Madman wrote:Well, I managed to find a binaries somewhere on the Bioware servers from googling around random 3rd party forums and finding an old post with a direct link, pure luck. And the game runs without issues on Mint 13 which is very fresh actually. Still, it took a lot of googling to find that, and 3rd party forum was a savior just by a chance.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nwn+linux+client
SECOND RESULT ON GOOGLE FOR "NWN LINUX CLIENT": http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic ... ex/4643217
By "luck" you must mean that that "I feel lucky" doesn't immediately take you to it.
For heaven's sake, isn't community-sourced support exactly what Linux is supposed to be about? And, for the love of the FSM, this support community is actually hosted by the developer, is relatively up-to-date, and the links to the binaries all work and are also hosted by Bioware!
Madman wrote:Of course, it seems to be a MMORPG game, with subscriptions or something, but the retail media or starter was not free as I understand.
Oh, ok. Now we're talking about something else entirely. Again. Wow.
Let me see if I can follow your logic, starting from the beginning:
1) Links for a FREE & NON-RELEASE (it came out a year later) & BINARY Linux client for a TEN YEAR OLD game no longer work.
1A) Instead of reflecting on the ubiquity of broken links on the internet, especially ones from years and years ago, you decide that the failure of publisher/developer to maintain FREEBIES on their website in the same way for all perpetuity is indicative of how:
2) We can't trust publishers/developers to ever deactivate DRM. Nope.
2A) Ignoring the extremely tenuous connection between 1 & 2, you didn't heed my examples of developers/publishers who did exactly that. You also ignore their many promises to do so in the future, with no real reason. Heck, you don't even recognize that the implications of one of the core anti-DRM arguments ("Crackers gonna crack, pirates up, legit buyers down!") is that DRM removal patches are out there anyway & already. No, instead you decided to illustrate your point by:
3) Talking about how there is a MMORPG that is soon-to-be-defunct, despite how obviously non-channel resellers on Amazon still offer it.
3A) Ignoring the complete and utter irrelevancy of 3 with 1 & 2, you fail to realize that the only way to prevent non-channel resellers from selling even defunct MMORPG software is to completely and utterly abrogate the legal doctrine of first sale. Incredibly, you ignore that salient fact despite how regard in your camp for that very same doctrine has reached legendary (and entirely unwarranted) proportions.
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In summary, your criticisms are barely coherent and your argument for how all this all relates to DRM non-support seems to boil down to two things:
i) Broken links for FREE products are indicative of bad faith on behalf of publishers/developers instead of simple oversight or archival indifference.
ii) There is the possibility that an unfortunate soul could purchase installation media for the defunct COH for nearly $100 from a third-party on Amazon IN THE UNKNOWN FUTURE, and since publishers/developers have not made the server software freeware/opensource, misfortune will ensue.
The first one is a big ado about nothing; a conspiracy of inaction. As I said, broken links are legion and shackling developers/publishers into never changing their websites is not the solution. The solution, for the technically inclined, should be reflexive: Google. Use it, it works!
The second one is something that publishers/developers have no control over, and, more importantly, you don't want them to! You side is aggressively interpreting First Sale into something akin to a positive right despite no recognition from the actual legal community, so it's contradictory and hypocritical to make issue over the recognized (and actually statutory) negative right.
Because even making the server stuff freeware/opensource won't totally solve the issue: our hapless and misfortunate soul who hypothetically purchases COH in a few months for 95 USD (shipping not included!) will find that it doesn't work. What will he have to do? Oh, right: Google.
And, of course, there are myriad and mundane reasons why the developers/publishers of COH would not release such stuffs, as it's a legal minefield. They may even be very specific reasons: COH deals with superheroes. They were sued by Marvel. Parts of the suit were dismissed, but, and this is critical, there was a settlement under undisclosed terms!
That settlement might have precluded the makers of COH from ever releasing their server stuffs! We don't know, but it certainly seems likely.