Quoting: Superuser

Quoting: Quote from Hamish

Quoting: Quote from Quote from DudeskiWell, not like the FSF is known for being particularly rational or non-douchy when it comes to these things. Those people would much rather just see all "non-free" software dead and gone.

How is the FSF defending the rights of those who use their license make them acting like a douche? The Game Dev Tycoon developers made a mistake and violated the license; actions have consequences.

I disagree. The license violation was so minimal it's unreal. The GOL article actually makes the facts less clear, which you can see for yourself at this post on the game's forum [External Link] by our very own Liam Dawe.

How does my article make the facts less clear, I very clearly laid out exactly what happened. Also my post on their forum to them was to point out a flaw in what they said they will do to clear it up (when the license text states it should be with the software, they should do that not tell people to go to the credits page).

Yo quote myself:

Quoting: liamdaweThe basics of it are that they use glibc that is under the Lesser General Public License (L-GPL) that can be used in commercial applications, but they didn't note that down anywhere and didn't include the license file along with it. It seems like an easy mistake as they say they use the node-webkit package which itself uses glibc on Linux, but the node-webkit package apparently doesn't note down it uses it (so it's not directly their fault they claim).

That is exactly what happened.

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Quoting: GuestWTF? Hotline Miami has been ported to Linux alone time ago. I have it in my Humble Bundle account. I guess Humble Bundle must have done the porting for them.

It was ported yes, but it has been in beta for quite some time now.

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I feel I need to point out that me and Trevor are actually on really good terms and we shall hopefully be revisiting this issue in a years time :).

I do not think gog.com are evil and I will easily be a customer of theirs if/when they come over to our side.

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Quoting: TheEnigmaticT

Quoting: Quote from liamdawe

Quoting: Quote from Quote from TheEnigmaticTMaths stuff

I understand your reasoning now but I completely disagree, using market share like that (and a complete estimation of the actual marketshare which is heavily debated pretty much anywhere) should never be used like that.

Sure. Let me just add a coda here that, while I did not use any of our internal numbers for discussion here, we do know how many of our sales come from users who are on our website using Linux, and we were able to draw our own conclusions as to what expected growth we would see after we officially supported Linux--based on our own experience with MacOS--and while our numbers were quite different, the conclusions we reached are the ones I'm giving you.

Now it's getting interesting ;)

I am glad to see you track Linux sales stats in some form.

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Quoting: TheEnigmaticTMaths stuff

I understand your reasoning now but I completely disagree, using market share like that (and a complete estimation of the actual marketshare which is heavily debated pretty much anywhere) should never be used like that.

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Quoting: TheEnigmaticT

Quoting: Quote from liamdawe

Quoting: Quote from Quote from TheEnigmaticTLinux, though? That's a bastard. For $1,000 in costs, we need to assume that the game will sell about $200,000 worth of games (x*3)/.015 before we've probably recouped the cost of the Linux effort. That's a whole lot of profit that we need to earn from a game--before we even know how well it will sell--before we can assume that we will make back the money invested in.

Sorry but now you have completely lost me.

I honestly don't get your math at all or your reasoning for why $1,000 of costs for a Linux version means you need to get $200,000 in sales?
I mean seriously come on, that's just a joke. If it costs you $1,000 you need to get $1,000 to break even, anything above that is revenue, revenue you wouldn't have gotten without it.

I may not have explained that fully. If I'm adding a cost for a specific project, I want to make sure that the costs from that project are worth it. So, given the size of the market share of Linux, if I'm spending $1,000 to fix a Linux issue, then I'd generally assume that the game will need to sell a heck of a lot of copies for it to actually recoup the Linux-specific costs.

Still lost me sadly, I am not a businessman which is why unlike some other people I won't be calling you colourful names but if I spent $1,000 in time to fix a Linux issue on a game and made $2,000 from it, that's $1,000 in revenue.

I can see how you are shying away from the Linux support if that is how you are doing your math though, you can't just divide it by market share and say that's how much you need to get.

Edit > Like I said business isn't my strong point so I won't comment on that anymore.

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Quoting: TheEnigmaticTLinux, though? That's a bastard. For $1,000 in costs, we need to assume that the game will sell about $200,000 worth of games (x*3)/.015 before we've probably recouped the cost of the Linux effort. That's a whole lot of profit that we need to earn from a game--before we even know how well it will sell--before we can assume that we will make back the money invested in.

Sorry but now you have completely lost me.

I honestly don't get your math at all or your reasoning for why $1,000 of costs for a Linux version means you need to get $200,000 in sales?
I mean seriously come on, that's just a joke. If it costs you $1,000 you need to get $1,000 to break even, anything above that is revenue, revenue you wouldn't have gotten without it.

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Quoting: darkone778So I would recommend that GOL start actively asking developers their opinions on developing on Linux. I know in my upcoming interview with Hugh Jeremy from Unknown Worlds. Here is just one example of the questions I asked. 

There have been some developers who have brought their games over from Windows to Linux. Some of these developers have complained specifically about the debugging process using GDB (GNU Project Debugger) and the lack of good interfacing IDE's being the biggest determent to bringing games to Linux. Whats your take on the subject?

I may be mistaken here but why is developing directly on Linux coming into question? This isn't about making games on Linux directly but about supporting games that do run on Linux already.

A valid question to ask for another subject (creating games on Linux) but it's not really to do with this discussion.

Quoting: DrMcCoy

Quoting: TheEnigmaticTLet's take an answer like helsinki_harbor's from right above me: these are all generally community-run projects.

You know what else are community-run projects? ScummVM. And DOSBox.
 
 Let's suppose ScummVM pulls an FFmpeg and splits down the middle.

Exactly what I pointed out in an earlier comment, waiting for a reply on that one too.

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Quoting: TheEnigmaticT

Quoting: Quote from liamdaweConsidering the comments we have explaining how easy it actually would be for you guys to support us (didn't realise you worked for GOG.com hello!) I see it a cop out. 

I don't want to re-post them as they all explained it better than me.

There's no nice way to say this, but I'm going to try: you are all thinking like Linux fans, not business people. You're only looking at upsides and positives, not the potential downsides and negatives. Let me explain:

Let's take an answer like helsinki_harbor's from right above me: these are all generally community-run projects. Let's suppose that we roll out Linux support and rely on one of those community-run projects to help us support GOG.com's Linux release. What happens if the community behind it decides it's sick of it and gives up? What happens if the project runs into idealogical problems and splits into two projects, each of which focuses on one particular area, but we need the output of both?

Well of course we are users not businessmen (most of us). We are trying to show you ways you can support us and trying to get you to see you can and will earn money from us.

You rely on dosbox and ScummVM for some games don't you? Aren't those community run projects? How is that different than using another one? What if no one maintains those projects for a while and updates in say Windows and Mac break them and no one is around to update those projects for GOG?

The linux support vote here: http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_games [External Link] has nearly 12,000 votes on it, are those masses of people not a big enough percentage of your userbase to work with and earn money from?

The point is you don't need to support every game on GOG under Linux, hell you sure don't for Mac. Why not even for now to dip your toes in use the dosbox and ScummVM games? What is the problem with them? As you surely can't think you would have more issues with those projects on Linux than you would on Windows or Mac?

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Quoting: TheEnigmaticT

Quoting: Quote from liamdaweI have updated with the next answer, I have to agree now they are basically doing a cop-out and using any reason they can not to support us considering what they just said.

 Okay, I'll bite. How is that a cop out? You're a fan of Linux, I get it. I have two computers which use Linux--PupEEE Linux and a Mint one--so it's not like I'm opposed to the OS. 

The answer I gave wasn't "marketing B.S." It was the truth. The economics don't work out. I understand that you're all fans of the OS and you're part of an active community that is passionate and dedicated--all things that have gotten GOG.com where we are today--but you're also part of a *small* community. And until we create a better way to actually scale the labor required to test and master builds, it's not economically feasible for us to support even *one* Linux distribution, much less the three that we've targeted as providing a broad enough reach to make us feel happy about moving into the space and doing it right.

I'll admit that this is disappointing news for you guys, I'm sure, but I don't see why it's a source of vitriol.  I would think the fact that we've clearly thought about this in depth--and that we have a pathway for what we need to do in order to implement Linux support--should be more promising than discouraging. Sure, it's not Linux support today, but I think that our investigations and attention in this matter show that, while we're still a small company that's trying to make the best use of our limited staff that we can, this is definitely something that we believe is worth figuring out.  

Considering the comments we have explaining how easy it actually would be for you guys to support us (didn't realise you worked for GOG.com hello!) I see it a cop out. 

I don't want to re-post them as they all explained it better than me.

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