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Should GM become open source (GPL - general public license)?
yes
30%
 30%  [ 4 ]
no
7%
 7%  [ 1 ]
don't know
0%
 0%  [ 0 ]
I feel change is needed, but maybe this is not the way
46%
 46%  [ 6 ]
no leave GM as it is
15%
 15%  [ 2 ]
Total Votes : 13
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Tue May 03, 2011 6:03 pm
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trace567
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Post subject: For or against GM becoming GPL license Reply with quote

What is GPL?
See below link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License

Should GM become open source GPL?

This is a simple poll, I feel a poll will best reflect all community opinion as there is no need to even state your view in a post.

Please all take the time to place a vote regardless what that vote is. I for one wish Kreso to see what it is the community actually wants.

Changing to GPL is a massive change, and one of which there is no going back from!
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Tue May 03, 2011 6:10 pm
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princeofpersia1992
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well i dont think gm should be made open for all it will have consiquences any other game companies too can easy make a copy of game(and most probably they will) and rehash it so wont be a good idea to gpl it . changes are necessary but this way is too risky fr gm
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Tue May 03, 2011 7:06 pm
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ranban282
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Prince, I would have respected your post a little more if you had taken the trouble to post it in proper English instead of SMS-like manguage.

I believe that these things are said in ignorance.

Quote:
well i dont think gm should be made open for all it will have consiquences any other game companies too can easy make a copy of game(and most probably they will)


Companies will attempt to do that only if they believe it to be a money spinners. That means a few hundred thousand dollars at least.

I am no lawyer, but the general idea is that game ideas are not copyrightable.

Look at the official page of the US copyright office.

Quote:
Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.


Read the full article here:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html

I hardly think that GM has a huge amount of literary, artistic or musical content. All right, you may prevent the companies from using the image(s) that are used in GM.

Here's a relevant judgement from the UK court of appeal:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/108516/no-copyright-on-computer-game-ideas-court-of-appeal-rules

So the bottom line is - they can copy and rehash GM anyway.

I hope you don't imply that someone will be copying the code - you've got to be kidding me, right? You should know better, being a computer engineering student.

Kreso has himself said that the code is badly written and contains some very bad ideas. If somebody wanted to commercialize it, he surely will not use this code. I am prepared to bet my life on that. If Kreso wanted to commercialize it he would have rewritten it from scratch.

As I said before, Kreso knows what he is doing, and I am sure he has thought out these things. But by all means go ahead and vote against it. All you will end up doing is showing Kreso your ignorance.

It was Kreso who wanted to open source it - I suggested the possibility of sharing the code with a small number of people, and had reservations about security aspects and hack attempts, but Kreso thought that the security was good enough. You can, in fact, read the email conversation if you care to join the developers mailing list.
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Tue May 03, 2011 7:21 pm
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ranban282
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Post subject: Reply with quote

Anyway, I am glad that this is being discussed.
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Tue May 03, 2011 7:23 pm
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Magflag
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Joined: 07 Jul 2006
Posts: 25

Post subject: Reply with quote

Ranban, not all members of the site can speak English fluently. I understand what you meant by saying what you did to Prince, but I think we should have a higher tolerance for people who have a hard time with English. The guy is from India for goodness sake, not the US, UK, or otherwise.


Anyway, I agree with you, that the comment was made out of ignorance of what it means for something to go open source (under GPL). I am by no means a programmer, and neither are the rest of us. Please be patient in dealing with that fact.

Many of us don't fully understand the implications of going GPL. We furthermore have concerns. I have voted yes to the change to GPL because I believe that there is some changes that need to be made and I don't know if Kreso would be willing to do anything else.

However, what I think we all want is some sort of assurance that the game cannot/will not be abused as a result of this massive change. I have confidence that you want the best for this game, as does Kreso, but I think we will all feel better about this if people who have experience in this sort of thing take a few minutes to explain to us what is being done exactly, how you guys (and us if at all possible) can do to protect the little community we have got going now, and lastly answer some questions with respect and patience.

From what I understand so far, this GPL deal is not going to lead to a massive amount of changes on a timely basis (due to bad code writing and lack of resources etc etc).

Thank you ranban for being dedicated for some change around here, it hopefully will end well if all goes according to hopes and wishes.

One last question, how on earth did you get in contact with Kreso. I know people have been trying to do that for years.
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Tue May 03, 2011 8:00 pm
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ranban282
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Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I am from India too, in fact the same city as Prince. English is practically a first language for computer literate people here. I was criticizing him for not for any mistakes he made (I make them all the time), but for not having the courtesy to post it in English and not abbreviated speech. And I said I would "respect it more" - it is merely an opinion. Surely I can decide which posts I will respect more?

Okay, now onto the more relevant parts.

To be frank, I don't really know the differences between the various open source licences, GPL, Lesser GPL, Apache, MIT, etc in detail, but broadly, the GPL assures the programmer(s) who worked on the software that the code they release will remain free, and to ensure that this freedom will be preserved even when the code is modified.

As to what has been done - nothing. As to what is proposed to done - Kreso releases the source code to the world.

The GPL will frustrate efforts to make huge amounts of money from the game - the license doesn't prohibit commercial usage, but should someone else try to make commercial use, another individual or community could use the ideas code to provide a similar experience. And the licence will prevent anybody else from EVER licensing it again.

As for misuse - well, depends on what exactly one means by that. Like I've said before, commercial misuse is adequately protected by the licence. As for somebody trying to crash the server - possible(will find that it out only when the code is released, and examined in detail, or perhaps not even then) but unlikely. Kreso seems to be reasonably confident about that.

As for how I got in contact with Kreso - I could've asked the mods, I think they may have the contact details. kreso@galcticmag.org has a powerful spam filter, and will most likely consign your email to trash, but a little searching and a little bit of luck lead me to an alternate email address.
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Tue May 03, 2011 8:09 pm
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palabra
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Post subject: Reply with quote

ranban282 wrote:
As for how I got in contact with Kreso - I could've asked the mods, I think they may have the contact details. kreso@galcticmag.org has a powerful spam filter, and will most likely consign your email to trash, but a little searching and a little bit of luck lead me to an alternate email address.


Sounds very fishy. By saying that Kreso made the decision to go open source, you made it sound like he came to you with his decision. Are you saying that you contacted him first and suggested it?

Also, I know for a fact that Kreso purposefully does not give that email out. Even when I was a mod, I was not allowed to have it. I think 3-4 people tops have ever had it (head mods only I believe). Interesting that you were able to find it.
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Tue May 03, 2011 8:09 pm
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ranban282
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Joined: 26 Jul 2009
Posts: 171

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By the way should we discuss these changes on the forum itself? We already see that the discussion has branched to a couple of threads now, and some more may spring up. Then there's privacy. At the moment, the google groups are open - anybody in the world can view the content, but could be made members-only if needed.

I was also hoping for a more close knit and enthusiastic community. Then I like having things in my inbox? A new mail comes - read it - reply to it - boom. Here we have to keep visiting the forum to see if anything has changed. Then we may have to deal with posts in multiple sections.

But GM players are used to the forum, and may feel more comfortable to discuss ideas here. What about a separate mailing list for developers? Or those things should be discussed here too?

Thoughts, anyone?
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Tue May 03, 2011 8:14 pm
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ranban282
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Joined: 26 Jul 2009
Posts: 171

Post subject: Reply with quote

palabra wrote:
ranban282 wrote:
As for how I got in contact with Kreso - I could've asked the mods, I think they may have the contact details. kreso@galcticmag.org has a powerful spam filter, and will most likely consign your email to trash, but a little searching and a little bit of luck lead me to an alternate email address.


Sounds very fishy. By saying that Kreso made the decision to go open source, you made it sound like he came to you with his decision. Are you saying that you contacted him first and suggested it?

Also, I know for a fact that Kreso purposefully does not give that email out. Even when I was a mod, I was not allowed to have it. I think 3-4 people tops have ever had it (head mods only I believe). Interesting that you were able to find it.



No, it was I who emailed him and suggested it. I had tried the kreso@galactigmag address a couple of times without success, but found the new address with a bit of luck. He replied soon, and seemed to agree in principle, but the final decision to open source it was his.
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Wed May 04, 2011 1:54 am
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fingerbun
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Post subject: Reply with quote

palabra wrote:

Also, I know for a fact that Kreso purposefully does not give that email out. Even when I was a mod, I was not allowed to have it. I think 3-4 people tops have ever had it (head mods only I believe). Interesting that you were able to find it.


Bra are you serious? Go to "memberlist" in the top tab. Click on Kreso and his email details come up. I emailed him a couple of times back in the day and he replied to all of them.
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Wed May 04, 2011 5:08 am
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palabra
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Post subject: Reply with quote

fingerbun wrote:
palabra wrote:

Also, I know for a fact that Kreso purposefully does not give that email out. Even when I was a mod, I was not allowed to have it. I think 3-4 people tops have ever had it (head mods only I believe). Interesting that you were able to find it.


Bra are you serious? Go to "memberlist" in the top tab. Click on Kreso and his email details come up. I emailed him a couple of times back in the day and he replied to all of them.


Fingerbun, everyone does have that email address; it is technically an email service just for the game, but Kreso rarely checks it and has strict filters on it. The one ranban got was Kreso's personal email address. Very few people know it.
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Wed May 04, 2011 5:18 am
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fingerbun
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Post subject: Reply with quote

palabra wrote:

Fingerbun, everyone does have that email address; it is technically an email service just for the game, but Kreso rarely checks it and has strict filters on it. The one ranban got was Kreso's personal email address. Very few people know it.


His on facebook. He is easy to track down. He comes up in my "people you may list" all the time.
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Wed May 04, 2011 8:38 pm
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palabra
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Post subject: Reply with quote

fingerbun wrote:
palabra wrote:

Fingerbun, everyone does have that email address; it is technically an email service just for the game, but Kreso rarely checks it and has strict filters on it. The one ranban got was Kreso's personal email address. Very few people know it.


His on facebook. He is easy to track down. He comes up in my "people you may list" all the time.


You're not getting my point. He doens't give that email away. He just doesn't. Yeah you may get him on facebook or you may get lucky with the galacticmag email (more likely in the past), but he just doesn't give his personal email out. Go ahead and try to get it without seeking ranban's "luck".
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Wed May 04, 2011 10:35 pm
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palabra
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Never mind- I withdraw. I no longer find the personal email finding fishy.
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Thu May 05, 2011 4:28 pm
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theunknownamus
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I'm used to forum discussion. Inbox discussion can get lengthy and delayed. I can deal with duplicate posts although.
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