Bill Gates Denounces Tribes 2 Open Source

Microsoft founder Bill Gates took time out of his busy Comdex and Windows XP schedule to address what is becoming his hot-button issue: open source software. Speaking to Tribes Universe, Gates discussed open source software and its impact on Tribes 2.

"See, gamers have always been an independent group," said Gates. "These are great people, and they appreciate the technology in the games they play. But they're intelligent people too, and they want to tweak and change and modify the games they play. The first game that really made this easy to do was Doom. Custom Doom levels were created by the gamers themselves. They were the first open source gamers."

According to Gates, today's open source gamers are to blame for many of the problems in the gaming industry. In particular, "mods" and "scripts" are the targets of his ire. "These add-ons pollute the pure vision of the developers, and create support nightmares. Often open source additions have no documentation, relying on expertise and word-of-mouth to install and operate. They're software anarchy."

Gates continued, "You can see the effect of this unbridled open source development in the Tribes 2 market. Did you ever wonder why Sierra eliminated Dynamix? There were more mods and scripts than all the code in the product combined. You can't remain flexible and competitive in a market like that. As I've said, open source is a follower, not an innovator, and destroys jobs. Mods and scripts killed Dynamix."