POL open source

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Demostenes
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POL open source

Post by Demostenes »

Is there ANY reason, why not put POL open source?

If you look for example at run UO, it overrun every emulator project in few years. Now run UO is the best emulator. Few years ago it was not usable at all. Open source development is very fast in theese cases.

You can say ok, go for run UO then. But we have shards on POL many years and we have quite complicated systems there already. Switching to run UO will be work for one, or more years. And it is not possible to stop development of new features for players and make such migration without loosing them. Even if we can find someone, who is able to rewrite 25MB of scripts to c#. So we are quite dependent on POL.

As i read this forum, i very often see answers from development team like "when we have time", "not enough time" and so on. Whats the point of such development? POL is free project, nebody has anything from it. So why not go open source? POL team can still maintain and develop "official" distribution and use only fine modifications/upgrades. There is lot of things on POL, which should be rewritten or upgraded, but there is not enough human capacity in POL team for such changes. I understand that, it is hobby project, so work is done only if somebody has mood for it.

I beelive, if POL goes open source, it can catch run UO very fast. Now, if anybody wants to start new shard, run UO is the best option by far. And POL team cannot catch up with open source run UO, it is not possible. Now POL is few years behind run UO (with current speed of progress). And that abyss is growing bigger and bigger. It is said, because few years ago POL was the best.

Other possibility is to sell pol code. If there is any chance to buy POL code for some reasonable price (-+$100), i am quite sure, that there will be lots of people interessed in. Such sollution would lack advantages of opensource community, but at least enable shard development teams to make their own unique modifications they need.
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Austin
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Post by Austin »

Its been considered but the point of open source is for a larger group of people to contribute to a project....

This has never been demonstrated by users of POL.
We started with the 096 distro to test the waters - almost no one contributed to it in anyway. If the POL core source were released, we can with almost complete certainty assume that people will grab it and drift even further apart.

There is still active work being done on the core.
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Post by Demostenes »

Austin wrote: We started with the 096 distro to test the waters - almost no one contributed to it in anyway.
Well, i think this is quite logical. POL was the first emulator, which allowed highly customized shards. I believe, that most of POL shards are so much customized, that something like universal distro does not have sense for most of developers teams. Years ago, we chose POL, because of good customization possibility, nobody cared too much for distro.

I know, you are still doing lot of god job with new cores, but you cannot make all features users wants, because each shard is different and need different things. If you want more POL users, only chance is to satisfy us much people as you can. And going open is only way in non commercial projects.

I agree, that lot of people would probably take source and disappear, but if you look at the run UO, since they made code open, numbers of users went up many times. So you loose people, but probably gain new.

Even if you are 100% right, and most of people will disappear (and nobody new appears) from the forum, what difference it will make? Whats the point of having 200 users just waiting for new core and contributing nothing? Is it not better to have few people, but active people, who can/want somehow contribute? And you can continue development your own way anyway.

You are caring about number of people in your community, but in current situation, POL cannot atract new people because of run UO. And the old people will end sooner or later. Without "young blood" is not chance to at least survive on constant number of users.
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Post by Demostenes »

RunUO status: Currently Active Users: 423 (147 members and 276 guests)

POL status: In total there are 2 users online :: 1 Registered, 0 Hidden and 1 Guest

This doest really look like that closed code attracts people to forum, or holds the community. Such thing can work only if all emulators are closed, or if the open ones are shitty. Not in current state of things. Good open emulator on the scene, POL has no chance to attract new users and the old ones are disappearing too. If there is no radical change, like 50x faster development, or openining the code, pol is dead in some time. Forum is already almost dead. Even reply of developers/other users take usually days. Not mentioning bug fixes, if i post something now, maybe in few months i will see fix.

Pol now holds only the shards, which are too big and too complicated for fast migration to run UO. No new shard will pick POL. If you want something simple and easy to learn you pick Sphere (even if it is shitty), if you know some programming and plan to build serious shard, you pick run UO. Run UO has even better default distro, which is advantage for admins who wants osi like shards.


I think everybody with some simple/beginning shard migrated long time ago. I know about many features, i want to modify on POL, but since there is problem with fixing important and more general problems like at least catching up with the current uo client development, i can never hope to have implemented some shard-releated features.

Once you run shard for some years, the system is quite tuned and you want to start adding some unique features, no one else have. A this is sometimes problem due to core. On one side i want to keep improving our shard, on the other side there is more and more limitations of core. And migration to run UO would be work for at least one year and that will mean stop caring of game, try to migrate and hope to not loose to much players? And than tune the system again for new emulator? It will send the project to hell. I ve seen many shards who tried to migrate in later phase and it was always their end.

I think opened pol can be competition to the run UO, because it would provide quite good scripting language + opened core for further modifications. Which would be good and unique combination. I think there is nothing to loose, POL is dying anyway.
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MontuZ
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Post by MontuZ »

Demo, how long have you been around POL?
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Sadahar
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Post by Sadahar »

I think pol works fine with closed source... BUT needs a good default distro...

Maybe if you help instead of crying Pol will improve?
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*Edwards
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Post by *Edwards »

Personnally, I would be glad to see Pol source but unfortunately I'm sure a lot of people will simply grab the features and just forgive the community for their own success. But if PenultimaO plan a futur major change as a new "background" that could help to discover new ideas from everyone who share them and eventually they could simply release a big update closed source. Kinda like RunUo did in the past and said above. Personnally, I'm waiting the new updates given by the community and waiting the opportunity to help... Thank you Pol for all this fun.

My goal is to provide an unique world with a lot of features, fun and great time for our players while Pol is doing the same to us.
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Post by Demostenes »

MontuZ wrote:Demo, how long have you been around POL?
5-6years?

I know very well, how run UO developed. From the not usable emulator to NO1 in half, maybe even less time then any other emulator. Ask yourself why?

2sadahar: Well, i will not take away your ilussions, maybe it work well for your shard.....Anyway i dont see any point in developing distro, if am working on highly customized shard. You know as well as me, that everything around shards is pure hobby and time is very limited. Thus i prefere to focus on my project. If POL team want to help with this, it would be better to ask people, who are running OSI like/distro shards.

However i would have no problem with sharing some code, which can help others. For examle if POL is opened and our team repair some notorious core bugs, or add some improvements, which can serve well all, i will have no problem with sharing it.

If you can think over it, there is nothing to loose at all. Whats the point of having forum full (erm, now empty) of pasive people, who are only wayting for new core? Even if they want to contribute by sharing their work, such work probably cannot be used by community, because each shard is unique.
On the other side if core is open, there are much wider possibilities of what to share. By opening core you only increase chance of attracting people and thus chance for gaining contributors.

I know that POL team is working on core, but come on, since release of 0.97 there is plenty of serious bugs not fixed even after 5 months? I dont blame them, i understand that this is matter of time and mood, but this is only other reason, why to go open.
If the core was opened, i would bet, that theese problems would be solved in few weeks. If 20 shard teams fix the problem, there is some chance, that at least one will share. If there is none, chance is none.


2edwards: Yes that will probably happen. But in longer term run it will attract lots of new people and some of them will for sure start contributing (If your community has 20 people, is much lower chance to have some contributors, than if you have 200)
Now there is almost none, or very low chance for attracting higher number of new people.
Btw, since the run uo went open (yes, it was not open from beginning), its community growed MANY times. You can guess why.
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Sadahar
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Post by Sadahar »

New people... can I ask from where?
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Post by Demostenes »

Sadahar wrote:New people... can I ask from where?
People from shard community, for which pol can became interesting option if going open?
People who are now starting new shards (yes, i know at least about 3 new projects in my country)?
Drag some people from run uo comunity?

It is only necessary to make pol more interesting. Now there is no reason for potential new users to choose pol.

Or you really believe, there can be no new people? Come on, start using your brain.
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Post by Pierce »

@Demostenes:
You can surely ask somebody to make his/their perhaps more than 1000 or more hours of work public, but you can't demand it.
It's the same if i ask you to make your server scripts public. Perhaps you have 10 new competitors shards in your country with exact your scripts. And they done no work on it. You can surely not compare that directly but its nearly the same. I can understand Austin when he says that the distro dev shows that it's not a good idea.

What pol currently misses is a startup distro for in my opinion 97 that at least gives everyone new to pol an easy setup for the important systems.
The test core 97 i use is very stable. No crash at all yet.

If pol is open source it's perhaps an advantage for you and for sure me also, but it's not an advantage for new users or a more populated pol community.
If you want your special changes in the core and won't wait like we all do, perhaps you ask them to join the dev team :)
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Post by MontuZ »

He's just suggesting strongly. I dunno why I prefer POL closed, just do. Might be because most of us are already behind on client features scriptwise and if POL suddenly accelerated at the speed of light and enabled a whole bundle of features, our heads would probably explode from all the goddamn updating we would have to do to our scriptbases.

Updates bug fixes and feature additions may be slow, but they're always worth the wait. And in my case it's easier on me, they upgrade the core, give us plenty of time to catch up or at least do it the right way and not speed through core conversions. If they came out with 098 tomorrow I'd die. I don't care if I don't see 098 for another year or two, I need a break damnit and I bet they need one too!

Demo, you want open source, go to RunUO.

RunUO is the hare and POL is the tortoise. Who always wins? =)
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Post by Demostenes »

MontuZ wrote: Demo, you want open source, go to RunUO.
I want. But i wrote reasons why i cant. When we started to run shard years ago, POL was best choice. But now the situation is different. It is pitty, that pol wasnt able to stay at lead. But of course few people cannot compete with hundreds.
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Post by qrak »

POL community is larger than you think but most of people doesn't contribute anything or they don't speak english. Second thing, it's better to learn and write in C language than some unusable eScript. In my opinion closed source it's not the main reason of lack of people in community.
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Post by Demostenes »

qrak wrote:POL community is larger than you think but most of people doesn't contribute anything or they don't speak english. Second thing, it's better to learn and write in C language than some unusable eScript. In my opinion closed source it's not the main reason of lack of people in community.
Well, scripting language is both advantage and disadvatage. So this is not case.
I think the most important is speed of development. If the emulator is at least able to catch up with client development. A this is problem of POL. Pol even properly doesnt support AOS and ML:

http://forums.polserver.com/ftopic2009.php

Other thing is activity on forum. If you put some questions and there is no reply in one week from anybody, it clearly shows, that this is some dying project. If am choosing emu, i need to know, how much supported that emu is. If i can ask for some help and hope for further development. I seriously doubt, that some POL newbie would be able to only start 0.97 core without help. That is serious problem too.
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tekproxy
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Post by 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.
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Austin
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Post by Austin »

^--- Most awesome and hilarious post in ages!
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Austin
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Post by 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.
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Post by 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
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Post by 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...
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Post by 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.
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Tritan
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Post by 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.
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Post by Pierce »

runUO forum:
Currently Active Users: 796 (232 members and 564 guests)
Some guys here always compare these numbers. Did you ever read the runuo forum? From the 564 guests you mention there are 400 google bots, yahoo bots or else :) The members number is o.k. (me myself is a member), but you should put it in the right way. Mostly it looks like a WoW Server. My Script is better than your script. You even have no idea of c++. You suck. You too. And more of this way. Quantity is not always quality :) They have an easy install, POL miss one. That's why everybody new to UO choose RunUO. Even with no idea of what you are doing, you can run RunUO. Pol97 you can only run at the moment, if you are know what you're doing. Cause there's no distro. Just again my 2 Cents :)
It's like sphere the first server i've ever installed. What we need is a distro first. A simple running 97 server. The problem is, everybody has a server running and if i talk from my view it looks very different to the distro. Even folders are completly stored elsewere. And that's the problem. If you are member of the community since e.g. 91, 93 you have a complete different folder structure to the existing 97 distro :)

I personally converted 95 distro not the whole way but nearly 85% to 97 after i converted our own freeshard to completly Core 97, cause we need also a multi/statics build server. But that even looks like the existing 97 distro cause the folder structure is completely different. Nothing i have converted from the old fits in the new structure.

I think that's the problem, cause everybody has it's own structure. :D
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Post by 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.
Last edited by OldnGrey on Wed Mar 05, 2008 3:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
Xpatriat
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Poor horse.

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