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

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html

by donteatbark • 14 years ago

39 56 14 years ago

gnu.org

swernoxidation• 14 years ago

This post is open source.

antidoh• 14 years ago

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

mquander• 14 years ago

Free as in speech, not free as in beer, etc. It's not particularly ethical to sell food and refuse to tell anyone what's in the food, which is why we have various laws regarding that. Nor does it seem particularly reasonable to sell someone food under the condition that if they eat it in particular ways, you'll sue them.

alecbenzer2• 14 years ago

While I understand this concept, is it not another consideration that people should receive compensation for their work? In most areas these two goals don't seem to conflict with one another, but in software they seem to, at least a bit, and I don't think I've ever seen something from rms or the fsf addressing this notion. Even if RMS's position is "Freedom is _absolutely_ uncompromisable in any form whatsoever, and the need for freedom takes complete precedence over the ability for people to receive payment for software", I'd like to hear him say that (unless he has and I've never come across it).

I don't think Valve is being unethical in protecting their games. They're not controlling their products because "fuck you consumers, we are evil and wish to suppress your rights", they're doing it (at least I presume) because if they didn't, no one would buy their games and they wouldn't be able to operate. A food vendor can't make a similar claim (well, at least not in as strong a way -- though I guess there are things like secret recipes) to justify hiding things from consumers.

bmj• 14 years ago

Actually, there's another element to growing food you missed: industrial agriculture companies actually have "closed source" seeds. Scientists muck with the genetics of the plant, and one effect is that a farmer can no longer glean seeds for their next crop--they are forced to purchase more from the supplier. Some people may not find that to particularly ethical, either.

yuhong• 14 years ago

It is not unethical to sell software, but software and other digital things at the core is a set of easily copiable bits, while food isn't, and it takes food to write software.

mmphosis• 14 years ago

I believe that it is unethical to knowingly sell something that is harmful.

At the core of food are plants that have a set of easily copiable and modifiable DNA. Apparently, biotech corps think that they have DRM on plants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeis...

michael_michael• 14 years ago

See here for more information on the distinction between free (gratis) vs free (libre) as it relates to software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre

mrsteveman12• 14 years ago

I don't think that's their position actually, only that it's unethical to sell someone software they have no control over and no legal right to alter or work to understand, particularly if the software is actively undermining the user in various ways as DRM would.

It's a black box so to speak. Someone else pointed out the food comparison, it would in fact be unethical to sell someone food without telling them how it was produced and what was in it, and I think that's a reasonable take on the software situation.

However, one could argue that the GPL makes it almost impossible to build a traditional software sales business if the product is GPL licensed. The first person who buys it gains a legal exception to copyright to give it out freely, but that happens whether its GPL licensed or proprietary, we just call it piracy in the latter case.

So in some respect they're working against the idea of traditional software sales as a side effect of upholding the freedoms they promote.

ridiculous_fish• 14 years ago

Regarding the food comparison: Coca Cola is not behaving unethically by protecting their secret recipe. They have a responsibility to share allergen and nutritional information, but they have no obligation to provide sufficient information to reproduce their product.

Extending the analogy to software, if your program accesses personal information, contacts remote servers, inserts itself into the kernel, etc. then you have an ethical obligation to publish that behavior. But there's no ethical obligation to provide the source code, and indeed, providing the source code wouldn't be sufficient to satisfy your other obligations (because it wouldn't be accessible to 99% of users).

drivingmenuts• 14 years ago

It's up to the end user - if the GNU movement is somehow planning on restricting the ability of the user to use DRM'd software on their own systems, then they've gone completely off the rails.

mikegerwitz2• 14 years ago

Nowhere does GNU or the FSF advocate preventing the user from doing as they please; the user is more than welcome to use a DRM-infected system if they choose to do so.

We simply discourage it.

lambda• 14 years ago

Where in that did you see him advocating preventing the user from installing Steam? He's just saying that installing proprietary, DRM'd software reduces your freedom; so if you want to promote freedom, you shouldn't install that software on your computer.

One thing to keep in mind is that most of the time, he doesn't want to force anyone to do anything (other than make sure that code free if it was written under the GPL, even when modifications are made). He just suggests that people who value freedom do or don't do certain things.

newsoundwave• 14 years ago

"If you want freedom, one requisite for it is not having these games on your computer."

I feel like restricting the definition of freedom fairly narrowly goes against the very definition of freedom itself... but then again he's free to do that too.

drivebyacct22• 14 years ago

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?

tikhonj• 14 years ago

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 provide their views on what would further free software most.

As to who cares: anybody who supports freedom of software cares. And, while such people are in the minority here (going off the OS poll I saw a while back), they still make up a significant percentage of the audience.

drivebyacct22• 14 years ago

Sorry, my post wasn't meant to be an attack on the FSF at all, I assure you.

I care too. But I'm not every user and I'm not prescribing something for someone else. I'm all in favor of (the FSF) informing people and empowering people to choose free software free of DRM, but I'm also not going to imply that using a free OS means forgoing games or other things that might require DRM because developers (think they) need it to protect their IP and make a profit.

kzrdude• 14 years ago

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.

dsrguru6• 14 years ago

"My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm."

Did rms just admit that proprietary software can theoretically have benefits? What's this world coming to lol

Mizza• 14 years ago

RMS is pretty reasonable! He gets a bad rap, I think. It's like people watch his every move like, "Oh man, what's that craaaazzyyy old man going to do next?" Of course, he's actually right 4 times out of 5.

I thought the point he made in this article was a balanced one.

dsrguru6• 14 years ago

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.

jiggy20116• 14 years ago

That surprised me as well, I'm sure I've heard him say before that nonfree software is 100% unethical even on a free platform.

Perhaps he realises that having steam + valve games would be a huge net win for desktop linux use.

Even if you had mainly nonfree software , in theory desktop linux would still be quite a free system in the sense that there would be a level playing field amongst software devs.

dsrguru6• 14 years ago

Actually, that does seem to fit with the rational behind the LGPL. If you're going to write free software that replicates a proprietary program or library's functionality without adding anything new, rms believes you should make it available to the widest possible audience with the hope that more contributions will trickle back. However, I'm also sure I've heard him say that nonfree software is unequivocally unethical even on a free platform. Hell, didn't he say recently something about not being able to justify using proprietary medical equipment to save his life unless he immediately would embark on a quest to produce a free equivalent? Maybe he makes a distinction between trying to free future adopters from total proprietariness (i.e. in the case of games and LGPL'd libraries) versus trying to make people who have already taken the red pill 100% free.

nknight• 14 years ago

Even the most zealous are rarely devoid of all nuance.

Note he actually says "Nonfree games (like other nonfree programs) are unethical". That one believes an act is unethical is different from believing it will have a net negative effect vs not performing the act, and there's often a lot of nuance to be had when something is ethically questionable.

Consider the periodically-raised question of taking control of a botnet in order to shut it down. Opinions on this range from "totally ethical" to "totally unethical", even as much of the "totally unethical" crowd would probably admit that shutting down the botnet is a net good vs not doing so.

Sometimes, "X is unethical" doesn't mean "no good will come of X", it means "we need a third option". RMS believes non-free software is unethical, almost surely believes the existence of software in general is a net good, and that Free Software is the "third option".

pippy2• 14 years ago

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 users

I get the feeling he lives in a fantasy world. Unethical is hitting a baby in the face, not allowing people to see how you wrote a computer programme.

jiggy20116• 14 years ago

Just because you are not doing something directly and obviously "evil" like hitting a baby does not mean something cannot be unethical.

As more of our world is software and we rely on it to do things like store our personal information and trust it to respect our privacy etc, how is the availability and ability to understand and inspect that software not a potentially very ethical issue?

dsrguru6• 14 years ago

Well, I'm certainly grateful that his views are this strong, or else there wouldn't have been a free software movement for the open source movement to arise out of. If you think about it, the world as we know it would be completely different without Stallman. However, I'm not quite sure I agree with his belief that the existence of proprietary software licenses that tell you not to share with your neighbor create a double bind in which you either comply with the license and contribute to the destruction of social cohesion or you help your neighbor but incur psychosocial harm in the form of guilt that shouldn't be. :)

AJ007• 14 years ago

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.

cheebla• 14 years ago

Just to be clear, when he says "nonfree" he means free as in speech, not free as in beer, right?

jiggy20116• 14 years ago

yes, you can basically always assume that with stallman

mynegation• 14 years ago

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 story editors, 2D/3D artists, composers, voice artists etc that create experience, not a tool or platform. Do you really want Hemingway's texts be licensed under GFDL so you could improve upon them? Or may be you want to get your hands on petabytes of data that went into production of Avatar so that you could fix a couple of landscapes?

jiggy20116• 14 years ago

Not sure why this got downvoted.

Games I think are a very different case to almost any other software and should be treated as such, of course that does not necessarily mean that they do not contain malicious features.

artsrc• 14 years ago

> Do you really want Hemingway's texts be licensed under GFDL so you could improve upon them?

We create copyright laws because we want value what is made possible by it.

Games are entertainment.

Games are culture.

I want Hemingway's texts to be available to blind people, to to work on todays e-readers, and not be lost forever because they can't be updated to current technology.

There are specific exemptions in US copyright law to allow brail versions and copyright holders can't stop them being made available.

I want all copyright software source to be registered with the Library of Congress, because I value software.

reedlaw• 14 years ago

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.

wtracy• 14 years ago

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.)

mikegerwitz2• 14 years ago

Person X is a hypothetical game developer. Person X is not new to software development, but does not have much experience developing games. The best way for Person X to learn is to look at the source code for a game similar to the one he/she wishes to create, to see how the experts did it.

Sadly, that game is non-free, and Person X is unable to study the source code. Person X learns nothing other than that he/she has been denied this knowledge and must go seek it out from another source.

---

There's other reasons. What if the game saved all my data to a remote server and I wished to modify the game to save it locally? Or, perhaps the game crashed every time I entered a certain room and I did not want to wait for a fix from the original developers (which may never happen --- what if this game is now unsupported due to its age?).

DanBC2• 14 years ago

> Why would I care?

You buy a game. It sucks. You wish to sell it, and use the money towards buying another game.

Games are moving towards not allowing this type of sale.

ced2• 14 years ago

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

anonymoushn• 14 years ago

It is reasonable and possible to program these games in such a way that the client is assumed to be malicious, but this is not a common practice. Preventing cheating would be possible in the general case. For most existing games, though, a modified client already enables the user to cheat. It is just more difficult to create it without the source.

koeselitz2• 14 years ago

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.

ced2• 14 years ago

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.

pessimizer• 14 years ago

I think this is the most important question regarding online games on Linux, and aren't most games online these days?

I think that the solution is radical: I think that as much much time and effort should be put into making the binary unhackable as is put into the game. Ultimately, DRM(1) is a game, and a lot of programmers are addicted to breaking it anyway.

What's funny about DRM in the case of an online game is that it's actually a feature that customers would pay extra for, and a premium for quality DRM. Hopefully, we'll have good companies and groups creating it, and online games (whether given away or sold) will advertise and brag about what kind of DRM that they're using.

(1) I'm using the term DRM because I can't figure out a better term - but it's more like tamper management, isn't it?

DanBC2• 14 years ago

Technical solutions for social problems are tricky.

Putting stuff server side might help - meaning it doesn't matter so much what client people are using.

forkrulassail2• 14 years ago

Can't wait for Valve on *nix - easy to use - great specials. Resyncable.

forkrulassail2• 14 years ago

Games are the last vestige of the Windows platform that still chain my students to the platform. If they could game (with the latest and greatest games) on *nix, then, the battle is mostly won, no more dual booting, no more worrying about crappy Windows dev tools.

jfoster• 14 years ago

This is the closest I've seen them come to recognizing that the importance of free software may vary by where it sits in the stack. Think about it... the full stack of applications is a tree, right? A free root node is much more important than a free leaf node.

wjs• 14 years ago

I think it's important to add that regardless of whether proprietary games are wrong, he points to two initiatives (Liberated Pixel Cup and the LibrePlanet Gaming Collective) that are promoting and developing free games. Those are worthy of support even by people who many not be convinced that all games should be free. Personally, I think they should be -- games can have backdoors and antifeatures like any other program. They can be used to control the user. Game code is also re-usable in contexts that aren't games, and it has educational value. It has all the problems that locking away knowledge usually does. Game companies have also been some of the most aggressive when it comes to trying to control users.

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

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