In the past he's went out of his way to enforce and respect the copyright issues of the sub-communities, such as when tg13 put out a DMCA notice on Fallout13 and he issued website & hub bans to the devs illegally using the open sourced work of tg in a closed source, for profit project. This backing led to the situation being resolved amicably. While under no real legal obligation to do so, I'm going to assume his cooperation ultimately came down to it just being the right thing to do. I think a lot of people see this as his standard way of doing things and would similarly return the same level of respect to him.
Personally, I could be someone who's bitter about the engine, given I started a webclient exclusive project with the very clear cut, early assurances of Tom that the performance wouldn't be an issue. It was very much a deal breaker and we had to find a way to salvage our game given all of our menus had been written in JS, costing multitudes of tens of thousands of dollars and over a year of our time where we were working on it daily with the hope the webclient would be fixed eventually. It has not been to this day, and has since been, for the best really given the time sink, abandoned. Despite that I'm not hung up over it and I only put the blame on myself for making the very silly mistake of investing in untested software when there were tons of better alternatives out there, a lot of inexperience and naivety, a love for this platform and a want to release a "real" game in it.
No one acted maliciously there, and Lummox isn't doing anything wrong by rejecting previous calls to opensource, or future ones: No reason to scorn him or make assumptions of bad intentions. It is his livelihood, the source of his income and literal job for two decades, and he has done what he thinks is best. That's fine.
But I disagree and think that open sourcing can only come with a host of benefits, both to himself and the community at large. Let me detail why:
- There's already a good relationship between Lummox and the devs that can only improve. We're going to respect his licencing/business model and ultimately just want to improve what's there. Nobody is going to run off and make a 'BYOND v2' website to any success and any attempts to do so will be shut down by the prevalent hosts of SS13 and other devs, who are generally good people with a respect for other people's work. This can be set up in a way where the foundations are solid and the developer of BYOND ultimately only benefits from the passions of others who want to improve the engine to improve their game/s.
- The argument that 'BYOND is too complex for others to work on' is extremely outdated, objectively incorrect thinking. There are talented software developers within this community, extremely passionate hobbyists and people who will spend countless hours refining, refactoring, and overcoming any obstacle. It doesn't matter how poorly documented the source is or that the core is some 1994 code, this isn't going to be a problem in the long term. You don't need to spend an insane amount of time 'prepping the engine', what you need to do is clearly lay out the contractual and legal aspects of open sourcing, and work as a lead developer by organizing the programmers that would work on this around you, given your knowledge of the engine and position.
- It's necessary to survive and grow. The rendering and networking are the major issues when it comes to creating a 'good game that doesn't play like it was made in BYOND', then we have the actual website + inability to easily distribute/market games in a tidy package, limiting projects from reaching a wider audience aside from word of mouth. If it isn't done, people are just going to release alternatives, which is a mess that you should want to avoid and can do so easily while only gaining from it.
- The current business model is really bad. This can only be improved upon with additional help. BYOND's subscriber system lacks stuff like proper data tracking, making it independent, etc, or any real official terms. The ad method is also broken; I can't remember the last time I saw one, and also isn't a great way to monetize the engine regardless. Currently the engine survives off of donations/subscriptions, and there's no reason why with proper rallying we can't refine and expand this to improve cash flow. The website, pager, engine, with proper organization and lead all of this can be modernized. So many people want and can help.
That's my take, anyway. I don't expect anything to come of this but if it at least stirs thought and consideration, I'll be content. I hope it'll be taken seriously and maybe we can organize an effort if Lummox is for it starting by gathering the devs of the engine to hash out terms/the foundations. If it becomes a reality, I sincerely believe it will be mutually beneficial for everyone involved, especially the person who has the reason to have the most concern.
If it is carried out, then the beginnings of the process could look something like:
1.) Contact major developers & the sub-communities of BYOND (tg, goonstaton, paradise, eternia, sl2, etc). Host a meeting between project leads.
2.) Decide on the custom licensing that the opensource project would involve. Talk this out with others who have knowledge in that area.
3.) Begin the process of open sourcing the engine. The website/hub should remain as a centralized focus point for the long-term health, as well as the pager. IMO games only benefit from this because we have our own tight knit community of people who play different BYOND games/servers, which is cool and unique. But the first step is really just a 'this is probably the best thing to do, now how to go about it' before something like OpenDream becomes a viable alternative (which is going to happen eventually).
