Post: #1

It's been almost one year since I visited sphereserver.net. What happened since then? When I was leaving, khaos had made me a developer but I didn't get into the code, Damian had e-mailed to khaos about the open source matter but some angry boys in the development crew strongly disagreed without any proper arguments. I was kicked most probably due to inactivity, same for khaos and many others. But I'm mostly glad of that shiryux kid got kicked. Yes, he was the main reason I've lost my interest on Sphereserver and looked for other emulators. He was basically stubborn against me in every possible discussion, bug report, suggestion etc. and I thought "why do I have to wait for a kid to fix core bugs or add features when I'm running a live server?" then went for RunUO. It seems, it's still the same situation but the development staff has been vastly improved and the new people work really hard, I appreciate that. But still, why did you deny the chance of going open source when it was possible? The community dedication and contribution are what kept UO still alive till these days. But sphereserver seems to have lost it's glorious days. I'm not bashing your effort or anything but was it really necessary to be stubborn? Many people relied on sphereserver with their live shards but people got that it's not reliable to stick on an emulator that might change completely overnight or become unstable the other day and they had to wait for another patch to fix the spaghetti code.


So what was your counter-argument when Damian himself was mild about going opensource on GitHub last year? What is Damian doing now, where is he?

Post: #2

Post: #3

it's all explained here

Post: #4

I really don't want to fuel the fire here, but some things do need to be made clear about everything that had gone down with open source over the years.
I was asked to join the dev team 3 years ago by khaos and shyriux, and up to that point, open source was not an option. shortly after that, the whole team disappeared on me. I was left with a big project that no one apparently cared for anymore, so I hired a few devs... out of those, only a few really helped and the others also disappeared right away. At this point, I decided to cleanup all inactive SVN accounts, and this is when khaos popped back in and flipped out on me and threatened to release the source. This is when I found out about an old discussion between damian and khaos where damian gave permission to go open source, but khaos himself replied to him "the dev team" was not interested in open source.
To settle things down, I gave khaos his account back and added around 6 other people to the team if I remember correctly, which that included you xantier, and open source discussions just stoped again.
Once again, only a select few stuck around to really help, so another account cleaning was done just recently.
Now, once again, an old dev team comes crying back about open source. To be completely honest, I do not see any benefits to going open source. I have thought about it, yes, but we are not going to gain anything for the community.
Everyone will just take the source and modify it for their own server, not sharing with the main branch anyways, the community will dissipate and this place will become a host to a dead branch...
I'll take the whole blame for keeping it closed source for the last few years, as this project was dumped on me like an unwanted child.

If it's truly what the community wants, I'll make it happen, but you can be sure that this place will not survive, and I won't be sticking around to see it burn.

Post: #5

(08-02-2015 11:04 PM)Ben Wrote:  Now, once again, an old dev team comes crying back about open source.

No, I don't consider myself as a -old or not- sphere dev since I don't have any contribution on it. I am not mad at account cleaning since I was completely inactive, I am not blaming you for anything related to that.

(08-02-2015 11:04 PM)Ben Wrote:  I do not see any benefits to going open source.

Plain wrong, I don't think I need to post lots of paragraphs for the benefits of open source, I really don't.

(08-02-2015 11:04 PM)Ben Wrote:  Everyone will just take the source and modify it for their own server, not sharing with the main branch anyways, the community will dissipate and this place will become a host to a dead branch...

And why does that make you suddenly stop contributing to the master branch? RunUO has lots and lots of forks but it still doesn't keep it from being developed. Even though runuo.com has declared cancellation, people still fork the main branch and develop it on github nowadays. This is a community project. You are doing it for free like all of us, if there is something that needs to be fixed, people would just request push access to fix it. Don't be afraid of being dead, sphereserver is already almost dead at this point. People still have hopes regarding to UO, have you checked the client project UltimaXNA recently? They are doing an amazing job thanks to the open source projects that are released so far. You should let people contribute or fork sphereserver.

Lastly, I am deeply sorry that you were beared with a dead project with 0 contributor at that year. I am not here to be edgy and bash everyone out. I am just trying to make some reasonable explanations.

And yes, I am aware of the fact that there are people with bad intentions who always try to take the credit on something they don't even own and don't share the work. There have always been that type of people, but if it was truly the case, the linux kernel wouldn't even exist.

Post: #6

I really dont understand why sphere call it self as "community" if the source code is closed... (today for me sphere seems a little bit like android: it's open source, you can do anything you want but the core source you can not touch)

I've been rejected for many years trying to get into the development team, the most recent kick off came from Ben, who sayied to me the same thing he wrote here: "Everyone will just take the source and modify it for their own server, not sharing with the main branch anyways"..

Obviously that everyone wants to make improvements on your shard, because the actual development team doesn't care about what we want to make for our shards become different, to get some advantage from other shards... we just want to do whatever we want to do and you guys are blocking us for some selfish reason.

If some one ask me to help, I always try to make the best to help then, so why you guys think if i've made something that was really good, i would not share?
Of course i will not share the same script of my shard, but the base script, the how-to, all the information to help of course I would!

I've already shared nice codes in the community.. why stop? (this is the luberjacking of my shard... any sphere shard can use it now, even DMS Shard from Brazil who have a Sphere Development member on the staff, Coruja... why i did that???? CUZ I REALLY DON'T CARE!!!!! i just want Ultima Online players back, if in my shard GOOD if not GOOD too!)

Sphere not becomming open source is the worst thing for Ultima Online Community... Ultima is almost dying around the world and we basicly are creating same shards arround the globe just with diferent names... this is really a community?

So, i ask again: WHY SPHERE CALLS THENSELFS COMMUNITY IF WE'R NOT ONE?????

Post: #7

It would be wise not to cause more friction at this point... when I get irritated, I tend to not listen.

Anyone wishing for open source, just say so, but don't start bitching.

Post: #8

Ben.... you as a "Sphere Developer" shoud be listening to your people and giving answers, not getting irritated! but ok.. you want to ignore the fact that for years sphere was stoped in time, outdated of technology, outdated of security issues.. alright, but i will not!

Yes i want sphere become OpenSource... for the good of the community!

Many others want, just the Development Team don't! At least me I want the freedom to make changes, to do my kind of stuff!

You say that everyone will change sphere for your own propouses, but really... how many people you think this is??? In the footer of forum have this:

Quote:The most users online at one time was 447 on 06-28-2012 at 10:50 PM

Lets say now this forum have... 50, 100 active members with shards (I'm being very generous)... how much of this 100 members will really do something that you are afraid of not be shared on the community?

I'm not trying to inflame this thread or make you irritated, I'm just trying to get some answers that i've never had the oportunity to ask.

---

Note: And i would be glad to see the point of view of all Sphere Team Members, if they could!

Post: #9

you do realize that the current devs have only been on "the team" for about 1 year, with the exception of me that have been around for 3 years.
Any complaints about how things were handled before that I couldn't give a shit.

Post: #10

Ok Ben... there is no way to talk to you.
I give a shit for how many time you or anyone is in the team, the crew, the fu#@!

I want to sphere get better!! JUST IT!
For my purpose, for your purpose, for everyone purpose!

When you calm down, try to read the entire post and see how ridiculous your answers have been.