Would you pay $10 extra for no DRM?

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by tater

You DO. Any software you buy without DRM has the associated losses to piracy built into the price. Nothing is free. Nothing. Someone pays, or it doesn't happen.

Open source? How on Earth to the devs feed their kids under that model? I'm serious, enlighten me. I'm not a shill for this OSP crap in case you haven't been reading my posts, BTW. I'm not buying because of the possible limitations to me playing (assuming there is ever a fleet boat version since I don't do u-boats).

Many people make a living by developing open source software. The point is that open source in commercial game development just doesn't work. So you will never see a Falcon 5 or SH 10 etc.... open source.
On the other hand, simulators developed in the free time by people that share a common passion can be viable. You just have to refocus your expectations. Now before you go on saying that open source games are "s h i t" , or cannot compete with commercial offerings you're wrong. And you're wrong because commercial offerings have to cater to the larger market (why do thing that SH 5 has all those "arcade" like settings in the first place ? ) whereas the community developed sims no.

Take for instance Orbiter, its a space simulator (way way better and more complex than the only other commerical sim Microsoft Space Simulator 1994/1995), it was developed by one man over the course of several years and he had the insight to make the core of the sim "closed source" but he gave to the community a great SDK and API with which to develop add-ons. The community is way way less numerous than that of subsim members, and yet if you look at the quality of several add-ons well they are commercial quality. And all of them are freeware and most are also open source. It works because the man found its audience. He develops in his free time, its a hobby of his (his main job is being a professor....) and the add-on developers do it in their free time too.
And with all this being a hobby, the quality and scope of the project is just mind boggling. I can tell you that if a commercial space sim should ever see the light of day they are going to have one hell of a time surpassing the hardcore Orbiter.

In the field of flight simulators, you have Flight Gear. This one is 100% open source. Everything from models, to textures etc... It has been in development for more than 10 years I think and its pretty good. Of course compared to FS 2004/ Fs X its way way back but can you play Fs X on linux ? No. Can you modify the inner working of the sim because you want to improve it ? No.

In the field of subsims, there is a WWII subsim called Danger of the Deep. Its open source and the graphics have nothing to envy to SH3/4. The pace of development is slow because there isn't a lot of manpower available. I can tell you this, if all the guys that focused on GWX 3 should focus on bringing and devloping content for Danger of the Deep, well in a 3-4 years we could have a real product competing with SH 3/4/5. And with nothing of the restrictions of DRM/modding and what else. The bonus thing is that you could run it everywhere, windows, mac, linux etc.... It wouldn't have a dynamic campaign but even so the game we could have an extremely complete mission editor and multiplayer and whatever else the communioty comes up with.

I'm always astounded how a small, very small community like that of Orbiter has achieved an outstanding simulator, and yet more mainstream simulators like WW 2 subsims with an enormous community and talented modders and/or developers just don't have the same kind of "passion" for developing or contributing to an open source WW2 subsim.