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« on: April 29, 2003, 06:03:42 PM »
I think your argument does have some good points, and I agree with much of it. However, you directly contradicted yourself toward the end - you said "And I welcome Mr. Mnemonic to do just the same: to develop his engine for the sake of it, for the people that would use it (i.e. for us), not for the money it might or might not bring him".
However. This makes no sense at all, considering you are also stating that you may want to sell your own work. That's fine, respectable even. But shouldn't Mnemonic get money if you get money? He's perfectly willing, I believe, to let those who plan to make -no- money off their work (yes, I'm changing it to "work", because of odnorf's point about it not being just a game-making program) by making it freeware, to use his program free of charge.
But the minute money comes into it, it only becomes proper business procedure that he gets a little as well. He does not appear to have any corporate aims whatsoever - those who do have such goals are evident simply -because- they charge $100 dollars straight off. They could care less if you're not going to do anything with it. They sometimes provide 'trials', which are just that. They have some time-limit, or limited features. He's not doing any of that. Free-to-use, percentage-to-sell.
So, if you earn money by using his program to make something else, it's only reasonable he gain money for the continual use of his program. If, by any miracle, you do make a million dollars, it will be because of his program. Advertisements, fans, all that - they have nothing without his program. It's a mutual relationship. Such mutual relationships require benefits on both sides. So, when you start benefitting even more, so does he. Simply because of the fact that while you -may- have created the same program using another base similar to Wintermute, you did not - and I can not say whether it would even be similar, using different programs.
Microsoft was even worse. They bought DOS off a couple of programmers for maybe a few grand (not sure of the figure). Those programmers lost all rights to it. Then along comes the crappy little Windows add-on... And suddenly, it's this huge corporation that's got its grubby little hands in everything. And the little programmers are forgotten.
While this is certainly legal, it's not exactly something that anyone but Microsoft enjoyed for long. However - would Microsoft have gone anywhere without DOS to begin with? I don't know... possibly, but probably not.
It's rather understandable to me that those programmers might be a little disturbed, upset, etc. Possibly wishing they hadn't sold DOS. Perhaps Mnemonic does not wish to have that error.
Money in this kind of venture is extremely complicated, but sometimes it does come up. Obviously. So, perhaps he's making a bad move, but it's actually probably a smart move in the end - I wouldn't want to end up like the makers of DOS either. Left in the dirt, while the people who bought their OS benefitted enormously.
Wouldn't you do something similar? While I also hate even the concept of money, it is a fact of life that is rather... 'difficult' to change. So, to get anything, you have to have these little things called 'dollars'. I wish I could utterly destroy the creators of the concept of money.
I don't know Mnemonics money situation, but if it's anything like mine, he's going to try to get money whereever he can simply to survive. Survival really isn't that great, but... Anyway. In the unlikely event that someone makes a boat-load of money through his program, it's reasonable, understandable, and acceptable to me that Mnemonic gets money as well. You would be nowhere without him, and may even do the same in his situation - he puts hard work into this as well, just as you may put hard work into whatever plans you have. Not exactly easy creating something like Wintermute with any degree of dependancy or success...
So, again, I state: Mnemonic is making this program. You use it. You make money off his program, he gets money for it. Common sense.