Oolite Bulletins

*adding to jump forum glitch*

Good points LittleBear. For someone like me, who's machine will never be able to handle the whole Extended package, it will be downright confusing if these complex OXPs start getting out of step.

Makara wrote:

*adding to jump forum glitch*

Good points LittleBear. For someone like me, who's machine will never be able to handle the whole Extended package, it will be downright confusing if these complex OXPs start getting out of step.

I don't see a real problem. This way you can be very sure you always have outdated stuff when downloading OSE. It is impossible to keep the individual parts within OSE updated and bug free. So it now becomes easier to convince people in not downloading this big bug, but to download the proper originals that are kept updated by their authors.

Eric Walch wrote:

I don't see a real problem. This way you can be very sure you always have outdated stuff when downloading OSE. It is impossible to keep the individual parts within OSE updated and bug free. So it now becomes easier to convince people in not downloading this big bug, but to download the proper originals that are kept updated by their authors.

If you guys think you can keep going like this, you're dead wrong.

I really don't have to put up with this shit.

EOC.

LittleBear, I'm hope you're happy with what you have let yourself get instrumentalised for. See the immediate results. Forget a further PM from me: It's not coming. I wanted to send you something calm answering to your concerns, but these are no concerns here. It's bull.

This here is simply a stupid little bullying game inscenated by people who for some reason don't have something better to do, and it is ending here.

I have invested a real lot of work into RS/OSE/OE, more than some of the people I could mention that bully me here have invested in theirs, I could say. Literally thousands of people got interested in the stuff I have put together. I created one of the most successful threads here and really tried to be cooperative and talk things out, take concerns and criticism seriously and so on. Obviously, this doesn't work.

I think this ignorant, arrogant, "I am such an elite (not the game) programmer/coder", downputting stance of some people here is simply a result from feeling overshadowed. Not sure why actually, as what I'm doing is showcasing everyone's work here in an obviously good light, but well. If you need it.

I'm out of here for a few weeks. I'll be back, I guess. But I've had it, I won't put up with this sorry lack of social competence anymore.

If someone here still hasn't got it, read up on the Creative Commons license and what it says! Condition: Share-alike!

If you are such superior coders that your stuff should by all rights be copyrighted like a commercial game and will also have fewer bugs than those, what about going to the gaming industry? Should really be peanuts for giants such as you.

I don't really know what has started the new round of flames nor do I want to know. Had I not invested more than a thousand workhours into this meta-oxp I would simply stop the project.

Though, I'm going to finish it. But I won't be cooperative about it. Anyone who tries to talk down to me in the future is going to be treated the same royal-assed, ignorant way I have been treated time and again on this forum: With silence at best.

When it's done, it's done, and will probably be more up-to-date than singular oxps on actual players harddrives. Or does anyone think players walk the 265+ oxps list daily and look for the holy update? If these are not even marked, and not even I can find them when looking for them sometimes (the updates)?

No worry, rant over, perhaps read you in a few weeks.

L

Eric Walch wrote:

I don't see a real problem. This way you can be very sure you always have outdated stuff when downloading OSE. It is impossible to keep the individual parts within OSE updated and bug free. So it now becomes easier to convince people in not downloading this big bug, but to download the proper originals that are kept updated by their authors.

Eric, really, is it necessary to write that way? Especially since there have been bugs found in your oxp's which could crash oolite and which were fixed by the OSE people. At least in that case, people would have had far better results with OSE than with the different oxp's on their own.

Furthermore, it's really a problem to stay up to date on oxp's for a single person as the way it's currently handled is producing problems for such a task. Hopefully, that will change when the oxp list is updated to a better version and also updated instantly when an oxp is being updated. Maybe post-MNSR Oolite really should have some tool to verify oxp versions.

Screet

No wish to fall out with you L. But you have used stuff that is being written by another member without asking permission and that is bad form. If you are going to distrubte work by other forum members without even telling them you are going to do it then it is a bit much for you to describe others as high handed. It is also bad for the game.

I hope would accept that any criticism of you, at least by me, is based on the effect of using w.i.p. OXPs in OSE would have rather than anything personal towards you.

For example yesterday Commander McLane posted a bug with the shaders on Griff's Hopper. Today Griff has posted saying he's got a fix for it. If Random Hits is circulating in two versions how am I suppost to support it? I can't fix bugs (my bugs by the way from my mistakes in coding not your mistakes) because there will be users who have OSE installed but not Random Hits itself.

If you are undertaking to maintain it and fix all the bugs yourself then fine include it in OSE. But that it is an impossible task and on any view, I really think that as the orginal author I am entitled to finish my own OXP.

There are bugs with the AI that need fixing in 1.3.6 and the events code is only half done and the special mission is only half done.

Another problem I will have if Random Hits is released in two versions is that the Random Hits version in OSE will still be setting certain blocking variables that stop certain events happening (I need these turned on ATM cos the code to support certain events is half done and if I let them run Oolite would crash).

However if I then relealse a new version with these features turned on when I've finished writing the code for it, the out of date version in OSE will turn off all my new features!!! That would be kinda annoying for me, as I hope you'd be the first to appearate. When you've worked on an OXP you want people to be able to play it.

Similarly, it makes no sense to include Assassins in a meta OXP. The script to assassins really chews up reasorches and its a play once OXP. There's just no point having it in unless you are in G7 and haven't finished it.

If you are going to distrute unfinshied code by other authors, then the orginal author has no choice but to either not support the OXP anymore or slap a warning on the Wikki page saying that the OXP won't work if you have OSE installed. I don't want to do that because I do not want to make any OXP I release incompatable with an OXP you (or any other member of the community has released). Please extend me the same courstory by not making OSE incompatable with any further versions of Random Hits.

I have always been supportive of your OXPs so I am entitled I think to be somewhat narked for you to realease an OXP that will prevent one of mine from working properly. And then go off in a huff when its pointed out!

I would full accept that you didn't mean to do this, but I hope you can see that because of the way Random Hits is coded, this is what you would do by including the current version in OSE. You would also have known this if you had the manners to have sent me a PM saying that you wanted to include Random Hits in OSE. I would then have told you "Please do, but I'd like to finish it first!"

If you do not want to co-operate with any other member of the forum, I fail to see how you can view this as good for the project. If everybody make there oxps incompatable with everyone elses the game (and indeed these forums) woudn't be much fun.

I would also suggest that you follow your own advice and read the Creative Commons Licence. ([/url]http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/[url]). You are not permitted to use another ... ask first.[/url]

I understand your emotional reaction Lestradae as you put a lot of work and enthusiasm into the project and I very much look forward to the end product but I think that Littlebear has some valid point in his commentary. BTW his comments where not meant as a personal attack.

So Gentlemen. Please return to being the friendliest board on this side of Riedquate please! We can discuss this out in a normal way

pagroove, yours is the voice of reason. Agreed.

I am going to try to resolve this with LittleBear via PM.

One thing still stands: I am not going to let anyone bully me around, fin.

And before criticising the idea here, please at least read what stands in the very first posting of this thread, this would have cleared up the question about the upgrade problematics immediately. There is a difference between a very critical debate and destructive b...!

L

Lestradae wrote:

If someone here still hasn't got it, read up on the Creative Commons license and what it says! Condition: Share-alike!

I’m not sure what the context of this remark is, but I want to make a clarification.

Oolite’s data may be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. This does not mean that OXPs are automatically covered by that license, unless they include significant portions of Oolite data. (As far as I am concerned, using Oolite plists as a template for how to lay out data does not qualify. Nor does replacing a built-in ship with a new model, or using like_ship. Using a built-in ship with a modified Oolite texture does, for example.)

For works that are covered by a copyleft license, it is certainly good form, albeit not required, to talk to the author before modifying or redistributing it, if they are known to desire it.

LittleBear wrote:

I would also suggest that you follow your own advice and read the Creative Commons Licence. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/). You are not permitted to use another's work in breach of their moral rights. IE You ask first.

I know you’re a lawyer and I’m not, but you’re wrong here. The duplication monopoly is quite specifically not a “moral right” in the context of copyright, and the license explicitly permits copying (for non-commercial use) without requiring permission.

The moral rights referred to are the right to control whether your name is associated with the work and the right to take action against derogatory usage of the work. These rights are of course jurisdiction-dependent, since they’re explicitly not regulated by the license (and, in most countries, can’t be). If you really wanted to escalate things here, you could claim that OSE is a “distortion or mutilation” of your work, but that goes quite a bit beyond requiring permission…

Lestradae wrote:

I am intentionally posting this in the Testing and Bug reports and not the Expansion Pack forum!

I know it’s a bit late, but this is wrong, and it’s not your call to make. Testing and Bug reports is for bugs in Oolite. I am moving this to Expansion Pack.

Moderator hat on
I haven’t felt the need to do this before, but: as of now, this thread (and its topic) is subject to increased moderation. Any personal attacks or inflamed rants from this point onwards may be deleted without further warning. If they come from Lestradae, the thread may be locked.

I haven’t been following the thread closely, I’m not clear on who started what, and I don’t want to know. I am not passing judgment on anyone’s past actions (and I really don’t want anyone PMing me to explain their side of it, whatever “it” may be). I’m just saying that I will be passing judgment in future. </headmaster>

Ok. Fair enough. I have tried to resolve this by PM with Lestrade. But he feels that he is entitled to copy and paste other authors work into his own OXP and release it without even telling the orginal author.

He has said that he will not ask permission to use others work and will not take any notice of the orginal author's objection. I simply don't have time for this. As I no longer have any control over the versions in which my code is circulating it is simply too much work to support my OXPs anymore. I will leave it to Lestrade to do so. Please address any bug reports on Random Hits to Lestrade for him to fix.

A few points.

@Ahruman:

I know it’s a bit late, but this is wrong, and it’s not your call to make. Testing and Bug reports is for bugs in Oolite. I am moving this to Expansion Pack.

About moving this to Expansion forum, fair enough. I did want it in the Testing forum to not create the idea this was already a finished, published meta-oxp. It is a work in progress, in parts still massively so. I hope a few people do read read-me's. There's not much more I can do about it.

The duplication monopoly is quite specifically not a “moral right” in the context of copyright, and the license explicitly permits copying (for non-commercial use) without requiring permission.

I would ask the original authors if they had a problem with their stuff included here. There are three problems:

* Past (& present) vendetta's against this project and it's forerrunners, that might make people anxious of being attacked too if they are associated with it or me
* Not much sense in an aaaall-of-it package that doesn't contain all of it.
* Seriously, ask 200+ people some of whom are not even locatable anymore?

Usually, I do react to requests from original authors the way they want that. Exemptions, see above three points. I am also confident to already make headway in that direction with LittleBear via PMs exchanged in the last 24 hours. The problem here are not his wishes (which he will get, now that I actually know what exactly his problem with this is) but the nearly-nonexisting culture of constructive quarreling/debate on this board. Imo.

I haven’t felt the need to do this before, but: as of now, this thread (and its topic) is subject to increased moderation. Any personal attacks or inflamed rants from this point onwards may be deleted without further warning. If they come from Lestradae, the thread may be locked.

I am absolutely OK with this and wouldn't act any different if I were in your position here. I assume everyone will be treated the same regarding this, though. Because if no one flames me, you can have any promise from me you want I won't rant at anyone, ever, period. I've simply had enough of the below-the-belt actions, absolutely, completely enough. And that I had to get out of my system.

I haven’t been following the thread closely, I’m not clear on who started what, and I don’t want to know. I am not passing judgment on anyone’s past actions (and I really don’t want anyone PMing me to explain their side of it, whatever “it” may be). I’m just saying that I will be passing judgment in future.

Again, complete agreement from me.

As already noted, if this "policing" is extended to everyone involved presently and in the future, I welcome it. Perhaps then contentious issues can be debated constructively and without derogatory expressions, and solutions found all sides can live with - which is all I want.

I assume "... I’m not clear on who started what, and I don’t want to know. I am not passing judgment on anyone’s past actions (and I really don’t want anyone PMing me to explain their side of it, whatever “it” may be) ..." means exactly that.

@LittleBear:

He has said that he will not ask permission to use others work and will not take any notice of the orginal author's objection. I simply don't have time for this. As I no longer have any control over the versions in which my code is circulating it is simply too much work to support my OXPs anymore. I will leave it to Lestrade to do so. Please address any bug reports on Random Hits to Lestrade for him to fix.

Oh, come on and don't be ... not so intelligent as you are. You must notice from the direction our PMs start to go that we will easily reach a viable compromise and are perhaps nearly there already. That could have happened without the whole tedious little civil war.

I did not say that I would "not take any notice of the orginal author's objection", but have said many, many times now that I actually do! What I have said is that I will not let myself be forbidden - on a whim - the usage of things that wouldn't be in existence without this 100% copyleft scenario here .

Again, had I known the whole point was RH being still a WiP (which I simply hadn't understood) and so it was too early for inclusion it hadn't gone into the WiP of OE for testing here ... for example Localhero is not in, too, because Svengali has made it clear for me that this is unfinished and not compatible with Oolite 1.73+.

The whole problem here is, imo, is a lack of discussion and/or argument culture on these boards. Every critical debate has to become below-the-belt and talking-down-to instead of trying to get to an agreement that takes all positions of the debatants into account - as is entirely possible usually.

L

I agree.

The problem is that you C&Ped my code from my OXPs without asking me or discusing it with me and released it without telling me.

How exactley am I meant to discuss something with you when you just go and do it without asking me first?

Either remove the download link for the current version of OSE and re-release it without the Random Hits code in it or support random hits yourself.

It is quite impossible for me to support Random Hits if every update I make to it will be over-ridden by OSE.

[Moderator: Inflammatory comment removed]I seem to remember you complaining on the boards (and even starting a poll) when Commander McLane released an OXP which altered the way OSE treated the MASC device. Yet you break every OXP I have written by copying my code into OSE and then claim that when you are critisied for it its below the belt!

LittleBear wrote:

Moderator: Inflammatory comment

Lestradae wrote:

The whole problem here is, imo, is a lack of discussion and/or argument culture on these boards. Every critical debate has to become below-the-belt and talking-down-to instead of trying to get to an agreement that takes all positions of the debatants into account - as is entirely possible usually.

See what I mean?

PS: The download link containing the RH WiP has been removed six hours ago, before you sent me the PM to remove it and also before you wrote the last posting in this thread.

All parties, please try to keep your cool. There is no need for personal attacks, the point gets across just fine without them. I hope there will be no further need to interfere with posts on this thread. I really do.

another_commander wrote:

All parties, please try to keep your cool. There is no need for personal attacks, the point gets across just fine without them. I hope there will be no further need to interfere with posts on this thread. I really do.

I agree 100%. May I propose a compromise? LB goes on just fine with Random Hits and Lestradae calls the oxp something like Oolite Extended Random Hits.

Just an idea to hopefully resolve this little laser war.

Without particularly wishing to extend this whole sorry saga, sadly I see a lot of the above mirroring the "discussions" I was involved with a few weeks ago.

Speaking personally I have no problem at all in my OXPs being rolled into a meta-OXP, with the caveats that a) they are not altered in any way without consultation and collaboration, b) I am not held responsible for any resultant problems due to incompatibility with any other component OXP if such incompatibility isn't present in the stand-alone version and c) the built-in version is updated when the stand-alone version is.

But all three of those have more to say about them, which I would like to detail:

a) Generally RS/OSE/OE's largest strength has been that it has been a good catalyst for identifying and removing bugs in OXPs. But there are two problems that I see here.

Firstly OXPs have been altered within OSE (as I'll call it from now onward, but read as the tryptic above), by the creation of player versions of ships have been created where none existed before. As to whether original authors have been consulted here I don't know.

Secondly there have been built-on versions of OXP equipment (e.g. the OSE version of hired guns and the proposal for Screet's version of AMS to name two I know about from direct involvement). This I class as generally a good thing, as it is building on the foundations of existing work, and at least in my case has been done with consultation. It does not replace the original version (other than through coded incompatibility) and should sit happily side by side.

Thirdly there was the recent example of proposed work on scripts and such. Without wishing to drag the whole thing up (as I consider it closed satisfactorily) this is where things fall down. If other people start changing someone's OXP then it is arguably no longer theirs. And it is different for someone to offer a suggestion, or offer to help the authors own work with someone just doing it and then hollering about licenses.

b) This rather leads on from a). If the OXP were not altered in any way, it would could not be an issue. However as soon as changes are made, then things can be introduced with unforseen consequences. And this I think is fundamentally LB's issue (aside from the inclusion of WIP work), and it was mine in the past. Arguably as soon as an OXP gets absorbed into another one (rather than code being recycled, unless it is badly done) then the OXP ceases to be the original authors "current work" and responsibility to maintain. Thus leading on to...

c) The built-in version keeping pace with the stand-alone one. This is Eric's point I think. As OSE gets larger, it is obviously going to be much more difficult to maintain. Given how often I seem to find bug in my scripts etc (:oops:) then just by including my OXPs OSE will need to be updated at least once a month. And that's not including the other 240 or so OXPs in there. Hence either OSE is going to end up with nightly builds and patching support like the trunk code does, or people are going to fall behind.

Yes when they do download an updated OSE version they are updating many OXPs that might have got missed had a whole slew of individual OXPs been installed (a one-stop update shop shall we say), but at a 900MB download somehow I don't see many people doing that regularly. Trying to keep a patch directory running might work, but may fall entirely on its face.


My personal recommendations (to try and move forward rather than downwards ducking flames) would be:

• Nothing gets included into OSE without original author or current maintainer's approval. Where no maintainer is available then inclusion indicates taking over that role, at least until the original author may reappear (including of the original stand-alone OXP where fixes are critical).
• All changes (as opposed to "extensions" like the examples mentioned above) are again by the approval of the original author, and are the responsibility of the OSE team. The this.author or other in-code and readme notes should possibly be updated to reflect this fact.
• By way of the above, explicitly no WIP work should be included unless it is repackaged as a completed "partial" OXP.
• No missions are included, for the cited reason that they will lead to bloatware by being present when not needed.
• Where OXPs feature missions and other items (e.g. Aquatics) then the inclusion decision should be by the original author. Sometimes splitting will work, sometimes it won't. And if a split OXP in OSE ends up in the same game as the original (should the player want to do the mission) all sorts of problems have been known.
• If people don't like the OXP fine, it's their personal opinion, and should be kept to themselves. But equally they should not be expected to support or help debug any problems caused by inclusion of their work.

Apologies for the essay, but for me the whole discussion is getting tired and tedious. And also sorry if it looks like I want to slant things towards the original authors, but fundamentally it is our work, and even within OSE it has our names on it.

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