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Author Topic: Open Source .vs. Closed Source  (Read 4618 times)

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Re: Open Source .vs. Closed Source
« Reply #20 on: April 21, 2007, 02:24:54 pm »
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I imagine, so he can make money off it. The problem with Open Source is, as you've mentioned, that you can't "just" sell it. Open Source makes its money through "support". If someone makes a game, they will need money, to pay for the art designed, and the labor that went into the programming and design.

Don't get me wrong, Open Source is great, but it does not fit well into the current society, where you need money to survive. In my eyes, Open Source projects have two competitive points, as where closed source only has one. With closed source software, you just need to really provide a better game to make money. With Open Source software, you need to provide a better game, for one, and to actually make money once you've attracted people, better "support". Open Source is not the way to make money in our current society, where, as I've said already, money is required to live.

It's kind of a double edged sword. You can't pay all the contributors in an Open Source project, because there are too many. Money is made through "support"... but how does that pay off the programming others have contributed? It doesn't... not really... With closed source software, you know who did what, who deserves to get paid, and they can be paid for their efforts.

Role-Playing:
Mr. Joe Someone contributed a huge bug fix, which was well needed by many people, to, lets say, the Linux Kernel. Will he get paid for his labor he put into finding the bug, and correcting it? No.

As stated earlier, if someone has to pay for a program, if it's open source, they can just go find another distribution giving it away for free. That doesn't work! Labor needs to be paid for. Nothing is free in this word. It's the very sad truth, unfortunately. Open Source doesn't pay for the labor done by people. With closed source, you can ensure that nobody is going to get your labor for free by a different distributor.

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That means if the developers want to make serious money they will have to provide support and warranty themselves in their own distribution,
In addition to doing labor (programming) they are now forced to do more labor (support) just to earn money for their original labor (programming)? That is a problem. Now they must succumb to two types of labor, just to pay for the expense of the original labor...

I don't mean to argue.. but there is a reason that things are closed source and should stay that way... I'm also sorry if this doesn't make sense.. A little lack of sleep...
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Re: Open Source .vs. Closed Source
« Reply #21 on: April 21, 2007, 03:25:31 pm »
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if by that you mean games made in group then I dont know cuz most of them never get finish.
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Quote from: Infini on March 18, 2008, 05:29:22 pm
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Re: Open Source .vs. Closed Source
« Reply #22 on: April 21, 2007, 03:31:51 pm »
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The thing is. What you get back from your labor is other people's work. Your "reward" for doing it is other people's work. You help others, they help you. There's is more in the world than money that can be useful as a reward for labor. If you got the money instead you would've just paid someone to do that work anyway (and you would be left at the same status, expect without the freedom!). And now you maybe say "but people who don't contribute code but still get products for free"? Well, there are other ways to contribute; donation, spread the word, documentation, management, or just simply use the software!
Also, you can't expect to get much when there's theoretically infinite amount of copies. The sharing value increase when the amount of copies increase, while the money value decrease when the amount of copies increase (except it's only half-true when the law allows an artificial limit, by making unlicensed copies illegal). Free Software (not to be confused with Freeware) says that sharing and freedom is more important since the value of that increase. Open Source sees the benefit in more technical terms (i.e. the product get better with more "eyes") than ethical ones in FS (i.e. one should be able to learn and modify the software by using the source) when the sharing value increase. (That's also the difference between Free Software and Open Source... also Freeware simply means something that comes free of charge, whether it is open source or closed source)

Support is something businesses would offer. So those who would have the intention to do it commercially would provide support so they can't loose money because they still get the same money from the support. They can also offer support for other software.

A hobby developer, can also offer support. S/he has the right to more or less say "nope, I won't tell you until you give me 10 bucks", if someone emails him or her with a question. But chances are that unless the question is really new and unanswered, the asker will simply find the answer somewhere else if s/he doesn't want to pay. But it's quite easy to put up an email where people can ask question. Have one free which is answered when there's time (i.e. no guaranty), and have one which requires a fee (per time, month, year, life, whatever) where you guaranty answer before an amount of time you have said (or else the asker get his or her money back). There are a lot of people that happily pay a fair fee to get support for a complex program they are not familiar with.

And it's only really very popular software that will have a real competition when it comes to providing support, except that some might offer support for ALL open source software, however these are more expensive and more for schools, offices and organizations and so on which use many programs, and they who offer support for all open source software probably have paid for support in their turn for all software (they act like a "support collector"). Look at the amount of commercial Linux-distributions which contains all the most popular free software, and that's where the competition comes. And active developers do often get their share. Simply fixing a bug or two by providing small patches will not really make you an "active developer" or "key developer" for the project, so you can't expect to get much for it. Visual and music art designer is a different matter and there are different free licenses for what they produce.

EDIT: Also there's more ways to get money than selling copies and providing support. There are TONS of services. Be creative!
« Last Edit: April 21, 2007, 03:35:31 pm by Venus »
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Re: Open Source .vs. Closed Source
« Reply #23 on: April 22, 2007, 04:27:26 pm »
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If I made my own software and wanted to sell it, I'd feel reluctant to making it open-source, because I would possibly gain less money than if I did it closed-source, wouldn't I?

But if I wanted to make it free, I would do it open-source. I just don't care if people are copying the code I did myself. After making many programs, I realised that coding is not SUCH a hard thing to be jealous of; that's what I think

As for graphics and music it's different, because they can easily be copied, so it makes almost no difference in open or closed source
« Last Edit: April 22, 2007, 04:29:12 pm by sjegtp »
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Re: Open Source .vs. Closed Source
« Reply #24 on: April 22, 2007, 08:24:13 pm »
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Yes, Ideas are far more important that code, and good implementation ideas should always be shared as they would improve the world... Other ideas being obvious and presented on the final product.
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Re: Open Source .vs. Closed Source
« Reply #25 on: April 23, 2007, 12:24:31 am »
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I kind of prefer both.

If I were making something that cost money, surely I would make it closed-source. I like open-source too because I can learn how the program was made.

BTW, if anyone is willing to decompile Sonic Ze, give me a PM because I want to make that open source, and have the gmd again.
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