Open Source?

[Shaolu]

Just out of curiosity, why isn't this project open source? Making the source available and licensing the mod more permissively would facilitate greater collaboration. I would love to try hacking away at porting this to my own platform (I use GNU/Linux exclusively) and I'm sure others would as well. Are there licensed components from SCS that would serve as a legal impediment or something? Even then, I would think it would be possible to at least open up *some* of the code.

[CJMAXiK]

It is a suggestion (already moving ->), please follow the format:
 

Suggestion Name: 
Suggestion Description:
Any example images: 
Why should it be added?:

[Aragon]

It's not open source because the idea of the mod is to be a MMO, and making it open source would probably decrease the server population by 50% on the public servers.

[Takumi Fujiwara 86]

as said above, its been suggested an infinite amount of times before, and its not gonna happen

[Creatured]

not all mods are opensource and if the devs don't want it to be open source then it wont be

[Unkeyboardinated]

Dont like the sound of this sorry -1 from me.

[mwl4]

We don't want private servers. We're going to create something like MMO game, where is one global server and players don't need to choose what server they should select.

Also problem with hacking and doing some other stuff when project is open source isn't good for us and for players. 

[Shaolu]

It's not open source because the idea of the mod is to be a MMO, and making it open source would probably decrease the server population by 50% on the public servers.

PlaneShift is an open-source MMO. It can be done.

[Shaolu]

We don't want private servers. We're going to create something like MMO game, where is one global server and players don't need to choose what server they should select.

Also problem with hacking and doing some other stuff when project is open source isn't good for us and for players. 

How about implementing some client integrity checksum check? If you're concerned about client modifications for anti-cheating, it would be a good idea to implement that anyways. Just because the source isn't available doesn't mean someone can't still decompile the binary and modify accordingly. If someone's unethical enough to cheat, the terms of a license agreement aren't going to stop them anyways.

[Creatured]

mwl can see when someone messed with the files and he will  then ban that person accordingly

[Shaolu]

mwl can see when someone messed with the files and he will  then ban that person accordingly

If that works, then I guess we're back to the original question: Why not open source then?

[FirestarteR93]

because 

1. SCS won't be happy with people earning money from their product
2. SCS won't just randomly give license to people for their gold mine
3. Majority of people who know the programming language are not interested in working for free (obvious reasons)
4. Players who play ETS (mp) ain't that much compared to other MMO games
5. The game is still in development - aka its code is frequently changed and to work in MP requires the MP's code to be reworked

[Shaolu]

^

I'm still confused...

1. You mean like the ad revenue generated from this site? Is that shared with SCS?

2. Okay, it would be nice if SCS opened up some of their code as well, but I thought we were discussing ETS2MP here, not the base game itself.

3. Yeah, are we talking about different things here? Because I thought this mod was being distributed free of charge.

4. Okay, so we *are* talking about ETS2MP I guess, now? What does the amount of players on ETS2MP have to do with how it's licensed exactly?

5. Umm... CVS repositories and the like have been around for ages. Just put it up on github and use its excellent version controls. Dealing with frequent updates is where open source excels.

Edited October 15, 2015 by CJMAXiK
Please use ^ symbol instead quoting upper post

[FirestarteR93]

No Sadly its not shared and I doubt it ever will be, yes MP is free (and AFAIK nobody else except SCS is allowed to use ETS to make profit),

about 4th point its not about license, its about potential players

 

---

To simplify it more:

Lets focus on the biggest issue: SCS owns the license = SCS makes the rules. One of their rules is not to use the game to earn money from it, else you get sued, jailed, hung, drawn and quartered (that's why MP mod is free and relies on donations for keeping up the servers);

 

Majority of the Programmers who are capable, experienced and interested in such open-source MP are working for SCS and won't work for free;

 

In case you want open source, you

• have to make SCS happy
• have to be a capable programmer or capable to hire one
• have to provide yourself with finances for it

[Guest]

To re-iterate why it isn't open source: The creator(s)(Rootkiller didn't want to either iirc) don't want to, that's the end of it, no need to explain any futher.

[caff!!!]

look at what happened to just cause 2 MP to see why

[sgpch1983]

+1 for open source code for ets2mp client! we would be happy to port the linux version for our selfs!

noone wants to make a private server! but open source would make it able to have a linux client!

[Neves768]

-1  This topic is getting suspicious (he's trying to make a hack to the game?)

 

+1 for open source code for ets2mp client! we would be happy to port the linux version for our selfs!

noone wants to make a private server! but open source would make it able to have a linux client!

Open source don't means that will have a version for Linux.

1- You need to do it (if you're a programmer)

2- If the devs put an authenticity verification method (server-side), you need a compatible server

3- Someone can see the code and make a hack to the mod (using vulnerabilities)

[Shaolu]

-1  This topic is getting suspicious (he's trying to make a hack to the game?)

 

Open source don't means that will have a version for Linux.

1- You need to do it (if you're a programmer)

2- If the devs put an authenticity verification method (server-side), you need a compatible server

3- Someone can see the code and make a hack to the mod (using vulnerabilities)

1. Yes, and I am a programmer. I do it for a living. I've done game development as a hobby, and I'd like to take a stab at it.

2. This is where collaboration enters in. The server would just need to do an additional check against the checksum for the Linux client. With the authentication code in place, this should be trivial.

3. As if that can't be done already right now? Having source code makes modification easier, but if someone just wants to cheat, they will just decompile and tweak the client anyways. Plenty of proprietary software has vulnerabilities that get exploited all the time. Assuming because you haven't released the source that you're somehow magically safe is absurd. Meanwhile, with open source comes many eyes. The overwhelming majority of websites run on open source webservers (e.g. Apache). If you honestly think that releasing the source just opens the door to exploits, while keeping it to yourself makes you safer... you're simply fooling yourself.

Just as a point of clarification, regarding the crossed out text: When I said "I would love to try hacking away" I was speaking of "hacking" in the hacker's understanding of the word (i.e. the definition(s) that can be found in the Jargon File). In essence, I'm referring to tweaking/modifying/coding something based on the source in the hopes of possibly creating a GNU/Linux port. Hacking in this sense is more common to Free Software advocates like myself, and it has next to nothing to do with exploiting bugs and/or circumventing security measures. There's possibly some overlap if said exploit or circumvention is particularly clever and useful to some end (which is likely how this confusion arose in the first place in the mainstream media), but otherwise not--and personally I'm not terribly interested in security myself and mostly find it a chore.

TLDR for the above: Think Life Hacker "hacking," not script kiddy cybercriminal douchebag "hacking."

[mwl4]

Even if ets2mp come as open source I don't think that you are able to port ets2mp to linux. About anti-cheats, well, why someone should connect to our server? Open source (even client only) = private servers.

[Shaolu]

To re-iterate why it isn't open source: The creator(s)(Rootkiller didn't want to either iirc) don't want to, that's the end of it, no need to explain any futher.

Well, that's too bad. If that's really true, I honestly don't understand why--which is why I started this thread in the first place. If it's truly just a matter of "I don't want to do that" it seems on par with asking someone for directions and they reply "I don't give out directions to strangers" or in conversation someone telling you "I don't believe in any form of charitable giving; I don't owe anyone else a thing."

In both cases, they're free to take that course of action, but in both cases you'd be reasonable to conclude that these folks kinda seem like jerks.

Just imagine if every time you entered a restaurant, the host expected you to sign an agreement from the owner which stated that in eating at said establishment you agree not to make any attempt to figure out what's in your dish, and likewise you are preventing from taking home any leftovers for yourself...

Certainly, it's understandable that restaurants are going to have trade secrets and they likely will want to prevent customers from milling about in the kitchen... but forcing them to sign the above agreement before they are served? Seems like some seriously douchey overkill to me.

And that, in a nutshell is the nature of anti-reverse-engineering clauses. I guess in a world where most people aren't cooks, people might tolerate this kind of nonsense, but restaurants don't treat their customers this way likely because there's still a lot of people that cook at home these days and accordingly still see the value in sharing recipes and maybe even trying to emulate a tasty dish from a restaurant. Meanwhile, because we live in a world where hackers are still a very small minority, these kind of anti-collaborative anti-social licenses are far too prevalent.

It's just sad to see this mindset infect projects that aren't even being monetized (at least not directly--I still have to wonder about the ad revenue for this site and its connection to a derivative product using a trademarked logo).

It seems like someone setting up a soup kitchen, calling it "Olive Garden - Soup Kitchen Edition" with food donated by Olive Garden and other overhead costs covered by advertisers who pay the soup kitchen to advertise in its space (and this advertising likely results in a small net profit for the operation). In order to enter the soup kitchen in the first place, you have to first visit an Olive Garden and purchase a dish from them, and they then give you a voucher for a free meal later at the soup kitchen. When you show up at the soup kitchen as a patron, you are made to sign the stupid agreement mentioned above prohibiting any measures to figure out the soup kitchen's recipes (which are ultimately just slightly remixed versions of Olive Garden's own, made entirely with Olive Garden ingredients, plus some additional mystery spices).

On the one hand that's great. The soup kitchen is handing out free food. But you'd still be left to ask... why the stupid agreement? Why the secrecy around the mystery spices at all? Is the soup kitchen ultimately making money on this whole operation and that's why they want to keep their spices a mystery? In any case, this is clearly a bizarre operation that's unlike the several other charitable soup kitchens in town.

As it is, I can't have any of the minestrone, because it gives me diarrhea on my digestive platform. I'd love to figure out how to modify the tasty soup so that it would work with people like me, but as long as the soup kitchen has this asinine policy it's going to be very difficult. Ideally they'd just hand out copies of the recipe so that if they're too busy to fix up the recipe for folks like myself, at least we could figure it out on our own.

So, that's the situation as far as I see it. The soup this site is making available looks tasty enough I guess; but it currently gives me diarrhea, I can't do anything about that because of the crappy policy, and on the whole I think it's a pretty shitty situation.

[Shaolu]

Even if ets2mp come as open source I don't think that you are able to port ets2mp to linux. About anti-cheats, well, why someone should connect to our server? Open source (even client only) = private servers.

The FOSS community is pretty broad and diverse, and I know some people. If not me, then someone else. Regarding why someone should connect to your server? Why not? If you only want your client branch to connect to your server for some reason (because you want less players I guess?) then you could always prevent connections from non-official clients and/or ban people from your server like it seems you're doing regularly enough.

And I don't see how open source somehow equals "private servers." PlaneShift is a good example of an open source MMO. Just because you have released the code doesn't mean you can't maintain some level of centralization. Could other people fork the code and use other servers? Sure. But why would they want to do that? Are you concerned that enough people will become disgruntled that they don't want to play on your server and so you want to force them to stay through technical measures by preventing a project fork because the code remains unreleased?

[mwl4]

@Shaolu you don't understand. 

 

Why open source equals private servers? Because even open source of client means that you know how to create your own multiplayer, and creating server isn't problem. Because the thing isn't server, but client. You can write server, but how will you create api for game? How will you create truck in game and other things? That's the real problem.

 

Of course private servers means less players on official servers. Basically 30 players on one server isn't good idea, and that's what open source does in this case. 

 

Open source of client with hidden parts of code isn't good idea too, because it's really simple to decompile that hidden code. Now it's really compilacted, because you don't have any code. Multiplayer uses also game engine in that way like we have api for that. Classes, methods, functions have same name like in game source. Our code and main developers code are very similar.

 

Why don't you ask SCS about open source game?

[Neves768]

Open source for a MMO mod/game isn't a good idea.

 

And if you wanna play ETS2 mp mod at Linux, try Wine or playonlinux (playonlinux uses Wine with some modifications).

[xhavefunx]

Maybe if you show them your skills in terms of coding, Shaolu, they could consider you for the developers team. You sound like you've got some real good potential and would like to improve certain things about this mod. These boys have put so much time and effort in the creation of this mod, that it would feel like giving it away for free if they would make it open source. You must understand their perspective, what they've reached by now if one of the most popular mods on Mod DB. Usually ETS2MP is around #50 out of 25.000 (we've reached #1 aswel), the example you've given (Planeshift) is #6064 out of 35.000.