Please, give the community KSP1's source code

[Lisias]

6 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Google is your friend. But, here, check this out:

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/244850,220200,954850

https://github.com/KeenSoftwareHouse

[AtomicTech]

9 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

https://github.com/KeenSoftwareHouse/SpaceEngineers

Ain't that neat?

It's a outdated but really cool nonetheless!

[Reusables]

On 5/21/2023 at 12:38 AM, Lisias said:

It's understandable, but also the reason P.D. would not be prone to consider this without some public pressu encouragement.  

I was wondering if e.g. you are doing something about it - by zero momentum, I really meant no momentum at all. Are you going to commit into this endeavor? For how long?

 

By the way, Reddit is a place where reposts are plenty and same things are posted again and again. I think it will be okay to give it another try..

[adsii1970]

Okay, folks, your friendly community moderator here...

I had to step in and put on my moderator hat and remove a few posts here. Just to let you know why, they were removed for one or more of the following reasons:

• They were off-topic. The OP is literally "Please, give the community KSP1's source code... Since the development team would and will be focused at KSP2, could you give us the source code, so we might look at it and, maybe, fix some things in it to make KSP1 a better game. I'm begging you to do it."
• Responses to the OP should be either in support of or against this idea, not beating each other in the head and verbally abusive to one another. Insulting comments are never allowed on this forum. In fact, we have Forum Guideline 2.2d that states: Insults and threats, stalking, bullying or any other behavior construed to be of a potentially rude, slanderous, accusatory, combative or otherwise harassing nature to/of another person. So, yeah, we gotta watch how we address others. It's always okay to address the comments, never okay to attack the forum member. Some of the comments came close to attacking the person.
• The posts removed appeared to be arguing for the sake of argument. Yeah, let's not do that.
• Nesting spoilers within spoilers within spoilers makes it more difficult for moderators to do our job. So, yeah, those comments had to go, too. Especially when they do not contribute to the overall conversation and are also off-topic.

Anyhow, now that all that has been taken care of, let's go back to discussing the pros and cons of the OP, shall we? Just keep it within the guidelines...

[AtomicTech]

So, for all of you in favor of releasing the source code...

What would be reasonable terms to do this in?

My personal preference is releasing it to us only to go and fix bugs. We'd make contributions to a repo, we'd test them to high heaven, then give them to PD/IG to publish

[Lisias]

6 hours ago, Reusables said:

I was wondering if e.g. you are doing something about it - by zero momentum, I really meant no momentum at all. Are you going to commit into this endeavor?

Yes I am. Not only by discussing things here, but doing what I asking to do and even a bit more.

 

6 hours ago, Reusables said:

For how long?

I'm TweakScale's maintainer for almost 5 years by now, and I'm still here giving support to its users - not only on TweakScale (to tell you the true, most of the support "tickets" are about 3rd parties!).

Believe me, I'm like a dog with a bone!

But this bone is too big for a single hound!

 

6 hours ago, Reusables said:

By the way, Reddit is a place where reposts are plenty and same things are posted again and again. I think it will be okay to give it another try..

Found some already, some of them not exactly what we asking but near enough:

Spoiler

 

 

 

2 hours ago, AtomicTech said:

So, for all of you in favor of releasing the source code...

What would be reasonable terms to do this in?

I think it's time to consolidate my points (pos and cons - and yep, there's some). I will start working it by night.

 

2 hours ago, AtomicTech said:

My personal preference is releasing it to us only to go and fix bugs. We'd make contributions to a repo, we'd test them to high heaven, then give them to PD/IG to publish

This may be one of the cons, by the way: contributions. Receiving contributions on an ARR repository is hairy due the different Copyright Legislations around the World. The Berne Convention signatories agrees on a minimum set of rights for authors, but there's no real "ceiling" for them, and one signatory needs to respects the rights granted by others: so, if you accept code from a Brazilian, you need to respect the Brazilian legislation for that commit, and if you accept code from a Australian, ditto. And so on.

OSI makes things way easier on this field, as it ties both sides to a common ground (written in blood and sweat over the time - 30 years on it already), but now and then something new still arises.

There's also the need to have someone inspecting the pull requests before merging - once you merge something, you get the bonus but also the onus: if the code is infringing some copyright, you ARE* liable to it (and there're probably people that would do it on purpose, unfortunately - in the Internet, no one knows you are a dog unless you say it).

Spoiler

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog

So, on an initial move, I would settle to a Shared License style (like Unity does) as this appears to be path of least friction for them to release the source: if they can't accept contributions right now, there's no real incentive for them to release the thing under a license tailored for getting contributions.

Make no mistake, I like OSI and I would prefer it as OSI, but there's no free lunch on OSI (to tell you the true, it's easier to get "free lunch" from ARR), and they need to consider things that we don't. I think it would be still a winning move, but they don't need do it all the moves at once: they can go OSI later.

Besides less than optimal, a Shared Source approach will still allow us to deep dive in the code and, with such knowledge, will allow us to write better add'ons, fixes and mitigations. There're code on KSP that already allows a lot of external interventions, as the Upgrade Pipeline and the Monkey Patching - we learn how to use them, and suddenly a lot of potential troublemaking and shady practices are not needed anymore.

Having Legal, Forum and EULA 100% compliant access to the source code will be a huge benefit to anyone willing to contribute to KSP and still be on the right side of the pertinent legislation for a reason or another.

(and yeah, I ended up writing most of my argument in advance! )

— — EDIT — — 

* Dude, how in hell I let that "not" pass trough? Geez, you are liable for the commits you merge - just to make things clear.

I think I need to sleep a bit more...

Edited May 22, 2023 by Lisias
EDIT

[AtomicTech]

33 minutes ago, Lisias said:

So, on an initial move, I would settle to a Shared License style (like Unity does) as this appears to be path of least friction for them to release the source: if they can't accept contributions right now, there's no real incentive for them to release the thing under a license tailored for getting contributions.

Make no mistake, I like OSI and I would prefer it as OSI, but there's no free lunch on OSI (to tell you the true, it's easier to get "free lunch" from ARR), and they need to consider things that we don't. I think it would be still a winning move, but they don't need do it all the moves at once: they can go OSI later.

Besides less than optimal, a Shared Source approach will still allow us to deep dive in the code and, with such knowledge, will allow us to write better add'ons, fixes and mitigations. There're code on KSP that already allows a lot of external interventions, as the Upgrade Pipeline and the Monkey Patching - we learn how to use them, and suddenly a lot of potential troublemaking and shady practices are not needed anymore.

Having Legal, Forum and EULA 100% compliant access to the source code will be a huge benefit to anyone willing to contribute to KSP and still be on the right side of the pertinent legislation for a reason or another.

(and yeah, I ended up writing most of my argument in advance! )

This is a win-win scenario!

PD gets free support on a game that lots of people are still buying and we get a more stable KSP!

[Gargamel]

7 hours ago, AtomicTech said:

PD gets free support on a game that lots of people are still buying

And that’s why it won’t happen in the near future.   People are still buying the game and the DLC’s.     As soon as they release the code or make it legal to work on, those sales drop to zero.    When it costs more for them to keep selling it than they make, then maybe they would consider it.    But not before.   This is a billion dollar company we’re talking about, in general they have no interest in what the community wants if they can’t make money from it.   

[Davidian1024]

There's this: OpenSpaceProgram

[darthgently]

2 minutes ago, Davidian1024 said:

There's this: OpenSpaceProgram

Last update 2019

[Davidian1024]

4 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Last update 2019

I see updates from last month.

[Lisias]

14 hours ago, Gargamel said:

And that’s why it won’t happen in the near future.   People are still buying the game and the DLC’s.     As soon as they release the code or make it legal to work on, those sales drop to zero.    When it costs more for them to keep selling it than they make, then maybe they would consider it.    But not before.   This is a billion dollar company we’re talking about, in general they have no interest in what the community wants if they can’t make money from it.   

Non Sequitur. There's no causality between opening the source and flattening the sales.

See Space Engineers, for an example,  usually have THREE TIMES more users online that both KSPs combined:

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/244850,220200,954850

And they had published the source in the past, when the game was still "young".

Links for the (pretty old) sources: https://github.com/KeenSoftwareHouse

Link for a discussion about the reason they choose to reduce the source's audience: https://blog.marekrosa.org/2017/08/statement-on-space-engineers-github.html .

Open Source can help, but also can hinder, depending on the stage of the development. Our opinion is that at this stage, KSP(1) has nothing to loose on opening the source, as it's already had run its course, are living more on less on life support (I doubt there's someone left for fixing any of the numerous remaining bug on KSP(1)) and there're still some traction for users wanting to have it fixed.

P.D. would not be waving the Intelectual Property, people will not be allowed to sell KSP's derivatives - the characters, the histories, the missions, the graphics, all of that will be still under Copyright protection. No one is going to do with the source more than it's already possible using shady practices already being used by people that don't mind the EULA and the Forum Guidelines.

I agree that just opening the Source is not a panacea for all evils, and there're risks involved, but success cases in the wild prove that there's no way to affirm that opening the source will be the Doom™  for the franchise. It may be exactly the opposite, it has good chances on extending the franchise life by improving the KSP(1) sells, helping funding KSP2.

Not to mention people on Consoles still complaining about the bugs and lack of updates. We manage to openly diagnose and mitigate such bugs, we make it feasible to bring back life to Consoles later, what will at very best be a nice P/R stunt.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Lisias
Entertaining grammars made less entertaining.

[AtomicTech]

11 hours ago, Lisias said:

Open Source can help, but also can hinder, depending on the stage of the development. Our opinion is that at this stage, KSP(1) has nothing to loose on opening the source, as it's already had run its course, are living more on less on life support (I doubt there's someone left for fixing any of the numerous remaining bug on KSP(1)) and there're still some traction for users wanting to have it fixed.

13 hours ago, Gargamel said:

And that’s why it won’t happen in the near future.   People are still buying the game and the DLC’s.     As soon as they release the code or make it legal to work on, those sales drop to zero.

That's what we're trying to get at; we want to help PD continue to make money off of KSP by continuing the development with their oversight so that they can focus on making KSP 2 awesome. 

Right now, the best way to keep the franchise alive is making sure that KSP is still purchased so that whenever KSP 2 gets much better, people will go and purchase KSP 2. Now T2 and PD have made twice the money with half off the effort. That's got to be good business, no?

[Bej Kerman]

13 hours ago, Lisias said:

Non Sequitur. There's no causality between opening the source and flattening the sales.

See Space Engineers, for an example,  usually have THREE TIMES more users online that both KSPs combined:

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/244850,220200,954850

And they had published the source in the past, when the game was still "young".

Links for the (pretty old) sources: https://github.com/KeenSoftwareHouse

Link for a discussion about the reason they choose to reduce the source's audience: https://blog.marekrosa.org/2017/08/statement-on-space-engineers-github.html .

Open Source can help, but also can hinder, depending on the stage of the development. Our opinion is that at this stage, KSP(1) has nothing to loose on opening the source, as it's already had run its course, are living more on less on life support (I doubt there's someone left for fixing any of the numerous remaining bug on KSP(1)) and there're still some traction for users wanting to have it fixed.

P.D. would not be waving the Intelectual Property, people will not be allowed to sell KSP's derivatives - the characters, the histories, the missions, the graphics, all of that will be still under Copyright protection. No one is going to do with the source more than it's already possible using shady practices already being used by people that don't mind the EULA and the Forum Guidelines.

I agree that just opening the Source is not a panacea for all evils, and there're risks involved, but success cases in the wild prove that there's no way to affirm that opening the source will be the Doom™  for the franchise. It may be exactly the opposite, it has good chances on extending the franchise life by improving the KSP(1) sells, helping funding KSP2.

Not to mention people on Consoles still complaining about the bugs and lack of updates. We manage to openly diagnose and mitigate such bugs, we make it feasible to bring back life to Consoles later, what will at very best be a nice P/R stunt.

SpaceEngine's source is outdated by nearly a decade nor does it contain assets. It's not going to harm sales for up-to-date versions of the game you need to even make use of the source. It is not a non-sequitur.

[Lisias]

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

SpaceEngine's source is outdated by nearly a decade.

It was up to date at the time of the release, in May 2015. And, look,  about 6 months later they had one of their best scores! 

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/244850,220200,954850#All

Really doesn't look they flattened the sells to me - au contraire, looks at it helped, and helped at lot!!

 

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

It's not going to harm sales for up-to-date versions of the game you need to even make use of the source.

I'm not sure I could understand this statement. the way I could translated it to PT-BR is something like "Não vai prejudicar as vendas de versões atualizadas do jogo, você precisa até mesmo fazer uso do fonte.", but it sounds like two disconnected phases loosely tied together.

I will tackle the part I understood, "make use of the source":

• There's already shady ways to make such use, but they are not EULA and Forum Guidelines compliant.
  • We want to do things on the clear
• There's many ways to make use of the source:
  • reading it so we understand exactly how things work inside KSP so we can better and safer write our own code, is one of them.
  • being able to spot and confirm the bugs without spending weeks on blindly doing black box tests is another.
  • knowing the internal KSP's mechanisms to update and patch things so we can code mitigation measures to effectively fix KSP in the user's machines without relying on yet more shady practices is yet another one.
  • None of this involve any kind of "competition" to the franchise, we are not proposing publishing derivatives,
    • There's no way to do such without the assets, and the assets are not needed and are not wanted on this bargain.
    • And we already have them, anyway. Anyone can have access to them by buying the game.

 

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

nor does it contain assets

And we are not asking for it. We, paying and EULA abiding customers,  already have them installed on our machines and we don't need any special right to republish them: Steam, GOG, EPIC, Humble, PD thenselves, they are already distributing such assets - there's no need for us doing it.

We are not asking to make the game free as in beer. We are asking to have access to the source code so we can be able to do a better work here, and we are proposing that such work will have a positive impact on the franchise - it surely did for Space Engineers.

 

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

It is not a non-sequitur.

Non Sequitur: In philosophy, a formal fallacy, deductive fallacy, logical fallacy or non sequitur[1] (/ˌnɒn ˈsɛkwɪtər/; Latin for "[it] does not follow") is a pattern of reasoning rendered invalid by a flaw in its logical structure that can neatly be expressed in a standard logic system, for example propositional logic. Source.

It was stated that "As soon as they release the code or make it legal to work on, those sales drop to zero", and I had proved without the slightest doubt that releasing the source code does not have the flattening of the sales as consequence. Ergo, that affirmation was a non sequitur.

Publishing buggy games, on the other hand, is a known and proven way to seriously hinder the sales - do I need to pinpoint evidences of such?

 

Edited May 23, 2023 by Lisias
chart fixed

[Bej Kerman]

2 hours ago, Lisias said:

Really doesn't look they flattened the sells to me - au contraire, looks at it helped, and helped at lot!!

Correlation =/= causation and the sales jumped several months after the source dropped.

2 hours ago, Lisias said:

I'm not sure I could understand this statement.

You need to purchase a build of the game for the assets anyway.

[Reusables]

On 5/22/2023 at 11:58 PM, Lisias said:

I'm TweakScale's maintainer for almost 5 years by now, and I'm still here giving support to its users - not only on TweakScale (to tell you the true, most of the support "tickets" are about 3rd parties!).

Believe me, I'm like a dog with a bone!

But this bone is too big for a single hound!

Oh, sounds great! I will participate in the movement whenever I got time.

(Btw I recommend not engaging with those who argue for the sake of argument)

[Lisias]

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Correlation =/= causation and the sales jumped several months after the source dropped.

EXACTLY. Opening the Source Code does not cause impact on the sales.

I'm glad we finally had reached an agreeement on the subject! 

My argument stands: since opening the Source Code makes easier to write better addons and to mitigate bugs, and since it's well proven that better addons and fewer bugs improve sales, the logical conclusion is that opening the Source is a winning move!

Thank you for your contributions.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Lisias
Entertaining grammars made less entertaining.

[Bej Kerman]

48 minutes ago, Lisias said:

3 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Correlation =/= causation and the sales jumped several months after the source dropped.

EXACTLY. Opening the Source Code does not cause impact on the sales.

It didn't help the sales at all, contrary to what you posited.

49 minutes ago, Lisias said:

I'm glad we finally had reached an agreeement on the subject! 

Don't get excited just yet.

49 minutes ago, Lisias said:

My argument stands: since opening the Source Code makes easier to write better addons and to mitigate bugs, and since it's well proven that better addons and fewer bugs improve sales, the logical conclusion is that opening the Source is a winning move!

To reiterate yet again, T2 will not want to effectively self-leak its own assets, regardless of what the community thinks. Keen is the exception, not the rule.

[Lisias]

13 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

It didn't help the sales at all, contrary to what you posited.

I never said it would help the sales. I said it would help us to find and mitigate bugs, as well write better add'ons - that, so, will help to improve the sales.

I hope I don't have to prove to you how better addons and fixed bugs improve the sales of a game...

 

13 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

To reiterate yet again, T2 will not want to effectively self-leak its own assets, regardless of what the community thinks. Keen is the exception, not the rule.

Point taken. We are advocating for an exception so.  

Edited May 24, 2023 by Lisias
damn grammars.

[Bej Kerman]

3 hours ago, Lisias said:

I never said it would help the sales.

Au contraire!

19 hours ago, Lisias said:

looks at it helped, and helped at lot

___

3 hours ago, Lisias said:

14 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

To reiterate yet again, T2 will not want to effectively self-leak its own assets, regardless of what the community thinks. Keen is the exception, not the rule.

Point taken. We are advocating for an exception so.  

I fail to see any incentive for T2 to be said exception.

[dskzz]

[snip]  There's a finite universe of people who can actually compile from source and I'd bet that most of them are the exact sort of people who would love to contribute/pay/support KSP in the first place.    Therefore that is not a vector for revenue loss.

Reuse of assets can probably be accomplished without source code, right?   Images and textures for example are often packed into an executable file.  As for like the 3d animations, well, honestly its not like Jeb or random rocket parts are that hard to string up and animate.   And you dont need to include those in the Git repo anyways; Space Engineers specifically doesnt.

So then there are only 2 arguments against opening the source - someone rebuilding the thing wholesale with their own assets or someone using proprietary algorithms in their game.   Assume someone made a knockoff using source and their own assets, like with Smerbils or something.  Yeah thats a cease and desist all day.   IF they could get Vanilla Ice on Our House, yeah doubt Smerbil Space Program would stand up in court.    And would that even make money, with the original thing and the anticipated version 2 upcoming?  Doubtful.     

OTOH if the game isn't close enough to KSP to cease and desist, then it really wouldn't impact the sales of KSP then would it?   

As for argument 2, proprietary algoriths...apart from maybe the physics engine there's probably nothing especially proprietary in there anyway.   I mean its running Unity, not some custom blazing fast 3d rendering pipeline that yeah you woulnt want to put out there.   Doubt anything is proprietary enough to outweigh the benefits of keeping KSP 1 rolling, commercially viable and still supported by new hardware/platforms.  At least while we all wait for 2 to be feature complete.

Sure over time revenue drops but there are always an opportunity to expand your market share so long as you do continuous dev - look at Paradox's multi year flagships, EU4 what a decade old still maintained?  So yeah keeping KSP up to date with new stuff, Win 11 in particular - with community supporty (and dont tell me  approving checkins would be an issue, hell let the top 5 modders run the verification) = continuous revenue stream.

I think the whole concept of closed source gaming esp on platforms like Unity is a boogaloo inherited from the days when yeah most pc gamers could have built their games from the source code - simpler games and more sophisticated userbase - and smaller games, and distribution was more difficult - Gamestop vs Steam.   And maybe the idea that FOSS is not commercially viable (wrong, OK no one is going to make money selling gnu tools but grep is hardly KSP!) leads people to conclude that opening their source code up would then kill commercial viability . 

Bottom line: the new universe of PC gaming has made the obsession with locking your code in a vault where it would never again see the light of day totally asinine.    Its Napster level disruption.

And frankly, if there was a game, game company, and userbase that was perfectly positioned to blaze a new trail forward on controlled--open source commercial gaming, it is  KSP, the amazing modding community, and its loyal band of Jebstranauts 

[zer0Kerbal]

I support the release of KSP's source.

Do not include the non-code assets (textures, models, et al (IP property) and only available for those who purchase the game, and the DLC's.

Release not the latest version of KSP (1.12.5) but perhaps version 1.11 or 1.8.1 or 1.3.1 - under the Unity version. Not much code changes between versions so enough code would be visible to encourage the community to push real fixes for fundamental problems (like the re-root bug that seemingly is plaguing some of my addons). These fixes could be evaluated and be released upstream as a new version of KSP, and even help KSP2, which would help the game we so love, and the sales.

I believe that even a release of KSP 1.3.1 would yield immediate and massive positive payback to KSP which would be reflected in sales, steam charts, and crystal balls.

 

[Lisias]

10 hours ago, dskzz said:

[snip]  There's a finite universe of people who can actually compile from source and I'd bet that most of them are the exact sort of people who would love to contribute/pay/support KSP in the first place.    Therefore that is not a vector for revenue loss. 

No doubt! What I'm proposed is a way to allow us, authors, to read the Source in an EULA e Forum Guidelines friendly way, so way more of us would be willing to look for the infinite amount of bugs and code mitigations as add'ons.

Such knowledge can be later use by PD to publish a DLC on the consoles, using the already existent patching facilites inside KSP, as the Upgrade Pipeline to salvage existing savegames and craftfiles, and the MonkeyPatching (yeah, there's such a thing inside KSP!!) to apply code fixes where a external mitigating measure is not feasible.

The whole proposal, since the beginning, is exactly what I wrote in my previous paragraph: an EULA and Forum Guidelines friendly way to access the KSP (1)'s Source code, all the rest are what we expect them to gain once the Source would be available.

Unless, of course, it's know that P.D. is still working on KSP(1), with a small but capable team of developers actively working on such bug fixing. That would, indeed, make our proposal useless.

Not to mention that merely compiling the Source is meaningless by itself, because unless the code is made OSI, the resulting binary would still be TTI's Intelectual Property and publishing it would be piracy exactly the same way is piracy to redistribute the game assets, as missions, meshes, models, et all.

The compiled binary is essentially useless without assets, and these are not going to be part of the bargain - we don't need them, we already have them as we had bought the game and have them installed on our legally acquired copies in our machines.

 

3 hours ago, zer0Kerbal said:

Release not the latest version of KSP (1.12.5) but perhaps version 1.11 or 1.8.1 or 1.3.1 - under the Unity version. Not much code changes between versions so enough code would be visible to encourage the community to push real fixes for fundamental problems (like the re-root bug that seemingly is plaguing some of my addons).

I won't deny that even 1.3.1 source code would be of immense value, but my experience on KSP-Recall tells me that we really need at least the last release of each minor interation (i.e. 1.3.1, 1.4.5, 1.5.1, 1.6.1, 1.7.3, 1.8.1, 1.9.1, 1.10.1, 1.11.2 & 1.12.5). Every new minor release broke things  (being 1.4.0 and 1.8.0 really really disruptive releases) and fixing these bugs are (most of the time) much easier when we have a previous release when the feature was working. It's one of the reasons I'm so adamant (on my add'ons) on supporting things down to the oldest KSP release possible: doing black box testings with the same code over different releases helped me to diagnose problems innumerous times. I diagnosed the Strut bug introduced on 1.2.2 this way!

 

3 hours ago, zer0Kerbal said:

These fixes could be evaluated and be released upstream as a new version of KSP, and even help KSP2, which would help the game we so love, and the sales.

This is were things can get interesting! No new releases are really needed!

KSP also have internal mechanisms that can be used to patch and upgrade itself without breaking existing crafts and savegames: they are the Upgrade Pipeline and the MonkeyPatching. These are very powerful tools, already implemented on KSP, that can be explored by a new DLC where the fixes would be applied at startup, making unnecessary the release of new versions - both on Desktop and Consoles (assuming they have DLCs on Consoles, of course, as I really don't know).

This may save some money on the process, as it's my understanding that publishing a DLC is cheaper than a full game release.

Make the new DLC free to anyone that bought KSP, and you are set.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Lisias
better formatting and Entertaining grammars made less entertaining.

[pss88]

It would be possible with Squad. It will never happen with TakeTwo.