I thought this was a really interesting model.
Maybe it wouldn't work so well with singleplayer games. However, there's a similar example with the sprite editor / animation software Aseprite, which is open source but you have to compile it yourself, so it's cheaper for most people (in terms of time and effort) to just buy it for $15.
Now sadly no longer on the Apple App Store
I guess that is what happens over time at the walled garden: You don't pay, you don't play
[1] http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/
update: gotta go scrounge for my box of old iPod touches with dead batteries if they have the games as local iTunes sync no longer works.
Jason Rohrer's game One Hour One Life has a few community spin-offs, which is also really interesting. There are also blatant clones, of course, but it seems to be a worthwhile tradeoff on the whole.
https://dev.aseprite.org/2016/09/01/new-source-code-license/
Still, the latest version is on GitHub? But it's only for "personal use" according to the EULA (and not making your own fork for example).
Imagine if someone asked you for help and said "I don't see how to free my slaves while making a living, paying my rent, paying for my children's education". Would you tell them "You shouldn't have slaves, it's unethical" or would you try to help them find a way to run their business with fewer slaves, but still some?
Try to imagine something that you find unethical but some others do not: burqas, abortion, war, public schools, private schools, eating meat, rolling coal or whatever it may be.
If you start from the position that such a thing is unethical, you can't enter an argument with someone who asks you "how should I do X to make you happy?", because you simply won't be happy if this gets done at all.
That means in this case it doesn't make sense to complain and argue about his answer to the developer, as his answer makes perfect sense given his premises. If you want to disagree with his advice, you have to disagree with his moral position on proprietary software and argue about that.
Expecting Stallman to help someone make money with proprietary software is like expecting a vegan advocate to help someone kill cows more humanely.
Note that I'm not expressing an agreement or disagreement with Stallman's worldview, only that his answer is exactly what follows from his worldview, and you should argue about that and not about the answer.
You did exactly that.
> The point is that Stallman does not find proprietary software bad for the user, he finds it morally wrong.
I truly hope that you are wrong and Stallman does not believe proprietary software to be an evil on par with slavery.
You may want to reread my original post carefully.
> I truly hope that you are wrong and Stallman does not believe proprietary software to be an evil on par with slavery.
I can't claim to know the internal ranking of evil things in Stallman's mind, but nonfree software is very clearly beyond the line of unjustifiable evil for him.
"While we can distinguish various nonfree distribution schemes in terms of how far they fall short of being free, we consider them all equally unethical.", from https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
> Stallman: "we consider them all equally unethical."
This is my whole point in a nutshell; unethical and evil are NOT synonymous words and you keep treating them that way. Wage theft is unethical and should be criminal. Slavery is evil.
Many vegans are actually doing exactly that: enacting laws to improve the living conditions of animals. In the Netherlands we have the "party for the animals" in parliament for that. While their long-term goal is the elimination of meat, they also realize this is not realistic/practical in the short-term for various reasons. In the meanwhile they've been fairly successful in putting the topic of animal suffering on the agenda, making meaningful proposals to improve things, and hopefully coming closer to the long-term goals
I happen to be vegan (well, mostly anyway). Yes, you have the "extreme" vegans you might encounter on occasion, which me and my vegan friends tend to dislike as well, but most are significantly more pragmatic than you might think. It's just that you hear less from them as they're not as "loud".
If a farmer was to walk up to me and ask me "how can I improve the welfare of my animals in my factory farm?" then I'd do my best to make meaningful improvements, even though I think factory farming in general is unethical.
Now, back to Free Software: in broad lines I agree with Stallman, but just find his approach unhelpful, and I don't think that can just be hand-waved away with "but [he thinks] it's unethical".
However, in my opinion, this game developer interested in doing the right thing is the kind of person the FSF and Stallman should focus on and work on finding solutions for, because they could make a difference and even move part of the industry to free software. Telling such people they are not doing the right thing without giving any trail is not going to achieve much and could even repel them. That's counter productive.
One could say that the concerned developer should instead think themself of a solution. That's partly true. I think they should if they are really concerned. However, the whole goal of the FSF is to move the world to free software. They should work to provide trails to such people, because they have all the incentive to do so, even more than the concerned developer. They should provide a welcoming climate so such developer want to join (even more).
I think Stallman should be prepared to give a kind, low effort answer to such a "basic" question. It can be low effort because sometimes the question is low effort too, or even a bit ill-intended and yes, the developer should do their homework. But a nice, positive answer could make things change and engage people.
(I say "basic", but that does not mean the problem is easy. I think it's hard.)
Two things don't have to be exactly as bad as each other to be analogous circumstances.
You are supposed to apply to same chain of logical reasoning to the two situations.
Just expressing faux outrage with a "How dare you compare these two things" isn't actually defeating the argument in any way.
Using extreme ethical examples to justify a statement is how Godwin’s Law came about, way back in the 90s. It’s a well known tactic to make one’s own position sound reasonable, by implying that anyone is still arguing with you may as well be saying the Nazis weren’t so bad.
It’s a good rule of thumb that rather than making a logical argument, you are in fact bringing a rational discussion to an end by invoking slavery, Hitler, or other incontrovertible evil. They are not in any meaningful sense useful analogies for most discussions.
The guy wasn’t bringing up anything like slavery. Therefore Stallman’s response is quite likely unexpected to most people.
This misunderstanding tends to be caused by (1) treating the rhetorical device literally rather than as an (intentionally exaggerated) analogy, and (2) - as in this case - by assuming that the argument being made is trying to draw some moral equivalence between the analogy and the original example. It isn't.
I wasn't making any point about whether Stallman is right or wrong on that, I was just pointing out that people are attacking the wrong part of his argument. If you disagree with him you should attack his base belief that proprietary software is unethical.
> Unless you have a low opinion of Stallman, why would you expect him to be so dismissive of the day-to-day concerns of someone who wants to support a family?
When have you ever seen Stallman be pragmatic instead of idealist about anything regarding proprietary software?
> When have you ever seen Stallman be pragmatic instead of idealist
Pragmatism vs idealism isn’t the point. My question was why would you expect someone you haven’t met to be an asshole, if you didn’t already think they were an asshole?
I would expect the same if I asked any particularly idealistic vegan how to eat meat with less impact. The idealistic vegan will just tell me to not eat any meat.
Also, in no way is any of what I said contingent on Stallman being an asshole, but it also surprises me that someone thinks finding Stallman to be an asshole at all surprising. He is a man of strong convictions that won't budge, and it's easy to find many anecdotes where people paint him as assholish.
I’ve been to events supporting a cause. They are full of people who, in support of their passionate convictions, try to help and persuade people to join them without reducing personal dilemmas to simplistic answers.
It makes me wonder: if strong convictions don’t cause or correlate to how you treat people, is there another explanation for why it’s so easy to find such anecdotes?
Wow. There is a continuum from good behaviour to unethical behaviour to evil.
To conflate and compare and equivalate unethical behaviours like theft with true evils like slavery or murder is beyond unhelpful.
I don't see how proprietary has even been established as unethical let alone a evil equivalent to slavery.
Please stop making this argument on Stallman's behalf.
I'm not saying those behaviors are all equally bad. I'm saying they are all bad, with an unspecified amount of evilness. I wouldn't help anyone do any of them. I won't help someone steal, even if I think murder is more wrong than it, because stealing is already wrong.
For Stallman, nonfree software is also wrong. You can argue with that, but you can't expect him to help someone write nonfree software and still hold that view.
Society has moved on in the decades since Stallman started (for better or for worse), and we need to figure out a way to stay true to their vision around software and bringing new people on board with the free software movement. Having such extremist comments when someone is trying to figure out how to make their game opensource without breaking agreements for other parts they rely on isn't going to get anyone anywhere.
RMS' heart is mostly in the right place, but he's a fanatic who is 100% out of touch with the real world.
The same way anyone who think selling metamphetamines to vulnerable people and kids is unethical and wrong, then you should not do it and find another income to feed your family.
Nobody is put a gun to the temple and forced to write proprietary software to make a living. There are myriads of other jobs.
For most part of his life he was living in his office at the university, technically homeless. After that period he lived in a home designated by MIT, possible because they got tired of the building code violation of having a professor living in his office.
I understand he's forgone the amount of wealth he could have accumulated by just working in the software industry in the name of his cause, and that is laudable. However he thinks everyone should do this despite the greater burden they'd have to shoulder. All the people he tells shouldn't be making non free software so they can support themselves and their families are not going to be given free lodging by MIT.
However your comment above said he lived comfortably off the income of his own celebrity. We would have to twist the word income here for a bit to cover this kind of situation. The comfortably part is also a bit questionable, but I guess living at the office can be comfortable to some people. The description just didn't fit the situation that well, which is why I wrote the above comment.
Yes, by working on unfree software, an occupation which he uncompromisingly condemns. Programmers working exclusively on free software would be earning much, much less on average.
You mentioned exclusively, that's true that you might have to write custom, closed code for customers at many of those companies. But that's still better than exclusively working on non free software.
All of the open source companies/people that come to mind are not selling libre software, they are all selling some kind of service - support contracts, managed hosting, etc - or they embraced some kind of freemium/"open core" model (so they are really selling non-free software), or they are funded by charitable donations and sometimes public grants, often by having some large non-free companies being sponsors (Linus Torvalds is paid this way for example, through sponsorship money from the who-is-who of the non-free corporate world distributed through the Linux Foundation).
It doesn't sound complicated to me to understand that you can sell games whose code is open source but the 3d models, graphics, levels building and artwork aren't. Customer would still retain all free software liberties, be able to port the game to other platforms and the dev studios would still get paid.
So yes, although your observations are not wrong, they do not apply universally.
> Nevertheless, more than 6000 of these individuals choose to help fund the project to the tune of between $150k and $210k a year.
How is this not covered by the posters comment about it not being a business but a charity if you rely on people paying more than they need to?
If that's your definition, then sure.
That's not my definition.
I would have just answered that the best way to develop free software games is to not be forced to rely on copyright in order to get paid. Get paid to work on it, rather than get paid after work has already been done. If one has to rely on copyright to get paid, a CC BY-NC license might be the best choice, as then the author still have exclusivity to put the game on stores. An other choice is a contractual trigger where once the author is not interested in exclusivity they they will release the code.
This is probably one of the best critiques of his approach (and by extention the FSF) I've read. Very true, and it is a tremendous waste.
An idea that's inapplicable to reality even in principle is worthless.
There's no reason you cannot make a living by simply creating a payment method where you get the game + code. Yes, people will copy it. FAR from all people will. In the game add a pay/subscribe/support button. Frankly, I suspect you'll get more money; the game will be spread further and people will be willing to pay. You can even create a "bug bounty" program, where people can pay for bug fixes. Alternatively, have people "pre-pay" for new releases and send the code. There's plenty of alternatives.
That said, I do understand the view, but take a step back..
Stallman's point is that it's unethical to have closed source code running on your hardware. Effectively, you cannot understand, manipulate, update the underlying code. If I purchase a book, I can modify it. If I buy a car I can modify it. If I buy a song, I can modify it. Why can I not modify the software I purchased?
In terms of meaningful improvements, everyone considers licensing. Every company I've ever worked at, every code base, every project is evaluated, etc. It's taken seriously, something that was not done prior to the FSF. I'm currently writing this comment on hardware I can modify, with software I can modify. I don't even have closed sourced video drivers.. So I really don't see your point.
Here you are. Discussing and arguing.
Good on you.
Made me imagine one of those xkcd:
Me: here is the code.
RMS: what? this is the compiled software.
Me: but the code is there in assembly.
RMS: that's unethical, give me the source code.
Me: ok, here, the source right before compilation.
RMS: this is obfuscated code, still unethical.
Me: granted, here it goes without obfuscation.
RMS: no, wait, the code is so micro-optimized it's no easy to understand, that's not open enough, and, unethical.
Me: ugh but I didn't save the unoptimized version, I just kept optimizing until it got this way.
RMS: look if we can't understand it we won't be able to inspect it, so this is still unethical.
Me: fine, I refactored the code.
RMS: it's undocumented, how are most people going to understand it, imagine a whole operating system undocumented, just, unethical!
Yet GNU and FSF aren't everything RMS is, so he has his own personal website. I would assume you've learned about his views on having children there.
Stallman's reply? "You should not be making those games, it is unethical."
To say that is non-constructive would be an understatement; it's just shutting down any conversation and exploration and how we can improve things. There are a whole bunch of things one can think of: release the code but keep the assets (graphics, sound, music, etc.) proprietary, release under some sort of "source available" license, keep the core rendering parts proprietary SO/DLLs and release the rest as free software, and maybe a few other things. All of that would be a huge improvement over "100% closed".
But Stallman isn't open to any of that, and because the FSF is still very much Stallman's organisation, neither is the FSF. For at least 20 years the FSF has done nothing except preaching to the choir, and certainly hasn't actually made many significant meaningful every-day improvements. In the above situation the game dev essentially asked was "what is the best way to make my software more free?" and all he got was a rather insulting and condensing shutdown of that conversation before it could even take off.
[1]: I don't have the source for that right now; I think it was somewhere on YouTube. It may have been an interview with Lunduke, but I'm not sure.