Free and open-source game studios are still very small, because they haven't had an effective business model yet. How do proprietary game makers remain profitable? That's right! By selling their game packages in the market. Can free and open-source game studios make packages to sell? We, free and open-source game developers, have to open the whole source code in accrodance with GPL. Gamers wouldn't buy the game packages for which they can download the whole source code from the Internet. So can our competitors. Then, they can copy and improve it without any restictions. As a result, all our efforts that go into developing game packages won't be able to return much to us. Who would want to be a free, open-source game developer knowing that?
I am one of the free, open source supporters. However I am not very optimistic if we can make money in traditional game business model. As Alex said at last night meeting, we need to develop a new business model, then we may take a good chance. I'll leave the space here for bloggers. If you have any idea on this, please share your idea.
--choipd
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