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[jaxler]

the game should not go open sorce. it kills games. infiniminer is an example. when something goes open sorced the original idea, the artists vision, the dream, is lost. they lose what they should be. removing the man with the vision ruins stuff, cuz when the vision man is gone you get a guy who is tring to copie what the vision man wants. if vision is made to be removed by people who wish to "fix" or "add" or "improve" you get a minecraft with pre generated new yorks, you get a gangster version of sponge bob, you get a god damn star wars with yoda.

my point is that when any1 is allowed in then the vision is lost. open sorce is bad if it was not open sorce in the beginning.

[ayoriceball]

the game should not go open sorce. it kills games. infiniminer is an example.

Infiniminer died because people hacked it and ruined multiplayer. Sorry if I sound rude, but do you know what you're talking about?

[FallingWhale]

Infiniminer died because people hacked it and ruined multiplayer. Sorry if I sound rude, but do you know what you're talking about?

Do you? Where do you think they got the codes from?
When he gave the code away he stopped making money and the whole thing burned.

[Starver]

I think one thing we can agree upon is that not everyone is going to agree on anything.  ( <= Even that?)

I already think your reasons for the fallaciousness is fallacious.  Why is it fallacious that DF is Toady's baby and he wants it to remain so?

It is and he does.  You might not consider that a good reason for not going Open (personally, I do), but it's undeniable.  Unless Toady's been secretly being roleplaying "Oh, I so want to share this" with one left-handed madness-imbued glove-puppet only to be shouted down by the counter-part glove-puppet on the other hand being badly ventriloquised with the words "No you don't!  We wants it all to ourselves!" from the right hand, which then proceeds to wrestle the former to submission.  And if that is happening, he's got much bigger problems.

There's other things I could say about Open Source (and I'm actually an advocate of the principle, in general, just not in this specific case at this moment in time), but all of that is moot given that Toady does not 'feel like' releasing it in that manner, right now.

The only way round that would be to get a 'new' project together to produce something DF-ish; something like UFO:AI is to the original XCOM series.  "Inspired by", in the heaviest way possible.  But I couldn't support that, given how it's not bringing something that's essentially[1] abandonware up to current systems, but actually treading on the toes of an active title.


Redhat, BTW, doesn't make money out of Linux[2].  That's contrary to the whole way it works.  Redhat is making money for its added-value (specific support, non-open augments, etc).  I've actually lost track of what Mozilla is/is not about (the last time I thought I was certain was when part of the NCSA Mosaic team forked off to make the first Netscape!), but I don't think they have any more claim over the Firefox effort.


[1] I forget now if this is strictly currently true for XCOM, but it certainly has been.

[2] Here, I'm using a shortcut term for the core kernel and wrapping of other GNU licensed elements.  Using the term quite badly, in fact.

[Babylon]

the game should not go open sorce. it kills games. infiniminer is an example. when something goes open sorced the original idea, the artists vision, the dream, is lost. they lose what they should be. removing the man with the vision ruins stuff, cuz when the vision man is gone you get a guy who is tring to copie what the vision man wants. if vision is made to be removed by people who wish to "fix" or "add" or "improve" you get a minecraft with pre generated new yorks, you get a gangster version of sponge bob, you get a god damn star wars with yoda.

my point is that when any1 is allowed in then the vision is lost. open sorce is bad if it was not open sorce in the beginning.

As the OP stated going open source would not mean Toady would give up creative control.  If people wanted their code incorporated into the game they would have to submit it to him.

I think it would be great for the game personally and i am afraid the OP might be right about Toady getting burned out, on the other hand it is his game, and his decision.

[Starver]

I know I prefer to be creative rather than a manager of other people's creation.  This might be considered selfish, but 'merely' collating and controlling a collaborative effort from others would not satisfy me, and I'd want to move on.  'Creative control' be damned.  I'm surprised he even allows community suggestions (regardless of whether they ever get implemented), on the basis that someone could claim that he had pinched someone else's ideas.  (But then I am past participant of the AFP newsgroup, where such concerns are far traditionally far more heightened.  At the request of the Author.  Toady has a different limit/comfort level, in this regard.)

[Babylon]

I know I prefer to be creative rather than a manager of other people's creation.  This might be considered selfish, but 'merely' collating and controlling a collaborative effort from others would not satisfy me, and I'd want to move on.  'Creative control' be damned.  I'm surprised he even allows community suggestions (regardless of whether they ever get implemented), on the basis that someone could claim that he had pinched someone else's ideas.  (But then I am past participant of the AFP newsgroup, where such concerns are far traditionally far more heightened.  At the request of the Author.  Toady has a different limit/comfort level, in this regard.)

I'd think that having other people work out bugfixes would be pretty awesome.  Incorporating other people's actual features would probably be much rarer, if it ever happened.

[Zarat]

the game should not go open sorce. it kills games. infiniminer is an example. when something goes open sorced the original idea, the artists vision, the dream, is lost. they lose what they should be. removing the man with the vision ruins stuff, cuz when the vision man is gone you get a guy who is tring to copie what the vision man wants. if vision is made to be removed by people who wish to "fix" or "add" or "improve" you get a minecraft with pre generated new yorks, you get a gangster version of sponge bob, you get a god damn star wars with yoda.

my point is that when any1 is allowed in then the vision is lost. open sorce is bad if it was not open sorce in the beginning.

I think you might have just skimmed my post.

I am 100% against Toady not retaining full 100% control and not being the sole driving force behind the design of the game. I am utterly and totally against that. Toady should always be the sole mover and shaker behind Dwarf Fortress. I am even a little uneasy about people giving him suggestions about what to put in the game.

The rest of my post explains why it's nonsense to think that going open source means that Toady would not retain 100% control.

I think one thing we can agree upon is that not everyone is going to agree on anything.  ( <= Even that?)

I already think your reasons for the fallaciousness is fallacious.  Why is it fallacious that DF is Toady's baby and he wants it to remain so?

It is and he does.  You might not consider that a good reason for not going Open (personally, I do), but it's undeniable.  Unless Toady's been secretly being roleplaying "Oh, I so want to share this" with one left-handed madness-imbued glove-puppet only to be shouted down by the counter-part glove-puppet on the other hand being badly ventriloquised with the words "No you don't!  We wants it all to ourselves!" from the right hand, which then proceeds to wrestle the former to submission.  And if that is happening, he's got much bigger problems.

That's not fallacious. The fallacious part is thinking that if he shares the source, then it's no longer his baby.

There's other things I could say about Open Source (and I'm actually an advocate of the principle, in general, just not in this specific case at this moment in time), but all of that is moot given that Toady does not 'feel like' releasing it in that manner, right now.

Yes, exactly. I hope Toady reads this thread and it at least causes him to reconsider a little bit, because my experience in software engineering tells me DF will be a stillborn baby unless something changes, and I don't want that.

Redhat, BTW, doesn't make money out of Linux[2].  That's contrary to the whole way it works.  Redhat is making money for its added-value (specific support, non-open augments, etc).  I've actually lost track of what Mozilla is/is not about (the last time I thought I was certain was when part of the NCSA Mosaic team forked off to make the first Netscape!), but I don't think they have any more claim over the Firefox effort.

First of all, it is perfectly legal (and even encouraged by the maker of the GPL license) for me or you to download Linux or OpenOffice or Firefox, burn it to a CD, and sell those CDs for $20. (I don't think Toady would necessarily want to go with the GPL - I think a no-forking license would fit his tastes better with a "all code is Toady's forever" clause, for example - but just using it as an example.) You do have to provide the source if anyone asks for it (again, under GPL) but you are allowed to charge for that too.

This is what Red Hat does at its core - you cannot get Red Hat Linux for free. You instead get a subscription from Red Hat which gets you the software and as a value-added bonus, support should you ever need it. You can get the very similar Fedora Linux for free, but there are plenty of differences other than the support.
EDIT: I take that back. The most basic Red Hat subscription doesn't give you any support, you just pay for Red Hat.

Firefox has deals with Google and Bing, among others, that pay them in exchange for having the Google and Bing search bar included in the browser.

But all this is moot, since with the right license, Toady can ensure that nobody else is allowed to distribute DF if he is worried about donations shifting away to third-parties who just repackage it. And he even could, if he wanted, sell it and not allow anyone else to do so - but thankfully he doesn't think charging money is a good business model (otherwise I would not have played.)

I know I prefer to be creative rather than a manager of other people's creation.  This might be considered selfish, but 'merely' collating and controlling a collaborative effort from others would not satisfy me, and I'd want to move on.  'Creative control' be damned.  I'm surprised he even allows community suggestions (regardless of whether they ever get implemented), on the basis that someone could claim that he had pinched someone else's ideas.  (But then I am past participant of the AFP newsgroup, where such concerns are far traditionally far more heightened.  At the request of the Author.  Toady has a different limit/comfort level, in this regard.)

Toady would not at all be regulated to merely collating and controlling a collaborative effort. He would never be just the manager. He would always be the main driver of DF and the sole creator of the games ideas and elements. He would almost certainly be the biggest code contributor to the project. If we go back to Mozilla as an example, the Mozilla employees are pretty much the only ones allowed to actually check in patches to the Firefox browser. People submit patches to them, they review them, and accept them or reject them depending on tons of factors. But the majority of Firefox code is still written by Mozilla employees.

What I'm saying the game needs is not more people making the game per se, but a general re-architecting and refactoring, bug fixes and performance improvements. If someone submits a feature patch that does exactly what Toady wanted and he decides to accept that, that's fine and great, but that shouldn't at all be the focus and I would expect Toady to not even pay any attention to most such patches. I think we would all be disappointed if anyone else had anything to do with most of the games ideas than Toady and ThreeToe.




 

[Starver]

That's not fallacious. The fallacious part is thinking that if he shares the source, then it's no longer his baby.

I must have misread, or you miswrote (something I'm often guilty of) because you specifically said "1. DF is Toady’s baby, and he want to retain full control over it" and then that this point was especially fallacious.

Yes, exactly. I hope Toady reads this thread and it at least causes him to reconsider a little bit, because my experience in software engineering tells me DF will be a stillborn baby unless something changes, and I don't want that.

It's far from stillborn.  But perhaps we have differing measures of life-lines vs project-cycles.

First of all, it is perfectly legal (and even encouraged by the maker of the GPL license) for me or you to download Linux or OpenOffice or Firefox, burn it to a CD, and sell those CDs for $20.

Indeed, but it's the added value (packaging on the media) you charge for.  Not for use of the core code.

[...]This is what Red Hat does at its core - you cannot get Red Hat Linux for free. You instead get a subscription from Red Hat which gets you the software and as a value-added bonus, support should you ever need it. You can get the very similar Fedora Linux for free, but there are plenty of differences other than the support.
EDIT: I take that back. The most basic Red Hat subscription doesn't give you any support, you just pay for Red Hat.

You appear to be repeating what I was saying.  You pay for the added value.  Or you don't pay (as much) and take the free (or media-only) version.  Anyhow, I think we're in knots.

Firefox has deals with Google and Bing, among others, that pay them in exchange for having the Google and Bing search bar included in the browser.

Now, I didn't know that.  You learn something new every day (and because of the shock of this information, I'm not sure the relevance).  Dunno why anyone would have Bing, anyway, by choice.  And who pays who?  Just realised your description might be ambiguous and not the way round I first read it.


Anyway, I feel this is a diversion.  Toady isn't feeling comfortable with this approach.  And I see nothing from what you say that would persuade me (an arbitrary and not necessarily representative benchmark in this matter) to break a similar project of my own out into Open Source territory.

Like I said, I like the concept.  Collaborative efforts, with or without a (self-?)appointed single head (although I rather think that could cause issues with a lot of the good points I like about Open Source) are good.  But putting myself in that position (fairly easily, except that I don't have a Bay12Forums or a public checking out my own plaything projects) I see myself having a trepidation.  Give me a year to simply make my code presentable so that I'd be willing to share it, for a start, but that's a personal issue.

[Footkerchief]

This post (along with Toady's other posts in that thread, all of which are worth reading) should address your points:

I don't want to work with other people.

[ayoriceball]

Infiniminer died because people hacked it and ruined multiplayer. Sorry if I sound rude, but do you know what you're talking about?

Do you? Where do you think they got the codes from?
When he gave the code away he stopped making money and the whole thing burned.

He stopped working on infiniminer because people hacked the multiplayer. Dwarf Fortress doesn't have a multiplayer.

[Zarat]

This post (along with Toady's other posts in that thread, all of which are worth reading) should address your points:

I don't want to work with other people.

I hadn't read that particular post, but I didn't see anything new.

The problem is that Toady's not wanting to work with other people and Toady's desire to finish his "life's work," to a point where he feels good about it, are mutually exclusive. That's not because Toady isn't good enough or anything like that. That's just the nature of this kind of development and the fact that Toady isn't a software engineer or anything like it.

That's not fallacious. The fallacious part is thinking that if he shares the source, then it's no longer his baby.

I must have misread, or you miswrote (something I'm often guilty of) because you specifically said "1. DF is Toady’s baby, and he want to retain full control over it" and then that this point was especially fallacious.

It was probably a combination of both - I meant it was fallacious in the sense of that's not an argument against opening it, it's just a non sequitur or a straw man. Nothing about opening DF suggests that it would cease to be his baby. And anyone who wanted to take it away from him would be foolish. No serious person would ever suggest that DF should be designed and written by committee - that almost never produces anything good.

Yes, exactly. I hope Toady reads this thread and it at least causes him to reconsider a little bit, because my experience in software engineering tells me DF will be a stillborn baby unless something changes, and I don't want that.

It's far from stillborn.  But perhaps we have differing measures of life-lines vs project-cycles.

First of all, it is perfectly legal (and even encouraged by the maker of the GPL license) for me or you to download Linux or OpenOffice or Firefox, burn it to a CD, and sell those CDs for $20.

Indeed, but it's the added value (packaging on the media) you charge for.  Not for use of the core code.

[...]This is what Red Hat does at its core - you cannot get Red Hat Linux for free. You instead get a subscription from Red Hat which gets you the software and as a value-added bonus, support should you ever need it. You can get the very similar Fedora Linux for free, but there are plenty of differences other than the support.
EDIT: I take that back. The most basic Red Hat subscription doesn't give you any support, you just pay for Red Hat.

You appear to be repeating what I was saying.  You pay for the added value.  Or you don't pay (as much) and take the free (or media-only) version.  Anyhow, I think we're in knots.

I'm not sure whether we agree or not - my initial point is that Red Hat charges for you to download their product, which is open source, and they do. In fact, you have to pay (heftily) per processor socket, or something along those lines. If you want the value-added component of support, that comes extra.

Firefox has deals with Google and Bing, among others, that pay them in exchange for having the Google and Bing search bar included in the browser.

Now, I didn't know that.  You learn something new every day (and because of the shock of this information, I'm not sure the relevance).  Dunno why anyone would have Bing, anyway, by choice.  And who pays who?  Just realised your description might be ambiguous and not the way round I first read it.


Anyway, I feel this is a diversion.  Toady isn't feeling comfortable with this approach.  And I see nothing from what you say that would persuade me (an arbitrary and not necessarily representative benchmark in this matter) to break a similar project of my own out into Open Source territory.

Google and Bing pay Mozilla. (As an aside, I use both Google and Bing - they run about equal in my experience, and I switch to the other whenever the one fails me.)

It is becoming a bit of a diversion, but my point was that you can still make money with open source. Toady makes money through a donation model, so it's doubly true. Nothing would change for him.

I personally wouldn't say that you should open source a personal project - unless a) it's very large and b) it's your life's work and c) you don't have all of the necessary expertise and resources (money/coders.) I've contributed to open source projects, but I've never opened any of mine.

Like I said, I like the concept.  Collaborative efforts, with or without a (self-?)appointed single head (although I rather think that could cause issues with a lot of the good
points I like about Open Source) are good.

Not quite sure if we're on the same page here - it's my observation that any project, closed or open, rarely succeeds without a single head and vision. And that was something Brooks said, too. Even RMS, who, for those who don't know, is a rather radical fellow (personally, I find him abhorrent, though he does have a few good ideas) who is the main driver behind the whole Free software movement, kept very tight control over his Emacs.

[Footkerchief]

This post (along with Toady's other posts in that thread, all of which are worth reading) should address your points:

I don't want to work with other people.

I hadn't read that particular post, but I didn't see anything new.

The problem is that Toady's not wanting to work with other people and Toady's desire to finish his "life's work," to a point where he feels good about it, are mutually exclusive. That's not because Toady isn't good enough or anything like that. That's just the nature of this kind of development and the fact that Toady isn't a software engineer or anything like it.

AFAIK Toady has never expressed a desire to finish the game, so if those are indeed mutually exclusive, his decision should be clear to you.

It is becoming a bit of a diversion, but my point was that you can still make money with open source. Toady makes money through a donation model, so it's doubly true. Nothing would change for him.

What if the community interest shifts to a forked version with a new head developer?  Why should Toady take that gamble when he already brings in enough donations to support himself and prefers to work on the project alone?

[Zarat]

This post (along with Toady's other posts in that thread, all of which are worth reading) should address your points:

I don't want to work with other people.

I hadn't read that particular post, but I didn't see anything new.

The problem is that Toady's not wanting to work with other people and Toady's desire to finish his "life's work," to a point where he feels good about it, are mutually exclusive. That's not because Toady isn't good enough or anything like that. That's just the nature of this kind of development and the fact that Toady isn't a software engineer or anything like it.

AFAIK Toady has never expressed a desire to finish the game, so if those are indeed mutually exclusive, his decision should be clear to you.

I kind of thought that Toady was working toward 1.0 when the goal of getting to it, and his usage of phrases like "life's work" also suggested to me that he wanted to get it to some kind of finished state.

If that's not the case, then...well...okay. I'd estimate another five years of DF at best before it becomes a total bog to work on.

It is becoming a bit of a diversion, but my point was that you can still make money with open source. Toady makes money through a donation model, so it's doubly true. Nothing would change for him.

What if the community interest shifts to a forked version with a new head developer?  Why should Toady take that gamble when he already brings in enough donations to support himself and prefers to work on the project alone?

1. This actually almost never happens. Forks are rarely sustainable, except in the case that a) the original developers quit or b) the original developers do something totally outrageous and awful. And even forks in the case of b rarely last.
2. I specifically suggested that Toady not allow forks. There is no real reason to allow forks for DF, given how Toady feels about it. Whether forks are allowed or not depends on the particular license, they are not an inherent feature of open source.

[Footkerchief]

I kind of thought that Toady was working toward 1.0 when the goal of getting to it, and his usage of phrases like "life's work" also suggested to me that he wanted to get it to some kind of finished state.

If that's not the case, then...well...okay. I'd estimate another five years of DF at best before it becomes a total bog to work on.

If you think this would sway him toward open-source, you're really underestimating his antipathy toward working with other people:

[...] I can't easily overstate how much I hate managing code or collaborating on code or anything along those lines.

That's not to say that I don't want to grow the audience and allow more people play the game, but I want to do it in a way with which I feel satisfied, even if that ends up being slower or just plain worse than a hypothetical third party alternative. [...] Despite my dedication to this project, I'm unwilling to sacrifice my enjoyment of working on it for anything, including its quality or even its future release if it comes down to that.

1. This actually almost never happens. Forks are rarely sustainable, except in the case that a) the original developers quit or b) the original developers do something totally outrageous and awful. And even forks in the case of b rarely last.
2. I specifically suggested that Toady not allow forks. There is no real reason to allow forks for DF, given how Toady feels about it. Whether forks are allowed or not depends on the particular license, they are not an inherent feature of open source.

"Almost never" doesn't cut it, especially not in DF's case.  We're talking about a game that has already had at least one reverse-engineering attempt by a disgruntled fan, in addition to the growing list of ripoffs and reimaginings.

Also, I don't think Toady trusts a license to prevent forks.  Enforcing the terms of a license requires lawyers and money.