Hacker News Reader

Comment by jluxenberg | Hacker News Reader

Physical objects that are handmade or manufactured have the advantage of not being easily reproducible. Rights management is easy in the physical world; I own an object if I posses it. The object can only be in one place at a time, because it is unique.

Digital goods are inherently more difficult to sell because it is so cheap to copy and distribute them. "Information wants to be free" has a kernel of truth in it; "free" is the most natural state for information. It can be copied easy, quickly, and cheaply.

DRM technologies feel draconian, but probably only because they restrict legitimate fair-use in addition to protecting information from unauthorized distribution. Ultimately, I think more DRM is going to be necessary to protect IP. Fairly soon, all IP is probably going to be distributed online (books, music, movies, etc). If piracy isn't kept to a minimum, it will eventually cannibalize the IP market.

View on HN

"If piracy isn't kept to a minimum, it will eventually cannibalize the IP market"

meh, smart people will find a way to make money, even when economies shift.

If that's the case then why haven't smart people figured out a way for game developers to make money while releasing their software as open source? Point me to an example that illustrates how this is possible and I will concede that you're right.

Who said anything about opensource? The issue at hand is closed source and profit.

And check out 2dBoy.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/20/world-of-goo-sale...

Directly from the article: "Programmers should give away their software and make money from consulting."

I read that as meaning open source, what do you take that to mean? Maybe my requirement that it be open-source is too restrictive - I'd be just as happy to see an example of a freely available closed source game that earns its creator a decent living.

In regards to 2dboy, while I think it's certainly an interesting economic model, which has a lot of potential, I don't think it's a counter-example of what the article is arguing in-favor of since it's still not free.

2dBoy was more of an example of smart game developers changing with the times and gating paid. And for a while it was free (as in beer) if a customer wanted.

The reason I doubt it means opensource because that's the equivalent to musicians handing over their source files.

Ultimately those who can adapt, will adapt. And they will inspire others.

I made a little bit of money writing open source game.

Some people, like Jason Rohrer, made his living based on donation from the public and patronage. http://libregamewiki.org/Jason_Rohrer

Also, lot of people are probably buying Wesnoth on the iphone judging by tons of iphone reviews that I have spotted using google alert. http://wesnoth.repositoryhosting.com/trac/wesnoth_wesnoth/

Game developers DOES make money while releasing open source software. I just hope you don't move the goalpost in your next comment.

Can you provide a link to your games or more info? I'd be curious to see.

I'm still not entirely convinced. In both of your examples it's not clear that it's possible to make a sustainable income, 10k is not imo a sustainable income, admittedly that's partly my fault though for not making my original question clear. I upvoted you for your examples though, since you did technically meet the requirements I asked for.

* http://wiki.kibabase.com/Codename_Subnem - a game development research project. Still ongoing. Second job.

* http://wiki.kibabase.com/Ruby-Warrior - outfit the game with a graphical front-end. First job.

They are only small jobs with very little pay. However, I am just a high-schooler with only a few years of programming experience.

its obviously easier to lobby to prevent the economy from shifting; many big companies will be unable to adapt, and many small companies will become the big companies.

It isn't an exactly what you're asking but in terms of giving away software and still making money on it with games - there are some people making money with free flash games. If I remember right the desktop tower defense guys made a little under 100k in a year and I read an article not long ago which suggested the ninja kiwi games website was making something near $30k/mo.

Or how about the farmville / zinga games offers where people do certain trial offers to get points in the game?

These seem like reasonable answers to your question (though these aren't open source they are still free to play).

Smart people will find ways to make money. If they stop making things of value that are easily stolen, everyone else will suffer.

> "Information wants to be free" has a kernel of truth in it; "free" is the most natural state for information. It can be copied easy, quickly, and cheaply.

The argument basically says "what is, ought to be, too!" But there's no logical relation between 'is' and 'ought' and this has been known for over 250 years. [1]

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem

True. And that applies to the opposing argument as well. As in: copies of music and other IP ought to be paid for since that is the way it's always been.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com