Originally Posted by
Speederlander
Linux is as open source as they come. It's also had the single biggest push from the most people of anything in the open source world in creating a product everyone could use (mostly out of antipathy toward microsoft). And yet, it's still not ready for people who aren't generally computer savvy. Yeah, anyone can surf the net in Ubuntu, but as soon as a problem crops up, god help you. I'm sure Linux people will beg to differ, but it's true. My parents barely get around in Windows, they would be completely flummoxed in Linux. And that's not saying Linux is bad or doesn't have its place, but it does comment on the viability and competitiveness of open source software. Even after all these years the biggest open source project of them all is used mostly by geeks, techies, specialists and in net books for people to improverished to get windows.
Now, scale down to a single game company. How do they get started? They have no guaranteed income (other than begging for donations). Do game companies just go away? What do we think the quality of "open source" games will be? Does that get us AAA titles? People are motivated primarily and most importantly by compensation. Sure, there are some few people who are "in it for the masses" (and usually they get paid well anyway), but the fundamental truth is people work hard and want to get paid for their hard work. Take away the pay, and the talented people will go find an industry where they WILL get paid.