Please, give the community KSP1's source code

[Lisias]

5 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

I love the opening line... Lead security engineer at bungee is not sure if the accused ever had access to the decompiled source code and indeed.. has not evaluated the 3rd party addon source code ... 

This is called probable cause. It's how the Justice justifies investigating someone when there's no proof the investigated had committed the crime.

Since this is a Civil Case matter, there's no Prosecutor deciding to file or not a criminal process, but yet probable cause is considered  by the Court while deciding to dismiss or not the lawsuit.

What the Bungie engineer said was essentially "I heard a gun firing, but I didn't saw the gun".

It's up to the trial to decide if the violation really happened. What Bungie managed to accomplish.

 

5 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Hell lets charge for all those amazing mods that people developed for free...

This is exactly what I think it is going to be attempted.

Why investing your time into something that is not Open Source? When you go OSI, you are contributing back to something you are also using.

Edited May 28 by Lisias
Missing bit on the argument

[Fizzlebop Smith]

7 hours ago, Lisias said:

Why investing your time into something that is not Open Source? When you go OSI, you are contributing back to something you are also using.

Often it's passion. Pure and simple.. and a love for a particular IP. People invest their time to make these titles better & curate a more personalized playstyle.

While there are a few opem source large scale projects out there, it is difficult to generate / organize the level of interest & time commitments required to complete something like that. 

It is true that sometimes they companies will release the code, but I'm not educated enough to know of many (games) that started open source from the get go.

Orbiter & Nethack? I'm sure there are others.

I have no experience directly jn the field to relate, but various other projects I have coordinated.. there would have to be an incredible amount of passion.

Perhaps crowd sourcing initial equipment  Costs with some plan to manage future costs....

Oops. Tangent.

I feel it boils down to mainly love of the title, and a solid community. The games that I truly LOVE all own their continued decade long success to the modding community.

Primarily Minecraft, Morrowind, Fallout, KSP, Never Winter Nights.. oh so many more.

 

In my humble opinion... these titles (and many others) owe their overwhelming success & ability to combat the test of time solely due tp the prolific nature of modded content.

This ability to intimately personalize a playthrough / playstyle to the individual lends a personalized connection to the title that is absent in games that due not support the modding community

Bethesda learned what happens when you attempt to monetize the free labor of your *beloved* community.. and it ends up hurting the numbers elsewhere.

I am sure some guru has a formulae somewhere about how much you can screw over your fanbase and still have positive gains from doing so.. they just have to tweak it a little more.

 

[Lisias]

On 5/28/2024 at 11:29 AM, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Often it's passion. Pure and simple.. and a love for a particular IP. People invest their time to make these titles better & curate a more personalized playstyle.

But why doing it "for free"? On OSI, you are contributing back to a pool of resources that you are also using, it's a constructive, self-sustainable feedback.

When you do it for non OSI projects, you are essentially working "for free" to someone, without any guarantee about still having access to the thing later, when the owner of the thing decides to go closed source and sell the access.

It's good to work on passion, but it's not good to be exploited using it to be induced to work for free.

 

On 5/28/2024 at 11:29 AM, Fizzlebop Smith said:

I feel it boils down to mainly love of the title, and a solid community. The games that I truly LOVE all own their continued decade long success to the modding community.

Primarily Minecraft, Morrowind, Fallout, KSP, Never Winter Nights.. oh so many more.

These as the good examples, but there're the bad ones too.

Falcon 3.0 is one of the bads. The whole ecosystem was hijacked, with all the mods disappearing and being incorporated in closed sourced competitors on the niche. We have one survivor nowadays, making some serious money - besides all that long forgotten open source projects probably are not there anymore after so many years of improvements, in theory they own their existence to that huge amount of contributors that failed to secure the rights to perpetuate their work as they intended.

As I said, one thing is to passionately contribute to a project you love. Other, completely different, is allowing this passion to be used to do free work so someone else can make money - in truth, I think that there're some countries around that even criminalize this practice...

 

On 5/28/2024 at 11:29 AM, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Bethesda learned what happens when you attempt to monetize the free labor of your *beloved* community.. and it ends up hurting the numbers elsewhere.

This is the point I wanted to reach! You can royally screw the Community and the IP by trying such a stunt - but you can , also, startup a new one (smaller, but still profitable for a few ones) using the remains.

It was what was made from Falcon 3.0. Do you think that Spectrum Holobyte (or whoever would still have the IP for Falcon 3.0 nowadays) is getting any revenue from the product that managed to survive the Falcon 3.0 community crash?

This is the reason I think it's also the current IP owner best interest to publish (under an OSI license that better fits them) the KSP¹ Source Code - to guarantee that they can also earn something back from any derivative project, instead of just having their remains used to kick start another commercial product without getting anything back in the process.

The effort now is to prevent the Community from being dismantled in order to have its remains kicking start some "hostile" kickoff.

Believe me, there's a chance this is already happening.

Edited June 1 by Lisias
Typos, tyops, tyops everywhere!!!

[Fizzlebop Smith]

@Lisias

Though I believe your intention was to elaborate on the futility of doing so and so may have been somewhat rhetorical in nature, but i still think passion for the product is the reason.

I would like to see major mod developer movement to where those who want to embrace mod culture do so with a EULA or OSI product license that bestows some limited rights onto those persons.

I do think there is a difference between people that make Aim bots. These individuals were probably not be led by passion, but pride.. it is still emotionally decided. 

Logic does govern those seeking to build a following for ad revenue.. or the true sin selling 3rd party add ons to copyrighted works. Sin from perspective of IP owner. 

Basically NONE shall profit from what I own.

My answer still stands as passion and love for the particular IP.  I am on mobile ATM and lack the requisite skillet to artfully select pieces of the comment but as to the "But why doing it for free"? " 

I think, at least for the games i have experience playing, that people have fallen in love with rich lore & quirky characters & let that cocktail of feelings lends a particularly optimistic view of potential ramifications.

As for the free, many labors of love are done so without a need to see financial returns. There are not many analogies I can think of off hand.. community service seems a poor  comparison but it is still a sacrifice of owns one time for the benefit of the community.. which can lead to reasons all their own. 

As an Afterthought

Perhaps years of spare time of free development will lead to being hired by your dream (harsh reality not withstanding) employer... but my primary answer will be *love* in some form of the emotion.

Which will easily explain away any and all attempts you use to inject logic into that consideration.

:}

 

 

 

Edited May 28 by Fizzlebop Smith

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

My answer still stands as passion and love for the particular IP.  I am on mobile ATM and lack the requisite skillet to artfully select pieces of the comment but as to the "But why doing it for free"? "

Language barrier.

There's "free as in free beer" (or "free as in free lunch"), and "free as in free speech":

• I don't mind giving a free beer now and then for a friend;
• I don't think it's right to give free lunches for people that will sell them for profit;
• and I fiercely defend free speech.

When OSI developers do Open Source, they are doing "free as free speech". There's no free lunch, but we can have a Stone Soup.

Using KSP¹ as a concrete example: yes, I had to buy KSP¹ to have access to the IP. So, in theory, by working on OSI here I'm also giving them some free beer. However, a lot of people around also did a lot of Open Source work here, that I also use - and use a lot. So, besides giving Squad some free beer, I'm also getting from the fellow add'on authors a lot of code too so I can toy with the thing myself, and it worths the free beer I gave.

So, of course Squad had benefited too, but hell, these guys also had provided us with 10 years of updates without further charges, so they are giving back to the Community too, perhaps not on a "free speech" but on a "Stone Soup" style.

Now, KSP¹ development was ceased for some years already, and we have adversarial actors treating to screw up the KSP¹ Modding Scene as a mean to solve their own problems disregarding the consequences to us (at best). The virtuous cycle that was keeping KSP¹ alive and kicking is at risk.

What we shall do now?

Opening the KSP¹ Source Code under a adquate OSI license (and only the Source Code, nobody is asking for "free IP" - just a necessary disclaimer for the casual reader) is my answer to the problem.

Keep doing "free beer" will, now, feed the actors that are threatening us.

 

Edited May 28 by Lisias
I finally write a post without tyops, and then I err a pronoun!

[Fizzlebop Smith]

Didn't you write a few mods for KSP1?

Since there is a language barrier I'm curious as to the reason. Why did you do so when the game did not employ the referenced  methodology and was therefore "done for free"

If these are just maintained by yourself perhaps that is something all together different.

Perhaps the first mod is the free beer?

Perhaps then, the answer lies within that ultimate non sequitor: "They want(ed) to"

 

Edited May 29 by Fizzlebop Smith

[Lisias]

2 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Didn't you write a few mods for KSP1?

Since there is a language barrier I'm curious as to the reason. Why did you do so when the game did not employ the referenced  methodology and was therefore "done for free"

Yep. By exactly the reasons I explained above already.

 

2 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

If these are just maintained by yourself perhaps that is something all together different.

Some I'm maintaining, others I'm effectively developing - most at this time were significantly rewritten.

 

2 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Perhaps the first mod is the free beer?

Ah, that's the deal: KSP¹ from the very beginning was welcoming to modders. And it was appealing too, it was an indie game, developed by some people cutting their teeth in the industry and learning while doing it.

You know, everybody love the underdog.

 

2 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Perhaps then, the answer lies within that ultimate non sequitor: "They want(ed) to"

Of course they wanted to. But here is the catch: when a scammer scams a victim, the victim at that time was willing to engage on the scam too! (dramatic example)

There are bad people in the World, some make a living on Software. The World would be a better place if naive people could stop helping bad people, and using their efforts for the common good instead for the good of few.

We don't write laws (and licenses) for the good men - they don't needed it. We write them due the unethical people.

--- -- - POST EDIT - -- ---

I forgot something pretty imporant! The original dev team, the one that developed the game up to KSP 1.1.3, had the policy to ask the add'ons published on Forum to be licensed under an OSI license.

This surely lured open source devs to KSP, you can be absolutely sure about it!

Edited May 29 by Lisias
Yeah, tyops...

[Fizzlebop Smith]

Sony, Nintendo and Blizzard all sue the crap put of everyone they *want*.

Regardless of merit of individual cases. The online culture promoted among these groups is often toxic. Of course these people generating money by destributing aim bots and other cheats to the public got in trouble. Whether it was direct points of sale or ad based revenue... they "profited" off of making derivate works from a protected product.

It matters little that many contribute to a kSP1 mod with OSI distribution/ use rights when the body of end result is for use with a well protected piece of property. If someone from Take2 got a giant hard on you may be covered under some statutes of limitation..

You did eventually answer the question though.. the developers were "welcoming". I am glad that welcoming developers mitigates some of the risk to potential copyright suits in the future.

so the meat of the answer is trust not in the owner of the IP.

What makes people develope third party software (aka derivate works) from protected bodies of code... or even risk potential fallout even though a mod may not require binary source to be decompiler. 

Frontloaders injecting things still modify the client end of a protected work..

So trust is the answer as to "why someone may engage in this activity" despite current trends & the traditionally overly litigious corporate worlds.

Trusting those that currently hold power over the IP to be trustworthy and accountable. Since mere passion for a product is obviously not enough of reason (when tranlated) for some to make *potentially* poor decisions regarding their own futures.

As these lawsuits in create more attention, that internal diaologue may start to go over various cost / gain subroutines when deciding to write a mod.. but probably not. Instead they see a game they love and want to make it better

Edited May 29 by Fizzlebop Smith

[Lisias]

On 5/29/2024 at 8:27 AM, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Sony, Nintendo and Blizzard all sue the crap put of everyone they *want*.

Regardless of merit of individual cases. The online culture promoted among these groups is often toxic. Of course these people generating money by destributing aim bots and other cheats to the public got in trouble. Whether it was direct points of sale or ad based revenue... they "profited" off of making derivate works from a protected product.

Only if it's profitable. They are on the game (pun not intended) for the money.

No one managed to win a lawsuit against OSI unless the project had broken the rules.

The novelty is that, this time, they managed to change the rules. This is serious as it can get - kiss GIT bye bye if this ruling were in effect in 2005

https://lwn.net/Articles/130746/

https://lwn.net/Articles/975099/

TL;DR: BitKeeper considered trying their luck on suing a Linux Kernel developer for "reverse engineering" their CMS protocol - when all the dude did was to send a request to their services with the "help" command, what they responded without the need of authentication.

 

On 5/29/2024 at 8:27 AM, Fizzlebop Smith said:

You did eventually answer the question though.. the developers were "welcoming". I am glad that welcoming developers mitigates some of the risk to potential copyright suits in the future

You missed the point. Open Source developers are usually not easy to lure by words, they want actions as proof. And the Development Team responded with actions:

Quote

5. Source code

All plugins that are made available on the services maintained by Squad that serve the KSP Community must have their source code be made publicly available. This can be achieved by posting it on a public code repository and linking this repository in every location you offer the plugin for download. Including the source code in the download file itself instead of hosting it on a public code repository also satisfies this requirement.

<...>

9. Legal boundaries

You may not decompile, modify or distribute any of the .dll files or other files KSP comes with beyond content of the GameData folder. Follow the EULA. For assemblies, you may only use exposed public or protected members of classes, and you may not examine the code within any member.

Source https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/add-on-posting-rules

Do you see the clause 9? They solved it formally publishing the api: https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/ksp/api/index.html

THIS is the reason it's 100% legal to mod KSP under OSI, because we don't need to do "decompiling" (what's against the EULA) to mod it. You can do clean room tests using the published API, and this is guaranteed to be 100% legal.

 

On 5/29/2024 at 8:27 AM, Fizzlebop Smith said:

so the meat of the answer is trust not in the owner of the IP.

<...>

Companies can't the trusted. People there come and go, and any deal you have with someone there dies with them.

Get everything written and public, otherwise your SAS in on the line.

 

On 5/29/2024 at 8:27 AM, Fizzlebop Smith said:

As these lawsuits in create more attention, that internal diaologue may start to go over various cost / gain subroutines when deciding to write a mod.. but probably not. Instead they see a game they love and want to make it better

Not if people start to get sued by doing this. You see, we are talking about a Nintendo level of dangerousness.

And if Steam closes the Workshop talking about legal issues, you can bet your mouse this is going to cause a commotion.

CurseForge, Nexus Games, you name it. As these guys start to get the heat, things will change - not necessarily for the better.

This is not about a kid publishing things under a nickname anymore - we are talking about not existing a place to publish these things other than bittorrent.

 

Edited May 30 by Lisias
Entertaining grammars made slightely less entertaining...

[Fizzlebop Smith]

@Lisias

Thank you for taking the time for honestly engaging with me.

I was genuinely wondering as to what THAT deciding factor might be.. in regard to the originally posed "but, why?"

I do apologize for the abrasive tone. I should have not let unrelated elements of life in general harm my ability to genuinely engage  with long standing members of the community.

But I am sorry for coming across as an ass. 

I think Trust is really the greatest contributing factor to those games I've been fortunate enough to play. I only returned to gaming in the last 2 years.

So my old school and newer gaming experience all center around titles that have wonderful, healthy and robust modding communities. Not all may be alive and current but even the Simcity 4k circles I follow are mostly really cool people wanting to make a game they absolutely love.. just a little better...

AND they have established trust with those in (or were in) a development position. That these individuals would protect the community interest against other entities etc.

Trust seems to have been the resource most lacking on KSP2 developement.. well maybe next to qualified engineers.

I am greatful to have grown up in the golden era of gaming. No doubt advancements in hardware, software and even wetware will produce some mind melting products in the future.. but that creative gestalt that motivated a generation seems to be a dwindling commodity these days.

Like many other novelties.. another victim of a world largely motivated by self interest and profit.

I do agree that there is a paradigm shift and Nintendo is one I think of most frequently. Those motivations and deciding factors may lead to a future with less modded content (or better software agreements for community) but I still thing what that motivation is will remain the same..

It's Trust. It should have been obvious.

Hopefully changes, Non Compete laws will set the stage for a Renaissance.. quality and community engagement are hallmarks of the small teams I've followed.

Have a good day and thanks

Edited May 30 by Fizzlebop Smith

[Mitokandria]

18 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

@Lisias

[snip]

Hopefully changes, Non Compete laws will set the stage for a Renaissance.. quality and community engagement are hallmarks of the small teams I've followed.

[snip]

From your lips to Celestia's ears.

[RUD Everyday]

On 5/8/2023 at 9:33 AM, WhatALovelyNick said:

Yes but it will harm their reputation. A lot.

I mean, look at KSP2, it has 355 online players in Steam. I mean, currently. Meanwhile KSP1 has almost 2k. Now. Online. Only in Steam.

PD is... in a bad shape. The update releasing is slowing down. I'm not a very pessimistic guy, but there is a possibility, that we will never see The Second part in full.

If we could get access to the SC -- we must try it. It will be better for the community. After all -- we love this game and we care for it.

He was right

[Lisias]

Hey, we just broke the 8 bits barrier!! Let the 16 bits era begin!!!

[Lonelykermit]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Hey, we just broke the 8 bits barrier!! Let the 16 bits era begin!!!

Wait what where is this poll!

(Wait nvm I'm dumb... it's this thread smh...)

Edited August 8 by Lonelykermit

[Chandra Aerospace]

Here's my vote to throw in the mix, if it makes a difference.

Open source may be unprofitable at times, there may be schisms and so on,  but it will sure ensure that the game is immortalized and that no one person can send it to the bottom of the harbor which sometimes does sadly happen with even the best games under corporate control. 

If we cannot trust a corporation like T2 to keep communication clear to and keep the game going soundly, then we ought to take it into our own hands. KSP is not an asset to be bought and sold like merchandise, it has a soul.

Edited August 26 by Chandra Aerospace

[Royale37]

On 8/26/2024 at 8:43 AM, Chandra Aerospace said:

KSP is not an asset to be bought and sold like merchandise, it has a soul.

I 100% agree with this, couldn't have said it better. I haven't been with KSP since the beginning, but the game and community are truly special. If it dies I will be very sad.