SWGEmu AGPL Instructions and Requirements

[Oru]

Actions speak louder than words. If your intention is for the good of the project, why is the engine source not freely available under a GPL or similar license?

I can't see any benefit to the project in keeping it closed.

I cannot agree more and you were in our shoes back in the day, you would probably see the same benefits. We had a fresh engine needed to be tested to the oblivion. We could maximize concurrent users this way to do the job.

On the other hand it was damned hard to trust anyone after having theft, betrayal, cheating, hacking, **** stirring and all kinds of crazy **** among developer ranks. All we wanted was to get away from drama so we could not afford risking something that wouldn't really help development. People even had a rough time using the engine on the application side so letting them develop it, which is by far more complex, didn't seem a viable option that could benefit the project.

Later on, had the chance to use the engine in commercial projects. Imagine hackers tearing apart such an immature engine causing the company a great deal of loss, so this completely closed the door for releasing it.

Whether or not this was the right decision, we did it in belief of doing it for the good of the project.

[Risri]

It was the right decision Oru, sometimes people forget what they have. You, TA, and the rest of the dev's gave us swg again after a certain company closed it. I can not Thank you enough, TA, and the staff enough for giving us this back. I tried my hand at being a CSR, I would like to do it again but Vlada is a tough one, I am kidding, I learned so much from Vlada from being there and from Bigevil and Elly. Oru, and TA, keep this project going and Thankyou all for what you do!

[blueman277]

I cannot agree more and you were in our shoes back in the day, you would probably see the same benefits. We had a fresh engine needed to be tested to the oblivion. We could maximize concurrent users this way to do the job.

On the other hand it was damned hard to trust anyone after having theft, betrayal, cheating, hacking, **** stirring and all kinds of crazy **** among developer ranks. All we wanted was to get away from drama so we could not afford risking something that wouldn't really help development. People even had a rough time using the engine on the application side so letting them develop it, which is by far more complex, didn't seem a viable option that could benefit the project.

Later on, had the chance to use the engine in commercial projects. Imagine hackers tearing apart such an immature engine causing the company a great deal of loss, so this completely closed the door for releasing it.

Whether or not this was the right decision, we did it in belief of doing it for the good of the project.

You talked about an engine5 for the emu a few posts back. Out of curiosity have you thought about releasing engine3 to opensource once engine5 is up and out?

[blueman277]

You talked about an engine5 for the emu a few posts back. Out of curiosity have you thought about releasing engine3 to opensource once engine5 is up and out?

If he is using the so called engine5 instead and no one else is using engine3, he could release it as open source and see if he made the mistake or if he made the correct decision and he could decide where to go with engine5 or any other new engine from there. may be one of those "what's the harm in it"

Even if it is 20 years, there still may be a bit of fun poking around it in and saying "holy cow, i can't believe swgemu ran on this for so many years!"

[duffstone]

Even if it is 20 years, there still may be a bit of fun poking around it in and saying "holy cow, i can't believe swgemu ran on this for so many years!"

That I cannot disagree with. it would be fun to poke around in it, and Oru / TA might yet surprise me.

Regardless of the type of software, library, or other... Intellectual property, copyrights, and patents that are licensed under contract, usually but not always, are worded such that all reversions of the IP are covered under the contract. if that makes sense. Basically, if Oru licensed Engine3 for X use in X project, and signed a 15 year deal, maybe containing support and upgrades, then more than likely that same contract would prohibit him from opening up prior versions as part of a non-competition agreement. With all the software I've delt with, this is a very common practice. Otherwise you could license engine3, upgrade them to engine5, then give their competition (and the rest of the world) free access to engine3, which would definitely cause competitive issues, even if engine5 was better... I can't image any company that would spend big bucks for a software package knowing that their investment was wasted when prior versions go public... I've never seen "THAT" happen, and in fact have seen the opposite done precisely for that reason.

My experience is with more statistical & portfolio management software, forward modeling software, financial reporting software... but either way it's still the same thing. There's no way the folk who make the "What's best" plugin for excel are ever going to open up their sourcecode libraries from 5 years back, even if they've completely changed architecture. why would they give their competition that advantage? IF engine3 was only used for SWGEmu then I'd see no serious competition disadvantage and opening it up would be reasonable, especially if they upgrade to engine5. However, IF engine3 has been contracted and licensed out to 3rd parties that ARE using it for a competitive advantage, and paid well for it, then why would they allow Oru to open up old revisions to the public??? doesn't make sense.

It's ALL speculation at this point, but this is how I've read and interpreted their use of engine3 since the first time I whined about the 2.5hr limit several years ago. Honestly, I preferred the 5 connection limit with an unlimited up-time, like it was at first (although that might predate engine3, I can't rightly recall any longer). What I need doesn't require anymore than 2 concurrent login's, but unlimited up-time sure takes the guesswork out of logging statistics...

-Duff

P.S. I'm just using "what's best" as an example since it's the latest 3rd party plugin I've had to battle with recently... Nice plugin, don't rightly like it much tho. :-)