Oolite Bulletins

I am leaving, too.

The reactions to RS/OSE/OE have made it obvious that any sort of bigger meta-oxp or oxp-bundle is not socially possible in this sort of community nor this sort of climate.

There are some people here who sit on their stuff as our beloved mega-corporations do it, calling anyone who tries to do something combining that "untrustworthy", "in bad faith", "disrespecting the feelings of others", "idiot" etc. etc. to name but a few.

I have no idea why and what for some of the "ruling elite" of devs and oxp-makers feels that threatened about the idea of an oxp bundle, and I no longer even want to know. I have the impression that this is less about the "feelings" of said people here, but more a flamewar of some who want to cement their status on this board.

Some try to depict the situation now that I simply ignored the wishes of people who's stuff I wanted to include - but that is an outright lie. The flames that started every moment I publicly did anything on this meta-oxp idea (like these last ones now) effectively prevented exactly that in many cases - and some of you know that when I was contacted, I usually did as asked and got rather cooperative.

A big, cooperative oxp-bundle is simply impossible in a climate of outright hate, petty jealousy and throwing spanners into the works at every opportunity - which I do think is all that this is actually about.

I am pulling out all my work. There will be no player stations, no realistic shipyards pricing, no combat computers, special system or any other stuff I provided or were about to provide. I am sure the players of Oolite will thank the guys I'm writing about a lot about that, too. RS was downloaded 5300 times. But I am sure this is completely irrelevant and means nothing, while what the ten entrenched elite oxp-makers here say does.

Some of you people really must be broken in the head somewhat. (Please don't delete this admittedly inflammatory statement here, admins, it's the last and only one you're going to read from me here ever again. It simply has to be said this once.) I take the only viable route out and see to it that that won't be one of my problems in the future.

L

PS: There are quite a few people here who are really friendly, cool, nice, respectful, agree-to-disagree-able, helpful guys and gals with other ways of solving conflicts than bullying. You know who you are. To you, I say thanks for the journey, and hope you continue to find joy and entertainment in whatever you do.

Damn!

Well now this an ending is what we don't want to see. It's a shame that this project is killed. I hope you rethink Lestradae. It' would be a shame to let all those hours wasted

Please take some time to rethink all. I'm sure there must be a way to do this project. Maybe by shrinking the size of it or in other ways.

But if you quit then good luck and I hope you will be lurking around the forums once in a while.

As a neutral observer, I think this is still the friendliest board this side of Riedquat, and that in this thread the negative motives are being attributed to sundry parties entirely unfairly. Let's not forget that the time and dedication displayed by all Oolite contributors is a precious, wonderful and sadly all-too-rare thing these days. [/grouphug]

I have played Oolite with RS, and without RS. It's nice to have the option of both. As it turns out for me, i prefer to lurk in the bb Expansion thread, and cherry-pick the Wiki and swap individual oxps in and out.

My opinion is that as long as the community of Ooliteers are aware that they can either download Lestradae's version of 'the whole shebang', or they can pick and choose from the original individual OXPs on the Wiki page, everyone can enjoy Oolite as they please.

Lestradae, it's not too late to make it back over that burning bridge, if only for the sake of your hours invested to date and the satisfaction of seeing something arrive at a stage of 'completion'.

my Cr0.02

That may be your opinion, but it is unfortunately not true.

If I create something, I have legal (and moral) rights to that thing. If I create an oolite ship and for whatever reason, I wish other OXPs not to include it, I have the right to manage that.

In many cases people here are happy for there creations to be used freely, but the root of the debate is where this is not the case.

A specific case that is often brought up is the Imperial Courier V1 and V2, but there are others.

Shame this had to die. It was a good idea.

Lestradae, if you feel that you have no option but to leave then that's up to you. I would make these points though:

Lestradae wrote:

Some try to depict the situation now that I simply ignored the wishes of people who's stuff I wanted to include - but that is an outright lie. The flames that started every moment I publicly did anything on this meta-oxp idea (like these last ones now) effectively prevented exactly that in many cases.

That's not the real issue. The issue is that the OXPs were taken and rolled into the RS and OSE releases without prior arrangement - that got people's backs up from the start, hence the bad feeling that was engendered.

Lestradae wrote:

...and some of you know that when I was contacted, I usually did as asked and got rather cooperative.

Again the point to be made is that you should have made prior arrangement or at least discussed it with the OXP makers first, simply out of common courtesy! If someone asked on the forum "please don't do it" or said "I don't want my OXP in your OXP" then the OXP should have been removed. It shouldn't need to be contacted to make the request! The feelings and opinions were visible for all to see!

As I said, it's not about politics, or empire-building or legalese or licensing. It's about co-operation.

Cmdr James wrote:

If I create an oolite ship and for whatever reason, I wish other OXPs not to include it, I have the right to manage that.

I can only think of petty reasons. If someone created the ship and I downloaded it and used it, then it is OK...
On the other hand, if I downloaded it and used it, then it is NOT OK.

Oh... I forgot one insignificant detail: I haven't downloaded it from that someone's link, but some other that was simpler and had more ships.
Only real reason that someone does not want me to download that ship from some other link is there is a chance I wouldn't appreciate his work, or God forbid, think that somebody else made it.

Oh, wait, .

(Spoken from a user's point of view)

Its not really the end users problem, you can download and mess about with OXPs as much as you want, what you cant do, is take someone elses OXP, mess about with it, then make your version downloadable.

And there are good reasons to not want people to change your stuff. There is nothing to stop me creating a ship which has advetisiing for my company on it -- I may reasonably ask that it isnt modified to carry a competitors branding.

Since there are a number of live threads dealing with what is essentially one issue, I've had some trouble deciding which to post this in. I finally landed here.
If a moderator thinks it should be moved, split, edited, deleted or whatever else can be done with a piece of writing, I have no problem with that whatsoever.

I would like to warn/apologize from the outset:
This will most likely end up being long, winding and at times semi-coherent. There will, however, be at least one point towards the end.


To start with:

First, a heartfelt thank you to the developers of Oolite, past, present and future. You have been, are, and will hopefully continue to be, doing a fantastic job bringing a true classic back to life. Furthermore, your tireless dedication to improving and fine tuning the game is nothing short of astounding.

Second, a heartfelt thank you to the OXP writers, past present and future. You have been, are, and will hopefully continue to be, doing a fantastic job expanding on and adding to a game that in its various forms has been around for a quarter of a Century. Your efforts are vital in keeping the game vibrant, alive and growing.

Third, a heartfelt thank you to the writers of Oolite inspired fiction, past, present and future. You have been, are, and will hopefully continue to be, doing a fantastic job in creating and expanding on what feels like a living, breathing history, greatly enhancing the overall experience, making it all the much easier to get immersed in a believable game world.

It would quickly become tiresome if I were to include the above statements in every single post I make on this forum, but rest assured that this purely practical consideration is my only reason for not doing so.


Now then:

I have not been around this forum for very long.
I have, at the point of writing this, made a total of 44 posts (this will make 45), sent 4 PMs and received 1.
[PMs: Eric Walch and Svengali: Sent 1 each - regarding crash at GRS station, BuoyRepair.oxp -- Commander McLane: Sent 2, received 1 - regarding Large Cargo Bay and SellEquipment.oxp]
I have neither formed friendships nor gained enemies (that I am aware of).
I have no particular likes or dislikes towards anyone here.
In short, I am as close to a neutral party humanly possible.

I am also approching this very much from an end user perspective.
I have no programming skills worth mentioning, and while I have some writing skills, I lack the imagination (and time!) necessary for joining in on the fiction side of things.
Any contributions on my part will be limited to the odd suggestion and spotted bug.


To bundle, or not to bundle:

When I first stumbled on Oolite, I was overjoyed that I had finally found a version of Elite that functions on a modern computer without emulators and/or dubious hacks to make it work. I was over-overjoyed to discover the OXPs. I am fully aware that people have widely differing opinions on the what-and-when of OXP adding. My personal magic-wand approach is as follows: Put everything in, remove what you find does not suit your taste.
[Note: This is just an idealized principle on my part. Practical considerations regarding hardware limitations etc will determine how, er, practical it is.]

So, let us pretend this is a commercial venture.
There's the core game, and the expansions.
In order to sell more games, and more expansions, you want to make it as easy as possible for your customers.
There can be no doubt that when approaching this from the customers point of view, the fewer downloads the better.
In a perfect version, every OXP ever written would be included in one big bundle, accompanied by a piece of software allowing the user to de/select all these optional extras with a few clicks. Categories and subcategories would allow the user to add all the extra ships, or none of them, or dig deeper and add just the Star Wars set, or dig even deeper and add just the X-Wing.


Perceptions, perceptions, perceptions:

Back to the real world.
Perceptions are powerful things. All to often, the need to be seen doing something gets priority over actually doing something.
To relate a personal experience: For the past few years I've been working at sea. Some time ago, a ship I've been working on encountered a storm. The weather was bad for days, but the ship had no problems at all. However, towards the end of the storm a crew member ventured out on deck, fell overboard and was lost. The media coverage at the time was fairly massive, and the search for someone to blame got pretty intense. Several inquires, television programs and news articles ensued, all under the guise of finding the "truth". The end result was a lot of changes made in the name of safety. Some changes were for the good, some were purely cosmetic, and a few have actually made the ship less safe. Most of the changes were also unrelated to the specific incident. (Yes, improving the engine room is a good thing, but it won't prevent you from falling overboard.) How is this possible? Because as long as the public perception is that doing X improves safety, the reality of the situation no longer has any bearing.


With this in mind:

There is a perception that while working on O(S)E, OXPs have been included and/or changed without the authors' knowledge and/or permission.

There is a perception that some OXP authors have opposed the O(S)E project merely for the sake of opposing it.

I'm not going to make any comments on the veracity of either perception, nor will I claim that my interpretation of these perceptions is 100% accurate.
These perceptions, or something closely resembling them exist among some members of the OXP community.


The long-awaited conclusion:

I wish I could come up with a master plan to solve this.
I have nothing of the sort.
Repeated attempts have been made at reconciliation of the, for lack of a better word, warring parties, to no avail.
We have now reached the point where people are throwing their arms in the air and buggering off.
Others have already asked them to reconsider, wished them well, expressed hope for their future return.
I second all that.

However, as it stands right now, it seems like the gap is too wide.
No common ground can be found. At least not enough of it.
So where does this leave me, the selfish bastard end user?
Well, since I can no longer have it both ways, I'm going to try to have it one way.
Which means making a choice.

And that is the first (and only) thing about this whole mess that is easy.
Forcing me to throw my support in for either a bundle of existing OXPs (yes, I am aware that O(S)E contains some unique features) or the making of new ones, there is no contest.

Lestradae, you will be missed. Though I no longer regularly use it, Realistic Shipyards was my first OXP. And although my hardware has not been able to run the test versions of O(S)E for more than a couple of minutes at a time, I would have liked to see the project finished.
But LittleBear and his OXPs will be missed more. As will any others who may have decided to abandon their projects due to this strife.

I am a selfish bastard. I just want my OXPs, dammit!

Sweet.

Well, and eloquently put.

I have no axe to grind, I've been happy to help L on the one occasion he needed it, but as you say, LB is (was ) the king of value added OXPing/scripting and future OXPs from LB will be sorely missed. If LB doesn't come back there will be a big hole in the future of Oolite.

I really was looking forward to being able to buy stations, to trade with oobay - in fact when OE came out I was going to download it just so I could hack it into a version of my own to leave just these attributes behind!

Oh well, I'll get my brush, time to sweep the place up, straighten the chairs, replace the broken crockery...

I hope Lestradae and LittleBear read this and that they both understand that they are unmissable.

Selezen wrote:

Why did I not include licensing in the OXPs I have made? Because I could trust the people in the community to respect my requests. That's no longer the case, it would seem. Now we're having to lock down our work in case someone walks off with it.

It’s a shame that people feel this way, because the purpose of an open content license is exactly the opposite: to open up content (it’s exactly what it says on the tin).

Ahruman wrote:

It’s a shame that people feel this way, because the purpose of an open content license is exactly the opposite: to open up content (it’s exactly what it says on the tin).

Hey, dude, don't get me wrong, I WANT people to be able to use and muck about with the stuff I release, but if I make a request to stop using something because I did something better, then it would be nice if someone would respect that. The majority of the community do follow that ethos, but some individuals have a problem with that.

As you know, I have put loads of my stuff out there for people to do what they like with.

Thing is, the open license definition is a paradox: how can something completely unrestricted (open) have a license?. Open source code is given to do with as you please, no accreditation needed.

i think the truth is that if someone releases an OXP, it's out there and anyone can do with it as they please. There's no real control over it once it goes out over the ether. OXP writers currently trust each other to do the right thing and respect each other's wishes. It usually works, and the only times that this licensing thing has raised its head has been with people who haven't understood that (Lestradae, Sung). The exception rather than the rule.

An open license typically sets out what is allowed and what isnt. The famous GPL pretty much only sets the requirement that any derivatives are also covered by GPL, meaning you can do what you want with it, but you have to provide the same rights to your changes.

There is no conflict between open/free and licensed. Look at oolite.

Selezen wrote:

Thing is, the open license definition is a paradox: how can something completely unrestricted (open) have a license?. Open source code is given to do with as you please, no accreditation needed.

This is simply not true; all non-trivial open source code is distributed under a license (and most such licenses require credit to be given). This is necessary because, as I mentioned earlier, copyright is structured in such a way that in many jurisdictions there is no legal option to just give your works away (or “place them in the public domain”, to cite one common but invalid variant). Even for this simplest case, requiring absolutely nothing, a carefully considered license or grant (such as CC0) is needed for legal validity.

I have no intention to argue that this is sane, but it is the case.