| |
Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2847 |
Closed-source scene tools
This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, being tickled every now and then.
So, why exactly do we get excellent tools once in a while, but which happen to be closed-source (and often for a specific OS, but that's only a side-issue), subject to inevitable bit-rot once their creators invariably lose interest or worse, among other problems?
My personal head canon says it's likely a combination of
1) being embarrassed of dirty code
2) not wanting other people to take snippets of code (and possibly pass them off as their own)
3) not wanting other people to modify the program to suit their needs (and possibly distribute it)
4) "I'll take my knowledge to the grave, suckers"
List is probably incomplete, but anyways, would like to hear yours' opinions on this. =) |
|
... 41 posts hidden. Click here to view all posts....
|
| |
Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2847 |
Quoting spider-jAnd then you just release in the way what your OS' "standard" way is. Meaning: when you're using Windows you will most likely just release a binary and when you're using Linux you will most likely just release the source. Hmm, so does this make for another point: "ignorance"? :)
Quoting spider-jyou're just not motivated to release as source, because you feel then you'd eventually have to provide solutions how to build. Even on linux I sometimes think: when it's more complicated than just gcc or simple make (only utilising well supported shell commands and gcc or g++ max) then it's really tedious work to write a readme that lists all prerequisites. I dunno, this seems like a lame excuse or rather moot to me.
You can just plainly write somewhere that support requests will be ignored, or something.
And if you're swamped with support requests, your tool seems more popular than you'd ever have imagined, after all, and may be worth the effort to clean up the code, or (the more likely case),
you're just getting some cry for help every now and then - which you can just continue to ignore. :) |
| |
ws
Registered: Apr 2012
Posts: 228 |
For some of my stuff i put out sourcecode in the past, just to see what happens. That took quite some work to make the package release-ready. I bet nobody is up for a nightmarish read, though.
Also i agree with what spider said: from my personal experience with it, i am guessing most people just don't care for doing the extra work of having a (well documented) sourcecode that could be compiled elsewhere (meaning, anywhere but my own very delicate, very bunged up system setup).
And what's a sourcecode worth that has a multitude of unexplained dependencies? Also what if i had some drunk texts to myself in there that i missed, or even features that i actually don't want anybody to know about?
So my belief is, the major reason for not releasing the sources is along the lines "watch me not care" and "binary relased, archive, forget".
(Tbh., i hadn't even spent a single thought on releasing the source to Trajed until Krill asked me to.) |
| |
Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2847 |
Quoting wsi am guessing most people just don't care for doing the extra work of having a (well documented) sourcecode that could be compiled elsewhere (meaning, anywhere but my own very delicate, very bunged up system setup).
And what's a sourcecode worth that has a multitude of unexplained dependencies? As long as the actual business core logic (the value-adding stuff built on top of random dependencies) is intact (complete), all the other things can be fixed. So again, this kind of dirtiness shouldn't prevent releasing source code.
Quoting wsAlso what if i had some drunk texts to myself in there that i missed, or even features that i actually don't want anybody to know about? And that kind of dirtiness, oh my... i don't even |
| |
Stone
Registered: Oct 2006
Posts: 168 |
For me I guess 1) has been the primary obstacle, but also the fear of being swamped in support requests. More often than not I'm already bored with developing the tool once it's functional and even when I have ideas of how to improve it, I know further work just won't be pleasurable for me.
Contrary to my fears, people have in most cases stepped forward and taken the project further by contributing code which makes me not feel as guilty about abandoning it. This goes especially for SIDBlaster USB driver BETA but also for SIDdecompiler V0.5 |
| |
TheRyk
Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 2076 |
Quoting ws... some drunk texts to myself ...
made my day =D |
| |
Bitbreaker
Registered: Oct 2002
Posts: 500 |
We in Performers also decided to go public now as raistlin did as a good example. So no reasons and excuses 1-4 here :-)
All the source for Next Level can be found here from now on :-) Enjoy reading, admiring, drooling, laughing, ... :-D
https://github.com/bboxy/next-level |
| |
Raistlin
Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 565 |
Great work, Bitbreaker!
We should split off a new thread for open-source demo stuff :-) .. so we can stop annoying Krill :-) |
| |
ΛΛdZ
Registered: Jul 2005
Posts: 153 |
HO added some of his source code to be downloaded here:
https://csdb.dk/release/?id=17637&show=notes#notes |
| |
Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2847 |
What Raistlin said. |
| |
Fungus
Registered: Sep 2002
Posts: 619 |
Well here is another one for you Krill.
EA Fat Tracks File Buster 2.0 |
| Previous - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 - Next |
