5 ms·

I agree with a lot of RMS' views, but I would be very interested to know what he thinks about computer games (PC, and consoles). Can anyone shed any light on th

by shocks 15y ago

I agree with a lot of RMS' views, but I would be very interested to know what he thinks about computer games (PC, and consoles). Can anyone shed any light on this? The way I see it, games are much like an interactive film. It's an experience someone has personally created for us. It's more of an art than a computer program. I'm aware of open source games, but I wonder how an open source model would affect a game like Battlefield 3? Cheating would surely be rampant. I certainly do not expect Terabytes of data when I watch a film so I can make the changes I want, nor do I expect sheet music when I buy an album. Games are as much of an art as music & films. What about consoles? They are viciously protected from custom modifications. I don't agree with this, I believe it's our hardware and we should be allowed to do as we wish (hey Microsoft, blowing fuses in my NVRAM without telling me is really not cool).

dchest 15y ago
See this talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_3i7ZX_Gvk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_3i7ZX_Gvk "Copyright vs Community". Text: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.htm... Search for "I distinguish three broad categories of works".
- shocks 15y ago
  Many thanks for this.
pantaloons 15y ago
> Cheating would surely be rampant. Not at all, as it is anybody can modify the game binaries in the same way they would modify the source code (albeit with more difficulty). Cheating is prevented by having a central server validate all client actions for consistency, or in games without a simulation server (Starcraft II) having clients compare a game state hash and disconnect if they differ. Client side cheating (Wallhacks, Aimbots) are not preventable without a locked down client, open source or not.
- shocks 15y ago
  But open source would make cheating far more "assessable". It would be a trivial job to modify the opacity of walls for example - I imagine such a feat would be substantially harder without access to the source code (of course, still possible). It's easier to trust a "cheating hack" if it comes as a source code patch or the source code is readily available. If I was so inclined to cheat, I certainly would not trust a strange patch/executable from some shadowy figure I knew nothing about.
  - chc 15y ago
    That's like worrying that sharper knives will make stabbing people easier. It's true, but stabbing is already easy enough with the knives we have that the difficulty of the act isn't really stopping anyone. Similarly, games get hacked, open-source or not.
  - pantaloons 15y ago
    Ignoring the security through obscurity mess, the more salient point is that there are classes of problems that cannot be solved at present without a locked down client. If solving such a problem is the entire function of the device I don't know that I'm against this. Technology will eventually solve such problems (thin clients or fully homomorphic encryption) but these have serious issues of their own.
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  > Client side cheating (Wallhacks, Aimbots) are not preventable without a locked down client, open source or not. You can easily prevent wallhacks; just don't tell clients information they shouldn't display to the user, such as the positions of players the user can't currently see.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    I think this is a case for performance mostly. A character hidden behind a wall will be likely to appear to the player very soon. The client then gets a chance to pre-load any necissary rescources into memory and download from the server any information about the other character it might need. If you didn't do this then for example the page containing the player character model might have been swapped to disk and the delay caused in bringing this back in might cause a lag which will give one player a disadvantage. Also you may be able to hear the person behind the wall , for (even though it may only be a very quiet sound from the other character walking slowly). The client application will need a location in order to play the sound correctly, this information could be used to make a wallhack. The other alternative would be to pre-prepare all sound on the server and stream it to the client , but this would put extra stress on the server and more demand on bandwidth.
jerrya 15y ago
Similarly are distributed computing projects like SETI at Home which (last I knew) were explicitly NOT open sourced because allowing others to see the code would explicitly undermine their trust in the computations done remotely. I haven't seen RMS address that either; I think his views would be interesting.
- seiji 15y ago
  Zealotry is not compatible with nuance.
- dchest 15y ago
  Can't such software be reverse engineered? Also, the home page for BOINC (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ http://boinc.berkeley.edu/) says it's open source.
  - jerrya 15y ago
    It's been sometime since I looked at it, but you can see http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=7531773 http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=7531773 that as of 2003, it was closed source The FAQ states they decided to make the code proprietary "for security reasons and for science reasons as well".
- tikhonj 15y ago
  Isn't the natural solution to something like that just to do some redundant computation? I think that's how people deal with similar problems in services like Mechanical Turk. It would, at worst, make the computation three or four times less efficient but would limit both active meddling and errors. Also, relying on a closed source for security is a bad policy anyhow.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
redthrowaway 15y ago
>I would be very interested to know what he thinks about computer games See Stallman's Reddit AMA (#7): http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/rms-ama.html http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/rms-ama.html Essentially, he thinks that the production quality associated with studio games is not worth the sacrifice in user freedom. Your point about games being much like film is an interesting one. Elsewhere in the AMA, he says that he doesn't consider proprietary software that controls, eg, a microwave, to be unethical as it's functionally indistinct from hardware. Now, with some games (cough BF3) being functionally indistinct from movies, it would be interesting to know whether he believes those, too, are unethical. My guess is yes, as there are many things like DRM and data collection going on behind the scenes that the FSF is opposed to.

by shocks 15y ago

dchest 15y ago

See this talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_3i7ZX_Gvk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_3i7ZX_Gvk "Copyright vs Community". Text: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.htm... Search for "I distinguish three broad categories of works".

shocks 15y ago
Many thanks for this.

pantaloons 15y ago

> Cheating would surely be rampant. Not at all, as it is anybody can modify the game binaries in the same way they would modify the source code (albeit with more difficulty). Cheating is prevented by having a central server validate all client actions for consistency, or in games without a simulation server (Starcraft II) having clients compare a game state hash and disconnect if they differ. Client side cheating (Wallhacks, Aimbots) are not preventable without a locked down client, open source or not.

shocks 15y ago
But open source would make cheating far more "assessable". It would be a trivial job to modify the opacity of walls for example - I imagine such a feat would be substantially harder without access to the source code (of course, still possible). It's easier to trust a "cheating hack" if it comes as a source code patch or the source code is readily available. If I was so inclined to cheat, I certainly would not trust a strange patch/executable from some shadowy figure I knew nothing about.
- chc 15y ago
  That's like worrying that sharper knives will make stabbing people easier. It's true, but stabbing is already easy enough with the knives we have that the difficulty of the act isn't really stopping anyone. Similarly, games get hacked, open-source or not.
- pantaloons 15y ago
  Ignoring the security through obscurity mess, the more salient point is that there are classes of problems that cannot be solved at present without a locked down client. If solving such a problem is the entire function of the device I don't know that I'm against this. Technology will eventually solve such problems (thin clients or fully homomorphic encryption) but these have serious issues of their own.
JoshTriplett 15y ago
> Client side cheating (Wallhacks, Aimbots) are not preventable without a locked down client, open source or not. You can easily prevent wallhacks; just don't tell clients information they shouldn't display to the user, such as the positions of players the user can't currently see.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  I think this is a case for performance mostly. A character hidden behind a wall will be likely to appear to the player very soon. The client then gets a chance to pre-load any necissary rescources into memory and download from the server any information about the other character it might need. If you didn't do this then for example the page containing the player character model might have been swapped to disk and the delay caused in bringing this back in might cause a lag which will give one player a disadvantage. Also you may be able to hear the person behind the wall , for (even though it may only be a very quiet sound from the other character walking slowly). The client application will need a location in order to play the sound correctly, this information could be used to make a wallhack. The other alternative would be to pre-prepare all sound on the server and stream it to the client , but this would put extra stress on the server and more demand on bandwidth.

jerrya 15y ago

Similarly are distributed computing projects like SETI at Home which (last I knew) were explicitly NOT open sourced because allowing others to see the code would explicitly undermine their trust in the computations done remotely. I haven't seen RMS address that either; I think his views would be interesting.

seiji 15y ago
Zealotry is not compatible with nuance.
dchest 15y ago
Can't such software be reverse engineered? Also, the home page for BOINC (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ http://boinc.berkeley.edu/) says it's open source.
- jerrya 15y ago
  It's been sometime since I looked at it, but you can see http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=7531773 http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=7531773 that as of 2003, it was closed source The FAQ states they decided to make the code proprietary "for security reasons and for science reasons as well".
tikhonj 15y ago
Isn't the natural solution to something like that just to do some redundant computation? I think that's how people deal with similar problems in services like Mechanical Turk. It would, at worst, make the computation three or four times less efficient but would limit both active meddling and errors. Also, relying on a closed source for security is a bad policy anyhow.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

redthrowaway 15y ago

>I would be very interested to know what he thinks about computer games See Stallman's Reddit AMA (#7): http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/rms-ama.html http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/rms-ama.html Essentially, he thinks that the production quality associated with studio games is not worth the sacrifice in user freedom. Your point about games being much like film is an interesting one. Elsewhere in the AMA, he says that he doesn't consider proprietary software that controls, eg, a microwave, to be unethical as it's functionally indistinct from hardware. Now, with some games (cough BF3) being functionally indistinct from movies, it would be interesting to know whether he believes those, too, are unethical. My guess is yes, as there are many things like DRM and data collection going on behind the scenes that the FSF is opposed to.