Free Open Source Software and the 2048 Problem | Hacker News Reader

Free Open Source Software and the 2048 Problem

pastebin.com

11 pointsrudd9 comments

Isn't this kind of the point of free software? To provide software that is equivalent (or better than) proprietary alternatives, and allow users the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software?

Are gnu coreutils "unethical" because they reproduce the proprietary unix command line tools with a free software equivalent? Is Linus responsible for informing everyone how Linux was originally inspired from Minix?

If I want to study how Threes was implemented, I can't. I can't modify the source code to implement new mechanics, I can't port it to new platforms. The only platforms Threes supports is iOS and Android. I don't have any devices with either OS, so I would not even be able to play the game. On the other hand, the free software 2048 has been ported to work in many more environments, such as the Web and even the Atari 2600! Threes would have never done that, not in a 1000 years.

Also just look at the burst of creativity, and inventiveness 2048 spawned. Now there are tons of derivative projects, each created by someone to tweak the mechanics and provide a new spin on the idea, ranging from simple tweaks, to full blown AIs, and even more advanced projects. And the source code is available to all to study and learn from. Threes inspired none of that. If Threes' developers had had their way, 2048 would never have even existed. Everyone who was interested would have to play the game Threes exactly as it was, and would not be allowed to change it, to experiment, or to express their creativity. They want to lock the user down.

None of this would have been possible from Threes, but it is possible from 2048.

If no-one buys Threes anymore, and instead uses 2048, that is not 2048's fault. It is not the job of free software developers to promote and support proprietary software. Should LibreOffice be required to do marketing for Microsoft Office, and give all users a link where they can purchase it?

Requiring everyone to reference Threes in each derivative is ridiculous. There is a reason why no one uses the original 3-clause BSD license anymore.

The little tiny games topping the free chart may not earn as much as they seem, unless they are played again and again for a long time. They should depend on clicks of mobile ads and mobile games have poor CPI ratios. Yeah. Flappy Bird has been downloaded more than a few million times and is known to garner $50,000 a day. Nice. But that would be a grand outlier and I don't think the game sustains that amount of revenue now.

Last I checked 2048 states that it is inspired by threes. I know this because the bombcast would talk about threes with reverence and I remember having a moment of understanding why when I read it on the 2048 page. Anyway this guy seems to be against what open is for, if threes was open from the beginning would they be in place of 2048? Who knows, but I love the fact that Numberwang2048 and doge2048 now exist, which wouldn't have existed without 2048.

This isn't just a free software problem. Assigning credit is hard. Mathematics arguably has this problem, too. Important problems take decades or centuries, and a long series of discoveries are necessary to put us in a place where the final step is in reach for a single person or team. Perelman rejected the Clay math prize for exactly this reason. And this is in a field where citation and attribution are carefully recorded in the literature.

>First, 2048 should never have been MIT licensed. If Cirulli didn’t feel he had the ethical standing to make money off of it, I don’t understand why he felt he had the ethical standing to tell others they could.

What now? If I release something under MIT (or even GPL to some extent), I'm waiving the right to tell other people how to behave with whatever I released.

>>First, 2048 should never have been MIT licensed. If Cirulli didn’t feel he had the ethical standing to make money off of it, I don’t understand why he felt he had the ethical standing to tell others they could.

>What now? If I release something under MIT (or even GPL to some extent), I'm waiving the right to tell other people how to behave with whatever I released.

Cirulli didn't feel comfortable enough selling the game itself because someone else had spent years coming up with the basic design. I couldn't clone tetris in 1989 and sell it under an MIT license without drawing potential lawsuits, even though no code was shared.

Are CC licenses software-compatible now? When CC launched 10+ years ago, they were very careful to state that CC licenses are only designed to cover media and that software should be released under GNU/MIT/BSD. They even had CC-style overviews of some of the popular FOSS software licenses.

That's still the position of Creative Commons:

"Can I apply a Creative Commons license to software?

We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative. Unlike our licenses, which do not make mention of source or object code, these existing licenses were designed specifically for use with software. Furthermore, most of our licenses are currently not compatible with the GPL, the most frequently used free software license. (We are looking into compatibility of BY-SA with GPL in the future; for more detail, see the compatibility page.)

CC licenses may be used for software documentation, as well as separate artistic elements such as game art or music.

Note that the CC0 Public Domain Dedication is GPL-compatible and acceptable for software. For details, see the relevant CC0 FAQ entry. "

The whole ethical/unethical thing makes me shake my head. It's not ethics that keeps people in line, it's laws.

License your software appropriately. If you get wronged, take action. But DO NOT complain about people not doing the "ethical" thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com