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Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

monogame.net

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Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#231

Post by nothrabannosir »

andy99 wrote: post #229
nothrabannosir wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license only says what you MUST and MUST NOT do. The comment you’re replying to talked about what they SHOULD do. These are different concepts and they are codified differently by humans: the former in licenses, the latter socially. You’re experiencing that process right now.

That’s certainly not a legal principle of any kind. It’s like the 17 pieces of flair thing, if they want you to have more, they should tell you, we don’t need some weird unspoken guidelines related to licenses, it’s why we have the license. If I get tremendous value out of MS office 365 but my agreement with MS charges me only $15/month, should I donate some extra to them because of how much it helps my business?

> That’s certainly not a legal principle of any kind.

Correct!

Reread the original comment that kicked off this thread in that light and the overwhelming majority of replies and votes should hopefully make a lot more sense.

Edit: for the record:

> if they want you to have more, they should tell you, we don’t need some weird unspoken guidelines related to licenses,

Again check the original comment which wasn’t written by them but by a third party commenting on the state of a community.

Those unspoken guidelines aren’t any more or less weird than any other ones we share as humans. (Actually I’d say they’re far less so than most.)

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#232

Post by AussieWog93 »

sneak wrote: post #111
mindcrash wrote: post #101

Not without reason: Stardew Valley, which has been sold to millions of gamers, has been created using the free MonoGame engine. So ConcernedApe is giving back to the open source software which made his commercial success possible, like commercial parties should.

Gifts do not confer obligation. Copying deprives the original party of nothing. Absolutely nothing about free software requires or even implies any responsibility to “give back”. This idea that anyone making money with free software somehow owes the original authors anything (or “should” donate a portion of their profits) is ridiculous. If the authors wanted money for their software, they would have sold it instead o…

A lot of people arguing the philosophy here, but I'm willing to bet that sneak simply had very strong negative experiences around gift giving growing up.

For a lot of people, a gift is not a gift but an invitation to abuse, and it's hard to be rational or pro-social about it when you were on the receiving end of that as a child.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#233

Post by benoau »

MajorBee wrote: post #143
yunnpp wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God, that's awful. That 30% cut for the middle man hurts. At least the government tax can be put to good use (emphasis on can ...)

In this case, as a solo dev, it's probably quite justified to be honest. I doubt ConcernedApe would have really been able to continue solo-ing it with this level of success if he also had to maintain distribution channels, sales/returns, marketing, legal stuff on a global scale. It's probably the big name studios who already have entire departments to do that kind of stuff that feel they're being ripped off.

Actually the more you earn the worse the deal is - he's probably paid about $100 million for what amounts to $100,000s of labor if he paid people to take care of this stuff, and some (low) millions in taxes collected for various jurisdictions. Dude's personally bought Gabe a ship in exchange for some accounting.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#234

Post by skibidithink »

nu11ptr wrote: post #210
bevr1337 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gifts do not confer obligation. Remind me, which Ferengi Rule of Acquisition is this? There's not much argument to be had. You've created a logical justification for a myopic, misanthropic world view. > My friend bought me lunch. I used that energy at my job. Do I owe them part of my paycheck? Many find reciprocation important in a relationship.

> You've created a logical justification for a myopic, misanthropic world view. Nobody said it wouldn't be nice, but that it does not confer "obligation". This is the key word. I would argue a world where people do things because they want to, and not because they feel they have to, would actually generally be a nicer world to live in. > Many find reciprocation important in a relationship. Yes, and those sorts of rel…

This is exactly it.

I don't buy someone lunch with an implicit expectation that they'll buy me lunch in the future. That's tacky and gross. I buy lunch because I wanted to buy them lunch, and if they decide to buy me lunch, I happily accept.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#235

Post by whou »

tredre3 wrote: post #188
unpopularopp wrote: post #89

I'm sorry but why C#? Isn't the big tech (Microsoft) in this case is a very big downside? Why not LÖVE (Lua) for example? https://love2d.org/ There is also libGDX (Java) but not sure Oracle is any better than Microsoft. https://libgdx.com/

> I'm sorry but why C#? Because Stardew Valley is written in it. Probably half of modern games are written in C#, too (Unity). It's not exactly an odd choice. > Isn't the big tech (Microsoft) in this case is a very big downside? No, a language being backed by big tech is a plus as long as the stack is fully open-source (which .net now is). > Why not LÖVE (Lua) for example? Because Stardew Valley uses MonoGame, not LO…

Slay the Spire!

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#236

Post by throw10920 »

bevr1337 wrote: post #120
sneak wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gifts do not confer obligation. Copying deprives the original party of nothing. Absolutely nothing about free software requires or even implies any responsibility to “give back”. This idea that anyone making money with free software somehow owes the original authors anything (or “should” donate a portion of their profits) is ridiculous. If the authors wanted money for their software, they would have sold it instead o…

> Gifts do not confer obligation. Remind me, which Ferengi Rule of Acquisition is this? There's not much argument to be had. You've created a logical justification for a myopic, misanthropic world view. > My friend bought me lunch. I used that energy at my job. Do I owe them part of my paycheck? Many find reciprocation important in a relationship.

> There's not much argument to be had.

Yes, there's no argument because you're incapable of coming up with an argument because you don't have anything to base it on. You're just responding emotionally and trying to slander them because you know that they made a good point and you hate that.

> You've created a logical justification for a myopic, misanthropic world view.

It is neither. It is a quite reasonable worldview that the vast majority of the population subscribes to and finds rather acceptable.

> Many find reciprocation important in a relationship.

This is a non-answer, because you know that the answer is "no", but you can't bear to say it because that would be admitting that your position is inconsistent, yet you can't assert that the answer is "yes" because that's obviously insane.

Thank you for so eloquently refuting all of your own arguments.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#237

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #211
nkrisc wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stardew Valley is a very noteworthy achievement, but it’s not the kind of success anyone should expect to simply replicate. Go for it, but most will not achieve a similar outcome.

You miss all the shots you never take. The Stardew developer took a shot. Notch took many shots.

The Stardew guy spent five years not working, living off of the labor of his girlfriend.

Sure, take your shot, but it is unreasonable to think that many people have the opportunity to drop everything for a five year vision quest, hoping to come out the other side a financial success.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#238

Post by throw10920 »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #184
sneak wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no moral obligation, either - that’s my point. They chose to give it away for free. It’s the author’s explicit decision that there is no obligation placed on recipients. Giving a fake gift that comes with unspoken strings attached (and “keeping score” in your head) is the passive-aggressive, immoral act. If reciprocity is expected, it is definitionally not a gift. Releasing software under a free software lic…

The license only says what you MUST and MUST NOT do. The comment you’re replying to talked about what they SHOULD do. These are different concepts and they are codified differently by humans: the former in licenses, the latter socially. You’re experiencing that process right now.

> the former in licenses, the latter socially. You’re experiencing that process right now.

No, he's not, because there's no social contract on the internet. Making these analogies between real-world communities and "the Internet" is an obviously stupid thing to do if you think about it for five seconds.

And not only is there no social contract on the Internet, but because of its nature there cannot be, and attempting (futilely) to implement one is extremely harmful.

So, as a result, the license is all there is. If you publish it as open-source, users have zero obligation to contribute. If you want revenue, then use a commercial license and sell it.

It should go without saying, but the insane mental backflips that open source advocates go to in order to make wild claims like this harms their position, not helps it. Don't make absurd statements to try to ignore the fact that asking for money for your software with an actual license is the only reasonable way to get money for your software - it'll just cause normal people to take the entire movement less seriously.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#239

Post by altairprime »

somenameforme wrote: post #177
bevr1337 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gifts do not confer obligation. Remind me, which Ferengi Rule of Acquisition is this? There's not much argument to be had. You've created a logical justification for a myopic, misanthropic world view. > My friend bought me lunch. I used that energy at my job. Do I owe them part of my paycheck? Many find reciprocation important in a relationship.

How about #59: "Free advice is seldom cheap." Because you're basically saying that there's no such thing as free, and it's simply an 'unclarified financial contract to be consolidated at a later time.' Quark would approve! If I'm paying for a friend's lunch it's because I want to, not because I expect anything from him in the future. And beyond that, I do not consider downloading something somebody has released for f…

I prefer #68 here: “Compassion is no substitute for a profit.” The donation is compassionate; retaining it would be more profitable.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#240

Post by giancarlostoro »

philistine wrote: post #86
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lottery definitely has worse odds, I just don't think that's saying much. If you want to create indie games—and you can make it work without quitting your day job—go for it! But I don't think it would be smart for EA or Ubisoft to, like, stop making big-budget games and make indie games instead. If you can make a breakout hit, you can make a huge profit—but you have to make a breakout hit, and that comes down to…

> The lottery definitely has worse odds, I just don't think that's saying much. Absolutely. People tend to assume that 95% of video games turn a profit, when it's the reverse. There are highly polished, incredibly high quality video games who simply just don't sell.

Can you name some as an example? Genuinely curious.
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