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elenaran
Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 18
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 Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:47 pm Post subject: |
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I too would like to see pol open-sourced. I have several reasons:
I would like to add in some things that I've mentioned to core devs before that they had no interest in adding to the core:
XML/mysql support for data files
Fixing UOG/connectUO packet support
Better implementation for custom boats
Like I said, the devs have no desire to put this stuff in core, so "Just join the core team to help develop for the community" isn't really a solution here.
Another big reason I would like open-source is that I hate when I get a segfault/core dump that it's virtually impossible to get ahold of the devs to figure out what the problem is. Don't get me wrong, I understand the devs are very busy people, so I do not blame them for not having time, but if it was open source, I could debug the problem myself in a matter of minutes.
The other day, we had an issue where pol had a segfault on startup - something to do with the pcequip.txt file. It gave us the stack trace, which I promply posted in #pol, but of course no one was around. So, our shard was down for over a day because I couldn't find out what the error meant. I ended up just having to revert our data, causing a timewarp and much headache to the players and staff. If I had the source, I would have had a much higher chance of finding the source of the error.
I've honestly considered switching over to RunUO for the adaptability, but our shard is just way too old and customized to even dream of doing it. I think a better solution would be to keep our existing scripts, but also have an open source pol. |
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MontuZ
Distro Developer
Joined: 10 Feb 2006
Posts: 293
Location: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 10:28 pm Post subject: |
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I think you guys should contribute by helping with the completion of the 097 distro. If you do that then people might actually start listening, because I know I'm not going to until I see your dedication towards POL, rather than just sitting around crying for pol to go opensource, give the true developers a reason not to, by helping with the distro first.
We don't trust you like we trust Muad, shini, austin, and that other guy(isn't there a forth?), lol. So help out or go runuo.
Kdieirlthnks. |
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elenaran
Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 18
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| Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 2:54 am Post subject: |
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It wouldn't make much sense for us to help with the distro, because our shard doesn't use any distro scripts.
If pol was made open source, I would gladly help out by posting any new developments, like the ones I posted above (multithreading, etc), available to the community.
The shut-up or go to RunUO attitude isn't very helpful either. I obviously do care about POL, or our shard wouldn't have been using it for 7 years now. Like I said before, it would be impossible for us to try to convert all our customizations over to RunUO, and I wouldn't even want to try. The only reason I considered RunUO at all was because of the abilities to do a lot of things that I can't do right now. However, the ideal solution isn't RunUO, the ideal solution for us is to stay with the UO emulator we've loved for years, but make it more adaptable. |
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Demostenes
Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 24
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| Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 10:06 am Post subject: |
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| elenaran wrote: |
I've honestly considered switching over to RunUO for the adaptability, but our shard is just way too old and customized to even dream of doing it. I think a better solution would be to keep our existing scripts, but also have an open source pol. |
I know exactly what do you mean, we have same problems.
This topic was very usefull and informative for me, because POL developers nicely showed me, that POL is more or less dead and wait other years and hoping that situation will become better is naive and futile.
Reactions on bugs and problems are VERY slow, or NONE and most importantly i have feeling, that authors have no more will to do some serious work. I understand, that after some years there is no more enthusiasm and energy, but this is exatcly the best time to go open....
POL even doesnt support newer clients properly and it causes many problems, especially for highly customized shards, who want to develop.
Only chance for POL is going open, but there is lack of open mind and imagination to see that. Well, who do not adapt will extinct. By opening run UO its community growed 10x, but it is too hard to admit the truth.....
The opinions about contributing to distro are totally out of mind, because how can somebody contribute to distro, if he is doing some unique custom shard? It is very naive to think, that somebody will waste his precious time on developing something, he will not use on his shard. Only chance is to make community bigger, so there is higher chance of contribution. But i would only repeat myself, i already wrote my argumets. No body was able to give me some proof, that i am wrong, instead of that some morons tried to start flame. Usual reactions of people, who have no arguments..
So after lots of discussion we decided to move to run UO. It will take us 1-2 years of work, but if we want some future for our shard, it is only chance we have. Because if i consider last years of POL development, almost nothing important happened. New versions of POL brought nothing important, there is only more bugs and problems now. We invested lots of work into switching on 0.97 core and it was totally wasted time. Nothing work better, there are only new bugs and problems. Some our features are even impossible to run on 0.97 core.
So run UO won. We made some serious research and it is far better, than we even thought. We are running on POL cca 7 years, but we would be stupid if we let out feelings about POL ruin future of our shard.
If you want some future of your shard, I recommending you to do the same  |
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ELSoft
Joined: 18 Jun 2006
Posts: 36
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| Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 3:07 pm Post subject: |
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Your criterion makes me think that always you had well-considered to migrate to RunUO but only to open this post with the intenseness of seeing if the dev were changing opinion.
To my preference i use Pol, since it is exactly what I need for my servant.
I care little if in RunUO there are more or less people who in alone Pol. Only it is important for me if one could offer what I need, a stable core and a good distro.
In my server I have distro 95 with one of the first cores of 96, and I never had problems with the core.
My problem is that a would need to update the distro, and after seeing 97 it was what i needed for my server.
Probably take a few months to pass the customs of my server to distro 97, but if the distro is not finished does not serve me.
If Pol becomes open source, probably appear many forks(as happens with RunUO), and probably end up in nothing.
I seen many projects move to open source and view appear 1000 forks and the project dies.
To be the most popular solution is not to move to Open Source, RunUO already has the reputation that you can never get.
A project should only be open source only if you have enough fame to know that the community is going to contribute.
There are many people who think that just want to download the .exe and run the server. For those people, have the source code of the core or not given the same.
Finally if the objective is to contribute to the community, I do not know why they are obstinate in saying they are only going to help to programme the core and not the distro. Community means, core and distro and if we want to help to that the community grows, we should start by making a good distro. |
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Luth
POL Developer
Joined: 30 Jan 2006
Posts: 35
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| Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 5:23 pm Post subject: |
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Before I get to Replying to whats been said, a brief introduction and statement...
Who the hell are you and why should I listen?
I'm a professional game programmer currently working in the industry. I've got a game shipping next month, actually. I've been programming for more years than I care to recall. I've been in the UO community for a decade. I've been using UO emulators for eight years. So with those and other qualifications I wont list (because bragging is only fun for so long), I am 100% against POL going open source.
What is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular.
As for the RUO vs POL, I'm going to pass on a lesson from my time at AskChopper... for those that dont know, AskChopper.com is the UltimaOnline Bug Site. Yes, we handle and publish bugs for player run shards too. As such, the AC community has spent MANY weekends terrorizing RUO shards due to the numerous heinous and gaping bugs in the RUO server. Not bugs like memory leaks, or core slowdowns, but fun bugs like placing houses in town, infinite money, breaking vendors, etc. In all the years I've been running that site, the very few POL bugs to be submitted were shard specific and thus a result of bad scripts, not a bad core, whereas the RUO bugs we publish are generally usable on every major RUO shard.
____________________________________________________________
| Austin wrote: | 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. |
Hey, thats how I got here. 
| ncrsn wrote: | Would I contribute back to the community?
To be honest, I'm not sure. Right now forums are close to dead and developers rarely participate to discussions, giving signal that they don't really believe in this either. Is there anyone who would care if I DID do some incredible coremod? Would I take the shot and try to revive community spending my own oh-so-expensive time?
Would you?
I understand the fear that if POL's source were released, community would die. Is there anything else beside the core that keeps us (not counting newbies) checking forums every now and then? If so, what it might be?
...
While doing that, I don't really care if you turn POL open sourced or keep it closed. As long as someone is making it better. |
Excellent points, really.
I figure the breakdown is something like this:
99% of people will never look at the source, and if they did, wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of it.
0.9% of the people will understand it, and fiddle around with it, but ultimately abandon the effort because people are lazy.
0.08% of the people will make a modification that affects something, but it'll be shard-specific.
0.01% of the people will make a modification that benefits everyone, but they'll keep it to themselves.
0.01% of the people will actually make modifications that benefit everyone. Hi, I'm the lastest one.
| elenaran wrote: | I would like to add in some things that I've mentioned to core devs before that they had no interest in adding to the core:
XML/mysql support for data files
Fixing UOG/connectUO packet support
Better implementation for custom boats
Like I said, the devs have no desire to put this stuff in core, so "Just join the core team to help develop for the community" isn't really a solution here. |
You speak against yourself. The devs, myself included, work on what we want to work on. Same as everyone else. If, as a dev, you wanted to work on SQL integration, guess what... you'd work on it! and your statement of "devs have no desire to put this stuff in" becomes invalid because, again, you'd be a dev.
I joined the dev team because I didn't feel like bitching about things that I wanted in the core, I felt like doing something about it. I fixed a couple bugs that'd been in for quite awhile, changed some improper procedure handling, and yes, even added brand new functionality. Wishing and whining doesn't do a whole lot....
| chainsawcharlie wrote: | Indeed - if the community is so noncontributing to development with scripts (and I can agree that it's not that active in that aspect), what harm could it cause to allow developer teams to add new content, fix bugs, add support for those things elenaran mentioned?
I'd be more than willing to contribute to the community. I've looked over some of my past escript work but unfortunately most of my relevant developments are inherent to specific major systems of the shard I develop in. Any utilities that can be widely used, I'll gladly post for public use, though, certainly. But I do believe that open sourced core development would greatly increase the contributions (in both quantity and quality) - hey, maybe I could put that C knowledge that I have in the backstore to some use after all! |
Follow the comparison. No one works on Dev Scripts because everyone's doing their own thing, and most of it doesn't have anything to do with everyone else's project. THEREFORE, if (barring my earlier numbers) everyone were to start modding the core, everyone would be doing their own thing, and most of it wouldn't have anything to do with everyone else's project.
How many people do you really think would jump into core dev saying "OH oh oh! I cant WAIT to fix bugs!"? (okay, there was me, but even still I added something to POL specifically because I needed it in my shard [it just so happened that its useful to others, too, so Shinigami decided it was worth keeping].) |
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Luth
POL Developer
Joined: 30 Jan 2006
Posts: 35
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| Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 7:04 pm Post subject: |
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(NB: DO NOT take my word for anything more than its worth... I am a dev, but I'm the newest dev, and have the least "policy" experience of them all. Talk to Austin, MuadDib, and all of them if you're truly interested.)
You didn't misspeak, but I may have given you a false impression. I believe that if I were to start adding components onto the Core that benefited my shard alone, and ignored the other work to be done, I expect that I would find myself the newest ex-Dev of POL. While its true that we work on what we want, for the most part, we all want to work on core Core issues: fixing bugs, improving performance, adding the latest compatibilities, and such. So, a slightly over-the-top satirical statement may be: You're free to work on whatever you want, provided you want to work on what we want you to work on. 
You apply by talking to the likes of Austin, Adam, MuadDib, and Shinigami. If they're suitably impressed with your C++ skills (no use trying if you haven't any), ambitions (see above), and attitude (I'm sure your forum posts would be used as reference), its not impossible that you'll find yourself the newest dev.
Or, if you're like me, ghost-code a few bug fixes, let the other devs put their name on it, and then ask for a Dev seat. ;-P |
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BoMbY
Joined: 18 May 2007
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 10:02 am Post subject: |
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| Luth wrote: | | As for the RUO vs POL, I'm going to pass on a lesson from my time at AskChopper... for those that dont know, AskChopper.com is the UltimaOnline Bug Site. Yes, we handle and publish bugs for player run shards too. As such, the AC community has spent MANY weekends terrorizing RUO shards due to the numerous heinous and gaping bugs in the RUO server. Not bugs like memory leaks, or core slowdowns, but fun bugs like placing houses in town, infinite money, breaking vendors, etc. In all the years I've been running that site, the very few POL bugs to be submitted were shard specific and thus a result of bad scripts, not a bad core, whereas the RUO bugs we publish are generally usable on every major RUO shard. |
Do you really think your server is more secure, because of not releasing the source? Ever heard of disassemblers? Security through obscurity will never really protect anything. |
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Luth
POL Developer
Joined: 30 Jan 2006
Posts: 35
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| Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 10:51 pm Post subject: |
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| BoMbY wrote: | | Do you really think your server is more secure, because of not releasing the source? Ever heard of disassemblers? Security through obscurity will never really protect anything. |
YES, of course it is more secure. Lets explore...
How many people will want to maliciously disrupt a shard, or exploit for their own benefit? Lets be extra-cautious and say 10% of users. How many of them know how to read code enough to follow, if not write it? This time, lets be generous and say half. So the potential abusers of an Open Source application are 5% of the user base. Now how many of those users know enough to use a disassembler AND know enough assembly to follow it? Again, generously, maybe 10%. That drops your potential abusers from 5% to 0.5%.
Will keeping a closed source result in a more secure application? Yes indeed. A completely secure application? No, of course not, and in that much, you are correct. However, I'll take half a percentage over five percent any day. |
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Madman
POL Developer
Joined: 05 Feb 2006
Posts: 30
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| Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 11:20 pm Post subject: |
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Security via obscurity can never be an entire wall of protection. But it steepens the hill, makes it more work to get to the exploits.
In any case- if you are interested in helping the Dev team, email me. I'm serious.
I haven't been around on the boards much lately, I know. For those who are too new to know me, I am Madman Across the Water, and currently I'm the one who holds the "rights" such as they are to the POL code.
I am going to admit that I haven't gone back and read this entire thread. I will mention that I have permission from Syz to "go open source" if (and only if) it is that or the death of the emulator. There are a lot of issues with going open source- many of them figgling little legal issues, like that I would technically have to contact everyone who has ever contributed to the code and get their permission to release under a license. If I didn't bother, would there be trouble? Probably not... but it would still be the proper way to go about it.
I don't really want to deal with it. I will if I have to, though. But for now, I would rather see a vital dev team and a new version come out soon. If you're interested in helping make that happen, email me: madmanatw@gmail.com .
I DO NOT promise that everyone who emails me will get drafted. And I would really like it if some people would volunteer to help flesh out the distro. It's one of our weakest links right now.
Actually, this is the wrong place for me to be posting on that. I'll post a "Seeking volunteers" thread over in the Dev Discussion forum in a bit. |
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