> I think games are really one of the few pieces of software that don't really make sense as "free" software.
I am curious as to the distinction. What is different about games, say compared to a complex piece of software like an office suite or a medical imaging/diagnosis suite?
Firstly high quality games (AAA or even professional indie titles) require a huge amount of time and specialist skills to develop including some (art, music etc) that are not usually possessed by developers themselves.
Secondly the usefulness of a game is pretty low, playing games by and large will not help you do another task which makes you money (Dev tools , libs and creative software will).
Also their perceived entertainment value degrades over time relative to other newer games with better graphics etc.
Also you are unlikely to play any one game for a massive amount of time without becoming bored of it and wanting something else.
Most open source software is developed either because.
1) There is an economic reason to pay somebody to do it for you, for example if you are facebook and you use allot of PHP it is in your economic interest for PHP to be as good as possible. If you are IBM it is in your interest for Linux to be as good as possible so you can sell servers based on it.
This doesn't really exist with games since there are less people making money from the gaming market who are not game developers, I can't think of a good economic reason to pay somebody else to build or improve on an open source game. This is because games make money from either charging one off for the game or by including adverts (which could be removed in a fork of an open source version). The only other model is selling subscriptions services (Wow) etc but then you are subsidizing the development of the game and another company could simply launch their own game servers for your game without subsidizing development and have an economic advantage.
2) You are "scratching an itch", this is partially valid as evidenced by the large numbers of people who start projects to build open source games. But due to reasons outlined above they will eventually find that either they lack the skills or that it is not an economic investment of their time.
If you build some office software than only you and a handful of others like to use than that may be a good investment of your time because you need an office suite and you will get many hours use out of it. If you build a game that few other people play this is probably not going to feel like a good use of time.
There are plenty of open source tools for game developers (engines etc) presumably these were built by game developers to scratch their own itch for a high quality free engine that was then used in a commercial game.
What is your opinion, or how do you perceive open source software which comes at a price? ie office suite or game where the source is open but the producer requires monetary fee for it or support services for it?
Again this depends entirely on the model which depends on the end user of the product and their incentive for buying it.
If you take redhat as an example they will contribute freely to the Linux kernel and other projects but will charge a support fee for their enterprise software. This support fee is justified because configuring Linux systems in an enterprise is a technically complex task and failures can come with a hefty price so having the support of an expert from redhat will be good value for money for a FTSE 100 company.
Another example to consider would be 37 Signals , who sponsor allot of development on rails but do not release the source for their profit making services such as basecamp etc.
There is an economic advantage to them for making rails open because 1) publicity , 2) It's in their interest to have a good framework to use , so by releasing the source others can improve it.
Let's imagine for a moment that 37 Signals released the source code to basecamp under a GPL or LGPL license, what would stop a competitor from simply taking the source and uploading it somewhere else and then charge 50% of what 37s charge (because they don't have to employ developers)? What would be the incentive to use 37s service rather than the competitor?
Now we come to games, most games don't (and shouldn't) really require technical support services. So trying to finance development of a game from having a $1 a minute technical support helpline is unlikely to be a good model unless you deliberately make the game buggy (if it's open source the bugs can just be fixed and re-released anyway).
If you have an MMO with a monthly subscription you get the same problem as 37S that I illustrated above.
The only people who seem to do OSS well in games and still make money is id software who release the GPLed source for their older games so that people are free to release derivative free games (you have to create your own art assets) but this is only after a period of time (usually 3 years or more).
If you want to make a commercial game with an older engine you still have to pay them , albeit at a reduced rate.
Another example might be Valve who release the source to some parts of their game logic but not their core engine, this allows people to create their own "mods" that override some parts of the game behavior but these mods will not work for someone who does not have a copy of the proprietary commercial binary.
I think an office suite would have largely the same problem as games unless you can think of some support service that would be worth the payment.
Obviously this is not 100% true because open office exists, however the original work for this was done by Sun Microsystems (as Star Office) who (I guess) mainly built it so that they could sell expensive Sun workstations with a working office suite that was at least partly compatible with MS office.
Pretty much all the mathematical and engineering software I use on a daily basis runs on Linux... and a lot of it is Linux only. That software isn't really visible to people outside of science and engineering but it's far from uncommon.
Those are pretty niche stuff for mathematicians , engineers and 3d artists.
In terms of mainstream apps pretty much everything on Linux is open source I'd imagine because there is an itch there to scratch.
Games are an exception to this (I think) because although lots of developers love games the amount of entertainment value derided from playing a game is unlikely to be worth the time investment to build it.
I think games are really one of the few pieces of software that don't really make sense as "free" software.
Even on my Windows boot (apart from the OS itself) the only proprietary software I run are games + steam.