Why is CM closed source?

[Nickvr628]

Noah hits the nail on the head. Going open source at this point would be the best thing to happen to CM in a long time.

[HBlokkum]

Closed source but GPL? N-Nani??

[spookydonut]

I don't think we could morally open source CM without the permission of everyone with work that still exists in the code and art.

[NoahKirchner]

I don't think we could morally open source CM without the permission of everyone with work that still exists in the code and art.

That is the one point that I feel is the most important aspect of the conversation since it is a rather large concern, I think it'd be legal technically but whether or not it's cool to do is a different story entirely.

[kamenkuro]

Here's an idea. Take all the super secret club stuff out. Release a bare bones version with like basic bitch ass stats and shit. Then let people build off of that. If that's possible. I know fuck all about coding.

[NoahKirchner]

Here's an idea. Take all the super secret club stuff out. Release a bare bones version with like basic bitch ass stats and shit. Then let people build off of that. If that's possible. I know fuck all about coding.

tbh releasing the CM source code would be pointless for people to use since a lot of it's incredibly niche for other servers or specifically designed to work in the context of CM. Going open source would be better for CM to be able to modernize their code with other codebases because open source works both ways, but as spooky said above there is a bit of a moral dilemma there.

[Jeser]

I don't quite where is the problem in "Moral Dilemma". If staff decides to try go open source, set time limit, say, 1 month. Within that month you try to contact all devs who worked on CM and ask if they are okay with CM going open-source. By the end of month count "For" "Against" and go with majority's opinion. I really don't get where is "problem" here. Obstacle, that's all.

[spookydonut]

If even one said no i wouldn't support it. I don't support it ergo

[Herac]

By the end of month count "For" "Against" and go with majority's opinion.

Honestly that's not an unreasonable thought. I say that having no idea just how many people would have to be contacted, though. I'm pretty sure CM has had a lot of coders, spriters and mappers working on it over the years and contacting all of them might prove to be a bit of a hassle.

A hassle that, lets be frank, would most likely be against making CM open sourced. The reason I say that is everyone who's worked on CM over the years has had the opportunity to argue that it would be better to open source it but that never happened. It's probably not worth the effort, however if they did do that it would draw a clear line under the whole open/closed source debate permanetly.

CM wouldn't look like a hodge-podge of different developers because the maintainer still has the ability to merge things, if they wanted to they could deny every single pull request by everyone who isn't a dev, or not allow them to submit pull requests in the first place.

You've got a point, I'm just thinking about what it would look like in practice and my mind is telling me that most pull requests would get denied for not sticking to the core focus on CM which would defeat the point, I think. This might be my ignorance showing but I have to wonder does going open source really have benefits if you auto deny pull requests from non devs? I thought that was the whole point of an open sourced project?

Or are you saying CM would be able to benefit more from just being able to use things from other open sourced projects?

(I'm not very knowledgable about this topic, as you can probably tell)

[lmwevil]

the fear of going open source at this point with the CM staff that they won't openly admit is simply that they are scared people will start a new community because of dislike of the current community and the greed of keeping their limited features entirely to their own codebase. the issue with closed source is it's overall more unhealthy for the entire ss13 community and allows for elitist garbage behaviour and isolates the coders/developers.

the very fact CM is closed source is via them exploiting a loophole, if the source of CM was leaked again there could be no legal trouble. It's why MSO still has the old leak up on his github, this is a fork of bay and then originally /tg/.

open source this shit, if your server is well managed nothing will go wrong - evidence being literally every open source server

goon is a closed source corpse, don't stagnate and be a goon

[Jeser]

I forgot to say my own opinion on this. Staff don't need to ask ex-devs. When those developers left they didn't say "I want all of my work removed from server, because it's my work and I leave." They contributed their work to community, in this case, CM community. It's up to community to decide what to do next.

[Nicboone]

I know I made my work for this server, because I saw in this server something that the other servers did not. I would not like to see my work used in a manner that I didnt create it for or intend to. When I left, I left with trust for the team. Outside of all the other reasons i mentioned about why it needs to stay closed source- I wouldnt want to see my sprites being used outside of that context.

Obviously I left my control over that at the door. But I trust the team, and spooky, to do what has worked out. Going open source is out of the question- It will halt good development, It will encourage the allready rampant entitlement of the community at large, and I think it is a breach of trust to do that.

I say again, CM is a mod of a game. [We] control the use and terms of players who would like to interact with that. I think with that I am done with this thread though. The team will do as they like, but I see them making the right call in the end and staying closed.

[kamenkuro]

It will halt good development, It will encourage the already rampant entitlement of the community at large

As many times as this has been stated in this thread that's the farthest from the truth. It's like people think it'll be some hodge podge of memes and shite graphics because "oh no, we let people see the super sekret code guiz." If SS13 has proved anything, it's that once everyone has the code it'll only get better. That's why people want it open source. It's not that they don't have faith in the team currently working on it. Folks are just clamoring for more. With more folks working on it there'd be so much more content. More CM servers would be awesome. More diverse servers with different shit would be awesome. Lifeweb, CM, Halo, Fallout, there are so many servers based off SS13 and they're all so much fun.

[coroneljones]

I forgot to say my own opinion on this. Staff don't need to ask ex-devs. When those developers left they didn't say "I want all of my work removed from server, because it's my work and I leave." They contributed their work to community, in this case, CM community. It's up to community to decide what to do next.

Not really
They left their work for a closed-sourced CM-only usage, thats like saying that if you left someone taking care of your house and didnt say "dont let anyone in" that they could invite anyone inside.

Its not up to the community to decide if they use their work, its up to them to see if they allow it to be used outside of the previously authorized form of closed-sourced CM restriction

[Casany]

Yeah that'd be a dick move to just release code without asking for the people who made it's permission

Like, if I invited like 20 guys to a party that I did all the preparation for, and prepared and everything by myself or with a friend, and then some random guy walks in and takes all my preparation to another house to host his own party with my work.

Not the best but it conveys the meaning here, it's moreso that people don't want others to just take their work that they didn't allow to be taken.

[kamenkuro]

Yeah that'd be a dick move to just release code without asking for the people who made it's permission

Like, if I invited like 20 guys to a party that I did all the preparation for, and prepared and everything by myself or with a friend, and then some random guy walks in and takes all my preparation to another house to host his own party with my work.

Not the best but it conveys the meaning here, it's moreso that people don't want others to just take their work that they didn't allow to be taken.

That's a terrible analogy. If anything the guy just copied the list of supplies you had and used that to build an even better party. Which is half the reason devs don't want to. It's about pride I guess.

Not really
They left their work for a closed-sourced CM-only usage, thats like saying that if you left someone taking care of your house and didnt say "dont let anyone in" that they could invite anyone inside.

Its not up to the community to decide if they use their work, its up to them to see if they allow it to be used outside of the previously authorized form of closed-sourced CM restriction

Also a terrible analogy. It's more like you move out of a house after having added a patio deck or something nice. Yes, you liked that patio, but the new pool the new folks are putting in needs the space and the patio ain't what they care about. People that have left have no say

[Nickvr628]

Yeah if CM goes open source, people are not stealing the code, they are simply copying it and editing it to make it better. Joe Random who goes and copies the CM source to host his own server will never get popular since people want to play the official CM server.

If someone takes the code and makes something even better with it, then people can play there and have a better experience, AND the original CM server can take their changes and apply it to themselves. Everyone wins.

The reason it will never happen is because the CM devs know that if they go open source someone will make a competently run server without all the CM Drama and issues and people will leave to play it instead.

[Blade2000Br]

I think instead of people trying to get this code base, which has alot of custom code made by the devs over the years, they could give a go with other open source codes and make something cool with another thematic.

I would love a Star Wars based game on SS13.

But I think its hard being creative...its better take another ones code. Dunno how this work honestly.

[NoahKirchner]

I think instead of people trying to get this code base, which has alot of custom code made by the devs over the years, they could give a go with other open source codes and make something cool with another thematic.

I would love a Star Wars based game on SS13.

But I think its hard being creative...its better take another ones code. Dunno how this work honestly.

There's not much to take from CM unless you're making another CM really. Aside from projectile code I guess but even still 80% of the unique to CM features are too niche to employ elsewhere.

[Challenger]

That's a terrible analogy. If anything the guy just copied the list of supplies you had and used that to build an even better party. Which is half the reason devs don't want to. It's about pride I guess.



Also a terrible analogy. It's more like you move out of a house after having added a patio deck or something nice. Yes, you liked that patio, but the new pool the new folks are putting in needs the space and the patio ain't what they care about. People that have left have no say

Your first point is an outright argument for piracy.

In your second point, the homeowner would usually be able to sell their home at an increase price for the patio they added, which is enough compensation. CM devs don't get paid in money, but they do get implicitly paid in having a lasting influence over the direction of the game that they put effort into. It's more than just "pride".

[Casany]

Your first point is an outright argument for piracy.

In your second point, the homeowner would usually be able to sell their home at an increase price for the patio they added, which is enough compensation. CM devs don't get paid in money, but they do get implicitly paid in having a lasting influence over the direction of the game that they put effort into. It's more than just "pride".

Basically what I wanted to respond but was too lazy to

[NoahKirchner]

Your first point is an outright argument for piracy.

In your second point, the homeowner would usually be able to sell their home at an increase price for the patio they added, which is enough compensation. CM devs don't get paid in money, but they do get implicitly paid in having a lasting influence over the direction of the game that they put effort into. It's more than just "pride".

It's not piracy if it's made open source. If it was piracy then using the bay12 release as a base for CM is pirating the work of everyone before them, especially the goon people.

Also, you can still control server direction and disallow other people from making PRs if you go open source, if they wanted to and in some weird universe if they decided to go open source they could make it so that only devs were allowed to submit PRs. Open source =/= community developed.

[Casany]

It's not piracy if it's made open source. If it was piracy then using the bay12 release as a base for CM is pirating the work of everyone before them, especially the goon people.

Except the people who worked on bay12 knew their code was public.

CM coders and devs from the past developed and added things in a system where they thought it wasn’t going to go public (and probably isn’t). When the Goons released their first release all the coders (maybe 1 or 2 had left at that point but most all of the coders never changed on a Goon) they allowed it, and knew what was going to happen. Here people are advocating “Let’s take all the work that people in the past have done and without their permission release it to the public because I say it should be that way”. Does that make any ounce of sense?

I don’t care one way or another, I’m saying that in order to ever go public it’d at least be nice to ask for permission from every past dev who had a sizable impact on CM.

[Challenger]

It's not piracy if it's made open source. If it was piracy then using the bay12 release as a base for CM is pirating the work of everyone before them, especially the goon people.

Also, you can still control server direction and disallow other people from making PRs if you go open source, if they wanted to and in some weird universe if they decided to go open source they could make it so that only devs were allowed to submit PRs. Open source =/= community developed.

Open-sourcing isn't piracy, but the counter-argument he used was "If anything the guy just copied the list of supplies you had and used that to build an even better party", which is hilariously the exact argument pirates use to say that they're not stealing.

While this server's staff has the power to regulate its own codebase, the issue after open-sourcing is that other people will fork their own servers off and modify the code/sprites/maps/etc without regard for the original developers' vision. The other issue is that individual servers popping up with the same codebase is pretty likely to create tragedy of the commons situations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons) where they act in their own best interest while making it worse for everyone.

[kamenkuro]

Your first point is an outright argument for piracy.

In your second point, the homeowner would usually be able to sell their home at an increase price for the patio they added, which is enough compensation. CM devs don't get paid in money, but they do get implicitly paid in having a lasting influence over the direction of the game that they put effort into. It's more than just "pride".

I don't know if you're being dense on purpose. But I'll respond

We're talking about digital goods. Also open source game code. This means my point has nothing to do with piracy. It feels like you're putting piracy out there just to try and discredit what I'm saying. You can't pirate open source code.

You seem to be stuck the house analogy and not the part where if a dev, coder, spriter, etc. leave the game they have no say over what happens with the game. They can't suddenly be important when up to that point their absence has made them inconsequential to the games current direction.

Open-sourcing isn't piracy, but the counter-argument he used was "If anything the guy just copied the list of supplies you had and used that to build an even better party", which is hilariously the exact argument pirates use to say that they're not stealing.

While this server's staff has the power to regulate its own codebase, the issue after open-sourcing is that other people will fork their own servers off and modify the code/sprites/maps/etc without regard for the original developers' vision. The other issue is that individual servers popping up with the same codebase is pretty likely to create tragedy of the commons situations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons) where they act in their own best interest while making it worse for everyone.

No pirate has ever said anything about making a game better because they're pirating the game. You're thinking hackers and modders. Which has actually helped games. Take Nier:Automota and Gearbox's Colonial Marines as examples. The entire point of open source is to make a good game out of a good game and you seem to ignore the fact that CM is a result of an open source code.