Ragnarok
2007-07-29 |  | Make GC open source |  |
Because the creator doesn`t make his game "open source", he`s making the same mistake a lot of other old business people are making and not tapping into the power of the community (and why GC still has bugs that have been around for ages).
If you have 1000s of hackers looking for bugs in the game and proposing fixes FOR FUN and PURELY EDUCATION PURPOSES, and then you have a few dozen well paid programmers working around the clock, which do you think will find and fix more problems? I don`t know about you, but I`d place my bets on the legions of programmers/hackers trying to improve your program for free cuz it`s fun and rewarding for them. It`s a strange thing, but the best resources are often had with no money at all
And many times, it`s not without reward. The returns are not only in terms of good karma, but can also result in some cold hard cash donations too. Spybot Search and Destroy, the best spy ware scanner around, is free. Yet, because of donations, he makes enough money for himself to maintain the scanner full time and can even afford a few full-time staffers to boot. Not bad for a program that`s literally given away at no charge.
Something for Stephen to think about. |
|
Baley
99+ day(s) ago | Ya I know Pandy, was also thinking that when I wrote that last post. Just read that as general information about the open source community ;-)
And Ragnarok, a large number of open source licenses allow for using the exact same code for commercial purposes, as long as the original author is mentioned and your code is released under the same license (aka your clone would also have to be open source). No copyright infringement in this case.
Anyway, that`s not gonna happen anyway, so might as well do something useful on this post...
/me steals Maraudian`s secret pineapple and goes to slap Pandy with it. |
Maraudian
99+ day(s) ago | nuh uh , bug juju :D |
Pandy
99+ day(s) ago | Paid staff keep regular office hours, and i only know two of them well enough to speak of what they do, but they do keep busy, its not all in game stuff, there is behind the scenes, it is a office they`re running, that involves paperwork, i`m sure that some of you would have a idea of what that is like.
GC pretty much runs itself, and i can`t speak for what goes on now, though I have a reasonable knowledge of what does go on, its not my place anymore to pass on that information, bug maraudian if you need that :P |
Pandy
99+ day(s) ago | and in case you don`t know what i mean, half the time he has trouble tracking down his own changes. |
Pandy
99+ day(s) ago | yeah but Baley .. its stephen. |
ThePakistaniEmpire
99+ day(s) ago | and i asked maraudian like if we can hack or something to change gc updates clean bugs he said its not allowed and anyone who tries will be banned |
ThePakistaniEmpire
99+ day(s) ago | fix the program gc lol gc is copy righted i bet if stephen finds out he will be able to file a lawsuite |
420Renegade
Game-Admin
99+ day(s) ago | Weill spam the hell out of him, so much his paid staff alerts him of it. And we will get him ! |
someone
99+ day(s) ago | blatently his paid staff are there to open his emails nd stuff so he doesnt have to |
420Renegade
Game-Admin
99+ day(s) ago | Actually, If you want ot get stephen to do something, you could organize a massive stephen-spam, spamming all his PM boxes, etc, emails and stuff (each player sending 1 letter/message to each) all saying fix gc. get a few hundred ppl to do it and he may even think about gc for a few minutes =D |
Ragnarok
99+ day(s) ago | And it really wouldnt be a clone if it was an improved version of GC. :P |
Ragnarok
99+ day(s) ago | depends on how good the clone was and how many players it ends up attracting. Or more importantly, how much it would motivate stephen to copy what they are doing and add actual features (assuming he doesn`t try to sue them first, and make the coders change the game significantly in some way). |
Galactic}{Killer
99+ day(s) ago | lol Agree`s with Ragnarok there xD (paid staff obv dont work that many hours. dont {do much work either}) lol
well i see everyones point, but it would suck if somone cloned GC |
Ragnarok
99+ day(s) ago | Well the only thing stopping people from making a GC clone to start with is time and effort really. There`s enough talent in the community that they could do this on their own if they really had the time and motivation. Even if they had the code, it would still be really hard as it would require servers and other resources. Whether they came up with their own code or used stephen`s (after it`s cleaned up), they would also open themselves up to copyright infringement unless the game was significantly different (in which case, it wouldn`t be a GC clone but an entirely different game based on the stacking idea).
But I would think that people would play both games if someone set up their own server, not just one or the other (esp the turn based ones).
And I do see your point Pandy. I guess trust and screwups (or worse) by the coder (esp if he can`t be seen face to face) are both a bit of an issue. :/
What`s the paid staff up to these days anyway? It seems that lag control and speed takes like 98% of their time if they work on GC, but that`s just my impression. |
Baley
99+ day(s) ago | "but if a player who`s doing coding for him did something wrong and then suddenly `disappeared` and became uncontactable, how easy do you think that would be for him to track that person down so he culd work out what he did ?"
Actually this is not really a problem. You just have to use a versioning system that keeps track of all the changes that are done in the code. When a developer from the community submits a change in the code, the project leader can just check what changes have been made and validate them.
That`s how large open source projects (think the Linux kernel, OpenOffice, the Java environment) work. Anyone can technically alter the code, but every change is carefully monitored. |
qwerty360
99+ day(s) ago | While i am pro open source software the problem with opensourcing spacefed would be that someone would simply host their own version, hurting both Stephen and the community at large (as it would be split, reducing the player count on each copy). This would be impossible to stop. |
Pandy
99+ day(s) ago | i agree with the 2nd post of yours in principle Ragnarok, however Stephen doesn`t keep his code secret because of the reason you listed, its because he`s tired of others telling him how sloppy something is when they see it, he is aware of his math being slightly funcky and psychadelic, and apart fro mall that who does he trust ?
don`t get me wrong I`m sure there are plenty of coders out there who could help him fro free, and who could work with him probably not as many, that takes getting used to being frustrated at every turn constantly by him.
However I do see his point, surely you can too. He now as I understand it has a paid member of staff who codes and if something goes wrong he can reach over and thump them one (metaphorically speaking of course), but if a player who`s doing coding for him did something wrong and then suddenly `disappeared` and became uncontactable, how easy do you think that would be for him to track that person down so he culd work out what he did ? And how pissed off do you think us the players would be if that happened, and it wouldn`t be at some random coder who screwed up, we`d take it out on stephen or the admins, we always do anyway so why break tradition there ?
No I can fully see why he wouldn`t do such a thing, unless its was someone he trusted completely like Tregelen or Belial, Belial pointed out for Stephen a great deal of problematic holes and had Stephen fix them. |
Strik3r
99+ day(s) ago | i dont think open source is the way to go for this game. what Baley says is very true and agree-able indeed |
Baley
99+ day(s) ago | I`m not sure opensource is the way to go for such an online game. A team of fully dedicated developers would probably be more effective. Anyway, Stephen has always been reluctant to give even tiny bits of his code to people wanting to help, so...
Oh also if he made GC opensource, chances are that someone would take the code, clean it (if that`s even possible without starting from scratch) and start a better-maintained version with frequent updates. Good for us, not for Stephen. |
ThePansy
99+ day(s) ago | heh I hear you Ragnarok but DM has a pretty good point too LOL |
