Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad? • Hacker News Board

Re: Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?

#41

Post by reedlaw » Thu, May 17, 2012, 5:07 AM UTC

mynegation wrote: post #28

Why would I care? I understand the point of freedom for some software: say if tomorrow the whole nginx team decides to retire and I nginx is a critical part of my business, I have the option of taking over the maintenance. But games are not like that. Games are entertainment and presumably a short-lived one. I play, I get bored, I move on. The games are also a product of diverse teams: it's not just programmers, but…

All other things being equal, I'd still prefer a free (as in speech) game over a non-free one. The idea that I could go in and change some behavior is so compelling that I would probably spend more for such a game than its closed-source counterpart.

Re: Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?

#42

Post by koeselitz » Thu, May 17, 2012, 5:08 AM UTC

ced wrote: post #30

Related question: wouldn't FOSS ruin competitive online play, by making it impossible for game companies to prevent cheating?

No. It is possible to ensure that people don't cheat even with FOSS; signing and encryption make it possible to set up a nice relatively-difficult barrier to cheating. There are dozens of parallel projects that demonstrate this; perhaps the most obvious is Bitcoin. There are breakins with Bitcoin, but the threshold is very high, and it's pretty clear that only the most intelligent and savvy attackers make off with cash.

In general, people sometimes ask this question about FOSS and security. Isn't FOSS bad for security, they say, since attackers can look at your code and find the holes so they can break in? What this assumes is that the holes are inevitable and obvious, and all anyone needs to break in is find them. It turns out that this isn't true, as many security-sensitive open source projects from OpenBSD to Mozilla Firefox have demonstrated. Security holes shouldn't exist; help from the community to prevent this is key. The hope that code will be more secure if we only keep it secret - otherwise known as "security through obscurity" - is a pipe dream.

Re: Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?

#43

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 17, 2012, 5:11 AM UTC

antidoh wrote: post #3

Why is it unethical to sell software, but (I presume) it's ethical to sell food?

[deleted]

Re: Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?

#44

Post by dsrguru » Thu, May 17, 2012, 5:20 AM UTC

koeselitz wrote: post #39

dsrguru wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that he was pretty reasonable in the case of this article, but he is a bit crazy by most people's standards. A friend of mine has worked for the FSF and told me that Stallman won't even use the World Wide Web! Anything he needs looked up he has coworkers do for him because they're foolish enough to trust that nonfree web sites aren't malicious.

It's not strictly true that he only has other people do it for him: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134979 As far as the internet, though, as I told a friend long ago - Richard Stallman doesn't need the internet. The internet needs Richard Stallman.

He posted that to a newsgroup, not the Web. I'm sure he wasn't using the Web to do that, especially given the content of that post!

Re: Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?

#45

Post by kzrdude » Thu, May 17, 2012, 5:21 AM UTC

tikhonj wrote: post #22

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #9

Nonfree? Okay. DRM? Groan. But really, who cares, let the user decide. Why does the freeness of the OS have to predicate the distribution, license or otherwise of the software used on it?

The FSF does not dictate what you can and cannot install on your system! They really do "let the user decide". However, just because you are free to do something does not mean you should . All the FSF is doing is presenting a clear, well-argued and rather balanced argument about whether you should support non-free games on Linux or not. This is a complex issue and it is treated as a complex issue; all they do is prov…

Well it is a bit strange that they do not for example endorse Debian, which is really principled on free software but lets the user decide what to install.

Re: Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?

#46

Post by dsrguru » Thu, May 17, 2012, 5:27 AM UTC

AJ007 wrote: post #40

pippy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programmers have to eat, and free software needs a supporting paradigm to be sustainable. With Firefox it's the search engine, with Apache it's support, only smaller projects can be made from pure passion. Any large company porting software to a platform will be good, as more people (and thus support) will come to Linux. >Nonfree games (like other nonfree programs) are unethical because they deny freedom to their use…

I would agree that DRM that breaks basic functions of an OS is unethical. I believe that DRM that prevents a user from using or accessing something for which he or she has paid for, at any time in the future for any reason, is unethical and legally dubious. The free or nonfreeness of a particular piece of software is as much of a moral question as the color of sand on a beach.

But if you believe that DRM which "prevents a user from using or accessing something for which he or she has paid for, at any time in the future for any reason, is unethical and legally dubious," why don't you believe the same about nonfree software programs that meet the quoted criteria? Or are you saying proprietary software is okay if and only if its license is not enforced? Actually, the more I think about that the more I think I agree with it.

Re: Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?

#47

Post by ced » Thu, May 17, 2012, 5:28 AM UTC

koeselitz wrote: post #42

ced wrote: post #30

Related question: wouldn't FOSS ruin competitive online play, by making it impossible for game companies to prevent cheating?

No. It is possible to ensure that people don't cheat even with FOSS; signing and encryption make it possible to set up a nice relatively-difficult barrier to cheating. There are dozens of parallel projects that demonstrate this; perhaps the most obvious is Bitcoin. There are breakins with Bitcoin, but the threshold is very high, and it's pretty clear that only the most intelligent and savvy attackers make off with ca…

No. It is possible to ensure that people don't cheat even with FOSS; signing and encryption make it possible to set up a nice relatively-difficult barrier to cheating.

How would that work? If I have the source code of Starcraft, I can turn on the "Make the whole map visible" variable, and there's nothing whatsoever that encryption can do to prevent that. With closed-source, as far as I know, Blizzard's constant patching makes cheating relatively uncommon on their own servers.

Re: Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?

#48

Post by wtracy » Thu, May 17, 2012, 5:38 AM UTC

mynegation wrote: post #28

Why would I care? I understand the point of freedom for some software: say if tomorrow the whole nginx team decides to retire and I nginx is a critical part of my business, I have the option of taking over the maintenance. But games are not like that. Games are entertainment and presumably a short-lived one. I play, I get bored, I move on. The games are also a product of diverse teams: it's not just programmers, but…

Granted, such games are few and far between. (The only ones I can think of at all are some of iD's games, and even those were only opened long after the games' initial release dates.)

Re: Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?

#49

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 17, 2012, 5:51 AM UTC

ced wrote: post #30

Related question: wouldn't FOSS ruin competitive online play, by making it impossible for game companies to prevent cheating?

[deleted]

Re: Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?

#50

Post by replax » Thu, May 17, 2012, 6:03 AM UTC

ced wrote: post #47

koeselitz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It is possible to ensure that people don't cheat even with FOSS; signing and encryption make it possible to set up a nice relatively-difficult barrier to cheating. There are dozens of parallel projects that demonstrate this; perhaps the most obvious is Bitcoin. There are breakins with Bitcoin, but the threshold is very high, and it's pretty clear that only the most intelligent and savvy attackers make off with ca…

No. It is possible to ensure that people don't cheat even with FOSS; signing and encryption make it possible to set up a nice relatively-difficult barrier to cheating. How would that work? If I have the source code of Starcraft, I can turn on the "Make the whole map visible" variable, and there's nothing whatsoever that encryption can do to prevent that. With closed-source, as far as I know, Blizzard's constant patch…

Your Starcraft example is flawed, because Starcraft is NON OSS. Therefore, they chose other means of cheating prevention. You might argue that it is security by obscurity but it is working more or less to a certain extend.

I have an example of OSS software with yet no cheater. Check out xonotic (www.xonotic.org), a heavily modified quake based shooter. They partly implement anti-cheat functionality by more or less shifting tasks from the client side to the server side, making e.g. wallhacks impossible. Also they use encryption for certain packages to prevent them from being tapered with. Aimbots are another thing, but I have yet to see one. I didn't really dig into the security features though, that is just what I picked up by casually browsing the forums...