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[Desdichado]

I hate the open-source zealotry.

That being said, Goblin Camp is going to be open source, apparently, so you'll eventually have what you hoped for.

Lol. You and Kazang are laying it on a little thick, heh. I think saying "open-source would benefit the project overall, but it won't happen, and that's a legitimate call" is a little less zealous than that other form of zealotry notoriously found on this board. 

[Ceaser]

I would definitely love to see more games in the genre. This doesn't mean copying DF outright, but rather more developers willing to go down this path. Currently there are basically only 3 games that make up this entire genre:

Dungeon Keeper
Evil Genius
Dwarf Fortress

Try Startopia if you haven't, it has a similar style to DK/EG.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4FpTIf5GjY&feature=related

[Kazang]

I hate the open-source zealotry.

That being said, Goblin Camp is going to be open source, apparently, so you'll eventually have what you hoped for.

Lol. You and Kazang are laying it on a little thick, heh. I think saying "open-source would benefit the project overall, but it won't happen, and that's a legitimate call" is a little less zealous than that other form of zealotry notoriously found on this board. 

What do you mean by laying it on thick?  If you mean comparing df to something as important as fire then that was just a metaphor to explain that imitation is an important part of progression, it wasn't to be taken literally. 

[HonkyPunch]

I'm pretty sure If I had something as ingenious as Dwarf Fortress I wouldn't release the code either, at least not until I was on my deathbed, or completely done working on it.

[Urist McDepravity]

I'm pretty sure If I had something as ingenious as Dwarf Fortress I wouldn't release the code either, at least not until I was on my deathbed, or completely done working on it.

Why not?
Open Source != FOSS. You can release source code under over-restrictive license which would prohibit any derivative works, re-distribution in both source and binary form, etc.
It does not force you to surrender any rights over your IP. Moreover, you could easily demand that all contributors surrender all their rights for their contributions in your favor, so you would still be sole owner of it even while letting other people contribute.
If your program is designed well enough, you can even open only parts of it, like UI or pathfinding/tile management. So you would get help where it is most needed and keep secret everything you dont want to share.

Altho I have to agree on 'foss does not work with games' thing. Yeah, there are like 10 successful titles. And thousands of such projects which never came out of their planning stage/core development. But it DOES work when game is already playable, since there is existing fanbase, which will work solely for improving their gameplay experience.
Warzone2100 did go this way, for example.

[Jh00]

First of all, thank you for all your replies. Considering that both Toady and Footkerchief replied to this thread, I guess that the first answers are somehow validated :-)

When I mentioned open source, I was thinking in options to see some help to Toady, considering the complexity of DF; the  huge additions that are planned for future releases; that each time someone add a feature to a program at least one hundred bugs appear, and that this game is developed by one single person (my compliments for Toady for the courage in coding it).

My interest behind Toady's intentions is because I'm a lawyer and lately I've been thinking about writing a paper about the Economical Viability of Community developed software focusing on copyrights, and he probably may have a strong opinion on it.

I don't find anything wrong with his decision, but I find it hard to maintain the creativity behind this project without having to waste hours and hours finding bugs of recent implemented features. In this scenario, it seemed logical to me i) to open part or the whole source with a restrictive license (as explained by Urist McDepravity), ii) allowing a strict group of old community members to peek at the code to help hunt for bugs or iii) simply hire someone to help.

Even though I know that once the source is opened, nothing stops someone else to do whatever he wants with it, it seems to me that DF has already a strong community behind its back and I find it difficult to imagine people switching to a fork, mainly because the creative force behind the DF development would still be Toady (and that's something infungible).

In this scenario, it would be morally and legally plausible to still ask for donations, even though there are more people helping coding it - it kinda makes me remember that Canonical still earn some bucks out of Ubuntu, even though it is open source. And I imagine that faster development and bug fixing would be positive enough to attract more donors.

On the long term, it is always possible for someone else to start a similar project helped by a community - it may not have worked well recently, but if you see the history of open source software, most projects started just like that.

Well, these are only ramblings out of my desire to see this project to its fullest. I totally support whatever decision the developers maintain and don't want to cause a flame war (if so, please, just delete this post). As I said, I was just curious about the motivations from the developers. Until them, the most I can do is to find a way to donate via paypal.

[Hyndis]

Bug squashing is part of any development process. Just making something and not testing it all is essentially flinging shit at a wall and hoping something sticks. If you do not have the patience to test your own creation, why should anyone else bother testing it for you?

(Note: Toady and Three-Toe do test things. You can see this numerous times on the dev log before 31.01 was released to us. Its just that other pairs of eyes do help as something you overlooked may be easily seen by someone else.)

Even creating a simple mod for a game, like, say, Supreme Commander 2 (got it for $10 on Steam, the game is okay, but worth no more than $10, all of the magic of TA and SupCom1 are gone ) requires a lot of testing and bug squashing.

I make changes. I then play the game to test those changes to make sure things are working as intended. If they don't work then I did something wrong so I go and look at the files again. If they do work but not as intended then I fix that as well. This even includes game balance. I play first with the modded units to make sure they are working properly. I then play against the modded units, giving the AI full control over my new super battleship or whatever, and make sure that playing against it is still fun.

Once I am satisfied that the new thing both works properly and also is balanced and fun, I can then move on to something else. There is a lot of testing involved.

[DalGren]

e- I noticed a Linux port of DF. Considering how vocal the Linux community is about open source and how inclined to "code their own stuff when they don't open it", how is it possible to hold that community at bay? 

My god, wonder what kind of Linux users you know xD
I can't speak about the rest, but I am grateful there IS a working version for Linux.
Then again I am also grateful there are binary nVidia drivers while a lot of people complains about it not being open.
I want a computer that works for free, not a free (as in freedom) computer that doesn't work, myself