I found this interesting concept today:

http://www.openwaregames.com/

Looks like if it takes off, it might be a great way for folks to get some pizza money out of games they we're gonna make opensource anyway.

Openware is similar to shareware in many ways.I don't see how they come to this conclusion, there is no try-before-you-buy in the Openware model. They're asking people to pay upfront before they get to see it. If you dig deeper the "Bedroom Coder’s Business Model" is even vague about making demos, saying that you should never release anything before getting money, but you need to release something to make people interested.

Slightly more effective is to write a proprietary program, keep releasing demos until the public decides it's good enough, then sell the source code in one big hit. I've seen this in the BeOS community, so it can work. But the example I'm thinking of is someone who wrote a near complete clone of Cool Edit over a number of years. They sold it to the community for $400. Compare that with how much Cool Edit must have made as shareware, let alone how much Adobe must have paid the makers to acquire it.

Interesting idea but I remain highly skeptical.

indeed.

Seems like they are asking folks to kinda dontate to the project gets finished.

I wouldn't think that this would likely fly, but it's interesting none the less.

kinda like rentacoder except folks are paying for devteams to make games they way the Devteams wants.

How is this stuff any diffrent that putting the all so ineffective "donate" button.

tuxracer is an example of opensource game getting paid. Highly popular and good game, they eventually made a retail version of it with extra things.

Probably would sell better if they used the opensource version as a demo with 'buy full version here' links.

Of course people could take those links out if they wanted, but probably wouldn't.

There seems to be a number of opensource games which are better than a lot of the shareware games I play.

'there is no try-before-you-buy in the Openware model.' I thought this came from previous games that people have made. Of course then you have a chicken and egg scenario. Where you need to make a good game before you can sell any. You also have other contributors to games not feeling appreciated, and ripped off for thier work. eg, why should a person work on this game if they are going to sell the next one? The answer to that would be because they enjoy the game.

Releasing a game free, or opensource is probably a good way to start off a fan base. Meaning that your next games can use that fan base in order to sell. Or you can sell addons for the free/opensource game.

Blender had a fan base of over 250,000 users before they asked that community for $100,000 for the code. Now it has been improved vastly, and they have been asking the fan base for more money in exchange for books/shirts etc. They are only paying small wages to a couple of people though. A lot of the work is done by people who use blender, so have reasons for working on it other than making money by selling blender.

The C key era of blender was also interesting. That is where they built thier large following. They gave away a freeware version, with the newest most requested features locked away. Paying users could get the C key features, non paying ones had to wait a few months before they were integrated into the free version.

princec said in another thread (emphasis mine):Shareware has evolved in recent years. It was always a very idealistic model in its purest form. Idealists usually die poor. So it's changed a little; now we have cunning nag screens, crippled features, limited uses, time expiration, inbuilt-buy screens, unlockable wotsits, etc. etc. etc.The Openware model struck me immediately as an idealistic model that probably wouldn't work... but maybe that just means it needs refining, like the shareware model. Perhaps with enough "nags", sufficient bonus features in the paid for version etc, maybe it can work after all.

I guess that was probably obvious to others reading this :) I do like the idea of giving customers source code when they purchase a program, and allowing them to modify it for their own use - I just can't see what the best way is to make it profitable/viable in the long term.