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[Jh00]

I gave DF a try two weeks ago doubting that an ASCII game would be any good these days. Unfortunately, that proved wrong and now I have wasted hours of my life starting at little smileys running around.

Since then, I have researched all I could from this forum and the wiki, which proved to be invaluable, but I'm still curious about some details behind DF development I could not find in the wiki, and I know some old timers could explain those to me (and maybe add something to the wiki?). Here are they:

a- Is Toady One the only programmer behind DF?
b- Does Footkerchief help on programming too?
c- Do they work full time on DF and live by donations or they have another job? If so, which jobs?
d- Does anyone know what are the developers reasons for not open sourcing DF (even with a strict license)?
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? 

Please, don't take me wrong - these are legitimate questions from someone new around here.

Thanks in advance! And my thanks to the developers for hours of FUN.

[Noble Digger]

I'll do my best.

A) Yes, though his brother Zack also helps with design, as do (I think) a number of older, long-term donators. That last part is only my suspicion though, because Toady refers to testers helping him with the alpha but won't answer any communication from me about that stuff.

B) I think Footy is just a forum\bugtracker helper, though he may be helping with the aforementioned stuff.

C) Toady's brother has or had a day job, at least last time I read. The donation totals are posted by Toady in the dev log each month.

D) There are 50 possible reasons, but the most obvious and immediate is that once you do, other people fork your code beyond recognition and you run the risk of losing control of your project to a more popular fork. That would not be fair to Toady since this is his livelihood.

E) Do those people really have any way of forcing anyone to do anything? My conclusion there is "no". In that sense, keeping them at bay is just as easy as not caring how rabid they become.

Welcome to the forums, have fun, and don't pay any attention to the few extremely vocal and often mean people that are somehow not banned from here. Nearly everyone here is really cool, otherwise

Also, since you're new, here are some essential websites.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Main_Page <- DF Wiki.
http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/ <- Dwarf Fortress Map Archive. Hosts an excellent Flash applet by Markavian that lets you compress, upload, and share your forts online, adding map notes and much more.
http://bay12games.com/dwarves/ <- Dev log. At the end of each month, Toady stops working on Dwarf Fortress proper and spends a number of days equal to the number of weekend days in that month, working on a "secret project" of which we know nothing. Don't bother asking about it

[Lasander]

Toady used to be a math professor but quit his job to work full time on Dwarf Fortress and lives entirely on donations from the community and is the sole programmer--his brother helps design it.  He has some helper gnomes here and there and the community helps the game in many ways  but the source code is going to die with him it seems.

I believe some of the SDL stuff has been opened for other people to work on it and Toady has been putting more things in the raws for people to edit but he isnt going to open-source it.  I am a big fan of open-source but not everything needs to be that way.

[Funk]

Footkerchief just is a realy good remmbering stuff.

[Jiri Petru]

There are regular podcasts with Toady made by a team here from Bay12. Pretty interesting if you wonder about the development. They mostly talk about the future plant, not about how something got done, but still they're great. HERE.

There has also been a lot of interviews with Toady on gaming webpages etc., which usually talk more about how he's done something. I don't have links to these, though. I'm sure Footkerchief would help 

As for the open source - the big reason is Toady is living off the donations and programming fulltime. If he opened the code it would be morally ambiguous to accept donations for other people's work... and it could also dilute the donations to other sources. Less donations could lead to Toady having to find a job, thus having less time for DF. So yeah, it's money 

[Capntastic]

Footkerchief just is a realy good remmbering stuff.

It's not even that, he just knows how to use the search function, effectively letting him use the server as a secondary brain.

[Daetrin]

Footkerchief just is a realy good remmbering stuff.

It's not even that, he just knows how to use the search function, effectively letting him use the server as a secondary brain.

Footkerchief is actually an AI running the server, so it is his brain.

[Jh00]

First of all, thank you for the answers!

As for the open source - the big reason is Toady is living off the donations and programming fulltime. If he opened the code it would be morally ambiguous to accept donations for other people's work... and it could also dilute the donations to other sources. Less donations could lead to Toady having to find a job, thus having less time for DF. So yeah, it's money 

But... What about trying to hire some other programmer and see if he gets more donations?
I don't know, maybe he can even have a trainee working for free :-)

[hemmingjay]

He could easily get a few transient volunteers to work on the code but that would be like asking heroin addicted parolees to raise your child while you masturbate to bestiality porn.
I would never turn over such a labor of love to anyone else and I am lazy. Real lazy.

[Doomshifter]

Footkerchief is a legend among men. I've heard rumours that he's read every single post, and that he installed the [NO_EAT][NO_DRINK][NO_SLEEP] tags on himself.

[Sizik]

He has some helper gnomes here and there and the community helps the game in many ways  but the source code is going to die with him it seems.

He's mentioned releasing the source in the case of his untimely death, unless there's foul play involved.

[hemmingjay]

If anything happens to him there are instructions for the police to question nobles who may or may not be motivated by revenge.

[Footkerchief]

a- Is Toady One the only programmer behind DF?
b- Does Footkerchief help on programming too?
c- Do they work full time on DF and live by donations or they have another job? If so, which jobs?

Yeah, I just help out with janitorial stuff.  I do have a day job as a web developer.

Baughn did a lot of programming for the new cross-platform SDL versions of DF (the fruits of the fabled "merge").  bhelyer also did some initial work on the Linux port.

[fanatic]

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? 

It is "kept at bay" because you just dont rewrite DF from scratch in a day. Toady's apparently been on it full time for years. Though waiting on DF gives you plenty of time for doing something else. I Wish i had a dual core...

There was an issue with an UI guy going berzerk at DF interface(I really wonder why...) and Toady's policy on DF development. He basically sid "Screw you i'll rewrite in 3D from scratch. Hey folks you should donate to me instead". lookup khazad on Github if you're interested in the project. Or this thread for the reaction thread. Apparently he also reverse-engineered some of DF code that was accidentally released with debug symbols. It is arguably less glorious, but in my humble opinion, so is refusing access to source code.

It is the only case i've seen. But it doesnt mean there arent any people who will show up one day saying "hey look we have a thing the looks the same but has a nice UI and no performance issues". And that are smart enough to keep it down until their thing no longer looks ridiculous.

[Hyndis]

The reverse engineering fiasco was hilarious. Trying to replicate what Toady One has spent years making, and do it all in only a few months?

Sure, the thing they made looks pretty. But thats all it does. There's no playable game, just pretty pictures.

Gameplay trumps graphics every time. I'll take ASCII (actually the Mayday graphics version in its 8 bit glory) over fancy 3D graphics any day so long as the gameplay is awesome.