They're trying to keep this old game alive and with a community. I think the initial release of Quake Live, or this move, has little to do with cashing in and very much to do with love of the game.<br><br>Moreover, "making it more fun" is pretty much what they are attempting. It's been a known problem for a long time that a new player will get completely owned when they first try, it's just such a brutally skill-based game and a small pool of players makes large skill differences more likely in matchmaking. Few people enjoy total domination by their opponent.<br><br>Quake 3/Quake Live used to be a living esport, now most of the big tournaments are gone. The game is beautiful, especially when played at a professional level. I'm all for any attempts to revitalize this genre so that the FPS duel might still be a thing in esports in the future. Of course the risk here is that the game becomes unrecognizeable.

Sad. I guess when they told us the Zenimax deal didn't affect their independence in any way they were "forgetting" some details. So, probably no more Linux ports, no more GPLing of older engines. I guess they gave the control to the suits. The reasoning doesn't sound very solid either, it's assuming that the only reason for anyone ever to run linux is that all of it is free software. I don't disagree with that being a very good reason but it's definitely not the only one. The same poor argument could be used for not doing a Mac port. And I thought anyone trying to run cutting edge games on Linux had to use the Nvidia driver anyway, Doom 3 didn't work too well on ATI when it came out anyway, did it?

I feel you missed my point. I was only arguing that your decisions should not only be based on what you can get away with when closely scrutinizing a law, license or a contract but that you should also consider what's ethical. Laws are usually (if they're any good) based on a moral code. Licenses and contracts try to reflect the wishes of the people who write them.

  I am fully aware of the contents of the GPL and as someone said the spirit of the GPL can only be defined by the FSF so if you want to look past the legalese you look to what they are saying and they're saying selling GPLed software is okay. They probably wouldn't like doing it through the App Store though.

Personally I'm all for the GPL as meant to be read by the FSF but in a situation such as the one we are discussing where the authors have used the GPL but have not themselves written it so their understanding of it's spirit may have been wrong you're going to have to take into consideration what their understanding of the spirit in which they were giving you access to the code was also if you want to do the right thing instead of just the legal thing.

Unless your ethical view is that the author is not really supposed to have the kind of control granted by copyright law over their work in the first place so their opinion is not so important at this point. A valid way of looking at it as well but one that depends on ethics rather than just doing anything you can legally get away with.

So if you find a loophole in the law that lets you get away with murder you'd have no problem doing it? There's something to be said for respecting the wishes of the people licensing you the software even if they've not been able to craft a perfect, no-loopholes legal document to describe them.

Never mind Freenet for this, you could use I2P which also features in-network Bittorrent. Of course if you really want to only share the torrents with an anonymising network you'll need to do modifications but at least it'll be easier when you can use existing tracker software. TOR's hidden services would work as well I suppose.

Just hosting the tracker on one of these networks is an interesting idea. It wouldn't provide any protection for the downloaders and seeders themselves but if people aren't quite ready to sacrifice download speeds at least it would shift the attention back to the people downloading again if the indexing sites/trackers were impossible to attack. It would be a step in the right direction. I can see why no-one has done this so far though.

Takes nearly equal skill to appreciate a match between the masters? Bullshit. I've been following the competetive 1v1 scene for a long time and I sure as hell don't have that kind of skill but I can still see when someone's skill is unbeliveable just like I can when I watch a sport like hockey. I may miss some details but I can still appreciate it and see a difference between the lesser and better players.

While I suspect I disagree with Linus on this topic, I think the journalist did not do a good job of portraying Linus's views in a way that best brings out his argument and that argument's strongpoints. Though of course, if I know that Linus did not get a fair opportunity to project his arguments at their best, then maybe I know that I don't know whether I would agree with Linus.....

Sllort is a vicious troll.
Mwalker is a crapflooder troll.
Enoch Root is a troll who links to hateful obscenities.
Ekrout is an idiot troll.

And you too are a troll.

Stop whining; you have been silenced.