Some thoughts on the community openness direction

[kondra]

@kondra Just to make clear I admire that you took effort and time to solve many issues within the original otclient and kept evolving based on my work, just as I admire many others have done the same in private. But at the same time I feel somewhat unhappy just as you would feel if someone was profiting with your work while they give nothing back, and some people in the community aren't happy too (while some take this unhappiness to extreme). This put you in a delicate place where some does like your work and others abolish (not much me, I am more indifferent within respect with that, but I could certainly admire if it was open).

Maybe you could ponder a model switch for the sake of your project image in the community. Just to give some ideias some open source projects are successful while the maintainers may make money of it, there are multiple ways do achieve this. I have no ideia what could work for you and the community, but let me give some ideias. You could make your client fully open source and offer goodies for backers who pay you monthly. Like personal support, exclusive tutorials, access to a private chat with you, prioritize new features/bugfixes that backers ask, provide them ready pre compiled binaries and offer access to nightly development git branch just to backers, making the official open source repository outdated for a few weeks/months. This way people will have many incentive to back your project and you could still be making money and all the people would still appreciate your work. Even more some people would be able to help you coding thus minimizing your work. If you are planning stop doing this project maybe you have nothing to lose trying to approaching like this. I feel somewhat sad at the moment, because I see the community hate in the forum and out there because of your project, and you are using my work and getting some hate from this. And my work was never intended to generate hate in any community, just to help out, maybe you have the chance to switch that.

Sorry, but that's best I can do by now. Maybe in few years I will fully open source otcv8, by now it stay as it is. I can't belive something like this would work in community which has been built on stolen intellectual property of CipSoft. Ask them to make tibia open source, they make 1kk$/year on that, not me. By now my work is as open source as it can be, if community will evolve and will start appreciate contributors maybe I will make otcv8 open source in the future. Start from edubart, whole community owns him around $50k for what he did. One more time - good luck.

 

[Marshall_]

I think the OpenTibia community is dependant on the continuous development and openness of OTC and TFS, and I wish that the OTLand management (they don't necessarily have to do the operative tasks, but they are the only with the mandate to make this decision) could take action and create a sustainable model to ensure that these two pillars in this community are being maintained in the best manner possible.

When remembering back when there was a SVN for TFS 0.4 on OTLand, I would like to recall that there was very big audience that was paying a monthly membership to get access to this software (and people were very grateful for what they got in return!). Now that the development has been moved to GitHub I don't think there is a particular big amount of people that are paying the monthly subscription to OTLand because of how grateful they are towards the development that is ongoing over at GitHub - however there seems to be a board on OTLand that lets the subscribers get exclusive access to prioritized support from the support team here (correct me if I'm wrong).

My suggestion is that there is some model put in place where there are two options when subscribing to OTLand:

a) First option, your monthly subscription fee goes solely towards the maintenance cost for the OTLand forum.
b) Second option, your monthly subscription fee goes towards the maintenance cost for the OTLand forum AND towards the development of OTC and TFS.

The second option would cost slightly more. There could also be badges that visually display that you are either a supporter of OTLand or OTLand and OTC/TFS. The second subscription would give you exclusive access to this support board for OTC/TFS and there could also be exlusive resources available here from people who would like to contribute in this way.

With this said, I really think we have to stop challenging the OTCV8 becoming open-source because it is a one person decision and we cannot expect one person to be the only factor for the survival of OTC. Instead we should focus on developing the open-source version developed my Edubart.

 

[Astrax]

I think the OpenTibia community is dependant on the continuous development and openness of OTC and TFS, and I wish that the OTLand management (they don't necessarily have to do the operative tasks, but they are the only with the mandate to make this decision) could take action and create a sustainable model to ensure that these two pillars in this community are being maintained in the best manner possible.

When remembering back when there was a SVN for TFS 0.4 on OTLand, I would like to recall that there was very big audience that was paying a monthly membership to get access to this software (and people were very grateful for what they got in return!). Now that the development has been moved to GitHub I don't think there is a particular big amount of people that are paying the monthly subscription to OTLand because of how grateful they are towards the development that is ongoing over at GitHub - however there seems to be a board on OTLand that lets the subscribers get exclusive access to prioritized support from the support team here (correct me if I'm wrong).

My suggestion is that there is some model put in place where there are two options when subscribing to OTLand:

a) First option, your monthly subscription fee goes solely towards the maintenance cost for the OTLand forum.
b) Second option, your monthly subscription fee goes towards the maintenance cost for the OTLand forum AND towards the development of OTC and TFS.

The second option would cost slightly more. There could also be badges that visually display that you are either a supporter of OTLand or OTLand and OTC/TFS. The second subscription would give you exclusive access to this support board for OTC/TFS and there could also be exlusive resources available here from people who would like to contribute in this way.

With this said, I really think we have to stop challenging the OTCV8 becoming open-source because it is a one person decision and we cannot expect one person to be the only factor for the survival of OTC. Instead we should focus on developing the open-source version developed my Edubart.

I like this idea. I believe that nowadays developers need some kind of incentive, even if it is a small one to at least motivate them.

We all know that the old times were programmers had lots of time to spare are not coming back, not to many other open-source projects that have become abandoned over the years, and especially NOT to a community as aged as open tibia. I wish this wasn't the case, but no need to trick ourselves with just good wishes that will never become reality.

 

[Gesior.pl]

I wanted to post in:
Do not use/buy OTC V8
but someone CLOSED IT. Posting opinions about OTC/OTCv8 is illegal on OTLand anymore? People there were talking about developing new features/bug fixes for OTC (free version).
@Kaspar @WibbenZ There is a post it's closed 'for moderation', but it was edited.. 8 hours ago and it's still closed.
--------------------------------------------------------
OTCv8 is misleading name for software with closed sources that does not use Tibia protocol to communicate with server.

 

[Alpha]

Even otland global moderators whcih have bug fixes to most problem you have don't share it with you, i recomment to read my post about it - OTClientV8 (https://otland.net/threads/otclientv8.266603/page-13#post-2591248)
The difference between them and me is you can buy those things from me, they won't help you because you are competition for them.

I'll link to a previous post from me since you don't seem to know anything about Red or Cyntara: [USA] [EU Proxy] Cyntara v12-s3 - Quarantine Season - [Custom Client w/ Vanilla Look] | Launch March 28, 2020 4:00pm EST (https://otland.net/threads/usa-eu-proxy-cyntara-v12-s3-quarantine-season-custom-client-w-vanilla-look-launch-march-28-2020-4-00pm-est.244557/post-2599734)

 

[Night Wolf]

@edubart so lucid as always, perhaps I can get your discord later so we can have a nice discussion regarding otc and few other Lua related projects that I checked on your github? It would be better talking in our local language

I always have been more naive when developing things, making in the open and with no money attached whenever possible,
just for curiosity of doing, and nobody should expect other developers to be like that.

I don't see as naive because I followed pratically the same steps as you and now I don't even have where else waste money on (specially now with covid19 since I cannot travel anymore), to be honest for me it would be far easier to just buy the source from Kondra along with all the other features he sells and just release to the community. But if I did it, I would be not only endorsing his behavior but also encouraging others to act like him and probably he or others would find new fixes to sell that I would like to once again buy and share. This is not sustainable.
Any great company will check your resumé for contributions in open source community and volunter work and if you have plans to one day be a soft engineering in a top tech company, I bet your experience and findings during OTC will cover almost all areas that they test people for.

I only get so much time to write code. If any of that time is spent writing code you've already written but refuse to share, especially for petulant profiteering, than you are in error, and you are not only robbing the community, you are robbing me. I don't tolerate those who would commit such sin against their fellow man. Willfully forcing duplicated effort is the gravest sin among our kind

This says it all.

 

[Eks]

he just care about money, he dont give a fuck about ethic, i cant belive he can just get otc, do few fixes and sell it like for 5k usd, its nothing close to have a server running with otc and get alot of money and then dont give anything back, because that person are not selling it, its just using and the reason of success its not even just the client, but kondra, you are selling it, exclusively the open source client with some fixes, if community owns him 50k usd, you owe him how much? 20k usd + by now?

 

[Night Wolf]

I have no ideia what could work for you and the community, but let me give some ideias.

Unfortunately he lacks the perspective to see 2 iterations ahead his own nose. Even considering he only cares about money, by sharing the source he could increase his prices in special features and have way more customers. Also a new client would be a game changer that would make the community grow. More people represents more users which represent more contributors and therefore more servers and players.
It's fair reasonable to say that by being greed he's actually earning less of what he could do by sharing.

 

[zbizu]

A perfect scenario would be using bountysource and putting money on issues. This way devs would get paid and the community would get their fixes. Unfortunately people want to keep things for themselves because they aren't doing development anymore. They got older and are doing "business" now.

 

[Ralumbi]

I feel your words, I can agree that there needs to be done more for the community. I am a new contributor to the community and hope people will not only do this for money. I am in the OT community for years without account and took others code for learning purposes. Now I learned a lot during the years I decided to give back to others what I have learned among the years.

Nice expression and its sad to see you go @edubart I really do hope you will stick around and still contribute more of your excellent work you've already been doing for years!

Make the community proud and start contributing what you have kept behind for years, but were huge improvements for OTClient as an example.

Sincerely,

Ralumbi (Caleb)

 

[Night Wolf]

This reminds me alot of the discussions we were having in 2007 when BlackOnix, the most advanced project that I've seen have decided to stop and none of the people involved wanted to share the project with the community.
They did the 'onStatsChange' callback years before cipsoft, it could have speed up the custom servers alot. Almost no one remembers them now and not only all those codes are useless since tfs has evolved into a much bigger and safer stage but probably the last backup of it may be long deleted by now.

Useless work, as in Sisyphus myth.

 

[BulawOw]

In my opinion the best way to go is to support slavi doing his unity client, i started today and will try to keep it monthly im only 1 person but if community will work together something will happen and the something is not small

 

[Deleted member 49793]

Real shame. I understand the concerns. I've voiced my opinion in prior threads how I see both sides of the argument. But what we're losing is an incredible developer pushing OTC, and will be back to a dead tibia client alternative once he's gone. I understand it wasn't free to have the source, and that sucks, again, I see the arguments, but the alternative is nothing, Kondrah has endless work he can find elsewhere.

 

[Night Wolf]

Real shame. I understand the concerns. I've voiced my opinion in prior threads how I see both sides of the argument. But what we're losing is an incredible developer pushing OTC, and will be back to a dead tibia client alternative once he's gone. I understand it wasn't free to have the source, and that sucks, again, I see the arguments, but the alternative is nothing, Kondrah has endless work he can find elsewhere.

From your comment I can only assume that you have skipped the whole discussion and jumped into wrong conclusions. He already stated that you bought it from him, if you want to be the change and have more people backing the project why don't you start by sharing the source code so we all have something good and optimized to start working with?
Kondra is no saint but he's far from being the only problem.

 

[zbizu]

what we're losing is an incredible developer pushing OTC

Developers aren't really losing anything if he doesn't contribute. Players probably won't lose anything either if he continue working on his client outside of otland.

Edit: I remember his name appearing in some old OT tools (forgot which ones, might be otserv or pre-1.0 tfs) so sure, he contributed a lot in the past, but currently we aren't losing anything because if his present and future contributions exist, but aren't accessible to the community in form of source code, we aren't really missing anything.

and will be back to a dead tibia client alternative once he's gone.

It isn't dead. BR part of the community managed to connect Tibia 12 to their server and implement some of its features already.

again, I see the arguments, but the alternative is nothing

rl client (br forums), otclient (edubart's version, otland version, br version), ot-unity (slavidodo), flash client code (quite dead) and there was one more client somebody linked somewhere but I forgot the name. Yes all of them are far from being complete, but I don't think that we have no alternatives.

 

[Deleted member 49793]

From your comment I can only assume that you have skipped the whole discussion and jumped into wrong conclusions. He already stated that you bought it from him, if you want to be the change and have more people backing the project why don't you start by sharing the source code so we all have something good and optimized to start working with?
Kondra is no saint but he's far from being the only problem.

We tried to get multiple big teams involved to fund the Unity Project, not a single one was interested other than us.

We're not allowed to share the source code. Shocking that had to be said about a paywalled product.

Continue pointing fingers. What a waste of time responding once again for someone to completely miss the point.

 

[Night Wolf]

We tried to get multiple big teams involved to fund the Unity Project, not a single one was interested other than us.

We're not allowed to share the source code. Shocking that had to be said about a paywalled product.

Continue pointing fingers. Great work. What a waste of time responding once again for someone to completely miss the point.

So you paid for the source and you're not allowed to share what you have paid for? who is not allowing? Kondra? Tell me more about it...
I'm not pointing fingers,just showing you how easy we can contributte to become a better community. I'm in the middle of finalizing an antibot version for source using machine learning over behavioral data. Have tested and detects cavebot autoloot and autoheal with 99.98% accuracy

GitHub - andersonfaaria/antibot: Antibot is a machine learning project created during the machine learning lectures

Antibot is a machine learning project created during the machine learning lectures - andersonfaaria/antibot

github.com

Do you really want me to stop my researches (that probably won't be anyone else in the community that can continue) just to do fixes that were already done by other people but they decided not to share?

Post automatically merged: Apr 23, 2020

What I'm trying to say is that we have several areas involved in an open source project, if each of us focus on the ones we are good and trust others to evolve other parts of the project that they know. We would all have something that is amazing and bigger than tibia.

 

[Deleted member 49793]

So you paid for the source and you're not allowed to share what you have paid for? who is not allowing? Kondra? Tell me more about it...
Yes... This is extremely common practice when you purchase the source code of something.

Yikes man, sorry I cant even have this discussion.

We offered to come forward and help fund projects here on Otland, other devs (many far larger than us) completely ghost when approached.

It's all fun talk until people actually need to cough up money themselves, donating $10 to a clients development is fun and all, but doesn't move the needle in the slightest.

Sorry I posted, that was my mistake, should of done what all the other large dev's are doing, and literally not saying a word you proved them right, and me wrong for trying to give my 2 cents.

 

[Night Wolf]

So you paid for the source and you're not allowed to share what you have paid for? who is not allowing? Kondra? Tell me more about it...
Yes... This is extremely common practice when you purchase the source code of something.

Yikes man, sorry I cant even have this discussion.

We offered to come forward and help fund projects here on Otland, other devs (many far larger than us) completely ghost when approached.

It's all fun talk until people actually need to cough up money themselves, donating $10 to a clients development is fun and all, but doesn't move the needle in the slightest.

Sorry I posted, that was my mistake, should of done what all the other large dev's are doing, and literally not saying a word you proved them right, and me wrong for trying to give my 2 cents.

I mean, if you do share what will happen? He'll drop the support? Or did he made you sign a contract that you'd be sued for sharing "his" work?
Because if it's just a matter of support, well, you lose him and you get several other people having your back. As long as we all act the same way in regarding our findings... it's literally a game of trust.

 

[Deleted member 49793]

I mean, if you do share what will happen? He'll drop the support? Or did he made you sign a contract that you'd be sued for sharing "his" work?
Because if it's just a matter of support, well, you lose him and you get several other people having your back. As long as we all act the same way in regarding our findings... it's literally a game of trust.

No he didn't make us sign a contract, but yes on purchase we agreed to not redistribute his work.

Yes we could release it without being sued. But we gave our word. Maybe that doesn't matter to you, but it does to us.