Originally Posted by Tiars
I think we may be losing track of what the purpose of this change is. Based on your response here it sounds more like your mindset may be "how can I get access to some other server's stuff and copy or modify it for my own server" rather than "how can I learn how to develop something for my own server". There's countless areas and fragments of information all over the internet and these very forums that basically tell you how to do anything you want to do in the code. If you're worried about what another server is doing in their LUA and TRE files then I'm not sure you're looking at this for the right reasons. In fact, I'm still unclear on what the point of this is until details are released, because as I mentioned previously: what if a server has content that was created by a 3rd party which was contracted and paid to do the work exclusively for that server? Is that server now going to be obligated to release that paid development content to people who did not pay to have it developed or have access to it? If I managed to get Lockheed Martin to develop something for me, on paid development time, do I now need to share the source code even if it's completely unrelated to vanilla Core3 or the general roadmap?
Yes, servers will not want to have their Jedi unlock code made public for obvious reasons, and there's also obvious reasons that certain other content should not be made public as well. I can understand the reason to have source code made public if a specific server, for example, managed to fully develop and finish JTL for SWGEmu, then sure everyone else would want that. I fail to see how a server's unique content (whether it be LUA, C++, models, plugins, etc.) should in anyway be forced into open source for everyone if it's unrelated to the Core3 roadmap.
To be blunt, if I paid a company or person $50,000 to develop a giant pink dinosaur with a laser beam on it's forehead that zapped players into little bunny rabbits, all exclusively for my server then there's little to no chance that I'd be willing to share it with anyone unless they paid for it. On the other hand, if I happen to find unfinished Core3 content or bugs and I fix or finish them for the greater good of the entire community then of course I'd share that.
I'm not saying this applies to me or any specific server but rather as a general feeler to see if this type of stuff is being taken into consideration when forcing the release of a lot of content which is either irrelevant to SWGEmu's roadmap or funded intellectual property. Food for thought in any case. I'd hope the final details include provisions which support the Core3 project but also protect individual developer's work. The last thing I'd want to see is this become a deterrent to community developers where some people start to lose the interest and desire to do something for their server because it will just become open source. If the focus is community and SWGEmu (free to use for anyone) then I don't think we'd want to whittle down the communities which will ultimately become the backbone after 1.0
Case in point and I don't mean that in any negative or derogatory manner. I understand the need for "some things" to go open source but otherwise, and until details are released for this, I see it more as a possible deterrent to community development, where some developers may stop working on interesting and innovating things for the SWGEmu community because they don't want their source code or whatever to be released.
Cheers
