RaideR, on 09 June 2014 - 04:08 PM, said:
Some ass-holes wanted the game opensource to take its code, replace its assets and make a mobile game .... for profit!
That would be a licensing issue...you could open-source the code without allowing such things.
RaideR, on 09 June 2014 - 04:08 PM, said:
Some clans have "Private Mods" for thier servers to make them unique and don't want to share because it makes people play on thier servers. But scream for "Opensource UrT" so i can make yet more private mods.
FS' stance on mods has been so explicitly negative over the years that anyone willing to release mods would surely be afraid of FS doing their best to break their mod in the future. If you rely on something that is easily removed/changed, and the developers have a history of denouncing any modifications, would you really want to release patches that the developers can then see? There are really two discussions here (engine mods and actual QVM/asset mods [the latter of which is not tolerated at all and the former of which seems to only be tolerated reluctantly as a necessary evil of the GPL]), but developer hostility is a prime argument for private mods. Additionally, some mods may not benefit the greater community much and thus there would be no point to publicizing them.
RaideR, on 09 June 2014 - 04:08 PM, said:
So to conclude I say this. If you want to help with Urban Terror and feel you can be a benefit, apply in writing to my email raider @ urbanterror.info and you have my word it will be treated with respect and seriously. But if people wish to insist on "Give us game code now or else ..." they are going to get exactly as far as they have previously. No where.
The problem with this approach is that some people may not be fantastic coders, but there may be a bug that has been sitting around seemingly forever that a less capable programmer could at least diagnose (if not attempt a fix) if the source was available. As it is, there are years-old bugs that have been reported that no one in FS seems at all willing to address or fix (which is fine); but because the source is closed, we rely 100% on FS to diagnose and fix these bugs.
I would be happy even with an open source codebase (or even fragments with anti-cheat removed, though maintaining a repo like that would be unreasonable) with a non-permissive license, so at least some fixes could be submitted even if a fork is not allowed. As it is we are at the mercy of developers who (rightfully) enjoy adding new features over fixing existing ones, and the barrier to entry is high enough that few people will join the developer team.
Both options (keeping the source closed and opening it up) suck, but it is my personal opinion that the community would be better served if it was opened up. Most FS members clearly disagree, and really I'm not sure of the legality of open-sourcing if you didn't force contributors to transfer their ownership of contributions to FS in the first place (and with a project as old as UrT there is certainly a good chance that open-sourcing would be illegal and therefore a pointless discussion). But only FS would know that anyway.
At the very least I would hope most would agree that the current situation is sub-optimal, though whether or not it can be improved is debatable.