Why intellectual property is such a confusing concept

[PabloLuna]

Pablo: just to make things clear, I do not thing Linux is agressive development. When kernel versions are like 2.6.31 to 2.6.32 in a year this is not aggressive development. By agressive development I mean smth along the lines of 2.0 to 3.0

Also, I wouldn't put the OS kernel development cycles with software. While there are examples of aggressive releases, which I argue are tied to competition with proprietary vendors, most of the free software development is pretty calm. It might be active and fast, but it is not rushing releases and certainly almost never creates new incompatible versions of the same software.

You talk about aggressive... significant changes does not mean innovation or usefulness or usability or playability.

For example, if you compare Microsoft Image Composer (MIC) with MicrograFX Picture Publisher 7 (PP7), you may find that MIC takes as much time to load as Photoshop but with half the features, while PP7 runs fast and has about 80% of Photoshop features.  PP7 is a very old software which runs in Windows 98 and also Windows XP.  PP7 is very cheap, about $4, 5 years ago.

Free software may be pretty "calm" but as a user I do not care.  Most of the features I use are there.

You see innovative games like Star Control II, where Accolade wanted to make a sequel with a smaller budget, so the original developers refused because it wouldn't cover costs.  The result was Star Control III which was a crappy game that failed, so Accolade argued "market lost interest".

The problem of commercial software is that it is tied to a budget.  No budget, no aggressive updates.  With freeware it is just a matter of enthusiasm.

Freeware may be slower, but it is constantly evolving.  Companies offer products faster but they are just like bursts and very often you see commercial software discontinued.  Fans who make freeware do not use to let down other enthusiasts, and if they can't they usually release as opensource, so other people take care of the project.

If you see Orbiter Space Flight Simulator (orbitersim.com) which is free and "slow" and if you compare it to Space Shuttle Simulator (http://www.space-shuttle-mission.com/) which competes with S3 freeware (http://www.shuttlesim.be/) you may realize that even if Orbiter is a bit simpler, it covers a wider scope and unlimited playability.

David413, who makes the shuttle addons for Orbiter, usually release special packs when a shuttle mission takes place.

With Orbiter you can build space stations, travel to other planets, make slingshots, deliver cargo, EVA missions, etc...  With Space Shuttle you can only fly a space shuttle mission.

Orbiter is the best renderer of Earth these days.

There are other free softwares that are the best around.  Stellarium, Celestia, Orbitron, etc.

And if it is about companies releasing free software, you may see the free racing game by Volvo.

[Saga Musix]

Louigi, I wonder what you have to say about the demoscene. Do Farbrausch or Fairlight have a secret contract with nvidia because their demos are so resource-hungry?

[Louigi Verona]

You talk about aggressive... significant changes does not mean innovation or usefulness or usability or playability.

Exactly! This is my argument exactly. Read the posts which I wrote previously.


Jojo: No, I do not think that Fairlight or Farbrausch have contracts with nvidia.

[Saga Musix]

Why should your argument be valid for "all the rest of the industry" then? Most Farbrausch members are working in game business.

[Louigi Verona]

Me and my business partner (he much more so) have worked in the game industry and I simply know that deals between game companies and video card manufacturers are a fact. Read it up. Read how Carmack and idSoftware guys were working with NVidia, but then had an argument and switched to working with ATI. Read up how well Quake 3 runs on ATI and how much worse it runs on NVidia.

Now if Farbrausch specifically would have deals with manufacturers - I would not be surprised.

But as for the demoscene in general, demoscene is an underground subculture which is not about money and it is nearly impossible to market. I do not think it is reasonable to pay some demogroup so that they show their cool demo to 1500 people on some demoparty and say - hey, we did this with NVidia card. Half of the audience would say - we don't care, we write demos for Amiga and 486.

[Saga Musix]

Half of the audience would say - we don't care, we write demos for Amiga and 486.

Actually, they wouldn't. Have you even ever visited a demoparty?

[g]

Read up how well Quake 3 runs on ATI and how much worse it runs on NVidia.

Like this?

[Louigi Verona]

Half of the audience would say - we don't care, we write demos for Amiga and 486.

Actually, they wouldn't. Have you even ever visited a demoparty?

Yep. Several times actually. Parties I cannot visit I watch online.

Anyway, I made my point. Basically, you question my argument that game companies make deals with video card vendors and ask a question that perhaps I believe that demosceners make deals too. I told you that I find it rather unlikely. What else do you want me to say?

g: Sorry, my wrong, I meant Doom 3. It is also quite possible - and I apologize for this - that I am replacing ATI with Nvidia. Here I wouldn't be sure, since i always mess up hardware vendors.

[Saga Musix]

What else do you want me to say?

Maybe you should just consider one time that not every game studio has a contract with nvidia or amd or some other company. I'm not even sure if those companies could afford this (after nvidia even decided not to sponsor Breakpoint 2009 anymore because money was "lacking" - well, maybe it was used to sponsor the next GTA?).

[PPH]

let me throw in here that companies do use patents - like buying a competitive patent - to prevent the development of products or improvements.  Why? because it is cheaper and / or more profitable to buy the patent than develop what the patent covers.  Other inventions are never produced until the patent runs out and license fees are no longer applicable.

Of course this is ammunition to say patents are bad but also show the perversion of any market ideal - companies rarely think of consumers - or the public - first.

This is a typical example of how government intervention screws up the market. Patents are government granted monopolies. They create incentives for companies to register patents instead of addressing consumer's needs.

Still, they must patent things that consumers need, or else the patents are useless. But yes, patents are detrimental.

[PPH]

But not all free software gets upgraded so aggressively. In fact, most is not when it is completed. There is simply no reason to. It can get slight upgrades, but it will not change much and if Some Software was released as a stable 2.0 release, chances are it will take it several years to become 2.9 or 3.0, not 6 months.

With Firefox it is certainly competition with proprietary browsers. If there was no competition, there would be no rush.

Examples of aggresively updated free software...

Google search engine
Orbiter space flight simulator (www.orbitersim.com)
Google Earth
Linux

Buy none, get one free
Is the business model of the future one where the customer no longer pays? Already products in the digital marketplace are being given away free, yet companies are still making profits. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7811481.stm

People won't keep buying useless things forever. If a person buys something, it's because she wants to satisfy a given want or need. If that something turns out to be useless, then that want remains unsatisfied. The person won't buy the same thing again. A company that sells useless things cannot survive because companies that do produce useful things will emerge, and people will buy things from them, not from the others. Unless, of course, that violence prevents these new companies from emerging.

There are 2 concepts of value.  One is "exchange value" (perceived value) and the other is "usefulness value" (real value).  The gap between those two is a toxic asset.

You may have a $1000 pair of shoes and a $40 pair of shoes.  From usefulness point of view, both are covers for your feet.  But perceived value, given some social values, distort perceived value, creating artificial and imaginary value that allows sellers to make more money.

This perceived value is what makes cheap stuff to be expensive, and it helps speculation and the creation of toxic assets.

Value is subjective. It depends on who is valuing and on the situation. There is no such thing as "real value". Value is not a physical property of things. Something has use-value if the person considering the thing finds it useful. It has exchange-value if it possible to find someone else who is willing to give up something he has in exchange for the thing.

A computer does not have use-value for someone who hates computers and doesn't know how to use it. But for me, it has value. If human beings didn't exist, it wouldn't have value at all. Moreover, asking for its value would be absurd.

So, let's take the two pair of shoes. If someone is willing to forego $1000 for a given pair of shoes, it means that, for that person, these shoes are more valuable than $1000. For you, obviously, they are less valuable than $1000. So, the shoes do not have an "artificial value". It's just that your value scale and the other person's are different. That's a natural thing, because you two are different people. And that is what makes exchange possible. If everyone valued everything in the same way, no exchange would be possible.

[uncloned]

No, no, no you got it wrong.  The $1000 shoes were bought by the woman in your life and you get the $40 pair. That is how that works. :-)

[PPH]

A cross-company agreement cannot be sustained in the long run. If the companies don't satisfy what consumers want, other companies will appear and will do it for them. Also, game theory shows that such agreements are unstable. Not honouring the agreement is a good chance of profit, so sooner or later, such agreements fall, especially because usually some of the companies are more efficient than the others, and therefore the agreement is no good for them.

Ha! Well what you are speaking about is slightly different.

Let me give you an example of what kind of a cross-agreement I am talking about. The situation is simplistic, but actually pretty close to how it is usually done.

You have Microsoft, a video card company and a game company, which are developing an anticipated game.

Microsoft develops Vista. Vista has almost no backward compatibility, so Microsoft has to make sure people make a switch. One of the things they do is go to a video card company and say - let's make a deal - you do not develop drivers for Win XP, MacOS and GNU/Linux, only for Windows Vista. You can develop those drivers only after 6 month after Vista release. In return Microsoft arranges for the video card company to be advertised as compatible with the new Windows and included into Vista laptops.

At the same time the video card company needs people to switch to their card. So they go to the game company and say - hey fellas, can you make the game more demanding? Our video card will provide for that, so you can have more resources (yay, progress!) and people will have to switch. In fact, we will fund your game development.

So in the end what happens is that the new OS came out and people have to buy "better" video card in order to use OS and to give them even more reason the new 3D shooter requires that new OS and the new video card to run.

This is how it usually works. And for the companies it is a great way to work. And customers sort of get a video card that seems better and a new OS, which seems better - because it supports the new card and the new game and because seemingly it is better resources.

But in the end it means a false feeling of progress, badly written game code and unnecessary tech race. We are sort of jumping forward without actually exploring one step at a time.

Consider - in order to benefit from more resources, one has to push to the limit. But that is rarely done.

I would say, Blizzard is a company that creates games that are really nice and which are very long-term. Most of their games would run even on older hardware at the time of release.

Yeah. And Vista was bad and people didn't buy it. Microsoft was forced to support XP for a longer time.

If people actually buy Vista, the card and the game, then it means they found it worth it. They weren't forced to do it. They chose to buy the game. I bet many didn't take that deal. If the deal was so bad, then nobody would have taken it. The company wouldn't have sold many games. Microsoft wouldn't have sold Vista. The hardware company wouldn't have sold the card. They would all have lost money.

By what standard do you say there was no progress? If people bought the game under these conditions, it means they found the new situation, with Vista, the game and the hardware, more than the previous situation.

[PPH]

No, no, no you got it wrong.  The $1000 shoes were bought by the woman in your life and you get the $40 pair. That is how that works. :-)

LOL  :lol:

[Louigi Verona]

If people actually buy Vista, the card and the game, then it means they found it worth it. They weren't forced to do it. They chose to buy the game. I bet many didn't take that deal. If the deal was so bad, then nobody would have taken it. The company wouldn't have sold many games. Microsoft wouldn't have sold Vista. The hardware company wouldn't have sold the card. They would all have lost money.

I cannot agree with what you say here.

In general, yes, people are forced or even tricked a lot of times. Hype makes people buy games which otherwise they wouldn't have bought, etc. In fact, a lot of businesses are doing this - creating hype around products which you do not really need - by that I don't mean it's crap, but that they are unnecessary, you can live without them quite efficiently.

Vista was a failure, but many people use it because millions of laptops were preloaded with it and not a lot of people would care to switch, even if they were not satisfied and rather stayed with XP. Microsoft made it difficult to switch back, by using hardware that is not supported in XP or that was not initially supported in XP.

Your general argument is that people are not tricked into buying or using things and that everyone is outright smart and always chooses the best deal. I cannot agree with that.