gptech wrote:It was more a rhetorical question cat (where's the name from anyway, all I can visualise is "Growltiger")
Haha it's just one of those things, a dumb name I came up when I was younger and stuck with because I couldn't be bothered to change it.
I'm going to try my best to answer the second paragraph but please keep in mind I'm not involved with the management or ownership of the site, so I can't answer with the same certainty of questions around the install tool etc as it simply isn't mine.
gptech wrote:It clears up the categories, but unfortunately not the ambiguity/confusion/surrounding the content. There's nothing wrong with creators looking for a return of sorts on their work, that's how Just Trains has worked many times with their published routes, supplying the marketing and support and passing on some percentage of the profits to the author. That's been for a known price though, nobody has been in any doubt that to have route A to Z they'll have to cough up 20 quid or whatever. It's the vagueness of the subscription model that's worrying many (...)
I sympathise with the concerns around the vagueness- I think unfortunately it's something inherent in having a model based around subscriptions for a brand new site that doesn't know how many subscribers it will get. Someone like Just Trains, meanwhile, has naturally been selling payware for a long time and will know roughly what to expect in terms of sales when they commission a new route and will negotiate with developers accordingly.
gptech wrote: (...) certainly when long established freeware routes would seem to be heading towards a "nope, sorry....put your hands in your pockets for it now" scheme of distribution.
Some freeware devs might decide to make their future updates subscriber only for a time or permanently, I can't speak for them and it's their choice to make. And even then, not everything's set in stone. I don't think it'd be too much of a leap to suggest some of the devs making things for the subscription are 'testing the water' to see how well the approach works and decide what the best choices are for their content going forward. Personally I would be surprised if people tried to retroactively make freeware into payware.
gptech wrote:Remember, many freeware routes use freeware assets, so doesn't that mean that the originator of those assets also be getting a cut?...add to that that many preclude the use of their assets for commercial use and it soon gets very messy.
When it comes to assets in a route, the question is generally using vs distributing them. In a route's file you're only ever saying 'look for the blueprint at this file location and place it here in the game', so I don't think a case could be made for that particular issue so long as you're not redistributing other people's assets without their permission (having said that, even then I'd usually ask permission in specific cases out of courtesy, like for my Leeds route I expressly acquired VP's permission to use the Leeds station models etc even though I'm not distributing it). Using whole sections of a payware route may be a trickier issue- that product would still be a requirement so it's not like the extended/merge route is detracting from their sales (if anything, the exact opposite in practise), but if it comes to it then areas could be remade or the approach could be adjusted to avoid conflict.
Obviously one of the biggest limitations of payware in a traditional sense is it more or less has to be self-contained in terms of asset use. Just Trains for instance, have their own asset library and modellers to make things they need, but from my understanding pretty much anything else is off limits to the devs unless they could expressly make an agreement with the creator of the assets they want to redistribute. For freeware and donationware meanwhile, it's a given that there are other payware requirements not distributed with the route, so the developer has a lot more freedom of what potentially can be used. Problem was, there was never really a place to host your own donationware save for buying your own site (example of this would be XCroute having Hereford extension for donators).
The main advantage of the Alan subscriber approach is that developers can get something back for their efforts without having to jump through the hoops of traditional payware or the hassle of setting up their own site for donationware. For me this is potentially a really great opportunity because so far the route has been built on a budget of £0, but if I could earn even a very modest amount back from it then I would be able to invest in cab ride DVDs etc for routes that currently can't be found for free on the internet, and as a result bring lots of new content to the route in time. I find route building to be a really enjoyable thing which is why what started out as a simple stretch of route is slowly becoming a sprawling network of lines by a small team of people, but we can't create stuff if we don't have any reference materials for it. And a lot of the creators I've talked to share a similar view I think, so I genuinely believe an approach like this will lead to more and better content for the community.
