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[MrWiggles]

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.

I dont think that would really work. With how DF is seemingly interconnected, and with how some bugs are pending future changes to another system, I'm willing to bet that most of them would be just place holder after place holder.

[Loud Whispers]

Goddamnit man, another one of these threads?

Yup. We all have different tastes of gaming, in our own particular brand of ASCII goodness, and it's much easier to apparently start a new topic than search/continue an older one. A FAQ section for the suggestions part does actually seem like a really decent idea (that Toady could be bothered to add) though.

[Zarat]

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.

If his antipathy is such that he would rather not finish his life's work if it means working with other people, then yes, I underestimated it and I'm kind of worried about his wellbeing. I am also unsure if his understanding of collaboration is the same as what I mean.

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.

If he's that worried about it, then why is he releasing the binary? It's only work - tedious drudgery, to be sure - to decompile the binary and make sense out of it. As I said in the OP, I went ahead and started this as a personal project for "fun." As I said distributing any product from that would be both illegal and wrong, but that seems to have stopped everyone so far.

99% of people act in good faith, and the remaining 1% nobody pays attention to. No matter how make illicit forks there were - if any were actually created, which again, is extremely improbable - people would always come to get THE DF from THE Toady, and they would always donate to him. Look at the legitimate Firefox and Chrome forks - people ignore them for the most part.

In fact, given the broadened audience, one would expect increased donations.

And frankly - as far as "ripoffs and reimaginings" go...that's how the world works and advances. Everybody builds on everyone else. You can't own an idea. The only way to "stop" those is to stay ahead of them and always be the innovator. If those are truly becoming as common as you suggest, and Toady is worried about imitators coming up past him and taking over, so to speak - that's a lot more likely with the current process, and this is how it happens.

Goddamnit man, another one of these threads?

Yup. We all have different tastes of gaming, in our own particular brand of ASCII goodness, and it's much easier to apparently start a new topic than search/continue an older one. A FAQ section for the suggestions part does actually seem like a really decent idea (that Toady could be bothered to add) though.

I did search through the forum and I read quite a few topics, but when you search through a many-years-old forum, you come up with tons of results that are irrelevant or outdated, and you have to spend a long time picking apart what's actually relevant. That's a lot to ask of the average Joe who would rather get back to playing DF. I specifically started a new thread because I have the ingrained tendency against necroing, and I also felt that my contributions were substantive enough to warrant a new thread rather than hijacking someone elses' - especially when I would rather not be bogged down distancing myself from their particular suggestions. Quite a few of the "just open source DF!" suggestions were, for lack of a better word, retarded.

Also, rather than Toady writing the FAQ, maybe one of the experienced forum members who has seen it all could write it up, quoting Toady as appropriate and/or writing their own responses, and then ask him to sticky it.

[Footkerchief]

99% of people act in good faith, and the remaining 1% nobody pays attention to. No matter how make illicit forks there were - if any were actually created, which again, is extremely improbable - people would always come to get THE DF from THE Toady, and they would always donate to him. Look at the legitimate Firefox and Chrome forks - people ignore them for the most part.

I'm going to concur with Toady here:

I'm being asked to assume risk.  I don't accept assessments of the risk as extraordinarily slight -- I've seen no sound basis for those assessments here.

My guess is that a die-hard core of players would stay with Toady, but the majority of DF's potential audience would be up for grabs.

In fact, given the broadened audience, one would expect increased donations.

Monetarily, it's impossible to say what on earth would happen, but if I supported the third party interface directly pre-release, I'd likely make more money, but I'd be unhappy.

And frankly - as far as "ripoffs and reimaginings" go...that's how the world works and advances. Everybody builds on everyone else. You can't own an idea. The only way to "stop" those is to stay ahead of them and always be the innovator. If those are truly becoming as common as you suggest, and Toady is worried about imitators coming up past him and taking over, so to speak - that's a lot more likely with the current process, and this is how it happens.

The point was that the potential for an unlicensed fork is greater for DF than for many other projects.  This community (presumably due to the many programmers) has a history of making the leap from "I wish the game was this way" to "I want to be the head developer of a DF-like game."

[Uristocrat]

This is the sort of thing that only Toady can decide and I don't think that any of our suggestions are going to add anything.  Sure, I love open source, but let's be clear:  no Toady == no Dwarf Fortress.  Maybe Toady can find a successor or have someone inherit the game if he's ever unable to continue, but he's the only one who could do that.

Even then, I think that Dwarf Fortress simply isn't a game that someone else could make.

So... there's nothing to discuss, really.

[MrWiggles]

There have already been forks from DF. There is Goblin Camp, and a more blatant copy, is DwarvesH. DwarvesH,  currently, even has the name of DF's foodstuff. (Though, he claims to become more separate from DF in the future.)

http://dwarvesh.blogspot.com/
http://www.goblincamp.com/

There a nastier one, that was reverse engineering DF binary, which I cant remember the name of.

It may "almost" never happen, but its happened/happening to DF already.

[Zarat]

99% of people act in good faith, and the remaining 1% nobody pays attention to. No matter how make illicit forks there were - if any were actually created, which again, is extremely improbable - people would always come to get THE DF from THE Toady, and they would always donate to him. Look at the legitimate Firefox and Chrome forks - people ignore them for the most part.

I'm going to concur with Toady here:

I'm being asked to assume risk.  I don't accept assessments of the risk as extraordinarily slight -- I've seen no sound basis for those assessments here.

My guess is that a die-hard core of players would stay with Toady, but the majority of DF's potential audience would be up for grabs.

Staying the course is also a risk. It's just easier to do because you don't have to change anything.

Your assertion that the majority of DF's audience would go else where is an assertion unsupported by history.

In fact, given the broadened audience, one would expect increased donations.

Monetarily, it's impossible to say what on earth would happen, but if I supported the third party interface directly pre-release, I'd likely make more money, but I'd be unhappy.

Toady's reasons for not supporting third-party interfaces were different from his reasons for not open sourcing DF. But putting that aside - he suggested that he'd be unhappy due to his interpretation of what collaboration was (which again I think is not what I am thinking of) - my belief before this thread was that he'd be more unhappy if he was never able to get DF to a point where he wanted it.

You can't always have your cake and eat it too.

And frankly - as far as "ripoffs and reimaginings" go...that's how the world works and advances. Everybody builds on everyone else. You can't own an idea. The only way to "stop" those is to stay ahead of them and always be the innovator. If those are truly becoming as common as you suggest, and Toady is worried about imitators coming up past him and taking over, so to speak - that's a lot more likely with the current process, and this is how it happens.

The point was that the potential for an unlicensed fork is greater for DF than for many other projects.  This community (presumably due to the many programmers) has a history of making the leap from "I wish the game was this way" to "I want to be the head developer of a DF-like game."

Why? I think this is actually a bigger problem for most other projects - to take the browser example again, browser fanatics are much more likely to be serious developers than DF gamers. And if you don't believe there are any - read their forums!

But either way, these people flame out because they set out alone to maintain their fork, and that's not doable - assuming they ever get a handle on the codebase, they have to add whatever it is they want as well as backporting Toady's changes - and that's not doable. So they fail.

There have already been forks from DF. There is Goblin Camp, and a more blatant copy, is DwarvesH. DwarvesH,  currently, even has the name of DF's foodstuff. (Though, he claims to become more separate from DF in the future.)

http://dwarvesh.blogspot.com/
http://www.goblincamp.com/

There a nastier one, that was reverse engineering DF binary, which I cant remember the name of.

It may "almost" never happen, but its happened/happening to DF already.

These aren't forks. They are games (perhaps too) inspired by DF. Nor are they illegal or wrong (except for the reverse engineered one), though they might be unfortunate.

And it looks to me like neither of them are getting anywhere.

But let's assume they do. Let's assume 100 legendary game developers working together as a perfect team descend upon one of them. Will it be easier for them to imitate a largely static DF that Toady is forced to spend more and more time  on just fixing bugs? Or will it be easier for them to imitate and outpace a DF that Toady is able to focus more of his efforts on constantly innovating?

The way to beat such people is to be better than them, not to pray they never figure out how you make X or Y work.

[Babylon]

99% of people act in good faith, and the remaining 1% nobody pays attention to. No matter how make illicit forks there were - if any were actually created, which again, is extremely improbable - people would always come to get THE DF from THE Toady, and they would always donate to him. Look at the legitimate Firefox and Chrome forks - people ignore them for the most part.

I'm going to concur with Toady here:

I'm being asked to assume risk.  I don't accept assessments of the risk as extraordinarily slight -- I've seen no sound basis for those assessments here.

My guess is that a die-hard core of players would stay with Toady, but the majority of DF's potential audience would be up for grabs.

Staying the course is also a risk. It's just easier to do because you don't have to change anything.

Your assertion that the majority of DF's audience would go else where is an assertion unsupported by history.

Specifically, they have not gone to Goblin Camp, which looks like it is, in fact, a fairly well made game.

[Footkerchief]

That comparison doesn't make sense.  Goblin Camp doesn't have a tenth of DF's feature set.  An actual fork that built on DF's existing feature set would be an entirely different story.  Also, I explicitly said that it was a guess, and that's kind of the point -- there is no good basis for predictions of this kind, and why would he gamble his livelihood on unknown odds when he wants to work alone anyway?

[ayoriceball]

That comparison doesn't make sense.  Goblin Camp doesn't have a tenth of DF's feature set.  An actual fork that built on DF's existing feature set would be an entirely different story.  Also, I explicitly said that it was a guess, and that's kind of the point -- there is no good basis for predictions of this kind, and why would he gamble his livelihood on unknown odds when he wants to work alone anyway?

Would you not suppport Toady One's DF over some other guy's forked version?

[Loud Whispers]

That comparison doesn't make sense.  Goblin Camp doesn't have a tenth of DF's feature set.  An actual fork that built on DF's existing feature set would be an entirely different story.  Also, I explicitly said that it was a guess, and that's kind of the point -- there is no good basis for predictions of this kind, and why would he gamble his livelihood on unknown odds when he wants to work alone anyway?

Would you not suppport Toady One's DF over some other guy's forked version?

Escaped Lunatics might not

[Footkerchief]

Would you not suppport Toady One's DF over some other guy's forked version?

Bolded a couple words I think were overlooked:

My guess is that a die-hard core of players would stay with Toady, but the majority of DF's potential audience would be up for grabs.

[ayoriceball]

Why the majority? I would expect Toady One's official stuff to be better.

[Capntastic]

One interesting thing is that Goblin Camp originally started because Aryoc wanted to prove that a game like DF could have an intuitive mouse driven interface.   It was never meant to be a rival product so much as something Aryoc hoped Toady would notice and possibly implement something similar.

[antymattar]

I believe the games source will be released only when its done. Otherwise it will go the way of infiniminer.