I'm not arguing against an API (yes I know what an API is), nor am I defending the stance to not release an API,
Sorry, my bad.
Not to mention the absolutely unfounded hostility I've seen some of the coders around here display to everyone when it comes to DF.
Oh, I don't know if it's unfounded. It's pretty easy to get hostile about something you care about, and people tend to care about the oddest things.
It being Christmas, feel free to post whatever reasons you feel this is wrong, unfair, etc... You can try PMing Toady but don't shoot the messenger (me) for relaying that it won't change anytime soon - so we've all gotten used to it and moved on.
Man, I've been dealing with games for all my life. I'm used to the way people think they should work, and have no problems with things staying the way they are, except for the relatively minor problem that I don't think the way things are now is quite perfect in a few respects (and of these, OSS/etc. is even more minor-- games are open in other respects). Toady is not the first to refuse to open his game up, he won't be the last, and it's quite a normal attitude. Anyway, if you say it's okay, fine. I suppose OSS is almost relevant, considering that a move to open this up is one method of allowing UI prototyping (via forking codebases).
I'm merely stating what's been said time and time again on these forums, that Toady already said he's currently against it and putting parts of DF on the public domain for a plethora of reasons (It being his income, baby, forcing him to deal with updates, a team of people)
There appears to be a leap of logic I don't get-- I'd probably only need to see what Toady has explained-- from what I can tell he gets money only through donations (and if DF is his sole source of income, that's mighty scary-- he's in poverty?), and I don't see why OSS would change this-- perhaps he has plans for selling DF as shrinkwrap or something, or perhaps he is worried about people forking his code and stealing his donations. The former is valid, the second is slightly less so-- he could get a major fork if he were tyrannical, but mostly people don't fork very often, and where they do they don't tend to really steal donations or even become very major. There are exceptions, but such is life. I am not some crazy OSS apologist, I just think it's pretty cool and honestly don't see the harm here, though I acknowledge it does do harm in other places, in a sense. On the other hand, half of this paragraph was previously arguments for why OSS could actually help his donations/income. Maybe I like it more than I like to think.
Also, you appear (or whoever said what you're repeating appears) to have flawed information: OSS doesn't have to have a team (in fact, by the number of projects I'd bet it usually doesn't), and it's usually much more restrictive than "public domain". In particular, copyleft via the GPL tends to be popular. I personally like BSD/MIT/zlib etc. (permissive licenses), but GPL is simply better for some kinds of software-- in particular, it's probably better for games in general, in terms of income.
so might as well work on DFHack if you want to do something constructive.
If *I* wanted to do something constructive about DF? It needs a good interactive tutorial, possibly. Could probably do it by writing a UI-writing API as suggested above, and then writing a simplified tutorial API and so on with a preset map. To be honest I just wouldn't find it as interesting as other projects I have. Plus I'd have to use C++ or SWIG or something, blech.
On the other hand, writing about what other people should do is definitely interesting. And reading other peoples' suggestions and considering them (and other peoples' responses to them) is just plain worthwhile, as a game programmer. Please do not fault me for my priorities, I beg it of you. Constructive things take many guises (and anyway, it beats discussing the weather).