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I've wondered about the possibilities of closed ecosystems paradoxically making it easier to open source your software and still make a profit. There's still r
by lukifer 15y ago
I've wondered about the possibilities of closed ecosystems paradoxically making it easier to open source your software and still make a profit.
There's still risk to your bottom line by open-sourcing: a competitor could use your code/ideas to create products that outsell yours. But what you don't have to worry about is piracy: the number of users with jailbroken devices or a dev certificate are a small subset of your user base.
On the positive side, you get the benefit of customer engagement: people helping you bug-fix, creating level editors, community content, etc. Companies can also sometimes find and hire top-tier talent this way.
At any rate, major kudos to Insurgent for doing this. I'm actually a little disappointed that all their games are free; I think at the very least, they should pick their best game and charge 99c, or do split Lite/Full versions.
- sycren 15y agoperhaps the alternative you are looking for is making parts of the software easy to access allowing huge mods to be made through modification of the mechanics. Its probably why skyrim will be playable for the next 5+ years due to the thousands of mods that are already available bringing even more content in..
- city41 15y agoNone of those things just automatically happen once a project is open sourced. The project has to be respected, known about, and generally desired. And if you've got those things, then you will probably be successful with your project, whether it's open source or not.
- jiggy2011 15y agoIf you have a closed ecosystem device how could you test your bug fixes etc without a jailbroken device?
- lukifer 15y agoThe 1% of users with a dev certificate would be tinkering with your code, benefitting the 99% who wouldn't bother.
- firefoxman1 15y agoHas anyone proven that open-sourcing leads to profit loss from competition? I was on one of the dozen Stack-Exchange competitors today and it made me wonder. Stack-Exchange isn't open source, yet plenty copied.
- yogrish 15y agoOpensource is very much welcome. But I have a doubt here. Can some one take their lets a simple "Alphabet Block game" ..do some minor modifications for UI or add simple features and submit to Apple for free/99cents?? If this is the case it will clearly affect insurgents sales right? Is it a service they are doing or they are expecting developers to fix issues or enhance the games ...what could be their main motive.
- hkolek 15y agoYou should read the post before commenting. They're not selling any games anymore, they're open sourcing everything. So how would it affect sales? And yes, you can, but if you take their code, fix it or whatever and then sell it you will still have to provide the modified code under GPL since the original was licensed to you under GPL. But as long as you do that you _can_ charge for the distributable of course.
- zokier 15y agoI don't know. Stories like http://blog.wolfire.com/2011/02/Counterfeit-Lugaru-has-been-removed-from-the-App-Store http://blog.wolfire.com/2011/02/Counterfeit-Lugaru-has-been-... are still somewhat scary.