Danger of popular mods dying off?

[Majiir]

As for a mod author being stuck with a license irrevocably, I don't see why that would be the case. Software publishers modify their licenses all the time - the terms change and the user has two choices: accept the new terms, or stop using the product. I'm not sure why this should be any different. If I create something, and later decide the terms of the license are too restrictive (or not restrictive enough to avoid unintended abuse), it should be my prerogative to change the license and notify users. Perhaps such changes could only be implemented with updated versions - after all, there's nothing to stop a user from continuing to use a version under the terms of the license provided therein - but even something as simple as posting notice on the thread and/or Spaceport page my be acceptable.

Suppose you release some code under GPL and shortly thereafter realize it's not for you. You can release your code under a different license, but it's already out there under GPL so people can fork it left and right. That's the sort of trap I'd like to save fellow modders from.

I know github is useful and a great tool, but excludes a lot of people who maybe can just post in a thread and say "hey, I did this and it didn't work and it's not listed as intented behaviour" by hiding your project under a dev-only-words-filled interface.

Wait, what? Git is a basic programming tool. Just who are these "old-as-hell" project maintainers who aren't using source control? ...and what's hard about downloading source from Github?

[PDCWolf]

Jesus christ I know how to freaking use github, guys. There's nothing bad about downloading sources from github, there's nothing bad with having your project there, what I think is bad is making it your only download source and the only place where you'll take reports from.

Is it that hard to understand?

[GavinZac]

The high memory usage in general might actually be a bug, based on what I've seen. It kinda looks like the game's keeping stuff it only needs temporarily during scene transitions in Memory at all times. I'm really the wrong person to investigate though, as I'm a tech, not a developer, and consequently I'm not at all sure of this.

As someone who has actually played around the the code, it is loading every detail of every planet that has been scanned into memory on launch of any ship. This adds more than a Gb of memory usage, which is unusable for anyone with a moderate amount of mods or less than 4Gb of memory available. The biggest issue is that it could be coded in such a way that it doesn't tax the memory so much

Second, he hasn't abandoned it, he's just been working on other, non-KSP projects. He hasn't updated it because people have told him it still works in the current version, which it does. If it breaks, I'm pretty sure he'll fix it.

There is still no actual release of ISAMapSat for 0.20+. What people have been using is explicitly called a Development build, and it isn't in development. I am curious as to how you came to your conclusions without any input from Insewerants himself. He last posted for 2 weeks 4 months ago, one of which spoke of a second dev build that didn't happen, some of which spoke about fixes for the pre-0.20 version. Before those 2 weeks starting in 3rd of May this year, his last post was a year ago.

I'll reiterate that I don't expect anyone to maintain their mod. It is commendable if they do, or if they move on from it gracefully. However, it would be nice if the community had a way of dealing with the inevitability of the loss of mods while the game itself is still a moving target for addon developers. Particularly since the vibrant modding community is one of the strongest attractions of the game. Once the game is actually done, a finished mod would actually be finished! But until then we could have a healthier mod community that deals with the challenges of the moving target.

I'm glad that this post has sparked some discussion, particularly in the area of licensing, even if it has gotten bogged down with semantics at times. I disagree with some of what's been said, particularly some people's odd ideas about open source (which is associated with but doesn't imply Free Software), but that's inevitable.

[Greys]

Innsewerants was a regular in the modding IRC channel until right around when he put out the dev build, maybe he just didn't see a need to post on the forums that year. He then stopped by for a few days maybe a month ago but I guess life happened again, and he was then online about a week ago but I don't recall him saying anything in channel. the couple days he was on.

The forums are not the whole of this community, and not everything that occurs, occurs publicly.

Life happens, deal with it.

One thing that has been ignored in nearly all of the conversations on licensing that I've seen take place, including this one is that in absolute legal terms: Unless stated otherwise by it's copyright holder, all works explicitly exist in a state of All Rights Reserved. This does not need to be declared, it is a fact of the law.

Nothing can be done about this, it's not a decision Squad gets to make. No one on this forum has yet to successfully argue that Squad has any legitimate claim over any part or plugin which does not make use of their work. ISA is 100% custom, Squad has no authority over it. The limit of the legal rights that Squad is capable of flexing against ISA is a clause stating that ISA's features cannot be used to prohibit Squad from developing similar features on their own to be part of the stock game.

Going forward Squad continues to have no right over parts and plugins that do not contain their work, so Squad cannot mandate any licensing except as terms of service on this forum and on spaceport.

This forum and Spaceport are optional. You do not have to come here to share your mod. As mentioned earlier Kethane is Not On SpacePort, because Majiir isn't willing to conform to the wording of the ToS for uploading a mod there. If Squad attempted to enforce a license of any sort, Majiir would have the Kethane threads scrubbed, and go somewhere else. As would many others.

And then the only thing you would have managed to do, is destroy a community. Mods would over time move off KSP Forums due to it's hostile actions, and probably refocus on smaller forums and Reddit. The wealth of experience for modders to aid new modders would diminish. Advancements in the craft would be publicized less and less, creating a negative feedback loop where Here would be a less and less useful place to go for anything mod related.

The modders who care most about the freedom to control their works are the modders who have the most to contribute. If you spite them, they are also the ones who need this community least, and the rest of us are less with them gone.

[Starwaster]

This is totally unrelated to the point I tried to make, I said the plugin got easier, lost all difficulty and challenge,

Which you tried incorrectly to claim as the reason that he'd left when the reason was clearly due to real life woes.

GitHub is unintuitive for a lot of people, and hinders the amount of testing that goes into the plugin. And on top of that, devs seem really irresponsive.

I had no trouble with it. I had the file within two minutes of reading your post. Still I suppose that's a better claim than your previous stated requirement of some kind of secret club.

Yeah, a life support mod that gets its entire purpose reduced to "add these parts to avoid dead" (Which is why almost everyone bashed the heat/heat management suggestion, hypocrisy much?). There's no objective for the mod than to add to the part count as it lacks any depth beyond that point.

no the objective is to force you to actually do something about resources that otherwise are assumed to be limitless. I dont recall the Apollo astronauts nor the engineers who built the rockets complaining about part counts .

[PDCWolf]

Which you tried incorrectly to claim as the reason that he'd left when the reason was clearly due to real life woes.

Never said that. I said the mod got too easy, nothing else, nothing more.

I had no trouble with it. I had the file within two minutes of reading your post. Still I suppose that's a better claim than your previous stated requirement of some kind of secret club.

I didn't have trouble with it either, but we are individuals. There are a lot of people that have difficulties. Again, this goes out of the scope of my complaint, which is about exclusivity.

I dont recall the Apollo astronauts nor the engineers who built the rockets complaining about part counts .

Okay, I'm done. I'm so freaking done. This part was just too stupid. I'm out of this thread.

[Tiron]

As someone who has actually played around the the code, it is loading every detail of every planet that has been scanned into memory on launch of any ship. This adds more than a Gb of memory usage, which is unusable for anyone with a moderate amount of mods or less than 4Gb of memory available. The biggest issue is that it could be coded in such a way that it doesn't tax the memory so much

...Uhhh...funny, because my testing shows it only uses about 600MB for the Maps, and that it doesn't vary with their scanned or unscanned status even the tiniest little bit. Which strongly suggests the memory usage is caused by the game keeping the decompressed versions of the maps loaded into main system memory, which there's absolutely no reason to do.

There's also this:

This is what happens when you suspend your system with KSP running. When you come back, the working set (but not the commit) drops to a SMALL fraction of its normal value...and stays there until you do a scene transition.

What I believe is happening based on this behavior is that when the game goes through a scene transition, it's failing to unload all the transitional bits from the system memory. This means, for example, the decompressed versions of the planetary maps, even after they've been recompressed as DDSes and loaded into VRAM. The memory usage for the maps, based on my testing, is consistent with two compressed copies and two uncompressed copies of each map being stored in RAM. So if, for example, the game loads the PNG, decompresses it, hands it off to OpenGL, which Recompresses it as a DDS...well there you go.

My testing seems to suggest that at most times, the game's actually only actively using something on the order of 500-800MB of RAM, and the rest is just bloat from the scene transitions.

Edit:

Forgot to mention. Simply not unloading things isn't in and of itself a bad thing. But it's clearly not treating them as cache that can be overwritten when needed, if this is in fact what it's doing. There's also some indications that the scene loading may actually have a memory leak, where it re-loads things that are still loaded from before. Not all the time, but at least some of the time. It's either that or just loading more parts as you do more things, but if that were the case in theory going into the VAB should pretty much do it all in one go...

Someone that knows what the hell they're doing really needs to look at the memory usage during and after scene transitions though, that much I'm certain of.

Edited September 12, 2013 by Tiron

[alen74]

sadly, it will true or not. if it true then very bad news.

[Seeker89]

For my two cents worth:

I really think mods are going to die off at some point. Mods from last year that sometimes gets a new post every now and again is a reminder of what will come. It's a very sad, sad thing but it will happen. But what I think needs to happen is after some point the mod can be taken over, more so when the game is released(version 1.0). So that the mod can live on for years to come.

Cause who's going to sue someone over a mod they made a year ago?

....that was more like .5 cents worth....

[John FX]

licenses are permanent, so mod developers should not be pushed into a decision

Isn`t the simple solution to this to be to enable the mod developer to easily change their license later? Then you could have a default license which the developer could alter as they become more aware of the things they want in a license which would give the protection you need and the flexibility you do not want to lose by default whlst at the same time providing a standard license for those who just do not need/want more. win-win.

[regex]

Isn`t the simple solution to this to be to enable the mod developer to easily change their license later?

The mod author can already do this. What Majiir is lamenting is the fact that, once you release a codebase under one license, even if you change it down the road that previous codebase is still considered under the terms of the old license. Future versions adopt the new license, but anybody who has an older version only has to abide by the terms of the license of that older code.

You really have to commit to open source code, which is one of the reasons that a mod author who posts on these forums should carefully consider how they want to license their code because one of the requirements is that the source is always available.

[Wahgineer]

About mods: while a few may seem to be going well (not all of them), their days are numbered. For example: Kethane probably has only two or three updates (not exact here) left before stock resource extracting/refining/storing/applying are added and Kethane is killed. Don't believe me? look at the old docking mods from pre-0.18 Try and find them on the space port. Once docking was implemented in 0.18, they all vanished. The only reason ORDA is still around is because it had a rondevouz/guidance system as well as docking parts (which are no longer in existance).

[Kerbart]

About mods: while a few may seem to be going well (not all of them), their days are numbered. For example: Kethane probably has only two or three updates (not exact here) left before stock resource extracting/refining/storing/applying are added and Kethane is killed. Don't believe me? look at the old docking mods from pre-0.18 Try and find them on the space port. Once docking was implemented in 0.18, they all vanished. The only reason ORDA is still around is because it had a rondevouz/guidance system as well as docking parts (which are no longer in existance).

Unless I misunderstand, that's obsolence. Mods disappearing because similar functionality appears in stock is, quite frankly, not a big concern. Of course, it's a shame of all the work that has been done by the mod developers, but then again I would assume they developed their mod because they felt the game was lacking. Now it's not lacking anymore, and they don't have to put work in it anymore. Of course you lose control over the way functionality is implemented, but unless Squad botches the job completely that doesn't seem to be a bad trade-off having more spare time (and not dealing with #### users)

[MennoLente]

I think this all up to squad to take action. Mod devs have lives of their own, therefore limited time. I think that if squad wants to keep it's modding community alive, they should look into implementing certain mods, if needed hire someone dedicated to use the mods ideas, make it more modular and make it fit the game's style. Does it kill mods? Perhaps. Look at it another way. Those mods are sacrificed for stock features. IF squad took just a little more effort in communicating with it's community.

What about license? IF squad gave people more what they paid for wanted, they would implement more features already present in mods. Since the game is theirs, only the artwork remains the onwer's property as far as I know.

Oh and people will hate me for saying this. Nagging about how that ruined their favorite cube-mining game. I don't care about that game, all I care about here is little green men killing themselves in crazy home made experiments while trying to get to the moon, preferably in as many different ways as possible. Like what I do at home, though I'm not very green.

For once I bought a game (with money), for karma and to support the devs. Now I want to see something in return. Bigger, better, stronger, faster.

EDIT: yeah, what Kerbart said!

[Temeriki]

Ioncross's license simply states you dont simply rehost the original work. That being said you could change a few parts from mod and rehost it. Im currently learning to mod (havnt done it since morrowind) and am trying to implement the best parts of Ioncross and TAC, which to me both seem like half finished projects. With those two mods it seems I have the base for a decent life support mod, my thought is to treat each required material as a resource (utilizing kethane) and set different modules to produce/consume resources. Set up fuel routing like monopropellant and it may work. Of course this is all speculation, still learning the modding system for ksp.

[DChurchill]

Tough ****.

ROFL See below.

[regex]

ROFL See below.

If six years of toiling in software has taught me anything, it's that sometimes it needs to be said.

[DChurchill]

But it applies to so many other things.

[somnambulist]

KW ROcketry is another one that is unmaintained. It has a few bugs that need fixing and I don't think it has available source code.

It's not dead yet, just sleeping. A friend of KickAssKyle posted some WIP pictures on reddit showing off new engine emissives. Kyle shared the same images with me and plans for KW's future in a steam chat. If Kyle/Winston don't come back, I'm going to update KWRocketry+ with a module manager bug fix for the decoupler issues, radial attach issues, etc.

[Devo]

There is only a limited amount of time you can hang around here, while the game stays stagnant in development people will move onto bigger and better things, that's all.

[Tiron]

The mod author can already do this. What Majiir is lamenting is the fact that, once you release a codebase under one license, even if you change it down the road that previous codebase is still considered under the terms of the old license. Future versions adopt the new license, but anybody who has an older version only has to abide by the terms of the license of that older code.

Actually, there might technically be limits to that as well. The more strongly copylefted open source licenses, such as GPL, frequently contain requirements that any derivatives be open source as well, or somesuch(And in some cases, also require that the source be included with it). I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that if you used a license with a provision like that, someone might be able to try to argue that any updates you made to it were 'Derivatives' and thus required to be GPL licensed themselves. I don't know how well such an argument would hold up, but it wouldn't surprise me to see someone making it.

If it did hold up, the only way to move forward with a more restrictive license would be to abandon the old codebase entirely and start from scratch. You might be able to do a dual-licensed setup where you have new, restricted licensed code that hooks into the old code, so that any additions or changes are in a separate, non-derivative codebase.

[Greys]

That's BS, licenses don't apply to the owner, they are terms set by the owner for how others can use their stuff. The only thing you can do that limits your rights over your own works is release it into the public domain, or transfer ownership of it rather than license it to someone else.

[xEvilReeperx]

The software owner already has all rights to his works. S/He isn't bound by the terms of the licenses s/he issues. It'd be thrown out of court immediately.

Edit: beaten! Gah

[Majiir]

GPL is a license for the general public and does not constrain the owner of the code, so you can release updates under a different license with restrictions. This is exactly what happened to Kethane. It's conceivable that some license might explicitly waive the creator's right to relicense the work, but as far as I know, all the well-known open source licenses don't have any such clause.

[regex]

Actually, there might technically be limits to that as well. The more strongly copylefted open source licenses, such as GPL, frequently contain requirements that any derivatives be open source as well, or somesuch(And in some cases, also require that the source be included with it). I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that if you used a license with a provision like that, someone might be able to try to argue that any updates you made to it were 'Derivatives' and thus required to be GPL licensed themselves. I don't know how well such an argument would hold up, but it wouldn't surprise me to see someone making it.

I'm not arguing what is allowed under any license, what I am saying is that if a piece of code is released under one license that permits modification and redistribution, and someone does just that, and then the original author relicenses the code, they can't exactly go back and demand that the person who made modifications and released a new distribution abide by the new license terms. The terms of the previous license still hold for that older codebase that the new author is using.

The original copyright holder can do whatever they want with their codebase, including releasing the code to multiple people under multiple licenses, this is not in dispute, but you can't simply give someone permission to do something and then take that away after they've released a modified version, or even after that version of code has been released into the wild. Copyright protects the new author as well, so long as the terms of the particular license governing that version of code are followed.

This is why it is very important to not just knee-jerk-decide on a license, especially when releasing to a site like this one that requires source available. Majiir's "choosing a license" post should be required reading for any mod authors advertising here unless they're quite confident they know what they're doing.

E: Also, for the record, insofar as derivatives are concerned, "once GPL, always GPL, and so's your mom" unless you have permission from the original copyright holder to relicense as needed. I had to do this once to preserve the BSD license on my entire project because I wanted to use a derivative piece of GPL code.

Edited September 13, 2013 by regex
GPL clarification