[brando]

Just for the record, Naturalpoint have been around since way before TrackIR. Their original product was called SmartNav and was designed to help people with disabilities to use their computers. It still exists (now at version 4) and is a great product which aided me a lot when I lost my arm. At the time, their technical support and personal back-up was exemplary and I believe it remains so. For me, the development of a head-tracking system for use with flight sims was a great bonus and remains so.

If we are to talk about analogies lets try something a little closer to reality. I was a bricklayer, trained in this ancient art and gained my qualification through practise. Imagine yourself in this position, working away at your trade and earning the rate of pay determined by local usage. Then suppose that another bricklayer comes onto the building site and offers to work for free...how would you react? You both have the tools of the trade and the knowledge ... but you need to put food on the table and otherwise support your family, while the newcomer is miraculously free of these very normal requirements.
I think I can speak for the majority of bricklayers when I say that he'd be taken around the block and seriously dissuaded from his benevolent but deluded stance.

I can see no difference between the 'benevolent' bricklayer's stance and that of those who are promoting Freetrack. Perhaps they should go and play the game on a Linux-based computer where open source is seen as a good thing, and stop trying to wreck the jobs of people who design hardware and software that exist in the money-earning world of computers and computer-gaming. I don't blame Naturalpoint for protecting their interests in this genre - and their actions are infinitely less savage than being taken around the block by a bunch of angry brickies, be sure!

B