Spring RTS Engine

People keep attacking me for supporting the GPL. I never mentioned the GPL. I dont even like the GPL. Its viral, restrictive, and too devisive.

Open source != GPL.

Please stop attacking me for positions i do not hold.

As ive already said, i do not mean that spring was 'started as' an open source project, i mean its based on (its 'foundation' is) open source. Open source is the bulwark that holds it all up and keeps it going. Again, forgive the ambiguity of the 'founded' statement.

Spring is still very strongly rooted in TA IP, and looks like it'll be locked down with it seeing as projects like CA are still sticking in '+1' TA art assets.

We dont have much choice here. How many free-to-use models are out there? You'll notice all my origional models are nothing like TA IP at all. Thank you for texturing the spherebot, BTW. If we had more people making models and textures for us we'd be free of OTA IP as soon as we can humanly manage it.

CA's goal is to make a game which is loosely based on TA's ethos, design, and scale to retain the OTA fanbase, yet is its own game with its own, free, open-source, origional IP. By taking TA and stripping off its closed content it is my fondest hope that we can do away with this attatchment to OTA IP forever.

You cannot blame people for using Atari IP when there are no free alternatives.

Can you modify spring's code and add it to spring
NO, you need permission but you can submit code

But you can fork it. Of course someone retains the ability to control their version of the content. The point is, you can make as many versions as you want. Luckily this hasnt even been needed because good code is generally accepted into the main project.

So instead of replacing it people spend all their time GUILTING others who make shit.

I make shit. It is perhaps not the best quality but i am using my time and effort to rid this community of atari IP. When i saw that FPS mod using my model with my texture (and your script actually, you gave me permission to use it if you recall, thanks- you didnt actually give anyone else permission, so if you want to rail on him you've a right to) it made me immensely happy. No need to use peewees anymore because people can use spherebot instead. I am not asking other people to do anything i am not myself doing.

Saktoth wrote:As ive already said, i do not mean that spring was 'started as' an open source project, i mean its based on (its 'foundation' is) open source. Open source is the bulwark that holds it all up and keeps it going. Again, forgive the ambiguity of the 'founded' statement.

I come from the TA modding scene, which is still active today, 10 years after the release of a commercial game the source of has never been released. I believe the Spring scene is just an offspring of the TA modding scene (albeit a very prolific and healthy one). Up to these days, the TA modders are still sharing innovations, models, etc..., pushing further and further the boundary of TA modding, both in term of quality and technicity. Yet over there, there is none of that Open Source bullshit that is plaguing the Spring forums.

Saktoth wrote:We dont have much choice here. How many free-to-use models are out there?

- Nanoblobs: 24 models
- PURE: 76 models (provided you don't mix them with cavedog models)
- Fibre: 36 models
Well, I can't be arsed to unpack every KDR mod, but you get the idea.

Saktoth wrote:CA's goal is to make a game which is loosely based on TA's ethos, design, and scale to retain the OTA fanbase, yet is its own game with its own, [...] origional IP.

I feel EE had already reached that goal. But to my sorrow, there's one EE game for fifty BA games in the lobby.

Saktoth wrote:You cannot blame people for using Atari IP when there are no free alternatives.

I blame people for refusing to acknowledge the existence of the many alternatives.

Saktoth wrote:By taking TA and stripping off its closed content it is my fondest hope that we can do away with this attachment to OTA IP forever.

Saktoth wrote:I make shit. It is perhaps not the best quality but i am using my time and effort to rid this community of atari IP.

Yeah, CA's way of replacing TA assets gradually is an interesting approach, I wonder how it'll go.

zwzsg wrote:

Saktoth wrote:You cannot blame people for using Atari IP when there are no free alternatives.

I blame people for refusing to acknowledge the existence of the many alternatives.

I am so tired of hearing that. Fang made MOST of ee within a year. and it has 4 factions.

I am sorry but I think no one wants to commit to the real work. >:|

smoth? wrote:I am so tired of hearing that. Fang made MOST of ee within a year. and it has 4 factions.

I am sorry but I think no one wants to commit to the real work. >:|

If its really hard to work for, then its probably not worth working for at all.

smoth wrote: can you see the source to spring.
YES

can you see the source to any spring project
YES

Last one is NO actually.

BOS source files do not have to be in a mod for it to work. Map source files do not have to be in a map for it to work. .PSD files of textures do not have to be in a mod for it to work. etc. etc.

smoth wrote:Can you modify spring's code and add it to spring
NO, you need permission but you can submit code

Can you modify a project's code and add it to a project
NO, you need permission but you can submit code

the difference? none. just a damn license. it is rubbish that's what!

The license actually makes the difference.

Spring is Free/Open Source software (FOSS).

That other project clearly may not be FOSS. (e.g. Gundam, EE, OP, etc.)

You are allowed to fork Spring without asking for permission. You aren't gonna pull it off, mind you, but it IS ALLOWED.

You are generally not allowed to fork a project without asking for permission beforehand.

(I don't think you, Fang, centipede would appreciate it if someone forks Gundam/EE/OP, without asking [while there are enough someones around here who actually could pull it off.])

The pony up mentality of this community makes me rage. When tobi needed a map, he asked and I had time so it got done. I find most people here are more than willing to help if you just ask them nicely. Licenses are not needed. You don't need a lawyer to help a friend.

Not everyone in the world is friends with each other...

I do agree that people need to rage less about (each others) (lack of) license tho.

Tons of things write about this but my real life schedule has cratered quite a lot the last days so I got to restrain my self a bit (which I failed to apparently, below follows a novel or such).

It is my strong belief that the ultimate driving force behind individual design decision in Spring, Spring mods and other similar game projects (like Freeciv or the Sauerbraten Engine or mods to Battlefield 2 etc) is such a
trivial thing as personal PREFERENCES of the persons making those decisions. Often those preferences are disguised as "the only technically possible way to do/design things" or similar bullsh... er... utter nonsense (not seldom is this used in a slightly modified way to create the ultimate insult to a person who makes a feature suggestion: "you don't want what you suggest but you don't understand that" to make them seem sooo stupid and naive that they are unable to understand what they want themselves).

Sometimes design decisions really are technical in nature, sometimes people request features which have dramatic implications which makes those suggestions problematic even for the suggester BUT the cases when those things happens and there aren't just a matter of personal preferences vs personal preferences are RARE.

And the bitter truth is, dignifying preferences are never justified. They are just preferences.

But there is a BIG "BUT" here... and that is, even if coders and content creators base their decisions on such a trivial thing as their own personal preferences (instead of some higher wisdom etc) THEY GOT ALL RIGHT TO LET SUCH A TRIVIAL THING DRIVE THE DECISIONS.

Actually, in volountary work, nothing else than preferences really should be the basis for design decisions. Sure, one has to get along with others in the project (meaning both contributors as well as product consumers) and make some tradeoff regarding what preferences should prevail in the work on the project and what preferences should be deferred but basically, if a volountary contributor find that he has to work completely against his preferences, he/she will go do something else.

Being able to contribute according to (at least some of) one's preferences is key to keep up the motivation to contribute. No motivation, and one works with something else.

The use of GPL or other open source licenses are at the end of the day something that is based on the content creators personal preferences. He is not required to do anything other than what he feels like in this respect. Taking away the volountary part of the GPL and other open source licenses defeats a LOT of their power, IMHO. Sure, they contains a number of restrictions, but those restrictions are never FORCED on anyone, there were always some point in time before when one does a volountary decision that lead to those restrictions being applicable. E.g, it is a volountary act to decide to use GPL or not as a license for one's project. It is a volountary act to start making changes to a software one should KNOW is GPL and thus be subject to the restriction that one HAS to provide the source of those changes.

NEVER EVER meddle with the actual meaning of the word "volountary". Never over and over again tell someone that they volountarily shoud do something, because if you do and they do what you suggest, the are barely doing it volountarely, rather, they are coerced to it, defeating the "volountary" part of it.

Then I question the viral nature of the GPL. If I design a model for a Leopard tank (a modern German tank IRL BTW) and release it under GPL and Centipede use that model in Operation Polaris, that does not implicitly turn Operation Polaris GPL, I just cannot believe that. What happens is that Centipede is not legally allowed to forbid other ppl to take that specific Leopard model out of the Operation Polaris mod and use it. However, the remaining IP of Operation Polaris is still not forced to be GPL. Sure, I'mn not an FOSS lawyer, but from a common sense perspective.

Regarding opening up a project or not: by keeping a project "closed" under a "ask the author" sort of license (formal or informal), the creator do create a barrier for others who wish to contribute. This is both good and bad, and that barrier is not necessarily put there on sheer bloody mindedness or asocial destructivity, but it is put there as a measurement of creative integrity and to maintaing some control of one's dear project. Why should one want to control one's project? Well, you might for instance want to avoid that the project is hijacked by ppl who has dramatically different preferences that you has. I personally would be very distressed to see that mod/game/whatever with an intended wargame focus becomes "hijacked" by a bunch of contributors who all are more bent on creating a game with a e-sport focus: suddenly the project is heading in a direction where a lot of features I would like to see implemented are ignored or even considered "dangerous" (as they would be in the way of e-sporting). On the other hand, I might be willing to take the risk in order to get manpower to the project (hah, as if anyone would appear, when everyone got their own projects instead ) and thus release it as GPL. Or, maybe I'm keen on seeing parts of my project (like said Leopard tank) live on in other projects and using a license where I don't enforce my explicit permission makes it easier for others to use my work, especially for trivial things like just playing around with it on a more casual basis to see if is useful.

But Smoth is right, if someone release stuff on a closed "ask the author" permission but then it turns out that the author always says "yes" to any request to use his/her content, then the software is pretty much open, isn't it?

Agh, that was quite some text anyway. Hope noone was put to sleep.

Maybe we should continue to discuss Operation Polaris itself in this thread? I just asked for the license to determine how to contribute/use the Operation Polaris content (that is, with focus on OPERATION POLARIS side of things, not with focus on the LICENSE side of things...).

Otherwise, this discussion is doing fairly Ok, but I would love to some people try to calm down a bit before they write their responses. Some tone in here is getting a bit... well... out of hand.

Tobi wrote:

smoth wrote: can you see the source to spring.
YES

can you see the source to any spring project
YES

Last one is NO actually.

BOS source files do not have to be in a mod for it to work. Map source files do not have to be in a map for it to work. .PSD files of textures do not have to be in a mod for it to work. etc. etc.

scriptor can DECOMPILE.

a != b

Although they are functionally equivalent so meh

AF wrote:

Code: Select all

Script a;
Script b;

b = decompile(compile(a));

a != b

Although they are functionally equivalent so meh

Functionally equivalent, yes, but how readable will Script b be? Even if Script a is a wonder of clarity and sensible coding from a readability perspective, the resulting binary and it's decompiled code ought to look REALLY God ugly, especially if the compilation step involves optimizations.

Then, even if some application binaries can be reverse engineered (in some potentially unreadable form) others can be hard to "reverse" the source code for, or even determine if they have source code at all! As an example of the latter: you can have a neat .png graphic in a project, but how was that graphic generated? If it were generated by GIMP or MSPaint and directly manipulated as a bit map, well, then the image itself is part of the "source code" (or "source data") for the project. However, if it in turn is generated by Photoshop from a .psd file or by Inkscape from a .svg file then those .psd/.svg files should be regarded as the source. If a game project is released under GPL, I assume (and just assuming, I'm still not a lawyer) these .psd/.svg files need to be provided together with the project game source, even if those files strictly speaking is not needed to run the game (the .png would suffice).

So, if I fullfill my dream of creating some model of that Leopard tank (be it a really low poly so my limited time, talent and experience won't make it impossible) and I release that model under GPL, anyone who use that model will only be required to provided the source to that specific Leopard tank together with their project. Inclusion of the tank in their game won't force them to provide source for any other pieces of the game, as far as I understand. Then of course, if they change my Leopard in some way (e.g use it as the basis to create a model of the German salvage vehicle which is based on the Leopard tank) and use that modified model in their project, they are obliged to provide the source to THAT SPECIFIC MODEL. They can still keep their other stuff closed source.

Regarding other remarks that IP should be GPL or open source if it is created by tools which by themselves are released under GPL, I have a counter example: Inkscape is an SVG vector image editor (very nice editor BTW) which is released under GPL. Those people who create it have NO requirements or expectations that artists that uses Inkscape to create images should release the images "with source included" under some open license (like creative commons etc). Anyone using Inkscape is perfectly free to claim their exclusive right to their work.

MY GOD I feel that it is about time to "re-hijack" this thread and make it be about Operation Polaris again. I mean, with these discussions about licensing and stuff we might scare Centipede away from the Spring engine, and we don't want that to happen!

AF wrote:

Code: Select all

Script a;
Script b;

b = decompile(compile(a));

a != b

Although they are functionally equivalent so meh

that is a silly point to even try to make if you cannot read code because it has var1 instead of an obviously named variable, I mean really what was the point.

smoth wrote:Ok stupid, so they are going to write an obfuscator and a new format that isn't cob? if they can do all that why steal the scripts?

Actually i was talking about the lua. If you public domain it, or just accept stealing people can take off all the comments and mess up the variable (and function)names can be a very annoying inconvenience. I don't know that much about the cob and bos files, bos looks like a C-like language except with polish notation and cob its compilate?

Why is everyone talking about content and the GPL license? The GPL license is specifically not for data, but for code. Content is usually not a term used for code. If i were to distribute code, i would put it under the GPL license. And i'd probably put content under some CC (-nc) license. All hypothetical though, i am way to lame to produce anything.
I'd strongly prefer other people to use GPL-compatible licenses on code, and whatever they want on content. Of course it is up to contributers to see what licenses they think will have the correct effect. That is what the (L)GPL and the CC are about, freely distribution without getting taken advantage of.(in a bad way)
As for what this engine project was 'founded on', does it matter that much? It is about what people working with it now want to do with it. And if those people don't agree, that is what the gpl is for, they can fork.

Btw, this discussion is probably a waste of time. If any dev wants to use the (L)GPL, they will just have a large comment on top of file saying so. (Dependencies and previous authors need to allow you to be able to, of course.)

smoth wrote:can you see the source to spring.
YES

can you see the source to any spring project
YES

Can you modify spring's code and add it to spring
NO, you need permission but you can submit code

Can you modify a project's code and add it to a project
NO, you need permission but you can submit code

All true. However, there's one more aspect you didn't mention:
can you release spring with your own changes without asking anyone for permission
YES

can you release a modified mod with a non-open source license without asking anyone for permission
NO

which is a bad thing or a good thing. depends who you ask.

someone doesn't need my permission to write a mutator, which they should do anyway.

he doesn't technically need permission to punch you (or anyone else) in the face when he obviously should ask before, too... you get the idea. having rules and having the power/will to have them executed are different things, which is why spring (or BA/XTA/whatever) haven't been issued a C&D yet. (of course that doesn't mean that having no rules is a good idea, even if sometimes it is, see public domain.)

oh no I mean, if someone wants to make a mutator they actually can make one and never actually touch your files persay. Versus making a branch and the thing is with a mutator it gives them the ability to demonstrate a suggested change while offering it up in a patch like form.

Imagine how many people, and how much time and effort it takes to create a single loaf of bread. Now imagine you could effortlessly and without any cost duplicate that bread ad infinitum. Imagine how many people that would help, all those starving for a loaf of bread but lacking the ability/skill/power to create or buy it.

Think of the mod/game content as of bread, and the starvation being the lack of resources to express thoughts, ideas, art.

When it doesn't harm anyone or cost anything, why should anyone limit the flow of creative and open minded thought? Just because some people made the loaf of bread, doesn't mean they have the right to deny others to benefit from it without causing harm to anyone.

Just pull your fucking heads out of your asses and realize it doesn't hurt to share shit with others, especially when it needs no effort or cash.

Regret wrote:Just pull your fucking heads out of your asses and realize it doesn't hurt to share shit with others, especially when it needs no effort or cash.

Could I have your banking information please?

It directly costs you nothing to share and gives other people access to things that you certainly define as "yours".

Peet wrote:It directly costs you nothing to share and gives other people access to things that you certainly define as "yours".

"Oh look at meeee, I've noticed he forgot to think of every possible fucking scenario that people might relate his post to."

Fuck you.

Well if you refuse to acknowledge abstract/metaphorical arguments, I'll put it in absolute terms. It is his content. He does not wish to share some of his rights of intellectual property. He has the legal right to do this and obviously isn't going to change his mind because of the complaints of a few people, who do not own the intellectual property and thus have no control over it. End of story.

He can't realistically enforce any of his rights on said property. Story continues!

edit: also yeah, I refuse to accept abstract arguments unrelated to what I said.