POL open source

[tekproxy]

Awesome, another open source thread. These are always a lot of fun.

Here's a little secret: POL is not really that closed source. If you're a cool guy and a wizard with Visual C++ you could probably talk to Muad, Austin or Shini and help out if you wanted.

The overwhelming majority of the functionality of POL is done in the scripts. The distro is open source and there are only a few people that contribute, and yes I'm including bug reports and feature requests.

If help with the distro is an accurate indication of potential community support, the probability of any significant number of people being attracted to POL because it's open sourced is small.

The possibility of the core forking is more likely, and that's just a pain.

If you want to address the cause of POL being less popular than RunUO join me in this thought experiment:

You're a normal guy, probably impatient and retarded. You want to run a UO server so you and all your hardcore RP friends can make fairy-tale all day instead of getting a job and going to school. You search Yahoo and MSN and find out that there are 2 main emulators: POL and RunUO. POL might look a little hard to set up or the site might not be very comforting. You install it anyway only to find that the spawns are weird, the distro is 3/4s baked and it takes advantage of approximately 12% of the awesomeness of the core (+=, anyone?).

So you check out RunUO and find out it's a mostly-working OSI clone. You don't think about lofty concepts such as scripted VS compiled, etc... You just want a server to play on and so you can give yourself really cool equipment and really long titles to your name like [Head Admin GM Staff]. You may probably just stay with RunUO.

Once the POL distro is done, it will be able to compete more -- if WoW does not yet rule the 7 seas of MMORPGs like some sort of demon-beast Kraken from tales of old. Let's finish the distro guys.


This is a fairly common topic, one I asked myself in my POL infancy. Maybe we should make a "Why POL is not Open Source -- PLZ read or die" thread.

[Austin]

^--- Most awesome and hilarious post in ages!

[Austin]

Ill fill people in more on this thread.

The starter originally came to me in a private message asking for POL to be open sourced. He said he has programmers who would like to do stuff with the core such as make it support multiple processors, fix remaining memory leaks and add many other features.

I told him that he should have his programmers talk to Adam, Shini, Muad and I to get them onboard to help the community.

His next action though was to come to the boards and demand it be open source. Ill end it with "wolf in sheep's clothing"

There are people here who want to see the POL project go further.
Then there are those who claim to want to help, but also state they want features no other shard has, to get the core source code, and also claim its to help everyone.

If we open sourced the core, we would want it to be a move that ACTUALLY helps the POL COMMUNITY and not some individual.

[Demostenes]

2austin: Well, i am not really surprised by such reactions. You have no real counter-aruguments, so you just start flaming, telling half-truth and replying totaly out of context. It is so big problem to keep at least some level of argue?

Most funny thing is, that in one post you are saying one thing and in other almost opposite. That only shows, that you have no arguments to support your attitude. I would bet, that if there was no stubborness and pride, POL would be opened long time ago. But after such long time it would for sure hurt to admit that you were wrong. Forum dead, community dead, % of POL between all shards lowest in history, but still the same song. Close code of free emu is good, mmkay.

Contributing to core and contributing to distro is something totally different. It is really difference in contributing to distro i am not using (and most of people does not), or fixing problems in core everybody uses. If you are not able to see/understant it... But i would only repeat myself.

However I ve told our programmers about your suggestion, and i told you that, but such thing is their decision, not mine. It is their free time, not mine. Anyway after reading all of this i would not suggest them to do so.

In our private messaging you suggested me, if i know about some bugs, i should report it on forum. So i did. After one week not even reply from developer. I am of course not expecting immediate fix, but at least reply like ok we will look at it. I am not really suprised after that, that forum is dead. Why are you developing POL? From many your reactions on the forum it seems like that you are doing it because you must, not beucase you like it.


But enough of this. Now i know what i wanted to know. If i had any hopes about some further future of POL, i have none now. Its pitty, we run shard on POL for 6 years now, one of the biggest to be accurate. So lock the topic if you wish. It will be really nice reading for people, who are just undecided which emu choose.


Btw, if your all distro developers are like tekproxy, i am trully not surprised that there is lots of problem with quality of distro. That guy even isnt able to read properly.

[Zgryt]

Its sad but true...
POL forum:
In total there are 5 users online :: 1 Registered, 0 Hidden and 4 Guests
(that one registered was me)

runUO forum:
Currently Active Users: 796 (232 members and 564 guests)
(one from 796 was me)

And i dont care for open/close source, i care about my online players, which number is still going down...

[CWO]

And you guys have absolutely NO argument that going open source would make POL any more popular. Where is the proof that any program gets popular just because its open source. The POL/RunUO difference has a lot more factors between it. If they were exactly the same program written exactly the same way, had exactly the same people, then the argument can be that one is open source and one is not but there are huge differences between the two and open source is just one small difference.

[Tritan]

I would not mind trying to help out with the distro script set when I get time to work on something. I agree that the focus should start with the scripts for the distro before anyone starts to worry about the core itself.

That is just my thoughts on this anyway.

[Pierce]

[OldnGrey]

I care a lot about the core. It does need to become more efficient, do less - (ie enable hooks for more things), handle single precision floats, and a lot of *little* things like OSI housing support, memory growth and to manage statics. But the 097 is such a good core nowadays and it's a joy to use even without my wish list.

What sort of person has time to develop their own shard AND contribute to the distro? Few. However, I think doing the work on my own shard to make it more 097 compatible (ie use the function wrappers) is going to help. (GFGumps anyone?)

I don't really mind if the core goes open source. I know the core devs have considered it long and hard over the years, and when there is little activity in core development it seems to trigger the discussion again. But I do mind the core losing its way. I do mind that the core is really stable and a solid rock for my players to use proudly. And I do mind that it's so hard to get into pol in the first place. I just regret that I don't have any answers for you. I've been hosting for 7 years now and am quite scared of the future.

[Xpatriat]

[phao]

http://forums.polserver.com/ftopic1872.php

from this topic, talking about the changes that 098 intend to have , i've seen this line:

[ncrsn]

[MontuZ]

I totally agree.

[phao]

[Xpatriat]