maxbond

It's an hour. It'll tell you the expiry time on the status line now but that information is also available in /usage.

I agree the onus should be on people not to create a nuisance but I don't think it's a realistic expectation. Descriptively, normatively I agree that people ought to be considerate and reasonable.

Expression is as much about what is excluded as what is included. They've made it clear they aren't making a prescription for other people's projects. I don't see any reason to interpret this as an attack on other's expression rather than simply their own expression.

I'm wondering if you foresee remaining open to new contributors or focusing on a trusted set of like minded contributors? How much time are you willing to spend enforcing this policy? (To put my cards on the table I think it's good for projects to pursue different and incompatible agendas and if you are volunteering to conduct this experiment I think that is great and genuinely wish you the best, I'm just wondering whether this will become a tarpit that either soaks up all of your time or makes onboarding new contributors take an inordinate amount of time.)

Yeah, this is a much better version of my argument.

> People don't understand that good things are meant to be copied so that consumers have the best product

I get how my comment comes off that way but I do agree and am broadly in favor of knockoffs. I think there's a distinction between a knockoff and a bootleg, where a knockoff steals ideas and a bootleg steals the execution. And a good game is a tasteful knockoff of a bunch of previous games, great artists steal and such.

It's not personal for me either, but I am going to let you satisfy your curiosity on your own.

We're simply imagining different cases. I'm thinking about straightforward copyright violations I've read about recently in the games industry.

Regardless, I don't see why Valve couldn't fund a lawsuit based on a novel legal theory.

It's a good question and the answer is mixed. Some of the problem has been directly bootlegging games in other markets like China, so stealing the code and assets outright. That's definitely a copyright violation most places, I would assume it is in China too, but the point is moot without Valve's backing because no indie is going to conduct a lawsuit in a foreign country.

A clean room knockoff isn't but I don't think the cases would necessarily even be brought or won. There's a lot of quick buck artists who see gaming as a soft target. Success is in convincing them there's risk involved rather than actually winning in court or extracting settlements.

That will still leave a lot of AI game development people feel is slop. That's probably the reality going forward. But reducing that to the people who are interested in making games (even if we are unhappy with their results) and removing the people who are revolving through the latest AI get rich quick schemes is probably achievable.

The developer or publisher would bring the case. Valve would fund it.

This isn't much of a response, what they said amounts to that you should work harder to cultivate a community that you can then funnel into their platform. "Launching isn't the finish line" is obviously true but what has been happening is that people are sniped before launch based on their demo and marketing material, so it's not all that relevant.

Valve ought to be funding lawsuits against these bootleggers. Steam can only exist if indie developers feel confident they can publish there. It's as much a threat to them as anyone else, and indie studios can figure out for themselves they need to market harder but can't necessarily embark on a lawsuit.

Amazon didn't start by creating their own lines of products. Later when they were in a monopoly-like position they were and to poach only products their partners were doing brisk business in. So they were able to grow without holding any inventory or taking any risks on product development.

Why would OpenAI start a hundred companies when there's plenty of prospective founders to take that risk on their behalf?

This is a very narrow framing, and that is what I am trying to get at. Obviously it would be absurd to deliberately provide welfare to criminal enterprises. But our adversaries get a vote in what happens. There is a level of risk at which you are forced to pay the ransom.

If we don't get trapped in this false binary we might consider other options. I think the takeaway from my comment should be, if you want to make it illegal to pay a ransom to these groups, then you will also need to dismantle their infrastructure and organization. Otherwise you're just putting the ball in their court and hoping they'll fumble it. It's not that we're "scared," it's that that isn't a strategy.