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[simonthedwarf]

It will not become opensource while in development. Toady will open it when he's done with it, and if he dies (and it is determined that his death was not the result of foul play with the intent to cause the game to become open-source) then the game will be made open source.
That's because right now Toady's able to live off the game, and he doesn't want to make a big change that could fuck his livelihood up.

You know the worst thing? I bet the mermaid-farming DF players grinded their teeth when they couldnt assasinate Toady for the purposes of faster patches.

[HungryHobo]

If memory serves at some point he said that if he just got bored of it he might open source it.

We could get far better results if toady would just play nicer with the guys who make the memory hack apps  like therapist and let them access the game in less convoluted ways than messing with memory.

personally... after seeing how bland and poorly made many open source games are I'm not in any rush.

When most people think of features to add they tend to just recycle ideas they've seen in a million other games. toady seems to make an effort to avoid cliches at all cost. for example you can bet when magic get's added it'll be nothing like the level 1 level 2 level 3 fireball crap almost every other game uses. it'll be weird and fantastic.

[Makbeth]

The only way I think Toady will make DF Open source is if that there is some sort of quest to find it. Toady will walk around where he lives for 30 minutes every day, with a briefcase chained to his arm. You have only 30 minutes to get that briefcase, or he dissapears for the rest of the day. If you somehow manage to get the briefcase from him, you'll have to unlock it. There is only one person in the world who knows how to unlock it, and that person is ThreeToe. He lives on top of a large, unclimable mountaint. If you reach the top he will unlock it for you.

Inside would be a laptop, with DF's source code inside. The thing is though, that DF's Source code has be added to various files code on the laptop. The only problem is that there is over 1,000 programs on said laptop. If you manage to piece together DF's source code, and put it in correct order the prize is yours.

Simple right

This is bay 12.  That would keep the source code secure for maybe a few minutes.

[Crioca]

It would be a travesty if this game were not to become open source at some point, but right now it's Toady's primary source of income, and open sourcing the code has the potential to jeopardize that.

So here's hoping he hits the lottery.

[hermes]

I'd be incredibly happy if DF never went open source.  Open source (or even shared development) is just a recipe for a massive fudge up.  Posters complain about the development speed, but then if we are patient and DF continues to be popular we can look forward to years and years of beautiful improvements to this beacon of lovingly crafted RPGs.  DF is a development journey, and we don't need to have the finished product or the source code to enjoy that.

[cephalo]

Personally, I do not believe that the value in DF is the code. There's nothing revolutionary or special about it. I can't be sure, but I would be surprised if opening the code would make a dent in Toady's already modest income. The thing that we are all waiting around for is not technology based, it's to see where Toady's vision will go. I don't think that the value of DF is something that can be stolen.

As it is any experienced coder with the motivation to do it can clone DF without looking at code. Why aren't they? Because they don't have Toady's passion and vision for the project. Opening the code would most likely result in a faster, more efficient code base as no doubt there would be vast discussions over this or that algorithm that Toady could use to his advantage. There is no single person out there with the dedication, self discipline, and vision to sieze leadership of the project away from Toady. If there were, we would have certainly heard from them by now. Such a person would likely have little use for the code.

[Cruxador]

As it is any experienced coder with the motivation to do it can clone DF without looking at code. Why aren't they? Because they don't have Toady's passion and vision for the project. Opening the code would most likely result in a faster, more efficient code base as no doubt there would be vast discussions over this or that algorithm that Toady could use to his advantage. There is no single person out there with the dedication, self discipline, and vision to sieze leadership of the project away from Toady. If there were, we would have certainly heard from them by now. Such a person would likely have little use for the code.

Well, we've already heard of someone who tried. And you can argue that Notch was doing something kind of like that, since DF is cited as a big part of Minecraft's inspiration.

[cephalo]

Well, we've already heard of someone who tried. And you can argue that Notch was doing something kind of like that, since DF is cited as a big part of Minecraft's inspiration.

These things haven't really impacted DF in a negative way though.

[Person]

Thing is, we have no idea how toady codes, or even if it'd be readable by even an expert coder after all these years.

[rosareven]

Even if Minecraft is trying to do what DF does, it is still a different vision - Minecraft is a virtual lego game, DF is a fantasy world simulator.

As a programmer myself, I can understand Toady's decision of going solo. Everyone's ambition is unique no matter how similar they may be with a project. Once there are more than one person working on a project together, the unique ambitions from each individual of the team are normalised into something common that they all share, but then the uniqueness of their individual ambition is sacrificed just so they can work together. Conflicts happen when team members arrogantly hold onto their ambition that the rest of the team don't agree with, which wouldn't happen in a solo project - you can do as your heart desires and you get to create something that's truly unique to your own, you're just on your own without any help to speed up the development.

[G-Flex]

Even if Minecraft is trying to do what DF does, it is still a different vision - Minecraft is a virtual lego game, DF is a fantasy world simulator.

Considering its recent development, I'm not convinced Notch knows what Minecraft is supposed to be, or why people actually like it. That being said, I think of it and DF as fairly distinct products that don't really overlap a whole lot in terms of features or design.

[rosareven]

Considering its recent development, I'm not convinced Notch knows what Minecraft is supposed to be, or why people actually like it. That being said, I think of it and DF as fairly distinct products that don't really overlap a whole lot in terms of features or design.

Admittedly I only played Minecraft for about 10 minutes before my fiance couldn't continue on with his client repeatedly crashing. My impression with the purpose of Minecraft is that it is a game that Notch desired to play, and since there are not many similar games, he decided to make his own. I called it a virtual lego game as a light hearted metaphor of what I think it is, but yeah, there seems to be no clear vision for Minecraft other than it being the game that "he has always wanted to play but it didn't exist", whereas DF actually has a clear vision that hasn't been strayed away for so long. Today DF is still a world simulator, where new stories and fictional histories continue to get generated via people playing the game.

[huhu]

Toady has claimed at least once that the code is a mess, and I can sympathise with that since all my projects end up like that. The magnitude of the mess becomes immense with the size of DF codebase. It's also undoubtedly a hodgepodge of horror monster code with the various overlapping simulation levels. I don't envy the poor soul who has the motivation and opportunity to learn to work with the DF engine. It's entirely possible that Toady is the only one who will ever be able to handle the current DF code, and anyone else will have to rewrite and document it piece by piece, or wait until that gets done by Toady.

[Untelligent]

So it's sort of like the Necronomicon, really. Probably best to leave it shut.

[thvaz]

Toady has claimed at least once that the code is a mess

Quote please.

People always assume the code is a mess, but they never looked into it. I remember one quote from Toady that was about how he likes when he has to deal with old code is everything is clean and easy to understand.