Open-Source: The cancer of modern software ?

[issle88]

These thoughts im going to present, come as a conclusion of 1 year experience in an open source project as a private server developer, in our case L2J and a 5 years experience of L2 as a player in general. Some of the ideas might sound offending to some people in the forum, but its better to speak clear words coming from you than with blutant lies. I might be wrong, since my experience is too short in terms of time. Some of you have more experience and probably a more mature opinion than me.

So the topic is open-source, l2j, free knowlege and it derived mainly from the "forking letter" topic. I will try to describe things from my point of view by stating the benefits i got from that last year of programming in java specifically using l2j for my server needs. But i will also state what i lost, and what i could have improved more.

Advantages of my open source adventure:

Coding 1 year based on l2j for commercial use ( personal private server ), sure tought me way more "java", programming and software engineering in general, than any professor tought me in univercity. Compared to what we learnt there and what i learnt by coding on a serious code is like comparing a niddle with the galaxy.

Producing a derivative product used in real life, and not just an algorithm that calculates some values in a computer lab, is way too different. Live end products like a server, need much more serious decision making and focus, both in business-plan and in software ( debuffing, interface and more things that noone pays attentions to in labs ).

You have a first good meeting with real life especially if you are young and had not one before. You see how much respect you get out of your effort by those who dont understand how much is needed to produce something of your own and then you figure out that once upon a time you were also a part of the dissrespectful mass due to your innability to understand the previously stated fact. This is not limmited to just l2j, or open source or programming in general. It has a wider impact on the way you see leadership/productivity/social relationships and hierarchy. Coming from a country that is in deep political/economical crysis situation ( Greece ) and seeing how everybody has an opinion about everything and is constantly "flaming" those who are issued to solve a situation and then coming back here or in any server forum and watching the same type of flaming going on, one thing comes to mind: "How relevant ... ".

Dissadvantages of open source adventure ( personal opinion ):

Being able to use your brain was/is and will be a mean to manipulate the world, influence and to change it. Ideas, turned into reality by practical implementation create big changes. In general we can say having knowledge means having power. And having the knowledge to program is power. The million dollar question that arises is, who has the right to use that power and who has the right to hand it over to others ?

If you look into a more practical examle, l2j, you can easily assume who has the power of programming. The l2j developers. But are they the only one using the product of this power ? Obviously not. And this is where open source fails in my opinion. Great abilities, bring great responsibilities. Handing over a product to a very wide mass that consists of imature people without values/ vision and precautiousness is like handing over a gun to every single person in the earth. How will criminal levels be affected by such a thing ? They will definitelly rise.

Having the ability to use knowledge to produce power, and using that power should not come along. Today everyone with internet access, strong will and some IQ can become a scientist and create power. But are they entitled to use it too ? Do they have the characteristics needed to use that power ? What is more, should they share that power with randoms ?

This is personally the mistake the l2j took since its beggining. Going open source and giving everyone, regardless of his ability to cope and maintain quality standards, the ability to create his own server, which leads to the existance of more servers than the playerbase count in the l2 world. And you cant blame those admins by any means. This is their limmit. They cant produce more. But those that gave them the code, are those to be blamed.

And since people do not change opinions easily maintenance isnt an option. Precautions are the only way to stop the infestation of open source. And what precaution means, is give the knowledge only to those that have the ability to use it wiselly. They did it in the dark ages, and i believe it worked nice. Personal opinion. There isnt any reason for lower-end nations like Balcans,Greeks, South americans, Polands, pts etc to get the knowledge. Its proven fact that they cant use it wiselly, since all the garbage comes from us and not the advanced countries ( USA, Germany , GB etc ).

Knowledge shouldnt be a public free good. There should be an elite of people who use it and spread it to those they believe can use it in the better way. At least it works better than giving it to everyone. The wider mass always includes those that will harm the public with the usage of their power.

Try to think what would happen, if l2j was a private project consisting of a group of 30 elite people working for their benefit. Would the end-user servers be better ? And also try to visualise, how would such a thing be possible ?

[_DS_]

I does not like phrase "low-end nations"...

[jurchiks]

Agreed to _DS_... You can't separate people by nations, every country has smart and dumb people, don't put them in the same box.
The basic idea is clear - you suggest that l2j goes closed source (or even fully private development) and gives access/sources only to people who really know what they're doing, BUT how will you know who has the rights if they can't prove their knowledge? Without the source code the options are VERY limited, you can at most write some quests/handlers/skills, but that's the easy part, many can do it, you can't really judge much from that. And testing everyone who shows some potential would be very time-consuming. One way of checking the users would be to remove all how-to's and MAKE them LEARN to do it themselves the hard way (I mean at least the server setup tutorial; when a person would be able to go through all trials and errors and successfully set up an l2j server, that would really mean something. Currently some can't even do it WITH the tutorial.)

"Knowledge shouldnt be a public free good." - sorry, that is bullshit.

[issle88]

I does not like phrase "low-end nations"...

What did you want me to say, that we are nations that prosper in wealth ? That would be a lie. Truth might sound sad sometimes but it awakes us and makes us see things in more competitive ways. We from the eastern block of europe are far below the west in terms of productivity and quality standards. Its a fact, we need to face it and improve.

Regarding the separation of nations, i might have been extreme there. That comes from seeing the sutiation in my country and being ashamed by the incapable people that surround me. And if you wanna be more specific in that, we the greeks are the shame of l2. But regardless of that, there is a separation of nations. Its called developed and under-development. Why is it only that countries like USA and some europeans only produce good software ? Most of us in this forum, come from poor countries with unstable economies that are not famous for their software. Dont be mad or furious about it, im in this category too i just happen to be in the nation that is by far the champion of lazyness and anti-productivity.

Regarding l2j, i didnt suggest it going closed source. That might improve a bit the situation, but its way too late to cure the problems that started by that many years of open source. That should have been done years ago, before we all get infected by countless of failservers and failforks, who might not have quality standards, but their number is more than enough to divide the community. Im just stating, that those who started l2j as open source, did a mistake regarding the produced gaming quality of such a movement. And i believe we all agree in that.

On another note, getting people in a private project is done by a simple method. Its called CV and interview. It allows you to judge a group of people without them knowing the interior of your organization. From the CV you filter out the people that by no means would be useful to you in terms of productivity and by the interview you get the top people, those capable and those that have the same values and ideals as your team. If you want a team to be productive all you need is to get people that can cope with the difficulties and technological background needed for the tasks your team solves. And to ensure unity and team spirit, you ensure the ideals/goals and visions of the people match.

A private project would also mean much better developers. For two reasons. Existing developers would take it more seriously since they wouldnt get the upset from their work getting leaked. New candidate developers, would study much more, taking java more seriously since they would have a motive to join the project. Since most people dont really like joining open source, their knowledge level stays lower than the standards needed for a project. Thus open source disscourages people from improving. My knowledge is more than enough to build and customize a server, but its not enough to be a part of a developing project group member. And it doesnt need to since my intentions are not to join. But if we had the motives to join, we would imrpove rapidly with strong will to meet the standards of the project group.

[_DS_]

We do it for fun. So "failservers and failforks" is not really our concern. Ask who played on those servers.

[issle88]

We do it for fun. So "failservers and failforks" is not really our concern. Ask who played on those servers.

Exactly , for fun. Thats why i say some people shouldnt have access to knowledge. You probably get who i refer to right

[_DS_]

Those things not linked with each other.

[Copyleft]

I have to disagree... Open-Source and Cancer can't stick together.

The main L2 cancer comes from the thoughts from greedy people (that later turn into "admins") that hear about an easy way to make lots of money from something that is free, and they apparently have no problems exploiting this.

Those so-called admins (qualified for the position or not) will make donation failservers (fail because they don't care about the server itself, the players, the gameplay, etc... just the money) and those who encourage them (item/stat/whatever makes you better in-game donators who want to be #1 ingame) to keep them going or to create new ones when they die.

I'm not talking about servers made because the admin thinks players will like it or that he will learn something from it, I'm talking about servers that were created solely for the purpose of making money. Imagine no one would want money in this world, or that money simply wouldn't exist; where would all those failservers go? They simply would have never existed. There would be much less L2 servers and all the restant servers are those where the admin and the players actually care for, where they don't do it for the money, they do it because they enjoy being there. And as a side note: I'm sure that all of these servers would have much more gameplay quality than what the vast majority of (fail)servers have now. Isn't that what you were searching for?

So basically: the problem are the admins' mentality, not the open source L2J

[issle88]

Ofcurse that kind of admins is the problem. But its not the problem that can be tackled. Say you are a guy who can build a weapon. And you give a copy of that weapon to everyone in the world. You cant expect from the vast majority to be rightful and rational. There will be people who will use that weapon for their dark purposes ( say it power, money , destruction, insanity ). You cant treat 6 billion people and you cant change the way they think or the goals they struggle to achieve.

But you are the one who made the weapon. You are the guy who could prevent all this, just my making a rational use and distribution of your creation. Its easier to contain a small group of people, than to contain the vast majority. Isnt that obvious ?

The good guys ( developers ) are the ones who should understand that they should be cautious about their creation. Falling in the wrong hands would bring serious problems. And its in their hand to avoid that.

[_DS_]

We all has dark weapons: fists and teeths. Who we should blame for it ?

[issle88]

We all has dark weapons: fists and teeths. Who we should blame for it ?

Ill start replying to you seriously, when you show some maturity.

[ZaKaX]

[_DS_]

Ill start replying to you seriously, when you show some maturity.

This is because your messages contains some bad-smelling ideas.

[SolidSnake]

LOL XD

[ThePhoenixBird]