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Some thoughts on the community openness direction

@edubart hindered otclient development by himself by making it impossible to have a pull request merged with the main branch. Years later when people get organized to move one fork foward, @Iryont comes back and start merging stuff and randomly deleting reported issues, and people got kinda lost on what to do.

You guys identified a problem, lack of progress on open source projects of the community, and are trying to find someone to blame. No one owns anything back to anyone, if people don't want to join the open source game it's their problem. If edubart wanted something back from his efforts he should have picked another model or License, the beauty on MIT License is that people can do what kondra did and there is no problem with it.

If you guys want the open source going foward, you go there and move it foward. You don't write bullshit excuses and blame other people, other people don't own you nothing.

People that leech from it to make money are competing over each other and have no interest on an solution, the first step won't come from them. Stop to compare apple to oranges, they are playing the capitalist game, that has nothing to do with the open source world and they are not to blame. They are not some potential volunteer or mecenas, if they couldn't be doing what they are doing they would be somewhere else.
We have no one else to blame but ourselves, how many top tier programmers have passed through our community and could have rewritten crucial parts of tfs code but got tangled in several other problems that people solved by themselves and didn't shared?
So much lost potential, to everyone involved...
 
I intend to share some of the things I've developing in the past years but I do hope that this isn't an one-side act alone.

Just give up and move on, you are not Open Source material. It's not about it being a hurdle or wanting something back. It's about sharing being a fullfillment for yourself, you share it because sharing is what you want. And there are many reasons why that can be the case.

You are not help the community at all blaming the lack of progress on people that simple don't want be involved. They not only don't want be involved, they do not care, but also don't own anyone anything.

We have no one else to blame but ourselves, how many top tier programmers have passed through our community and could have rewritten crucial parts of tfs code but got tangled in several other problems that people solved by themselves and didn't shared?
So much lost potential, to everyone involved...

That's on the programers, they had a niche market to profit on and didn't. They should come up with a proper business model, that could either engulf the open source or not. Probably because most of them are employed or free lancers and not entrepeneur themselves.
 
Just give up and move on, you are not Open Source material. It's not about it being a hurdle or wanting something back. It's about sharing being a fullfillment for yourself, you share it because sharing is what you want. And there are many reasons why that can be the case.
I think you misunderstood what I said, it's not about waiting people to share something in order to share too, on the otherwise.
I've worked with someone who is probably the best programmer that ever passed through this community and we lost the chance to make huge contributions because we were stuck trying to solve basic things.

From now on I'll share everything I can and will put all my efforts to have tfs and a working client for it 100% working as the tibia one. Those two will be the perfect 'base' for everyone that will start in forgottenserver. This may take up to half a decade of work if I'm all alone but if we do this together we can close things and move on to the next 'big improvement' very quickly.
 
I think you misunderstood what I said, it's not about waiting people to share something in order to share too, on the otherwise.
I've worked with someone who is probably the best programmer that ever passed through this community and we lost the chance to make huge contributions because we were stuck trying to solve basic things.

From now on I'll share everything I can and will put all my efforts to have tfs and a working client for it 100% working as the tibia one. Those two will be the perfect 'base' for everyone that will start in forgottenserver. This may take up to half a decade of work if I'm all alone but if we do this together we can close things and move on to the next 'big improvement' very quickly.

I probably did, because it's the reigning mindset over here, "I will share after others do", "people don't share, that's why I don't", and then they are stuck in the never ending loop of wanting others to do the first step. Or worse, demanding people that has nothing to do with it, as if they own someone back by using open source content.

We either put hands in the projects and have enough brain power to move them foward, or we don't. If we don't, well, it's sad, but happens.

Someone could come up with a business model and make something like a Patreon to work on an open source server/client, and than tie his monthly income in the long term life of a pirate project of a 1998 game. Yeah, they could. Edubart could do it, instead of demading kondra to take such risky move, that he never did himself.
 
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Hello guys, i'm not a very active member, but I'm an old member... let me say some words...

Both sides have some points. I agree with all edubart said, and i'm a big fan of open source spirit. I can not contribute very much to Otland community in these years, because I was lost in my carreer, finishing a civil engineer university without loving it really, and found myself in development career just this year, in 2020. So, I'm still a developer, even if just a begginner one. And I know how difficult could be make your life in this career, specially in countries where it's not valued. That's said, i can get both sides.

While I do understain edubart's feelings, and I certainly sympathize with open source, I can get kondra's point too. Not everybody is fine in working for free, and i think it's easy when you're acquiring knowledge, but seens not the case of this user. I'm not saying i agree with what he did, but, technically, he could. After all, OTClient is released under MIT, and we cannot blame kondra itself for it (neither I'm saying that we should blame someone, please!).

I think some of use are being extremist, just like edubart said. I know it's not the better thing of the world, working in a project and see someone making money upon your work, but in terms of MIT, it is a fine thing. Actually, knowing edubart's position about this, i ask myself sometimes why he didn't released OTClient under GNU GPL, or something like this. Not saying he made a wrong decision, neither judging at all... I always preffer MIT instead GPL, but knowing his spirit, it's a thing I really don't understain.

And yes, I know this post is about "community spirit", but I'm just saying that, since it was released under MIT, we should just accept things like this. If it's a problem, we can still fork main repo and develop under GPL (i can be wrong, but as far I know, he can still uses branchs released under MIT, right?). Not everybody is here because of community, otland is an open place, and we must accept this (or close it).

The point is, while i agree with edubart's post, I can still see kondra's side, and he's doing nothing wrong, neither immoral. Community have allowed him to do this when released project under MIT, and if it would be considered something immoral, it shouldn't have be released under this license at all. "Yeah, but I'm a contributor and I don't agree with it's released under MIT". So, you can still fork and use another license, since you keep original copyrights, it's not a problem. This is the beauty of open source. "Uh, but I would be the only one". So you should considering being wrong. If you are doing the right thing and community agree with you, they will follow same decision. If they don't, just accept your opinion is not the mainstream, and don't contribute (there's no reason for contributing in a project you don't agree the philosophy), or just fork and keep developing yourself (which is not a problem at all), this way you'll not have problem with your work "being stoled". If you contribute to an open project, you must agree with community terms, and since for now it's MIT, then you're accepting MIT, and, thus, you must be ok with your work "being stoled".

Actually, I know it's about community spirit, not legal permissions, but it's still important consideering this. Even if I also think all this situation is sad, and people should be helping each other, I just can not see what kondra did as immoral, since the license upon project was released just contemplate this, and the license is inevitably connected with community's ethical.

TL;DR: Doing something by knowledge is a thing, doing something you already master is another one (which seens to be kondra's case). And while I always preffer open source, I still can understain people who wants make money with their work. "Uh, but he's doing money with my work too", so don't contribute to a MIT project. "But it's important to me", then fork it and look for people who agree with you. This is how open source works.
 
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Hello guys, i'm not a very active member, but I'm an old member... let me say some words...

Both sides have some points. I agree with all edubart said, and i'm a big fan of open source spirit. I can not contribute very much to Otland community in these years, because I was lost in my carreer, finishing a civil engineer university without loving it really, and found myself in development career just this year, in 2020. So, I'm still a developer, even if just a begginner one. And I know how difficult could be make your life in this career, specially in countries where it's not valued. That's said, i can get both sides.

While I do understain edubart's feelings, and I certainly sympathize with open source, I can get kondra's point too. Not everybody is fine in working for free, and i think it's easy when you're acquiring knowledge, but seens not the case of this user. I'm not saying i agree with what he did, but, technically, he could. After all, OTClient is released under MIT, and we cannot blame kondra itself for it (neither I'm saying that we should blame someone, please!).

I think some of use are being extremist, just like edubart said. I know it's not the better thing of the world, working in a project and see someone making money upon your work, but in terms of MIT, it is a fine thing. Actually, knowing edubart's position about this, i ask myself sometimes why he didn't released OTClient under GNU GPL, or something like this. Not saying he made a wrong decision, neither judging at all... I always preffer MIT instead GPL, but knowing his spirit, it's a thing I really don't understain.

And yes, I know this post is about "community spirit", but I'm just saying that, since it was released under MIT, we should just accept things like this. If it's a problem, we can still fork main repo and develop under GPL (i can be wrong, but as far I know, he can still uses branchs released under MIT, right?). Not everybody is here because of community, otland is an open place, and we must accept this (or close it).

The point is, while i agree with edubart's post, I can still see kondra's side, and he's doing nothing wrong, neither immoral. Community have allowed him to do this when released project under MIT, and if it would be considered something immoral, it shouldn't have be released under this license at all. "Yeah, but I'm a contributor and I don't agree with it's released under MIT". So, you can still fork and use another license, since you keep original copyrights, it's not a problem. This is the beauty of open source. "Uh, but I would be the only one". So you should considering being wrong. If you are doing the right thing and community agree with you, they will follow same decision. If they don't, just accept your opinion is not the mainstream, and don't contribute (there's no reason for contributing in a project you don't agree the philosophy), or just fork and keep developing yourself (which is not a problem at all), this way you'll not have problem with your work "being stoled". If you contribute to an open project, you must agree with community terms, and since for now it's MIT, then you're accepting MIT, and, thus, you must be ok with your work "being stoled".

Actually, I know it's about community spirit, not legal permissions, but it's still important consideering this. Even if I also think all this situation is sad, and people should be helping each other, I just can not see what kondra did as immoral, since the license upon project was released just contemplate this, and the license is inevitably connected with community's ethical.

TL;DR: Doing something by knowledge is a thing, doing something you already master is another one (which seens to be kondra's case). And while I always preffer open source, I still can understain people who wants make money with their work. "Uh, but he's doing money with my work too", so don't contribute to a MIT project. "But it's important to me", then fork it and look for people who agree with you. This is how open source works.
you just showed everyone you don't know the difference between immoral and illegal.

it's obviously immoral since he is literally selling fixes for a project he got for free, yet totally legal as we are under the MIT license.
The point is however not kondra nor otclient but the lack of perspective, mark has always fight to keep the community working in unison but yet in the end even him had things fixed which he did not shared, a proof for me that we can get tired of our own discourse if people don't cooperate.

After this discussions began with my topic, we have had plenty other discussions and there are a lot of good people trying to coordinate change for the community and currently open projects. I had literally shared the whole source of my project which we have been working on in the past 6 years and there are several new features/improvements/fixes. Something I would never ever consider before...
 
you just showed everyone you don't know the difference between immoral and illegal.

Yes, I do, sir. Please don't talk like this, you're not owner of the truth. And what I tried to say (and you clearly didn't understain) is that these two things are connected. Yes, I know they're different (and I said it clearly in my post), but these two things always walk together. I read all your posts, and I do admire what you've done, and I do understain your feelings, but you're the kind of extremist person edubart just talked about.

The point is that legally questions are always connected with the ethical ones, and it is not my opinion. I'm not a lawyer, but I studied a lot of about our law (yes, the same as yours), because I used to study for being a public agent. Thus, learned a lot about what our academy thinks about all this subject. Law and ethic are inseparable things. But if you'd like to know, they taught me exactly the same at uni (yes, I'm from a public uni too, just finished civil engineering in IFCE, and I get all you said about helping the society, and I do agree with this).

Do u would like an example? Let's take the safety belt of our cars. Ask your parents, about two decades ago, they just launched the law saying you must use it. In that time, people got angry with this. "It's not right, it's my car and my body, why i'm being forced to use it?". In that time, it was just law. Nowadays, the first thing you hear when enters a car is "please, put your safety belt". Now, it's a moral thing. The opposite occurs too. Laws are created upon ethics, and ethics usually comes from laws too.

It's a philosophy discussion. And have no problem in discuss this with anyone. I certainly can handle with people not agreeing with me. Just please, don't talk like being the truth's owner. You are not. Many people who studied more than you about this matter will say you're wrong (and I'm not talking about me, I'm not presumptuous like this). Ethics is always a subjective thing, so please don't treat it like math.

So, hope I have explained better this time, and shown that I do know the difference, maybe even better than you, and you prove this putting your own moral as truth. I'm going to repeat: i agree with your feelings, and we are the same side here. I'm pretty sure you are not a bad guy, and I do admire what you've done for community. You just fight for what you believe, and there is nothing wrong with this. But please don't forget being extremist is always a bad thing (we can see this looking at our country's situation). Still, If you'd like to really have a nice conversation, I'm open.
 
Yes, I do, sir. Please don't talk like this, you're not owner of the truth. And what I tried to say (and you clearly didn't understain) is that these two things are connected. Yes, I know they're different (and I said it clearly in my post), but these two things always walk together. I read all your posts, and I do admire what you've done, and I do understain your feelings, but you're the kind of extremist person edubart just talked about.

The point is that legally questions are always connected with the ethical ones, and it is not my opinion. I'm not a lawyer, but I studied a lot of about our law (yes, the same as yours), because I used to study for being a public agent. Thus, learned a lot about what our academy thinks about all this subject. Law and ethic are inseparable things. But if you'd like to know, they taught me exactly the same at uni (yes, I'm from a public uni too, just finished civil engineering in IFCE, and I get all you said about helping the society, and I do agree with this).

Do u would like an example? Let's take the safety belt of our cars. Ask your parents, about two decades ago, they just launched the law saying you must use it. In that time, people got angry with this. "It's not right, it's my car and my body, why i'm being forced to use it?". In that time, it was just law. Nowadays, the first thing you hear when enters a car is "please, put your safety belt". Now, it's a moral thing. The opposite occurs too. Laws are created upon ethics, and ethics usually comes from laws too.

It's a philosophy discussion. And have no problem in discuss this with anyone. I certainly can handle with people not agreeing with me. Just please, don't talk like being the truth's owner. You are not. Many people who studied more than you about this matter will say you're wrong (and I'm not talking about me, I'm not presumptuous like this). Ethics is always a subjective thing, so please don't treat it like math.

So, hope I have explained better this time, and shown that I do know the difference, maybe even better than you, and you prove this putting your own moral as truth. I'm going to repeat: i agree with your feelings, and we are the same side here. I'm pretty sure you are not a bad guy, and I do admire what you've done for community. You just fight for what you believe, and there is nothing wrong with this. But please don't forget being extremist is always a bad thing (we can see this looking at our country's situation). Still, If you'd like to really have a nice conversation, I'm open.

I'm not acting like I'm the owner of the truth, just giving you a simple explanation that what I'm discussing here is not the legality or the etchics but the moral instead. I understand what you said and this was explained before as well. I'm not being extremist, it's just that I write a lot and people tend to feel animosity when reading but in fact I've just write it very calmly while attending some meetings in my job

My point being: We are all sitting here under the legacy of mark, who shared the same beliefs that I'm reinforcing now and I'm also pointing that even for people that are only here for money or for their own server, this approach would be more benefical.

While I appreciate you saying we are on the "same side", that statement implies there are sides in this discussion which I believe to not be true. The difference is not about point of views but rather of "Do you understand the basic logic I'm showing?" and by your answer I can see that you do, which is great!

Regarding what you said about laws and ethics, I don't know which were the academics who told you that but there's a big difference between morality and ethic but that's not really the point here, let's try not to go off-topic. While that arguments holds for the seatbelt it becomes very fragile while talking about cases where law is unfair such as legal racism. Ethics are subjective indeed, because they rely on the self, but moralis built upon society consensus so while it may vary from society to society it is not subjective analyzing on snapshop of society in time. We can continue this discussion in PM if you wish...

I'm not forcing my moral to anyone simply because there's no such thing as 'my moral', it doesn't exist. Please take a moment to analyze the rest of the discussion and my other comments so we can have at least a starting point to have a more constructive discussion
 
I'm not forcing my moral to anyone simply because there's no such thing as 'my moral', it doesn't exist. Please take a moment to analyze the rest of the discussion and my other comments so we can have at least a starting point to have a more constructive discussion
You can't label this as offtopic, because the whole discussion revolves around this premise:
it's obviously immoral since he is literally selling fixes for a project he got for free
I would say it's your moral, because there is nothing objectively wrong with doing that. MIT License was literally built to enable kondra to do what he did, you trying to label it as immoral is mind-blowing.

And the argument is unfruitful, because falls in the trap of blaming people that never volunteered to do open source for open source not happening.
 
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I think this community works quite well, always room from improvement, but this is how it went for me.

First impression.
I knew very little to nothing about servers and scripting.
As soon as I got an idea to try to launch my own server it took me ~2 weeks to get it working, with some help from community and helpful sources all around this forum.
After a few more weeks with support help, I was able to do some scripting.

Basically when you are here to set up a game and know nothing about how can it be done.
This community helps you get started quite fast. A very good sign.

What next?
At the start, I simply wanted to be part of something and help anyone, because all of this was fascinating, but my skill level was so low nobody was interested. So instead I started tinkering with the TFS 1.x what I got working.

Here is the first major problem with a lot of these open source or private servers here.
There is no onboarding process.

Bringing value to the community
After a few months, I got pretty good at it and started offering my skills for free where I could.
Every time I had a problem I posted in support and continuously updated it with what I was trying to do and what I already tried if I didn't get an answer. This motivated me to spend even more time here.

I think I got an answer to all my problems.
This means it is a very healthy and helpful community.

Money
Few months after helping others I started to see the development patterns and started having ideas on how to improve TFS architecture.
Also the more I did stuff the more I was requested to do things.

I got a little overwhelmed, all I did was things for other private servers.
I started thinking: "Why should I do something for others if I could build something much better myself and share it with others in the end?"

Eventually, I wanted to improve my own server map.
And here was the kicker, nobody was willing to map for free, but they were willing to do it for money.
So I started offering my Lua scripting services for 2eur/h or in return for maps. The price eventually rise to 10eur/h

It was now over 6months spent in this community. I had no work nor school and my family started to push me to do "real work"
For excuse, I started bringing up, that what I am doing here is work and I can make money here.
From that point on started also paying bills.

This shifted me from spending money to the community and only get paid here or working on my server.

Moving on
Eventually, I got offer from an ABB factory to be an ERP software developer.
And that offer was because thanks to the skills I learned from this community. It was the only thing I had on my CV :D

At first, I accepted the job to speed up building Whi World.

Funny, nobody was interested to work on my server for 10eur/h (looked for the mapper, c++ engineer and website developer)
I started using the freelance site. I spent over 1000eur over several months.

I posted quite often what I bough or what I am working on, because I wanted to be noticed, but it felt like, a very small amount of people cared. (also I did a very bad job at marketing)
At work, however, I got praised every time I did something good or got guidance on what to do differently If I made mistakes.

Over time I gave up on doing this server in my free time and started focusing more on improving other coworker working tools.
This how I stopped contributing here.

Conclusion
If I would have understood that all I am doing here will benefit me in the future regardless if I publish everything or not. I would have made a public repo from the beginning. I would have definitely had a higher impact on the community and my situation only could be better, not worse.

For all the new developers here. Your ideas are amazing, but there are also a lot more great ideas out there.
If you don't get money for keeping your ideas and code private. Open source them as soon as possible.
Its the fastest highway you can fulfill your ideas and dreams.

New beginning
If your project set up is well documented and your server is open source.
I am willing to advise and write scripts for you for free.
 
You can't label this as offtopic, because the whole discussion revolves around this premise:

I would say it's your moral, because there is nothing objectively wrong with doing that. MIT License was literally built to enable kondra to do what he did, you trying to label it as immoral is mind-blowing.

And the argument is unfruitful, because falls in the trap of blaming people that never volunteered to do open source for open source not happening.
If you have read all the text and you still don't get it then I have nothing left to say ¯\(ツ)
 
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Holy shiz he actually did it. I wonder what that 10% is thats left out.
Probably rendering and FPS fixes?

That's great. I hope we can start to appreciate this instead of our old unmanaged otc. If he continue to work on it while its open source, maybe we can join him in the process and finally work out even better client that it is now. (I assume the cropped out code is that thing that track usage?)
Edit: oh I just noticed it's missing vc14 folder, well so far so good.
@Oskar1121 did some test, he tried to used Kondra's network protocol in our version of otclient and the only thing that changed was FPS drop :p (it turned out that drop wasnt caused by this). Anyway, it can be helpful for someone who wants to build something new based on these sources.
 
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I have not visited this thread since my posts back on page 1, and was content to never see what was said later, because it was irrelevant to me. I return now because I must. I address Icarus once more, because it is owed.

kondra, your reappraisal of your model, whatever the reasons are; it matters not, spares me a great many hours of work I'd have otherwise eventually had to duplicate in one fashion or another. I express my gratitude at being spared the expenditure of so much time, for it is a precious resource. Thank you for choosing feathers.

I now bear witness to Archlight's account that your accord was based entirely on honor. With that, you may number me among those who respect you.
 
I think the issue that we've never actually talked about is what kind of contributions OT devs and community members "ought" to contribute to the software they use.
Basically any artistic product is not ought to be given to anyone, the only components that are ought is core & security patches to make a given engine/software stable and secure for everyone.
Unfortunately these are also the hardest and often least interesting jobs, so we can't expect newbies to contribute with this.
That means we have to rely on the experienced core developers to do these jobs, and although some do it for free, I honestly think the best way to incentivize core development/contributions from experienced developers is by making more bountyhunts.
Another thing newbies/intermediate devs can contribute is wiki information and of course PRs.
Unfortunately we seem to be in a situation with OTClient now where a lot of PRs are ignored or rejected for funky reasons, meanwhile projects like OTClientv8 is still closed-source/can't be recompiled without paying a pretty enormous sum of money, $1k, for a single person. That's literally twice the cost of a lifetime license for IDA Pro..
Meanwhile a lot of people are afraid of sharing their experiences and thoughts about any of this in case it somehow upsets staff or "violates a rule" that may not even exist just because it makes staff look bad.
All of these factors and more is what's suffocating the community.
Staff sell their services, even with their own website linked, but forbid everyone else from selling services or sharing their website, with the exception of putting it in their signature supposedly.

People keep getting angrier at each other, both experienced developers like Iryont and people in staff, that everyone "act so entitled", meanwhile various develoopers are getting angry or disappointed and losing motivation when getting censored even though they haven't said anything wrong.

What we need in this community is less ego, less censorship, more fun, more co-operation, and more core development.
The challenge now is to figure out how to go about trying to accomplish these goals.

Btw, really appreciate your thread @edubart, hope you stick around or visit from time to time, without you we probably wouldn't have an open source client at all and we'd be way further behind than we are, thank you.
 
Honestly this community, other than maybe the contributors to TFS right now, shouldn't get anything ever. I don't have time to work on TFS but when I do find a little time to squeeze something out it is just met with people, who can fix the code, just shit posting about everything wrong with it. Instead of posting fixes just doing everything in their power to make me not want to do anything for the community.

If it isn't that then it is just radio silence. People use the code, or try to in my cases because there will always be something I miss and complain. It has actually come to the point where unless you do something perfect for the community they just flame you. There is a small group of people that aren't apart of this and I am sure they know who they are.

With that being said, I have changed my view of Otland, Kondra, and know that unless someone comes in and pushes through the trash of this community to make TFS better Otland will forever be, or die as a community of undeserving shit posters, and negligent staff. I only say that of the staff because I only ever see them to push out warnings and bans.

It wasn't always like this. The worst it used to be was the best codes were behind a pay-wall which I agree with more than the current state. $10 to get code that was pretty close to the best available (outside privately owned) wasn't a lot to ask and when you needed help you got it. It took some time sometimes but still.
 
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