awp wrote:
people often don't donate for great software if they don't have to
And you scare people away or get hacked if they have to. And people do donate. If they didn't, I wonder how all those free open-source projects would still be running.
As for the plugins, I have no idea either, maybe a drunk mode where everything on the screen sways. Or a beginner mode, where the song would slow down if your life is low... maybe that would be even harder, since you couldn't really follow the beat.
As for GNU/Linux, it is not much about the open source, but about the freedom, as in price and freedom of speech, not being bound by any contract. Every operating system I know, except Windows, which isn't anymore, is based on UNIX. GNU/Linux is as easy to use as Windows XP, you only need the right distribution for you. And there are games for Linux and many great programs which were ported to Windows to please those narrow-minded people who think "Lunix is a terrorist system designed to transform our children into hackers."
Teamspeak [closed-source]
Return to Castle Wolfenstein [closed-source, commercial]
Enemy Territory (love that game) [closed-source, commercial, free multiplayer]
AbiWord
Audacity
Pidgin (formerly GAIM)
Ogg Vorbis (used in many games to nowadays as a replacement to MP3 songs)
OpenOffice.org (a free alternative to the expensive Microsoft Office)
VNC (this kind of software started on Linux)
WinGIMP (port of GIMP, some photo editing software)
Opera [closed-source]
Firefox
These are just a few (the first few programs I found on this computer). Not all of them are open source, and not all of them are free.
However, I also am not entirely for open source myself. As long as corporations, like Microsoft, will wander around "legally stealing" code from open source projects, I will not like to release source code. They can use code taken from an open source project, or base theirs on it, and they will be "legal" (according to their lawyer). Since their code is closed source, there is no way to prove they stole code from an open source project. It is also the main reason why Teamspeak will not go open source.
That is also why I do not buy anything from them anymore and encourage people not to buy anything from them either. You have Windows and like it? No problem, stick with it, but know there are free alternatives. Also, know that Linux was designed to run on the slowest of the "modern computers" (Pentium 1 and up), which doesn't limit its abilities to that since there are plenty of extensions to make it look sometimes better than XP, but Windows Vista requires you to have a super computer (not really, but the requirements are very high) when the main objective of an operating system is to "manage efficiently the system resources". Windows XP? You try running that on a 233MHz without too much lag.
To sum it all: Don't release your code if your potential competitors are corporations, they will steal your code then say you stole theirs. =P
To sum it even more: Fine peppy, don't release your code, you meanie! lol
-- Wolf --
PS: Sorry if some parts of this post were off-topic.
PPS: You could always have a basic free version, and an advanced version in which people would need to pay.
PPPS: I still want that drunk mode. =P