Please, give the community KSP1's source code

[Lisias]

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Can't you already bask in its legacy just by playing it (ideally with at least 150 mods)?

Obviously, nope. There'a a myriad of problems that need access to the Source Code to be understood and fixed/worked around.

 

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

It's not that simple...

I know. Otherwise, we would not have to campaign for.

 

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Take Two is doing its best to forget KSP ever happened

The ones that allowed that huge borkage to happen? For sure. But people came and go on Companies - all the time.

Sooner or later (and probably sooner, due he way the market is behaving) someone that it's working against this idea will be replaced by someone that may consider it if this would be the way to get something back from that money invested.

You see, "someone" published yet another update for Doom and, guess what... it's selling.

 

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

and your best bet if you really want to respect KSP 1's legacy is to just follow what Harvester is doing (I.E. Kitbash, the Rocketwerkz space game) instead of hoping that Take Two

I don't bet with my lifespan. Life is short, and this Industry had already demonstrated that betting on the future is a loser's game.

Kitbash it's something fun to play with your friends while creating little toys and putting them to fight each other. There's surely an audience for it, but I'm not part of it.

If you are interesting on creating contraptions and then see if they fly (sometimes into space) against the odds of the rule of the physics (or at least an interesting approximation), even Juno is a better choice for me now - so much that I had bought it.

But Juno is not a KSP replacement, it's - at best - complementary and IMHO their best chances now is to somehow integrate KSP¹ assets on their game play for people that own both. Their engine is pretty solid, I would really enjoy trying my Kerbals on a stable game engine like theirs.

On the other hand "Kitten Space Agency", right now, it's just a Moon flyby demo that I can't even run on my rig - and I like to run demos on real hardware, still have a Pentium MMX around that now and then I use to run things like this:

Spoiler

 

Why? Because this is what I used to watch them when younger. This is emotional attachment, simple like that.

Lots of people still have emotional attachments to KSP¹, you are not going to lure us just with shining new toys - as KSP2 demonstrated very well.

 

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

ran by greedy suits - notices a meagre forum poll and changes its mind after losing so much money to the same franchise.

There're greedy smart suits, and there're greedy suits. I'm trying to reach the smart ones.

There's money being left on the table. Of course it's a far cry from whatever they failed to get from KSP2, but still... Some pennies in the pockets everyday is better than impossible dreams about fortunes to be magically earnt in a distant future.

Whoever is calling the shots on TTWO have a huge uphill battle ahead - I don't envy their shoes right now. If they are really serious on "dumping" Private Division, they need to make it more palatable to whoever would be willing to buy it. Any kind of positive news about the Franchise will surely help and, as I had said ad nauseaum on this thread, the KSP¹ Source Code worths squat right now. The IP, and the emotional attachments it still have over a lot of people is where the real value lies on.

 

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

There's no use getting worked up over what cannot be changed, can't you look forward into the future and see there are new things happening to be excited about?

Put something running on my computer that makes me excited, and I may jump ship. Until there, I reserve the right to expend my scarce free time on whatever I have in hands right now.

This is something that some people don't grasp: I respect HarversteR by what he did, not by who he is (I don't even know the guy!). But I also respect Linus Torvalds, and I'm not hacking the Linux Kernel - unless if demanded by my job, what happened once.

What I really like is KSP¹, this freaking little game is where I enjoy spending my (again, scarce) free time on, and this is the source of my admiration for HarverteR: I like KSP¹ and so I admire HarversteR, and not vice versa. Otherwise I would be playing Kitbash, what I'm not.

Do you know a game that I was really looking ahead to play? MotorWings from Munch. Kraken damned "Pandemonium" that screwed my life to the point that I couldn't jump ship on that game while it was alive - that game had the potential to drag me (a bit) from KSP¹, and I still mourn its demise. Why? Because that type of game is something I enjoy to play, while Kitbash is not.

And this should be enough to any smart and greed suit to understand why there's still people willing to have access to the Source Code - because we still enjoy this little freaking game enough to invest some scarce free time to make it better, so we can better play it.

Like it happened with Doom, Quake and Tomb Raider - right now is the right time to plan ahead and work to be in a place where Doom, Quake and Tomb Raider are today. These things don't happen in a couple weeks, after all.

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. -- Carl Sandburg

(And everybody loves the underdog.)

Edited November 2 by Lisias
Tyops, as usulla...

[Bej Kerman]

7 hours ago, Lisias said:

Lots of people still have emotional attachments to KSP¹

Yes but this isn't healthy. There are scientific papers shorter than the amount of characters you've spent convincing people Take Two will pay attention, and running the forum equivalent of a change.org petition certainly won't grab T2's attention. They're a corporation that's currently entirely concerned with GTA VI, not a small company run by ex-indie devs who have the bandwidth to listen to fans, and maybe people still aren't used to it yet. Why can't you just be happy with what you've got?

7 hours ago, Lisias said:

But Juno is not a KSP replacement, it's - at best - complementary and IMHO their best chances now is to somehow integrate KSP¹ assets on their game play for people that own both.

That might  be possible but it's also a different game - JNO isn't a KSP replacement, it is its own game with its own identity, its own design philosophies, it's successful and has its own fandoms, and the devs probably don't want to lose the identity of their game, to have it melt into KSP 1 just so people can migrate from KSP 1 and  still hold onto it, just so people can have their cake and  eat it.

7 hours ago, Lisias said:

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. -- Carl Sandburg

I agree. You've not got infinite coins, and it would be a shame to waste them all letting the world pass you by, just so you don't have to let go of the hope anyone at T2 cares about KSP more than they care about their multibillion pound GTA franchise. Me personally, I'll come back to KSP 1 occasionally, loaded with tons of mods, while occasionally checking in on the development of KSA with healthy skepticism. It's better than spending forever here...

[Lisias]

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Yes but this isn't healthy.

YES IT IS. Emotional detachment is not healthy.

 

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

There are scientific papers shorter than the amount of characters you've spent

Please,  no rhetorics. These empty affirmations don't add value to the discussion, and reflect badly to the arguer on the long run.

 

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

They're a corporation that's currently entirely concerned with GTA VI, not a small company run by ex-indie devs who have the bandwidth to listen to fans, and maybe people still aren't used to it yet.

They are a Company losing Billions.

Frankly, they are doing something very wrong. Not listening to their bases is one of them.

Money talks.

Sooner or later someone will read this thread (if they didn't already). With a bit of luck, it will be someone trying to find solutions for the deep role they dug themselves. With yet a bit more luck, it will be someone that will progress in their career by finding these solutions.

And this is where things start to change.

Conformists like you are the reason problems pile up until the bitter end: from all the things you try, less than 25% fructify, but from the things you don't, it's a 0% flat.

 

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Why can't you just be happy with what you've got?

Why you are so interested on dictating how people should be happy?

We are not your puppies, by the way. It's not up to you to define how to make us happy or not!

 

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

That might  be possible but it's also a different game - JNO isn't a KSP replacement, it is its own game with its own identity, its own design philosophies, it's successful and has its own fandoms, and the devs probably don't want to lose the identity of their game, to have it melt into KSP 1 just so people can migrate from KSP 1 and  still hold onto it, just so people can have their cake and  eat it.

Yep. Juno is not a KSP replacement, but can be a hell of an Companion.

They don't need to compromise their game's identity - do you see KSP being compromised by RSS? By mods that change the Kerbals for Ponies? By adding vehicles from another franchises? (Hey, someone made a Speed Racer's Mach V for KSP?).

Had Metal Gear Peace Walker (PSP) lost its identity by adding bonus missions based on Monster Hunter? As a matter of fact, these missions became some of the best on the game!

You line of arguing just don't reflects reality, sorry.

 

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

I agree. You've not got infinite coins, and it would be a shame to waste them all letting the world pass you by, just so you don't have to let go of the hope anyone at T2 cares about KSP more than they care about their multibillion pound GTA franchise.

And, again, this is where you completely misses the point. (sigh)

There're two possibilities:

1. GTA VI is a success, and then everybody on the Company not directly involved with it will need to find something to do in order to keep their jobs
2. GTA VI is not a success, or not enough of a success, and then everybody on the Company (involved with it or not) will need to find something to do in order to keep their jobs

And we will be here when this happens.

Smart people will start to think about right now in order to have a resemblance of a plan for when it will be needed.

 

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Me personally, I'll come back to KSP 1 occasionally, loaded with tons of mods, while occasionally checking in on the development of KSA with healthy skepticism. It's better than spending forever here...

And people like me (and not necessarily me) will be the ones guaranteeing you will be able to run KSP¹ when the hype is finally over and the high profiles authors will be gone, some of them removing their add'ons from the Franchise to use them on the competition.

Don't fool yourself, bit rotting is a thing - try to run a 32 bits game on MacOS nowadays - you wont, Apple ditched completely support for it.

Windows is changing too, 11 is walking into another mass extinction if they keep things that way.

Securing the KSP¹ Source Code is the best interest of everybody that plans to keep playing KSP¹ LEGALLY in the future - that may be near than you think.

Edited November 2 by Lisias
Changing the chart

[Bej Kerman]

11 minutes ago, Lisias said:

YES IT IS

You've convinced me already

26 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Emotional detachment is not healthy.

Okay, what about the other end of the spectrum? Struggling to cope with change, loss, etc. You don't seem to understand that KSP is now owned by a massive corporation, not a small humble indie development studio. Take Two as a massive corporation does not have its priorities at pleasing fans or maintaining 13-year-old games. It is concerned with its franchises that make any significant return I.E. Grand Theft Auto, Civilization, NBA 2K, Red Dead Redemption... Whatever the KSP fandom accounts for in T2's spreadsheets, now that neither game is being maintained and the latter earned the franchise a bad rep, practically amounts to a rounding error.

24 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Conformists like you are the reason problems pile up until the bitter end: from all the things you try, less than 25% fructify

In this case, 0% because nobody at Take Two who makes decisions uses this forum.

13 minutes ago, Lisias said:

• GTA VI is a success, and then everybody on the Company not directly involved with it will need to find something to do in order to keep their jobs
• GTA VI is not a success, or not enough of a success, and then everybody on the Company (involved with it or not) will need to find something to do in order to keep their jobs

And in either case, Take Two will find a way to monetize it somehow as Bethesda did with FO76.

17 minutes ago, Lisias said:

And we will be here when this happens.

Yep. You'll be here, in this thread, when Steve the accountant decides they should look for solutions to their financial problems on the old forum they disowned.

19 minutes ago, Lisias said:

And people like me (and not necessarily me) will be the ones guaranteeing you will be able to run KSP¹ when the hype is finally over and the high profiles authors will be gone

If my small collection of old games like Frontier: Elite II indicates anything to me, it's that even if Take Two never decides to start behaving like a small studio and fetch ideas from fan forums, and we never get the KSP 1 source code, there won't be much to prevent me from just emulating my old computer to run my old games like KSP. 

 

[Gargamel]

Pleas stick to the topic.   Off topic discussion should be taken to the lounge.

[Lisias]

On 11/2/2024 at 11:50 AM, Bej Kerman said:

Whatever the KSP fandom accounts for in T2's spreadsheets, now that neither game is being maintained and the latter earned the franchise a bad rep, practically amounts to a rounding error.

A rounding error that is doing better on SteamCharts than Sony's latest remake.

Seriously, Sony "invested" some serious money on a high profile project that is doing less than a 13 years old space frogs game "disowned" by it's Publisher.

So, yeah... It's a hell of a rounding error (and I'm not even mentioning Concorde). I wish I have a rounding error like than for me.

 

On 11/2/2024 at 11:50 AM, Bej Kerman said:

In this case, 0% because nobody at Take Two who makes decisions uses this forum.

Perhaps they should. There's still lots of smart people around here, some of them "predicting" the future with a pretty reasonable accuracy...

 

On 11/2/2024 at 11:50 AM, Bej Kerman said:

And in either case, Take Two will find a way to monetize it somehow as Bethesda did with FO76.

You completely lost the point. Bethesda was acquired by Microsoft on a closed doors sell (ZeniMax). By a "meagle" 7.5B USD, essentially the TTWO net losses for May and June 2024. Two months of net losses**[twice the current net loss of TTWO], Microsoft bought ZeniMax (owner of Bethesda et all) by the money TTWO lost in only two months this year [by twice the current net loss of TTWO].**

I think you are losing perspective. Essentially, you are saying "that's Ok, worst case scenario Microsoft will buy TTWO". For peanuts! 

 

On 11/2/2024 at 11:50 AM, Bej Kerman said:

Yep. You'll be here, in this thread, when Steve the accountant decides they should look for solutions to their financial problems on the old forum they disowned.

Yes! Exactly! Steve the accountant, and some others like them, are the people I want to talk with. And the Shareholders, and everybody else that is going to get screwed by the current culture on TTWO.

https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/business/t012-s001-15-ceos-who-started-on-the-ground-floor/index.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/ceos-started-entry-level-at-company-2019-7

Some of these guys became CEOs from the biggest companies of all times. Chances are that these guys will be the ones working hard for recovering TTWO after all - they don't want to lose their jobs, and some of them love the company they work on.

Capitalism 101: first lesson free. The later ones, however, may cost you dearly.

I strongly suggest to anyone working on TTWO right now to take a close look on the VMWare buyout by Broadcom, and what happened (and still are) since them. Seriously, this scenario is not too far from what may happen to TTWO on the long run if things stays this way - and, guess who is beating VMWare to a pulp nowadays? Open Source.

 

On 11/2/2024 at 11:50 AM, Bej Kerman said:

If my small collection of old games like Frontier: Elite II indicates anything to me

Thank you for mentioning Elite II: Frontier.

Frontier Developments is one of my "heroes". They passed trough some really rough times and, granted, it's a pretty small company compared to the behemoth TTWO is. But, guess what, they have a positive net revenue. And a small positive net revenue beats huge net losses anytime.

Interesting enough, this is the all time comparison between Elite Dangerous and KSP¹:

They had a good start, got really big more or less in 2021. And, interesting enough, KSP (1 and later 2) managed to beat it sometimes - besides never reaching the success ED got at his peak.

Great. And exactly what this have to do with Open Source at all?

Well, Elite, Elite: Frontier and Elite: First Encounters are probably some of the most modded, reworked, recodified, and ported games of all times (perhaps losing, but not by too much, only to Doom).

Someone in the 90's took the 68000 binary code from Atari ST IIRC, disassembled it, ported that code to C, and then everything and the kitchen's sink got a modern port for Elite II. Nice and naïve times, dissassembling binaries weren't yet a Copyright violation enforceable into the whole World by the Berne Convention - but since Frontier Developments is British, this is a problem that will never affect Frontier fans.

Follows the original Frontier for Amiga (IMHO the best original port ever), the best IBM-PC port of the game (the sequel, First Encounters) and then a modern remake using open source code from 10 years ago:

Spoiler

 

 

You can play Elite Frontier in your Android, if you want:

The original games are freely available nowadays: https://www.frontierastro.co.uk/Files/files.html  . So you can download/fork/whatever the source code that was reverse engineered, change it if you want and recompile it and even distribute your fork, and the end user only needs to download one of the original ones from the last link and they will be able to run the game on whatever machine the source code could be targeted.

And let me tell you something: Elite Dangerous probably would not had seen the light of day without all that open source work. Elite fans kept the flame alive for decades until Frontier Developments got big and bold enough to risk a Crowd Funding, and I can guarantee you that a lot (if not most) of the kickstarters never played the game in their original form on the original hardware.

Elite Dangerous is one of the best (if not the best) case studies one will ever have about how Open Source can help the Game Industry to survive turbulent times.

I'm proposing that Open Source can do the same for KSP¹ - and, with that, saving some jobs in the process by the way.

=== == = POST EDIT = == ===

** I misinterpreted that chart. The chart depicts cumulative losses, not incremental!!!

Edited November 4 by Lisias
"Óbvio, evidente, não poderia ser diferente": tyops!

[Bej Kerman]

43 minutes ago, Lisias said:

I think you are losing perspective. Essentially, you are saying "that's Ok, worst case scenario Microsoft will buy TTWO". For peanuts! 

I'm being realistic, that's what I'm doing. Worst case scenario, yes, Microsoft buys T2 out because corporations happen to be known to buy things out. There's a precedent for companies making poor decisions and getting bought out as a result. There is, however, no precedent for companies of T2's size using old semi-niche forums to decide what they should do with their games. That's far less likely than T2 being bought out or breaking even.

43 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Thank you for mentioning Elite II: Frontier.

Frontier Developments is one of my "heroes". They passed trough some really rough times and, granted, it's a pretty small company compared to the behemoth TTWO is. But, guess what, they have a positive net revenue. And a small positive net revenue beats huge net losses anytime.

Interesting enough, this is the all time comparison between Elite Dangerous and KSP¹:

They had a good start, got really big more or less in 2021. And, interesting enough, KSP (1 and later 2) managed to beat it sometimes - besides never reaching the success ED got at his peak.

Great. And exactly what this have to do with Open Source at all?

Well, Elite, Elite: Frontier and Elite: First Encounters are probably some of the most modded, reworked, recodified, and ported games of all times (perhaps losing, but not by too much, only to Doom).

Someone in the 90's took the 68000 binary code from Atari ST IIRC, disassembled it, ported that code to C, and then everything and the kitchen sink got a modern port for Elite II. Nice and naive times, dissassembling binaries weren't yet a Copyright violation enforceable into the whole World by the Berne Convention - but since Frontier Developments is British, this is a problem that will never affect Frontier fans.

Follows the original Frontier for Amiga (IMHO the best original port ever), the best IBM-PC port of the game (the sequel, First Encounters) and then a modern remake using open source code from 10 years ago:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

You can play Elite Frontier in your Android, if you want:

The original games are freely available nowadays: https://www.frontierastro.co.uk/Files/files.html  . So you can download/fork/whatever the source code that was reverse engineered, change it if you want and recompile it and even distribute your fork, and the end user only needs to download one of the original ones from the last link and they will be able to run the game on whatever machine the source code could be targeted.

And let me tell you something: Elite Dangerous probably would not had seen the light of day without all that open source work. Elite fans keep the flame alive for decades until Frontier Developments got big and bold enough to risk a Crowd Funding, and I can guarantee you that a lot (if not most) of the kickstarters never played the game in their original form on the original hardware.

Elite Dangerous is one of the best (if not the best) case studies one will ever have about how Open Source can help the Game Industry to survive turbulent times.

I'm proposing that Open Source can do the same for KSP¹ - and, with that, saving some jobs in the process by the way.

Okay. You know why we're able to gush about all the ports of classic Elite? Because Frontier cares. You said yourself it's not nearly as big as T2. It was formed by its CEO David Braben on the success of Elite II, and he remained the CEO until fairly recently, and he was able to get Elite: Dangerous out with the financial support of fans. So of course the fandom surrounding those classic Elite games had a lot of stock in how Braben thinks and runs the company. And yeah, it would be nice to say all this about KSP. But T2 simply isn't comparable. To reiterate, you're still thinking of T2 as a small humble company that you can grab the attention of with soap boxes such as this thread, like Squad or Frontier. This could not be any further from reality. Needless to say: apples and oranges.

[Lisias]

38 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

I'm being realistic, that's what I'm doing.

I beg to differ. You are being unrealistically pessimist.

This is a long battle, it's not going to happen next week (if at all). But:

1. Doing nothing will not improve the chances
2. Constantly battling utter pessimism again and again, essentially forcing me to reproduce the same counter arguments again and again, besides utterly annoying is also promotion and, so, is even counterproductive to your own arguing.

People don't waste time (like you are doing) kicking dead horses. Your insistence on using your "coins" (see my post above) on this matter strongly suggests that:

1. This somehow is not in your best interest
2. You think this can happen, and so are inclined to invest your time demoting it.

So, and assuming your intellectual honesty on the arguing, your best interest is to invest your "coins" on a thread explaining to everybody that could be interested on the subject why "this is not going to happen" - because, right now, I'm using you as an evidence that yes, this can fructify and by some reason you are trying to demote the idea in an attempt to prevent it.

 

38 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Okay. You know why we're able to gush about all the ports of classic Elite? Because Frontier cares. <...>

I said again and again - people come and go from Companies. Sooner or later someone will be kicked off the company, opening space for new people that, with a bit of luck, will be aware of this idea and perhaps find it good enough to consider planning something about.

TTWO is too much a big of a behemoth to someone be in absolute charge of everything, and you can bet your mouse that if good results don't start to pop up in the short term, things will change there pretty dramatically. Granted, not necessarily for the best - since my opinion that the sooner some serious discussion about alternatives to the current M.O. start, the better for the Company,

Every 100K USD not earnt by inaction is a Electric Bill from some plant that will be paid from the stockholder's pockets, and I'm absolutely sure at least some of them are aware of that. Every single penny counts when you are bleeding money like there's no tomorrow, and this is the reason there're so many accountants reaching CEOs in some companies.

Someone need to stop the bleeding.

There're solid evidences that Open Source can be a valuable tool for this - and even more solid evidences that really big companies can be royally screwed by ignoring Open Source (like VMWare is learning the harsher way with ProxMox).

The KSP¹ "Source Code" is already being exploited by the competition anyway - it is not like they are going to lose anything at this time, as anything they could lose is already being lost right now: there are people making money over it and even working for the competition (using reversed engineered code in violation of the EULA and even some legislation by now), the Genie is already out of the bottle and from this point there's nothing one can do to put it back.

From this point is already downhill - legally opening the Source can, at very least, serve as some breaks while they figure out how to get out of the situation.

Edited November 2 by Lisias
Tyops, as usulla...

[Bej Kerman]

50 minutes ago, Lisias said:

The KSP¹ "Source Code" is already being exploited by the competition anyway

This is particularly relevant to this quoted section, but I feel it's also response enough to your post here: What competition?

Do you mean Paradox Interactive, the company that Take Two wanted to give their problem dog to?

[Lisias]

9 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

This is particularly relevant to this quoted section, but I feel it's also response enough to your post here: What competition?

Competition is anything and anyone trying to exploit commercially the same market TTWO does without teaming up with them.

And I would avoid naming people and companies over this subject - after all, there's legal precedent about reverse engineered code being a Copyright Infringement and, so, naming them over this can bring the attention of lawyers over you. And I pretty sure everybody around here, including you, have better things to do with our money than defending ourselves from a business defamation lawsuit.

As I said before, the Berne Convention makes this a World Wide problem.

 

Edited November 3 by Lisias
Better phrasing.

[Bej Kerman]

10 hours ago, Lisias said:

naming them over this can bring the attention of lawyers over you

Do elaborate - I've explained plenty that this thread is just a soapbox and not the big super-important catalyst you think it is.

[Lisias]

On 11/3/2024 at 3:06 AM, Bej Kerman said:

Do elaborate - I've explained plenty that this thread is just a soapbox and not the big super-important catalyst you think it is.

Naming companies in the context on Copyright Infringements is unwise.

It's not about this thread being important or not - it's about to do not expose your cheeks to legal problems in the years to come.

[snip]

But some other people here don't hide behind fake personas, they publish things to be used by other people and, so, are liable to the pertinent legislations. The whole point of this very thread that you say is completely unimportant, besides insisting on coming here to tell everybody how this thread is unimportant, is that there are people willing to follow the rules instead of breaking them and exposing people to Copyright Trolls  in the years to come.

There're legal precedences that reverse engineering code is a Copyright Infringement in USA. Due the effects of the Berne Convention (and others), USA's IP Copyrights should be enforceable in every country that signed such Conventions - what means that doesn't really matter if your country allows reverse engineering by law, if you are reverse engineering code belonging to an USA Company, you are in Copyright Infringement nevertheless.

This should be rising eyebrows everywhere - this scene is relying heavily on reverse engineering code for some time already.

Opening the KSP¹ Source is a way to "fix" this situation - as any reverse engineered code would be meaningless, because the respective Source Code would be openly available, nullifying the risk.

[snip]

[James Kerman]

Some content has been removed. Please discuss the topic without resorting to personal attacks as all members have the right to express their opinion provided it complies with our community guidelines.

[Bobbejans]

do we have a petition anywhere?

[Vanamonde]

More personal remarks removed. Again, please stick to the topic and avoid bickering so we don't have to close this thread. 

[wnderer]

You could try contacting NASA and they could run an open source project funded by sponsors with volunteer programmers. They would buy they code and the sponsors would get their Logo displayed when you start up the game. Companies like  SpaceX, Boeing, Blue Origin, etc. Companies that want to promote interest in the space program.

[FlyMaker]

So the KSP IP has been sold, I guess we won't get the source code anytime soon. Unless one of you bought it... Maybe some billionaire hiding in this forum

[Lisias]

On 11/7/2024 at 5:08 AM, Bobbejans said:

do we have a petition anywhere?

I didn't thought it would be useful before, but now with new ownership, perhaps it would be the time?

 

On 11/7/2024 at 6:08 PM, wnderer said:

You could try contacting NASA and they could run an open source project funded by sponsors with volunteer programmers. They would buy they code and the sponsors would get their Logo displayed when you start up the game.

I think they would contribute with specialized workforce - what would not be small humm.. "things" . The knowledge they have worth more than money, ask Musk about.

But investing money themselves... Dunno. You just can't impose conditions on Open Source, so kiss bye-bye to the logos on the startup - unless they fund a Non Profit Organization themselves, in which that Org would be responsible for the "canonical" binaries for the thing (as Mozilla does with Firefox).

 

On 11/7/2024 at 6:08 PM, wnderer said:

Companies like  SpaceX, Boeing, Blue Origin, etc. Companies that want to promote interest in the space program.

Competing companies rarely manage to direct cooperate between then. This could work for an Org.

But, being realistic, I don't see this going to fly. It would be somewhat expensive, as Ongs need to hire people to do Ong things, as bookkeeping. Part of the money would be used to fund bureaucracy, and I don't see KSP big enough to worth such boilerplate.

Even Mozilla is downsizing their workforce, keeping an Organization afloat is expensive.

And without a Non Profit Org behind this, I don't see them footing money themselves.

 

10 hours ago, FlyMaker said:

So the KSP IP has been sold, I guess we won't get the source code anytime soon. Unless one of you bought it... Maybe some billionaire hiding in this forum

The chances were always dim, I will not lie to you.

But IMHO we have slightly better chances now, depending of who bought the thing and how they plan to capitalize on it.

With the current trend of closed source, pay to play add'ons, whoever bought the IP, IMHO, will probably choose one of the following possible paths:

• Decide to stop leaving money on the table for others taking it, and decide to do it themselves;
  • Expect them to demand royalties from anyone making money from the IP, or plain forbidding it to happen
  • And then start to do it themselves.
• Decide to further develop the thing and, so, they would strongly prefer the current KSP Scene to stay as they are now, as this will greatly improve their chances to succeed by learning lessons from what happens here - mostly, detecting, fixing and preventing bugs.
  • On this case, we have a better chance on convincing the current owner on releasing the KSP¹ source code for us.
  • Please note that releasing the Source is not the same as waving rights over it, and absolutely do not involve the IP (graphics, characters, etc).
    • There're many different models available, from Open Source to Source Available - and none of them allows anyone to use the IP.

We need to keep in our minds: it's about the money, it's always about the money. Releasing the Source Code is something that must be good for all parties, including them - the new IP owners.

This is the real challenge: we know what we will gain from them opening the Source, but we also need to propose something that would bring gains for them too.

Edited November 9 by Lisias
Danm! Tyops erevytime!!

[SchwinnTropius]

On 11/8/2024 at 6:19 AM, Lisias said:

This is the real challenge: we know what we will gain from them opening the Source, but we also need to propose something that would bring gains for them too.

 

On 11/8/2024 at 6:19 AM, Lisias said:

We need to keep in our minds: it's about the money, it's always about the money.

 

You summed it up nicely. Convince the new owner they can make money from making game code Open Source, much of said code currently existing in a new "developing" game (strong emphasis on the quotes there).

I honestly love the hope you have for the future of the KSP franchise and KSP1 in particular. I can't share in it with you in the slightest, however, despite the publisher changing hands; corporate greed wins every time.

 

[Lisias]

49 minutes ago, SchwinnTropius said:

I honestly love the hope you have for the future of the KSP franchise and KSP1 in particular. I can't share in it with you in the slightest, however, despite the publisher changing hands; corporate greed wins every time.

As a matter of fact, I'm counting on it. You see, there're the greed suits, and there're the smart greed suits. I'm trying to reach the smart ones.

I want them to consider that, right now, they are leaving money on the table to be taken by third parties without any counterpart. This gives them the following options:

• Ignore: allowing anyone to keep using this scene to make money and/or feed the competition;
  • It's a solution, but I doubt any greed suit will choose this path - they made an investment on the IP, and they need to protect the Copyright and the Trademark against unauthorized use, or they will essentially lose money on the long run by doing nothing.
• Heavy hand: prosecute, or threaten to do, anyone breaking the EULA, infringing Copyrights or making money on the IP without paying royalties;
  • It will effectively protect the Trademark, but I doubt it will protect the Copyrights
    • To tell the truth, this will increase the risk of blatant piracy due the backslash.
    • See Nintendo, the more they sue, more piracy they get.
      • And Nintendo is spending some serious Money on this, and I don't think they are going to spend less (and I doubt they will get similar benefits from the stunt).
  • It will prompt the current Scene to dismantle, and they will lose a source of free P/R and Advertising.
    • And a lot of technical knowledge that can indirectly benefit the new product.
• Go Open Source, or at least some kind of Source Available.
  • IMHO, this will keep the Scene tight, allowing the Community to thrive on for more time and, at the same time, allowing them to gather important information and lessons learnt about the game that can be used on the new product.
  • KSP¹ source code is already on the wild, and that's a fact. Be by decompilation, be by leakage, the Source is available already - they (and people willing to follow the rules) are the only ones not benefiting from it at the present time.
  • KSP¹ source code is pretty outdated, and it's unlikely that any competitor will get any kind of edge by using it.
    • And even if someone does it, they can't do anything with the current IP (graphics, textures, missions, lore, etc). So why bother?
  • If going Free Software, anyone using the code will need to publish back any changes made, and so the improvements will be available to the current code-base, in a self feeding virtuous cycle.
    • And more often than not, the Scene itself will help to monitor infringements.
  • It will really solve all the current problems this Scene is facing right now, and this will create a lot of good will around here.
    • And some good will is really what's lacking around here lately...

There's no easy solution - each one of the proposals above have advantages and drawbacks, and I had already talked about it on my posts that can be reached on this search - there's no free lunch.

But the gains outweigh the risks with a pretty comfortable margin IMHO.

[SchwinnTropius]

@Lisias If you truly believe your ideas can sway any greedy suits, it might be wise to prepare a presentation for the mystery buyer of Private Division when they reveal themselves. Just don't count on there being any significant difference between "greed suits" and "smart greed suits".

[Fizzlebop Smith]

On 11/2/2024 at 11:10 AM, Lisias said:

I beg to differ. You are being unrealistically pessimist.

This is a long battle, it's not going to happen next week (if at all). But:

1. Doing nothing will not improve the chances
2. Constantly battling utter pessimism again and again, essentially forcing me to reproduce the same counter arguments again and again, besides utterly annoying is also promotion and, so, is even counterproductive to your own arguing.

People don't waste time (like you are doing) kicking dead horses. Your insistence on using your "coins" (see my post above) on this matter strongly suggests that:

1. This somehow is not in your best interest
2. You think this can happen, and so are inclined to invest your time demoting it.

So, and assuming your intellectual honesty on the arguing, your best interest is to invest your "coins" on a thread explaining to everybody that could be interested on the subject why "this is not going to happen" - because, right now, I'm using you as an evidence that yes, this can fructify and by some reason you are trying to demote the idea in an attempt to prevent it.

 

 

I admire the way PCD, you and others craft your arguments. I have read the art of rhetoric a couple times and must formulate these things in word then wait a day or so.

It too easy for me to let emotional dissonance detract from my overall argument. One can only argue with reason & logic when both parties have the same basic understanding of reality. 

I do love the one sided-ness of the argument. 

Side A :

Hypothetical Concept -> Supporting Arguments -> Facts -> Analogous Examples to Substantiate -> Verifiable Metrics -> Concluding Thoughts

Side B:

Nuh-Uh. *mic drop*

19 hours ago, SchwinnTropius said:

@Lisias If you truly believe your ideas can sway any greedy suits, it might be wise to prepare a presentation for the mystery buyer of Private Division when they reveal themselves. Just don't count on there being any significant difference between "greed suits" and "smart greed suits".

Like sound well crafted arguments, with some visual aides & kindergarten logic? ... pretty sure I saw something like that floating around.

--

It would foster an insane amount of goodwill and word of mouth publicity to facilitate the launch of a new developer. 

Even a private equity firm that views it as a percentage of the total acquisition, holds some faint hope that we could leverage the possibility of passive income.

Keep Dreaming @Lisias. Ill gladly dream the same dream and drum up some physical signatures if the time were ever right.

 

 

[Bej Kerman]

44 minutes ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

I do love the one sided-ness of the argument. 

Side A :

Hypothetical Concept -> Supporting Arguments -> Facts -> Analogous Examples to Substantiate -> Verifiable Metrics -> Concluding Thoughts

Side B:

Nuh-Uh. *mic drop*

I also love arguments built around the strawman fallacy, because replying to the actual argument is too difficult.

[Gargamel]

Right since we've gone beyond the initial scope of the point of this thread, we're going to lock this for a bit.