I don't have the bandwidth to continue most of this discussion, so I'll leave it to others, but just a couple quick notes because I feel these are moving goalposts:
I don't think using DRM makes a company evil
I don't either, but this is neither pure DRM, nor was "evil" the bar to begin with. There's a lot of room in the middle for both. DRM technologies have existed that didn't prevent you from owning or transferring your own copy.
I know HN skews wanting to "own" games, but that's just not a big deal to most gamers.
HN also "skews" toward caring about privacy, but billions of people use (say) Google and Microsoft etc. without minding what they do. If your bar is "it's not a big deal to most users" then wouldn't tons of companies easily pass it easily, especially the giants? They didn't become giants by being boycotted...
For sure we don't have to keep arguing these things. They are trivialities in the grand scheme of things :)
But I think that's kinda the overall discussion, isn't it? There are different facets to every company and people have different values. What bothers one person might not bother another.
I remember Sun, in its heyday, as being disliked as well because its workstations were so expensive and Java was terrible in its browser applet days (in the same way Microsoft would come to be disliked for ActiveX).
I tremendously respect Valve and am grateful that they've stayed privately owned and able to maintain their culture. At the same time, others may find fault in the way they do business. I don't expect all of us to agree on who the respectable companies are.
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I don't have the bandwidth to continue most of this discussion, so I'll leave it to others, but just a couple quick notes because I feel these are moving goalposts:
I don't either, but this is neither pure DRM, nor was "evil" the bar to begin with. There's a lot of room in the middle for both. DRM technologies have existed that didn't prevent you from owning or transferring your own copy.
HN also "skews" toward caring about privacy, but billions of people use (say) Google and Microsoft etc. without minding what they do. If your bar is "it's not a big deal to most users" then wouldn't tons of companies easily pass it easily, especially the giants? They didn't become giants by being boycotted...
For sure we don't have to keep arguing these things. They are trivialities in the grand scheme of things :)
But I think that's kinda the overall discussion, isn't it? There are different facets to every company and people have different values. What bothers one person might not bother another.
I remember Sun, in its heyday, as being disliked as well because its workstations were so expensive and Java was terrible in its browser applet days (in the same way Microsoft would come to be disliked for ActiveX).
I tremendously respect Valve and am grateful that they've stayed privately owned and able to maintain their culture. At the same time, others may find fault in the way they do business. I don't expect all of us to agree on who the respectable companies are.