Black Raven Dragoons

[Zancarius]

I was reading Slashdot tonight (not much of a surprise) and came across an article comprised of an interview with the creator of Tetris who claims that Free/Open Source Software hurts the industry. The original article is in Spanish and a link to the Google translation of it is provided:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/26/1859249

The interesting part of Slashdot (for me, anyway) is the comments, and about 3-4 pages down, a few people begin discussing the economic implications of F/OSS starting with this comment. I'd be curious what Tirian's take is on the issue.

[Tirian]

Hmm, that is interesting... I have three thoughts:

1) Alexei Paxitnov (sp?) has been known to be mildly crazy for some time. Besides that, what he's saying is very Russian. "I hate these evil people who do things for free that I want to be paid to do."

2) I don't know much about the topic that jbeaupre is speaking about, but it does seem to make sense. Actually, we can see it in WoW all the time -- so many of the items we make with our trading skills to level them are actually worth less than the mats to make them (or, even more so, the farming time to get the mats). So why do we still do it? Well, usually to make high-end products for ourselves, friends, or possibly even for sale that are worth the loss to us. I would love to charge lots of gold for the Imbued Netherweave Robe I just made, but I can't when some "jerk" just posted 20 of them he made just to get to 375 at prices less than the mats he used.

3) And finally, the argument below jbeaupre's goes into bogus semantics and is to arcane and academic to be worth considering, IMO.

[Zancarius]

Thanks, Tirian. I figured that since it involved a Russian and economics, you'd find it to be a reasonably interesting discussion (loony pro-FOSS types aside). I don't know a great deal about economics aside from the few obvious things relating to supply and demand, and I certainly would have never made the connecting between FOSS and WoW crafting. Do you think "software as a service" models make any sense at all, e.g. producing and "selling" the software for free or a small sum and simply charging for the services associated with supporting it? Redhat is one of the few fairly large companies I can think of that has done exactly that.

[Tirian]

Hehe, you know how to bait me...

The crafting situation is kind of sad actually. I think that, from a true crafter's standpoint (NOT a general player's standpoint, which has a lot more factors and WoW crafting has mixed positives and negatives -- most positives only in endgame) WoW crafting is just plain broken. As far as I can tell (and please, correct me if I'm wrong!) you really can't make money, consistently and independently, from crafting in WoW. And you REALLY can't make money at lower levels -- it's a total goldsink and not useful at all if you don't have a 70 main to supply funds.

I'm not sure what the answer is either. Allowing players to create items, etc. truly unique to them (until someone else goes through the same processes, but still, relatively unique) as I heard they had in Asheron's Call? Well, as far as I know the implementation wasn't that impressive. Forcing crafting by A) limiting what players can do for themselves while B) making most/all necessary items for full gameplay rely on crafted items as they're trying in Pirates of the Burning Sea? A novel idea and I may try it out, but I've got a bad feeling it's way too hardcore -- if you don't keep up constant activity you probably lose out of critical production periods (cooldowns for us... no idea for them) and definitely lose market share/reputation. I had high hopes for Vanguard's system of separate leveling for Adventuring, Crafting and Diplomacy, but that game tanked and those who actually still play it seem to mostly say that crafting and diplomacy are hobbled in comparison to Adventuring.

Anyway... converting software from a commodity to a service is an interesting idea, I'll admit. Theoretically it should guarantee a more consistent revenue stream (for example, a stock brokerage or commodity trading house, even in a bad year, should be making money from their service charges for trading), but at the same time, they're trying to force this change. I'm not convinced consumers or businesses want software as a service -- they develop their own customizations and even IT departments (the 12 yo next door or a vast and arcane bureaucracy of geeks like us) for their own needs, molding a product to their best uses. Why pay Microsoft for that with "Vista Officeline 2012" when your in house team knows your exact needs and how to build them? I don't know -- mostly I'm waffling because I don't know enough about this economically or industrially to give a non-John-Kerry answer. Somebody that knows what the hell they're talking about want to chime in -- Turus, Sum?

But before I end this overly long post -- aren't we already paying "software for service" fees monthly?

And then again... we're not paying for the client software (we paid for that separately), we're paying for server maintenance and a down payment for the next software update (Expansion QsleRFghEaZZZ). So maybe we're not

Me -> Homework

[Zancarius]

Hehe, you know how to bait me...

I'm a troll at heart, remember?

The crafting situation is kind of sad actually. I think that, from a true crafter's standpoint (NOT a general player's standpoint, which has a lot more factors and WoW crafting has mixed positives and negatives -- most positives only in endgame) WoW crafting is just plain broken. As far as I can tell (and please, correct me if I'm wrong!) you really can't make money, consistently and independently, from crafting in WoW. And you REALLY can't make money at lower levels -- it's a total goldsink and not useful at all if you don't have a 70 main to supply funds.

I agree, especially as a blacksmith. Of all the epic patterns out there, good luck finding one that doesn't bind when you create it. Thus, there are very few patterns you can craft that are both uncommon, BoE, and afford you a means to sell the items for profit. Any of the blue-quality items can only be sold at a loss (felsteel helms are a great example, because they fit in to the categories you mention: great for leveling up smithing, also at a loss, and sold on the cheap). I think that the only way you can make money from any profession at all is to stack gathering professions, and we know how much we like those people who do nothing but farm all day.

But before I end this overly long post -- aren't we already paying "software for service" fees monthly?

This is true, and this is mostly what I had in mind. Office software and a few other things you probably wouldn't find people paying a service for if it doesn't do exactly what they want, but I would assume that operating system software would be possible to charge some sort of support fee for, especially for large organizations. I think it's possible to charge a service fee in some industries, and people will happily pay such things.

Google is betting on web-based office applications, but I can't really see that as taking off. People do want a manner of control over some things, too, and service-based industries (especially off-site services) are going to suffer from that desire, I think.

[Tirian]

Plus, when I edited in an investment bank we never would have used software that we couldn't fully customize client-side. Too many critical, urgent changes had to be made with our macros, and they needed to be tweaked for individual instances and more generally over time. If Google can make that as easy or easier -- and more powerful -- than VBA for Office, then maybe they have a shot.