[Kde-games-devel] Sleeping with the enemy

[Erik Sigra]

tisdagen den 12 november 2002 06.02 skrev Jay Glascoe:
> I'd like to bring up a question regarding: when (if ever)
> is it appropriate to start comparing a free software game
> to a non-free one? And, if you do make such a comparison,
> how to avoid using someone else's, possibly copyrighted,
> ideas?

That is easy. Just do not use any code, images, sounds or texts from them.


> It's not so much copyright law that concerns me,
> it's intellectual theft that I want to avoid. (hopefully,
> being on the right side of the latter renders the former
> moot).

There is no such thing as intellectual theft. A thought cannot be stolen. It 
is hard to break into someone's mind and take a thought away from there and 
put it in your mind. Theft only applies to physical objects. Ideas are 
information that can be spread but not be stolen.

Copyright law does not restrict the reuse of ideas. It only restricts the 
reuse of specific implementations (of ideas).


> For my own part, in the development of my game, most of
> my research was done through general, and some specific,
> gaming rules books (*books*, paper books, Hoyle's Rules).
> But recently, I've taken a look at some non-free
> (commercial, or shareware) software to see how they did
> it. (Of course, all I can see is the interface, not the
> code).
>
> I found an online ("free") game, hosted by yahoo!, and
> a shareware (WinDOS of course) game. I've learned some
> things about user interface, or simple game configuration
> options, that make me want to smack my head: "why didn't
> I think of that?" (In particular, there are many regional
> differences to some simple games that can *easily* be
> included to a game, with a simple config menu, without
> changing the underlying code).
>
> Of course, there's also a few things I believe could teach
> to these guys (generally: there's no excuse for crappy
> looking playing pieces, a little anti-aliasing goes a long
> way. specifically: is clicking and dragging necessary when
> a simple click, or double-click, is sufficient to show
> intent?).
>
> Anyway, I think this problem must apply to a lot of games
> programmers.

Most game programmers spend a lot of time playing other's games to get ideas 
for their own games. This is good, because that makes their games better. And 
as I already said; copyright does not restrict the reuse of ideas. Our 
civilization would not have developed without the reuse of ideas. I guess you 
feel intuitively that reuse of ideas is right, but the "intellectual 
property" propaganda has made you uncertain.