CKAN Discussion Continutation

[phoenix_ca]

39 minutes ago, Sigma88 said:

this is exactly what I was talking about

the solution is, make the mod's license restrictive.

the result is, as a community we get less open source mods.

 

the nice thing about open source mods is that if a guy like @ferram4 suddently decides to stop working on his mods, then someone else can take over from there.

the current behaviour will just result in modders taking measures against CKAN, which will result in less mods being open source

I think that might actually be the best post in both threads so far. I doubt any of us want to see a significant portion of mods all go with extremely restrictive licensing. It'd be better to aim for a bit of reformation to help CKAN be less of a burden, and hopefully seen as being useful instead.

[passinglurker]

17 minutes ago, phoenix_ca said:

even if we just killed CKAN entirely. Someone else will make a new tool that does the same thing.

Not if we make a forum rule banning unneighborly mod manager policies

[phoenix_ca]

8 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

Not if we make a forum rule banning unneighborly mod manager policies

So they'd just post it somewhere else. Anywhere else, and it could spread by word-of-mouth. A heavy-handed forum rule about this is probably the worst solution. If you build it, they will come. If it's good enough, people will use it. You could even end-up in a situation where everyone knows about CKAN, so they keep using it, even if it's been ejected from the forums, and then there's no where even semi-neutral to even talk about improving it. All the same problems with no hope of fixing it. I definitely disagree with you on that.

Edited June 24, 2016 by phoenix_ca

[Sigma88]

2 minutes ago, phoenix_ca said:

So they'd just post it somewhere else. Anywhere else, and it could spread by word-of-mouth. A heavy-handed forum rule about this is probably the worst solution. You could even end-up in a situation where everyone knows about CKAN, so they keep using it, even if it's been ejected from the forums, and then there's no where even semi-neutral to even talk about improving it. All the same problems with no hope of fixing it. I definitely disagree with you on that.

well, to be honest I think it worked pretty well with sites like http://google.com/

(do you see what I mean, that was a real link to a mod site)

EDIT: probably it has not come out as clear as I intended

there are some sites that are "banned" from being linked in the forums, so if you link them here you get the link to google.com

the result of the rule however would not be the one you describe, most likely the result would be CKAN updating to be allowed on the forums 

Edited June 24, 2016 by Sigma88

[passinglurker]

Just now, phoenix_ca said:

So they'd just post it somewhere else. Anywhere else, and it could spread by word-of-mouth.

This is the nexus of mod development. There is no where else. and if they leave it works out for author comfort any way as their support requests can't be brought here.

[phoenix_ca]

Just now, Sigma88 said:

well, to be honest I think it worked pretty well with sites like http://google.com/

(do you see what I mean, that was a real link to a mod site)

I do see what you mean, but I still don't think anyone will be served by such enforcement. If it were strictly opt-in, then your own stance on CKAN would be invalid. No option to keep "hands-off", as it were.

1 minute ago, passinglurker said:

This is the nexus of mod development. There is no where else. and if they leave it works out for author comfort any way as their support requests can't be brought here.

With all due respect, I still don't think splitting-up the KSP community like that will help. The CKAN people aren't monsters. I think @politas's extension of good will here is showing that.

[passinglurker]

Just now, phoenix_ca said:

The CKAN people aren't monsters. I think @politas's extension of good will here is showing that.

@politas also said he'd delist far if he could. It's more like they are bound by fanatical open source ideals such a rule would give them the excuse to change in a way that stops alienating the community.

I mean it would be great if the change was voluntary but like you said what stops a dissenter from creating a fork with the same policies to attract users? In the end whether CKAN  does the right thing and changes or not we will need this rule to prevent another mod manager from creating the same problems.

[Sigma88]

8 minutes ago, phoenix_ca said:

I do see what you mean, but I still don't think anyone will be served by such enforcement. If it were strictly opt-in, then your own stance on CKAN would be invalid. No option to keep "hands-off", as it were.

not sure what you mean by "my stance" but I do think "strictly opt-in" is always the best way to go.

I am also ok with "opt-out" in some cases, but I still get annoyed by the fact that I have to bother go through the "opting out" process

 

unless of course, if you think that releasing a mod under a permissive license counts as "oping in" to CKAN indexing

what I mean by "strictly opt in" is, people actively asking for their mods to be featured on CKAN

Edited June 24, 2016 by Sigma88

[ferram4]

1 hour ago, politas said:

How many times do we have to publicly say that yes, CKAN occasionally causes some problems in order for you to consider we have acknowledged it?

When it changes from mere words to policy changes and procedure changes to address the issues.  Not the object-level "X mod was installed wrong" issue, but the issues that allow inaccurate metadata to be added and for any kinds of install errors to occur.  This has not been done.

1 hour ago, politas said:

If you came to us explaining what was wrong with the installation, we'd be able to fix it quickly. When all you say is "take my mod off, it's causing me problems" and refuse to see our side of things or engage in actual real discussion, then you're not going to get the result you want.

And if users came to me and pointed to my source code and told me how that caused a bug, I'd be able to fix it quickly too.  I don't demand that though, because it's completely unreasonable; I work with the bug reports I get.  I merely forward the complaints that I get from users that things don't install correctly, in a system that I don't want anything to do with and don't understand, and then I'm berated for not offering up the fix myself.  If I tried to pull this on my users they would flip out (and justifiably so).

1 hour ago, politas said:

Is CKAN still installing FAR incorrectly? My understanding is that the issue with installation has been fixed.

Right now?  Dunno, issues seem to come and go.  Even when it is, what safeguards does CKAN have in place to prevent issues from occurring?

Oh, and since I missed this the first time:

2 hours ago, politas said:

I really like the idea of a CKAN mod that dumps all information about CKAN installed mods into the KSP log. I wish I had the faintest idea where to start in writing one.

Alright, so here's what you do.  This is actually probably the ideal kind of first plugin to write because it's so simple:

Spoiler

Set up your IDE to target .NET 3.5 (or the Mono equivalent) and reference KSP_Data/Managed/"Assembly-CSharp.dll" "UnityEngine.dll" "KSPUtils.dll" "UnityEngine.UI.dll"  I don't know if the last two are necessary, but they may be.  Remove all the other references besides System.

The simplest way to set this up is to have a plugin that runs in the loading screen, dumps everything to the log, and then shuts itself down.  Nothing more, nothing less.

In order to do that, you want to create a class that will run there.  Easiest way to do that here is to create a class that inherits from UnityEngine.Monobehaviour and has the [KSPAddon] attribute; it has two parameters, the first of which tells it where KSP should create it (Instantly will get the menu) and the second which is just whether to do it multiple times (if it's Instantly, this won't matter).

Once there, the code can be set up as a standard Unity bit of scripting.  When a Monobehaviour is created, it will fire Awake() and then Start() (if it is enabled, which it will be by default), so create one of those methods as a void and put your code in there.  You'll need to find the KSP root directory to work with, I believe that's "KSPUtil.ApplicationRootPath" and then you can add additional path info from there.  Get to wherever CKAN stores its info in the file directory, turn that into a string, and then call Debug.Log([bleh]) on it and that will print it to the log.

Then at the end to clean up everything you can call GameObject.Destroy(this); and the Monobehaviour will destroy itself, reducing overhead.  Though without Update(), LateUpdate() or FixedUpdate() methods defined its overhead would be negligible, it's still good practice.

There, pretty simple.  Any other info and minor questions can probably be answered through checking other mods' source code or just asking, stupid things like that we're more than happy to answer.

 

1 hour ago, passinglurker said:

Not if we make a forum rule banning unneighborly mod manager policies

Even with my problems with CKAN, I really don't want that method.  Besides to issues with throwing rules around like that (honestly, I really don't like externally imposed rules in general), there isn't a very good way to implement that.  If the rule is made too narrow, it will be easily circumvented by CKAN (say, by manually changing the repo to a different one).  If it's made too broad, then CKAN has no option out (say, if the rule bans the option for it to change to a repo that indexes things regardless of modder discrestion).

It also opens up the issue of drama based on forking mods with open licenses regardless of a modder's personal wishes wrt that particular fork.  That should always be allowed, even if the unnecessary / hostile forker should be condemned and their actions frowned upon.  It also opens people trying to maintain a open source mod whose author has gone AWOL to unnecessary and unjust flak.

And to end it all, it would be hypocritical.  The main issue is that modders are getting forced into dealing with CKAN with virtually no non-nuclear-option recourse, resulting in severe animosity.  Forcing CKAN into bending the knee would result in the same animosity on the side of CKAN contributors and users.

[Stone Blue]

3 hours ago, politas said:

 I really do understand the problems that the minority of mod authors being vocal here have with CKAN.

If this is the case, then I dont see why it should be such a big deal to allow opt-out...??... Is it just because those could be VERY popular mods, and users want to have THEIR cake and eat it too?

3 hours ago, politas said:

A major part of the underlying philosphy behind CKAN is the open source movement, and I think this is where Ferram4, Roverdude and others are having conflicts. When you release something as open source, you are relinquishing control of it. That's fundamentally what it means to put something under an open source license. You have freely ceded any control over distribution, other than the specific limitations in the license you choose. To me it is frankly staggering to release something under an open source license and then complain that other people are taking away your ability to control the distribution. You gave that up when you released it as open source. You are opting in to alternate distribution methods when you release a mod as open source. We respect that decision.

I agree, legally mods give up distribution rights when they use open source... But again, there's the question of, just because something CAN be done legally, SHOULD it be ETHICALLY done?... I mean a good argument IS that mod devs provide ALL the content, that users get thru CKAN... So it DOES seem, that it IS a bit counter intuitive to alienate the providers, of the SOLE reason CKAN is in existence...

3 hours ago, politas said:

Now, Roverdude has relicensed all of his art assets as All Rights Reserved, and has clearly stated that he does not wish any of his mods to be listed on CKAN unless he submits them himself. I find that a sad decision, but we will respect it. I will personally make every effort to ensure that none of his mods will be added to CKAN unless he has published the metadata himself.

Thank You... I believe this is a step in right direction...

3 hours ago, politas said:

I really like the idea of a CKAN mod that dumps all information about CKAN installed mods into the KSP log. I wish I had the faintest idea where to start in writing one.

ALSO, a positive step in the right direction...

Is it possible, and feasible, to integrate some function into CKAN, that allows mod devs to include in the metadata, known or possible mod conflicts?..
To where CKAN will either warn, or even not allow users to install conflicting mods?

If so, maybe THIS is where mod devs who are willing, could maybe volunteer their time to do the coding or integration?...???

3 hours ago, JedTech said:

Everyone please just use a license that reflects your will.

Sounds easy, but THIS is a step backward... Just look at how many GREAT, even popular mods, have lasted so long, because once a dev loses interest, someone else is allowed to pick up the mantle... If devs are forced into more restrictive, or even closed licenses, it WILL only hurt the community later on...

And I think it is just down right selfish to think that way, because then you will not only be hurting CKAN users, you will hurt users who wont even touch CKAN with a 10ft pole...

3 hours ago, politas said:

Well, the response I hear from most modders is that it does. CKAN's mission is to help users get a fully working installation of KSP with as many of the mods they want that will work together. We want to get it right. I personally spend a significant portion of my week (that I used to spend just playing KSP) correcting CKAN metadata to make it work right.

Well, yes... A good point, but if DEVS were the ONLY ones allowed to handle their own metadata, then that would take more of the onus off of you and the CKAN team, would it not?

Edited June 24, 2016 by Stone Blue

[passinglurker]

15 minutes ago, Stone Blue said:

Edited June 24, 2016 by passinglurker
Mobile forum bug

[Stone Blue]

2 hours ago, phoenix_ca said:

No problem. I'm a left-leaning libertarian. If I didn't promote more discussion and try to help people as much as I can come to some sort of reasonable accomodation, I'd be a pretty huge hypocrite.  

HA! HA,ha.... So am I...
And I feel the same as well... (usually... :P)

2 hours ago, passinglurker said:

Not if we make a forum rule banning unneighborly mod manager policies

I see what you did there...

[passinglurker]

3 hours ago, politas said:

I really do understand the problems that the minority of mod authors being vocal here have with CKAN.

I'd agree with @Stone Blue on this if the problems are among a minority then it's not a hard thing to ask CKAN to let people opt out even with an open licence this won't hurt your users because the number of mods effected and therefore have to be installed manually would be managably small and often popular enough that they are being followed on the forum any way

[goldenpsp]

So I don't feel like going through and picking out all the individual quotes to illustrate this, so I will try and explain the best I can without them.

As I said before, and is generally the case with modders I know (and from the likes many modders seem to agree) is that modders don't make mods for the community.  They make mods for themselves and graciously share them with the community.  Re-read and let that sink in because it is important.

The reason it is important is because at the end of the day, a modder's primary goal is NOT to get as many people to use their mod as possible.  It is how to share it with the least amount of frustration possible.

To that end In my opinion CKAN started completely backwards.  From my perspective CKAN has always been something "for the users".  This is backwards.  From the beginning CKAN's goal should have been to reach out to MODDERS with the goal of making a system "as painless and seamless as possible for modders".  This is not because users's are unimportant.  But the Modders, the content CREATORS are most important.  There will always be users wanting to use mods, but a far smaller subset has the skill, time, and drive to create mods.  If CKAN had this attitude and actively reached out from the beginning to work WITH modders to come up with a system then you would have modder support and possibly a far more stable ecosystem to work within.

Even as a user, I don't care about a user who needs CKAN to manage his 300+ modded install.  But I do care about modders such as @ferram4 possibly not creating new mods that he has ideas for because of negative stuff like this.

 

28 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

I'd agree with @Stone Blue on this if the problems are among a minority then it's not a hard thing to ask CKAN to let people opt out even with an open licence this won't hurt your users because the number of mods effected and therefore have to be installed manually would be managably small and often popular enough that they are being followed on the forum any way

I'd hesitate to even say it is a minority.  There is definitely an issue when you see CKAN in threads everywhere.  Will you put your mod on CKAN, when will you update CKAN, your CKAN says it is incompatible.  CKAN says it is compatible but it isn't working...

I'd say maybe a minority vocal enough to complain, but in general there is too much talk about it.  If it works properly CKAN should be effectively invisible.

[Stone Blue]

21 minutes ago, goldenpsp said:

<snipped>

ALL very good points, and well stated.. (I ran out of "likes" after the 4th or 5th post in this thread...lol)

[Teslamax]

Hi all, I'm one of those crazy pro-CKAN fanatics. I was going to send this message to a specific person, but then found this thread and decided to change my recipient.

-------------------------

I was unaware of the behind the scenes politics and hard feelings regarding the CKAN issue. I'm continuously naïve about interpersonal communication issues. (Why I like computers...) I now understand why modders would not see CKAN as the panacea I see it as.

I see it as a vicious cycle then...

I consider CKAN to be analogous to the wonderful package managers in most Linux distros (dpkg, apt, rpm). Obviously the metaphor isn't exactly the same. In Linux distros there is a team of people who decide whether a package is ready for inclusion and what "canon" meta-file data should be. In addition Linux distros also assume a degree of responsibility to support their releases.

 

I was going to say something very fanatically pro-CKAN:

I know of several modders who care very little about the distribution of their mods. 
It makes it very hard to find out how to download them, much less keep them updated. 
I believe that's why CKAN allows non-developers to submit meta-files. 
Therefore, I'm not so sure modders would be much more excited about supporting it if only developers could submit meta-files.

 

After reading GoldenPSP's post...

40 minutes ago, goldenpsp said:

To that end In my opinion CKAN started completely backwards.  From my perspective CKAN has always been something "for the users".  This is backwards.  From the beginning CKAN's goal should have been to reach out to MODDERS with the goal of making a system "as painless and seamless as possible for modders".  This is not because users's are unimportant.  But the Modders, the content CREATORS are most important.  There will always be users wanting to use mods, but a far smaller subset has the skill, time, and drive to create mods.  If CKAN had this attitude and actively reached out from the beginning to work WITH modders to come up with a system then you would have modder support and possibly a far more stable ecosystem to work within.

... I have changed my mind. I'm fanatically pro-mod manager. Bear with me and my hypothetical ideas:

What if we were to form a "working group" of mod developers and/or responsible folks to maintain a mod manager with modder support as its primary function, as goldenpsp stated, then their needs would be the first considered. 

I realize this would require yet more people to commit their time to another cause. Perhaps the knowledge that they were sharing the responsibility with others who understood and respected their concerns would soften the blow of that additional effort.

 

 

Apologies if this is a terrible idea. I have little practical experience in such things. I live in a world of unicorns and rainbows.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Teslamax

[RoverDude]

3 hours ago, phoenix_ca said:

I figured this would be the response when I said that. My point was that people are going to use the tools that save them time and effort when installing mods. This is not something easily changed, even if we just killed CKAN entirely. Someone else will make a new tool that does the same thing. Saying "Well, just don't use mods" is equivalent to me just saying to you "Well, if you don't like the time modding takes, just stop modding." It shows absolutely no respect for the concerns of others.

That was some pretty impressive mental gymnastics there.  Me modding in no way affects you - you're free to do what you will, include deal with having to manually install some of my mods (since they will not be available on CKAN).  Not my problem... you're coming to me to partake of something I happen to let other people use.  Until such time as you start wasting my time.

 

Let's be clear.  Your time is completely irrelevant to me - it holds zero value.  You are exchanging, for some free content...  nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  You have zero skin in this transaction.  Heck, you're not even needed for the transaction... because ultimately, I make things for my own game... things I happen to release sometimes (and I don't even bother releasing everything I make).  

Yet despite this, there's a gentleman's agreement.  If you are nice, don't cause me extra work, help with documentation and supporting other foks, and add in testing or the occassional PR for a bug fix, I'll invite you over and share my stuff with you.  It's a pretty good gig... we both get something.  Provided we keep to the terms of said gentleman's agreement.  And when folks can't seem to do that, then things get locked down, or just not distributed in the first place.

So keep pushing with that entitled attitude, but don't look surprised when there's less content out there, and what's left is released under ever increasingly restrictive licensing.

@Teslamax - if the mission of CKAN was to make it easier for modders by offering us a framework we could choose to use to manage our mod distribution and installation, that would be great.  Heck, it's what I thought it was for when it first came out... then things kinda went south.

The core issue is not the product.  The issue core issue is it's policies, and how it willfully drives those who want to opt out into very restrictive licensing or changing to private hosting.  Change that, and you'll see, in time, a lot more goodwill.

You would think something who's entire existence relies on free content would show a bit more respect to the people making said content *shrug*

[weyoun]

I like the idea of CKAN but hate the implementation. I tried it once and couldn't make it work, never again. The reason is as so many pointed out, they take the wrong approach. They are so eager to get mods installed on peoples system, that all I know is hey something new, CKAN wants to update it. I have no idea if thats because the dev pushed an update, or some rando on the Internet is mucking with someone else's files. Things are chaotic after updates, CKAN makes it even worse. It really need to be more like linux solutions if you want to be 'THE REPO' for all mods. Users need to explicitly opt in to the 'community' repos, vs the 'supported' repos. things need to be tested with each other before they turn green, and feedback mechanisms are needed so when something breaks others can know so their clients don't try to make the same blunder headed moves pushing together incompatible stuff. It also needs to continually make it clear which installed mods in the CKAN client are unsupported by the mod author. If I remember correctly the mod managers I used for bethesda games would color code things so green was explicitly supported by mod author, orange was autodetected based on mod package layout, and red for things that where unsupported and could potentially cause problems if not properly manually configured.

 

If I was releasing a mod, or was the guy who makes FAR here is what I would do, put a big fat disclaimer at the top of my post saying CKAN is unsupported and is known to muck up installs, anyone who uses it is redirected to CKAN thread for support, and then put a big notice that anyone requesting support must first try a manual install, and that anyone requesting support with or discussing CKAN is offtopic, and report anyone who mentions them to the mods for removal from my thread. If there is some forum rule that doesn't allow that, I would stop releasing mods.

CKAN *needs* to stop creating a hassle for mod authors.

 

edit: as roverdude posted above me, CKAN needs to be helping mod authors. they shouldn't be tempted to exclude themselves from it, but should be running around in the streets singing its praises for how easily ckan gives them to tools to stop their mods from updating to incorrect conflicting versions, and cut down on their support requests. instead it causes MORE of a burden to them. No wonder that they hate it.

Edited June 24, 2016 by weyoun

[Kobymaru]

 

Quote

As for being evil, I don't believe that.  I just believe that they don't particularly care.  Considering that the issue that turned me completely against CKAN happened over a year ago now, it's pretty obvious they don't put priority towards fixing their issues.

According to politas replies, they do seem to care, and they seem to have at least fixed the technical issues.

 

Quote

When you modify those tools to get around steps that modders take to reduce their support workload and then share that with other people so as to sabotage those attempts, you are not a responsible adult; you are a jackass making modding harder for us.

See, this is what I don't understand. I know the words, but it does not make sense to me. It's this Apple approach of "I give you this, and you can only do what I tell you to do. I will do my best to prevent any attempt of using the software/hardware for anything that I didn't intend and I will claim it's to prevent 'issues'". It was the same thing with the win64 stuff, and it seems that you are quite willing to go this path again. Why??? Why deliberately sabotage peoples way of using your stuff? Why restrict the possibilities of your work?

This goes for RoverDude as well, what is it with those "support issues"? What is that? Why not just like this:

"User: Your mod is broken"
"You: Do you use CKAN? Is it 64-bit KSP 0.90?"
"User: Yes."
"You: Sorry, can't help you. Bye."

And then be done with it? Or the approach that seems to work quite well in RoverDude's threads:

"User: Your mod is broken"
"Roverdude: -"
"Seasoned user: Do you use CKAN?"
"User: yes"
"Seasoned user: RD doesn't support CKAN installations. Either install manually or try doing this, this and that."
"Roverdude: -"

What is the issue here? If you don't want to deal with it, just don't! It's not like you get paid by closed support tickets. This is from the License of your mod:

15. Disclaimer of Warranty.

THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY
APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY
OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM
IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF
ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

This is not just legalese. Read it, understand it, feel it, live it. You are not responsible for how your users break their stuff, and they should not make you responsible for it (if they do, you have every right to ignore them).

Then why do you feel the need to artificially restrict your mods use cases?

 

Quote

And yet, what other options do I have?  I keep asking for less drastic measures, and CKAN contributors and supporters keep telling me that isn't acceptable.

Being opt-in as opposed to opt-out would mean that the CKAN repo would be a barren, empty wasteland. I know you don't care, but neither users nor developers would ever accept that.

Opt-out should probably be an option though.

 

Quote

I don't take their existence as an insult; I do take the insinuation that the "good word on my mod" or that reaching any kind of wider audience should be a mitigating factor as one though.  I don't care about having more users, I care about having a manageable and useful support and feedback system.  CKAN does not provide that.

I know you don't care about getting more users, that was not the point. You're not policing the forum, reddit, facebook and whatnot for links to your mods that happen to have incorrect instructions, do you? As far as I can tell, you're also not complaining about not having "opted in" to be featured on facebook or reddit?

 

Quote

And if the user responses to the CompatibilityChecker breaker and win64-forks for FAR were any indication, many users really don't agree with introducing extra workload for modders even after they've explicitly asked for it to change.

See above. Why even make CompatibilityChecker and disable win64-forks? Why not say "I don't give support to incompatible versions and win64" and leave it at that?

 

8 hours ago, passinglurker said:

Not if we make a forum rule banning unneighborly mod manager policies

That's akin to censorship, nobody actually wants that and it will lead nowhere.

 

8 hours ago, passinglurker said:

In the end whether CKAN  does the right thing and changes or not we will need this rule to prevent another mod manager from creating the same problems.

A mod manager is code. Code is Ideas. You can't control ideas with rules. You sure can try, but you will not succeed.

 

5 hours ago, Teslamax said:

I consider CKAN to be analogous to the wonderful package managers in most Linux distros (dpkg, apt, rpm). Obviously the metaphor isn't exactly the same. In Linux distros there is a team of people who decide whether a package is ready for inclusion and what "canon" meta-file data should be. In addition Linux distros also assume a degree of responsibility to support their releases.

The metaphor is actually better than you might think. There's quite often animosity between package maintainers and original authors. Authors are unhappy on how their code is packaged, and maintainers are unhappy with decisions that make their work a lot harder. But those who suffer from that are the users.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Kobymaru

[Sigma88]

7 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

It's this Apple approach of "I give you this, and you can only do what I tell you to do. I will do my best to prevent any attempt of using the software/hardware for anything that I didn't intend and I will claim it's to prevent 'issues'". It was the same thing with the win64 stuff, and it seems that you are quite willing to go this path again. Why???

by promoting this you (= CKAN) are doing a disservice to the community since the unavoidable result is that modders get annoyed and stop producing (= sharing) content

I think you have no idea what the real "approach" of @ferram4 is. If he had the approach you described he would not have wasted one year getting along with this charade. He would have taken measures to completely prevent CKAN from using his mods.

I never had issues with CKAN but rest assured, if that day will come, I will do everything I can to get everything I do out of CKAN.

I'll go as far as hardcoding it in the mod if that's what I need to do in order to not stop enjoying doing what I do.

 

I find it funny how CKAN keeps waving the "open source" flag while taking measures that are driving content creators away from the "open source" model.

I was already forced to use ARR, I'd rather not have to waste time to take "anti-CKAN" measures. that's why I am still bothering to epress my dissatisfaction in how CKAN is approaching its role in the community.

[Kobymaru]

19 minutes ago, Sigma88 said:

by promoting this you (= CKAN) are doing a disservice to the community since the unavoidable result is that modders get annoyed and stop producing (= sharing) content

First, I am not CKAN. Second, what is it about this, that gets modders so annoyed?

 

Quote

I think you have no idea what the real "approach" of @ferram4 is. If he had the approach you described he would not have wasted one year getting along with this charade. He would have taken measures to completely prevent CKAN from using his mods.

But he did put code in his mods to disable itself when win64 was detected (back in the day), did he not? And he did multiple times claim that - as a last resort - he will put code into their mods to disable themselves with CKAN installed. And so did you, just now.

 

Quote

I find it funny how CKAN keeps waving the "open source" flag while taking measures that are driving content creators away from the "open source" model.

I'm not waving any flags, and I'm not trying to drive anyone anywhere. I just find it extremely difficult to wrap my head around this concept.

Assume, I bought a hammer. Or i got a hammer as a promo gift. The Hammer manufacturer says "this hammer is to be used on nails only". I read that, think to myself "thank you for your opinion" and proceed to use the hammer to open walnuts.
Is this bad? Am I a jackass now? Am I driving the hammer manufacturer away? I just don't see how.

If I fail in my endevour of opening walnuts, *obviously* i will not blame the hammer manufacturer. I will blame myself. I see that some users struggle with this concept, but we are on the interwebz, and the strongest weapon you have is to ignore people.

So WHY do mod authors like you even get so upset about all of this? You know your work is valuable, you know you are appreciated by many, many users - but you also know that there will always be a tiny fraction of people who are ungrateful and don't understand. Why do you have to focus on those? Why do you have to take offense in the people who can't tell the difference between mod problems and ckan problems, and ignore so many of the mature, responsible users who get it after a short "try again without ckan"? 

 

Case in point, here is one of those interactions from the UKS thread that I assume are meant by support issues:

On 22.6.2016 at 8:44 PM, kreutzkevic said:

Hey RD. Excellent work as always. Really loving your work.

 

They're not showing up in CKAN, however.

For me, anyway.

On 22.6.2016 at 8:50 PM, mcortez said:

Install KSP-AVC and use the download links it provides.

CKAN is one of RD's nemeses, and creates more support headaches than any 2 dozen other issues put together.

On 22.6.2016 at 8:53 PM, kreutzkevic said:

Done. Thanks.

Was that so bad? Who did that hurt? It's 3 messages, and RD didn't even have to get involved. Are those the "support issues"?

 

 

Edited June 24, 2016 by Kobymaru

[ferram4]

46 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

According to politas replies, they do seem to care, and they seem to have at least fixed the technical issues.

They say this every time.  They also ignore the policy issues that cause this every time.  Remember, a year's worth of inaction.

48 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

Why??? Why deliberately sabotage peoples way of using your stuff? Why restrict the possibilities of your work?

This goes for RoverDude as well, what is it with those "support issues"? What is that? Why not just like this:

Because that method doesn't work simply due to the volume of complaints.  If you had seen the FAR thread during the huge disaster CKAN created for v0.15 you would have seen crucial, valuable bug reports simply buried under floods of CKAN-related complaints.  The signal-to-noise ratio becomes terrible, hinders support for the users that aren't relying on broken CKAN, and risks issues just not being solved because they're buried entirely.  And that's before we get to the people who lie about installing manually, just as they lied about using win32 rather than win64.

Why?  Because it is a way to improve the signal-to-noise ratio.  The goal is to make my projects perfect; a streamlined and clear support system is needed for that; CKAN interferes with that by adding unnecessary noise.

58 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

Being opt-in as opposed to opt-out would mean that the CKAN repo would be a barren, empty wasteland. I know you don't care, but neither users nor developers would ever accept that.

Opt-out should probably be an option though.

Only if it's that absolutely terrible.  Hell, if CKAN had started with that method, considering that it had support from a few modders starting out it would have been far better than just starting as a barren wasteland.  And if your argument really comes down to, "I need to do these things that will cause strife for other people in order for my project to work" then maybe you shouldn't create that project.

53 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

I know you don't care about getting more users, that was not the point. You're not policing the forum, reddit, facebook and whatnot for links to your mods that happen to have incorrect instructions, do you? As far as I can tell, you're also not complaining about not having "opted in" to be featured on facebook or reddit?

That's simple; none of these places ever have install instructions, and manual installs are so mindlessly easy that it's hard to screw up.  Of the only type of install error that's commonly possible with manual installs, my plugins load sufficiently that I can use the game to provide correction instructions to the user during loading so they can stop loading the game and fix it.

Only CKAN screws things up beyond the point that any code I put in a mod can recover.

55 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

See above. Why even make CompatibilityChecker and disable win64-forks? Why not say "I don't give support to incompatible versions and win64" and leave it at that?

And also see above; to improve the signal-to-noise ratio.  Because users can't spend the time reading the FAQ in the forum post but can spend their time making a post asking about it and burying useful bug reports under dozens (at least) of complaints.

17 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

First, I am not CKAN. Second, what is it about this, that gets modders so annoyed?

As noted above, if you have seen or had to deal with the signal-to-noise ratio, you will understand.  The sheer scale of issues is one of the big ways that CKAN screws up in its worst moments.

19 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

But he did put code in his mods to disable itself when win64 was detected (back in the day), did he not? And he did multiple times claim that - as a last resort - he will put code into their mods to disable themselves with CKAN installed. And so did you, just now.

And yet, I have tried to avoid doing that with CKAN.  As I tried to avoid doing that with win64 for an entire KSP update before it became too much and the crashes got worse.  And as I did with CompatibilityChecker only providing warnings rather than locking down the mods.  Each time I have been exceedingly patient, and in the case of CKAN far, far more patient than I was with the other ones.  I dislike nuclear options, but sadly every time one of these things comes up it ends up being necessary.

23 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

So WHY do mod authors like you even get so upset about all of this? You know your work is valuable, you know you are appreciated by many, many users - but you also know that there will always be a tiny fraction of people who are ungrateful and don't understand. Why do you have to focus on those? Why do you have to take offense in the people who can't tell the difference between mod problems and ckan problems, and ignore so many of the mature, responsible users who get it after a short "try again without ckan"? 

Because they bury valuable support, and then they get defended by all the users that claim to appreciate us while demanding we put in more work, have a poorer signal-to-noise ratio and end up with buggier mods as a result.  We are trying to manage our time and make things easier for us to support and fix our mods.  Stop making things harder.

[Sigma88]

@Kobymaru with you (=CKAN) I meant that the "you" was not a direct reference to YOU as a person but rather a metaphorical plural "you people that promote CKAN"

since I had no idea if you were just someone promoting it or someone from the CKAN team itself I felt the need to specify that CKAN (being the source of the problems) has more responsability than those that merely promote it.

also, if you notice I always directed all my other comments to CKAN directly rather than "you" as a person

I'm not saying you have to change your mind, I'm just explaining to you what are the consequences of this situation.

5 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

what is it about this, that gets modders so annoyed?

it's a waste of time.

plain and simple. I don't want to have to waste time to read through a report to understand if the issue is caused by my mod or by CKAN.

CKAN has different issues, for example it does not remove empty folders from GameData

this leads to MM mistakely interpret that as "this mod is installed" even if it's just an empty folder.

this is only one example, there are more of them and I don't care to discuss them all here.

what I believe is that forcing CKAN's way down my throat will not do any good to CKAN because ultimately when I decide to take my mod out of CKAN my issues will stop.

this whole situation is already changing the approach of modders toward the creation of content, which is bad for the players because they get less free stuff, is bad for the modders because they have to waste time bothering about this, is bad for SQUAD because less "free content" means KSP is worth less to buyers and it's ultimately bad for CKAN because it will get less mods to "provide".

 

not allowing modders to opt out is a bad choice, if you don't see that it must mean that you believe you have some kind of right over the stuff I do in my free time, which you have not of course. and nor has CKAN, or any player for that matter.

 

I'm not even discussing the 64bit issue here because that was way worse than what CKAN is doing and I feel it's not fair to compare CKAN to that hack.

 

24 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

I'm not waving any flags, and I' trying not drive anyone anywhere. I just find it extremely difficult to wrap my head around this concept.

Assume, I bought a hammer. Or i got a hammer as a promo gift. The Hammer manufacturer says "this hammer is to be used on nails only". I read that, think to myself "thank you for your opinion" and proceed to use the hammer to open walnuts.
Is this bad? Am I a jackass now? Am I driving the hammer manufacturer away? I just don't see how.

again, I was referring to CKAN directly. but I will help you understand my point of view.

that is a bad metaphore.

I'm not selling anything, I'm not "on the marked" I am have no interest in reaching more people.

what I have interest in is doing my mods for my personal fun, and receive feedback on how they work from users that apreciate my work rather than just care about getting free stuff without ever even visiting my thread other than for poodle about issues that they get from something I'm not responsible for.

 

for now my threads are drama-free luckly, but I won't let any third party decision ruin the experience for the very small community that uses my mods.

[Kobymaru]

@ferram4

Thanks for your reply, I see your point of view now.

This just hypothetically:

is it possible that part of the problem is the structure inherent to "forum" threads? That they are linear and things can get buried? I guess this would probably never going to happen, but what if all of those issues were reported on a github-tracker or a bugzilla-kind of tracker, where people have some sort of checkbox where they can claim how they installed it.

It would probably improve the signal-to-noise ratio a lot.

Anyway, fixing CKAN in the first place would probably be the best solution, but by what I can judge, things are... hard.

 

2 minutes ago, Sigma88 said:

@Kobymaru with you (=CKAN) I meant that the "you" was not a direct reference to YOU as a person but rather a metaphorical plural "you people that promote CKAN"

Thanks, just wanted to clear up my affiliations (or lack thereof).

 

2 minutes ago, Sigma88 said:

it's a waste of time.

plain and simple. I don't want to have to waste time to read through a report to understand if the issue is caused by my mod or by CKAN.

I understand.

 

2 minutes ago, Sigma88 said:

CKAN has different issues, for example it does not remove empty folders from GameData

this leads to MM mistakely interpret that as "this mod is installed" even if it's just an empty folder.

this is only one example, there are more of them and I don't care to discuss them all here.

You're right, but not all of those issues are simple "bugs" or unimplemented features. Some problems are almost "philosophical". This is a good example! Lets say CKAN would remove this folder. What if it's not empty? What about mod-generated files, delete or not? How to differentiate between mod-generated and manually copied by the user? There are no simple answers or one-commit fixes, and there are many of these kind of questions.

Many of the issues that cause problems in the mod threads aren't just silly little bugs, they're inherent to the fact that there are no clear guidelines and every mod does stuff just a little differently.

Just hating on CKAN and their maintainers is a bit too easy, considering the number of these kind of issues, and the difficulty of balancing interests and mod idiosyncrasies. "Doing things the right way" is already difficult enough, but figuring out what "the right way" is in a very non-homogenous environment is even harder.

 

2 minutes ago, Sigma88 said:

not allowing modders to opt out is a bad choice, if you don't see that it must mean that you believe you have some kind of right over the stuff I do in my free time, which you have not of course. and nor has CKAN, or any player for that matter.

Well in this case it's a good thing that nobody actually believes that they have a right over your stuff.  It's also a good thing that CKAN maintainers have stated multiple times that they WILL remove mods on request

 

2 minutes ago, Sigma88 said:

that is a bad metaphore.

I'm not selling anything, I'm not "on the marked" I am have no interest in reaching more people.

Is it though? Of course you're not on the market, but that's not the point. My point is people using tools for things they were not intended for.

 

2 minutes ago, Sigma88 said:

what I have interest in is doing my mods for my personal fun, and receive feedback on how they work from users that apreciate my work rather than just care about getting free stuff without ever even visiting my thread other than for poodle about issues that they get from something I'm not responsible for.

I totally understand that, but with or without CKAN, sooner or later you will have free-stuff people visiting your thread, causing issues from something you're not responsible for. that's the nature of free stuff. Not even that! It's the nature of *making* stuff for other people (free or not).

I just think that you should try not to get discouraged by those people, and instead focus on those who enjoy your stuff and give you feedback.

[Sigma88]

10 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

My point is people using tools for things they were not intended for.

11 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

I totally understand that, but with or without CKAN, sooner or later you will have free-stuff people visiting your thread, causing issues from something you're not responsible for. that's the nature of free stuff. Not even that! It's the nature of *making* stuff for other people (free or not).

I just think that you should try not to get discouraged by those people, and instead focus on those who enjoy your stuff and give you feedback.

 

this is true, but it's all relative.

I get comments from people that want to use my mods not how they are intended to. I am not bothered by that. The problem is not the use but the massive flood of reports that comes from getting your mod on CKAN.

when that number starts to grow too much I will need to take measures to make sure it goes down.

the single bug report doesn't waste much of my time. but with CKAN there is the potential of these issues to sum up and completely overwhelm everything else.

it happened to ferram and he was patient enough to not block CKAN, I will not be that patient because I rather do other things with my free time.

 

ultimately CKAN is free to do whatever it wants, most likely it won't cause me personally any issues.

I'm just warning people that this is leading to bad things, and if they want to ignore my feedback it's fine. It won't harm me anyways.