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Kicking the Bukkit: Anatomy of an open source meltdown

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Re: Kicking the Bukkit: Anatomy of an open source meltdown

#12

Post by cybrox »

gear54rus wrote: post #3

So it failed just because of the stupid outdated law system - just like many other great ideas. Maybe it's just my idealist part, but isn't it a shame so many efforts (or much effort? not sure) in this world went to waste just because of blabla you can't distribute or blabla you cant build upon... This is digital millenium , wake up!

Of course it can be frustrating, if you can't build upon a project, if you have an idea that you want to realize. I'd say you have to look at this from the other side. Well, you can't blame people for building upon your project as long as they don't publish or distribute it but would you be happy if somebody distrubutes a better version of your product because he's allowed to build upon its source?

Granted, Mojang did make a lot of Money with Minecraft regardless but especially with open source projects building on other open source projects or especially non-profit projects in this case, this would be really problematic.

Developers don't need to wake up, they just need to put in the effort to chose the right license and make everybody who wants to contribute to their project agree with licensing their own code under said license.

Re: Kicking the Bukkit: Anatomy of an open source meltdown

#15

Post by mercer »

Kiro wrote: post #2

A bit OT but who are all these people making the mods? It seems really complicated and I'm impressed great developers choose to spend so much time on it. What's the incentive?

I used to be into 'modding' when I was sixteen, and the project I worked on turned out quite successful. In fact, some of the core team went on to work for Valve based on this (and later) mods.

Looking back, I suppose it was a bit odd that there was a group of people, most of them quite a bit older than me, who spent large amounts of time working on this project.

From the bits and pieces of personal information that I gathered about my team members, many of them, including the team leader, had 'proper jobs'. One of them actually worked as a lead level designer on a triple-A game.

I got the impression that they spent all this time on the modification because they loved building games, they loved not being constrained by budgets or non-passion related factors, they wanted to build up a portfolio to find a way into the gaming industry, or 'all of the above'. And it worked for some of them.

I'm not sure if this is the case for a majority of 'modders', but I suspect the reasons I mentioned are quite common. If you love developing things, a game is a really great thing to build. It's, ultimately, purely about fun and joy. It doesn't have to be useful. That might be enough for those who work on (boring) useful stuff during the day.

Re: Kicking the Bukkit: Anatomy of an open source meltdown

#16

Post by mikefaille »

Ecco wrote: post #5

Awfully similar to the VLC on iOS story. Terrible license (GPL) + one angry developer = millions of frustrated users.

The problem is not the licence, the problem is GPL haters.

GPL on VLC for Iphone can work without changing IOS or something else licence.

Note : Microsoft for example hates GPL projects for no reasons... Just check their publishing agreement. It's why I prefer Google Play Store ^^.

Note for me : Abandon Apple and Microsoft products

Re: Kicking the Bukkit: Anatomy of an open source meltdown

#17

Post by mikefaille »

reubensutton wrote: post #4

I'm confused what selling an open source project would even mean in this context?

For example, RedHat, Cisco, Suse (Novell), Alfresco, Wordpress, Drupal, etc. Can sold their Free Software project.

You can have it free. And it's ok. But having success is possible too (recheck my examples).

You can refuse to pay. But, if you want support : $$$ for value++. (you just buy the brand)

See this for more info https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

Re: Kicking the Bukkit: Anatomy of an open source meltdown

#18

Post by mikefaille »

Not sure about this presentation.

Just enforce GPL licence and you'r ok ;-)

Just ask Software Freedom Law Center and your fine. (every body can do this move; like you)

For example, it works against Cisco : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation_v._Cis...

Re: Kicking the Bukkit: Anatomy of an open source meltdown

#20

Post by belorn »

RKoutnik wrote: post #6

Bukkit made a lot of mistakes (don't we all), but I think that this talk tries to pin them on the wrong thing. Bukkit was in a failure state the second they included the Minecraft binaries. You're beholden to a third party the minute you create a server for the service, but linking the binaries in an OS project dooms you to failure eventually. Mojang could have DCMA'd the project (and thankfully didn't). The talk see…

From outside, it seems odd that Bukkit distribute the closed-source binaries rather than relying on a official minecraft client already been installed on the machine. Many older FOSS game projects add modification to an existing proprietary game and uses the game assets as a resource to be pulled from the during run-time or install. In Debian, most games located in contrib archive seems to be of this type.

Just seems as a much safer way to go about modifying software that restricts all redistribution.

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