Copyright theft insurance

[SSH]

I heard Trevor "Inventor of the Clockwork radio" Bayliss on the radio the other day and he mentioned in passing about copyright theft insurance. It seems to me that this might be good for AGS: if we paid for some for CJ, he could then make AGS open source without having to worry about someone stealing it and claiming it was theirs. Well, maybe there's other reasons he doesn't want to do the open-source thing, but I just thought it was an idea...

Any thoughts, folks? A quick google on my part didn't seem to find any info on where such a thign could be obtained.

[Kinoko]

I'd pitch in, for sure, but I really wouldn't want AGS to become open source. It's just a personal thing, I guess, but I think it'd almost... "dirty" the program ^_^ I'm quite happy with the way it is now. Maybe I'm scared of change, but I think there are quite a few good reasons for not making it open-source.

[dasjoe]

as cj told me, he won't make it open source.
you could easily write a decompiler for ags-games then, which means you could hack other games, cheat at them or rip their sprites and other stuff, just like it was your own game.

and we're already capable of writing plugins for different things. and i don't think that many people would understand the ags-source

[scotch]

I think once there is a group of 2000 members that uses the software, it can't be very likely that it'll be ripped off and people won't notice or realise where it originally came from, CJ is a god around here and the adventure game making community is not very large. Ã, And there are so many open source projects around these days, it doesn't seem very common for bad things to happen from it.
I think CJ has other reasons for not wanting it open source, one being that it'd be easier to make a decompiler for people's games (wouldn't bother me but it probably would some people), and another being that AGS is his project and hobby, I wouldn't want to open up one of my games for people to make changes and "improvements" Ã, Perhaps it is a bit different for a serious piece of software, but I am sure there is some element of that.

If it was open it'd be fun to have a look around the code, and maybe see about adding some features I'd like that might not get implemented otherwise, but it is CJ's to do what he wants with, if he'd prefer the security and focus of working alone that's fine.

[SSH]

But if the insurance was done correctly, a licence agreement for the source could include a prohibition on decompilers and so on, and the insurance would pay for legal action to take down any websites publishing such a thing. That way, if you wanted to rip sprites, you'd have to write your own decompiler which is probably more effort than drawing some sprites, if its only for yourself.

[dasjoe]

that's about  what cj told me when i asked why he won't release ags as open source under some open-source license like the gpl.

but i would like to look at the source by myself too

[Gilbert]

I don't want AGS to become open-sourced either, plus I don't want to see zillions of mods different buggy versions with different "nice additions/fixes" floating around.

[m0ds]

I wouldn't want to see AGS go open source either, but if it ever does then SHH's copyright insurance seems like a good idea. Couldn't that be done anyway? Or does he have to provide it open source :o

[Mephistophilis]

Is the Idea not that If he Made it Open source he would need Copyright Insurance, but seeing as it's not he doesn't need it because It's immposible or Damn hard to steal If it's not open source, So insurance shouldn't be needed.

[Pumaman]

I've thought about open source in the past, but the drawbacks seem to outweigh the benefits.

As far as I can tell, the benefits would be:
* people can add extra features that wouldn't get in otherwise

But the drawbacks would be:
* easy to write decompiler for AGS games
* some of the AGS source code, especially the older parts, is very badly written and hard to understand -- hence it would need to be reworked prior to release
* possibility of somebody 'stealing' the code and trying to pass it off as their own; but more likely would be:
* various people releasing their own versions of AGS with minor tweaks here and there, which would then introduce bugs, and people would start reporting bugs in the forums which didn't actually exist in the official version
* posts along the lines of "why did you code this bit like that?" and "wouldn't it be better if you coded that bit this way?" which would waste time
* you would no longer be guaranteed an upgrade path if you started to use a non-standard version and then whoever created it stopped maintaining it

I'm sure there's more that haven't been mentioned.

[MrColossal]

* They'd remove all the spyware

don't forget that one

[Joseph DiPerla]

Well, what about a CVS bit which allows you to view the source code that only Chris chooses for you to see.

Any code that would assist in helping you figure out how to decompile a game would not be visible.

Someone would then write their own code, post it on the CVS site. Chris has to look at it and then approve it and if he approves it, it becomes part of the official program source.

Something like Sourceforge.net.

This could help not only in adding features for the engine, but possibly allowing the engine to be ported to other OS's.

Do you think this could protect a lot of what Chris wants?

I hope this made sense, its late at night and my eyes are getting blurry.

JD

[Gilbert]

I don't think a CVS would help much, I think people can just ask CJ personally about helping and retrieve the relevant codes (if CJ permits) currently for development.

Moreover, it'll help porting the engine to OS only if the porter can get hold of the full source, I think anyone who is reliable, has enough knowledge of programming on the platform can just negotiate with CJ directly for codes (like the current *nix engines).

[Sylpher]

I think you guys are missing the biggest point of them all. Chris doesn't want to.

Case closed.

Gil, As far as I know Chris is pretty generious when it comes to porting.. Discussion with the linux porter seemed to lean that way.. as long as you are serious and know what you are doing. I think in the end it comes down to that AGS gains really no benefit from being opened up. Anything you really want to add can be done with a plug-in or chris will hard code (core) it in the engine so.. There is no point.

[Edwin Xie]

* They'd remove all the spyware

don't forget that one

:O, you mean that you guys actually written spyware in the source code?

[Moox]

Ever heard of sarcasm?

And btw, to refresh your memory, there is only one programmer.

[Pesty]

Ever heard of sarcasm?

And btw, to refresh your memory, there is only one programmer.

No! Don't keep perpetuating the myth! CJ is actually a large, well organized group of circus clowns who are filled with a seething hatred for FPS games and made AGS to counteract their popularity. He's Big Brother brought to life!!

[Sam.]

one question. Why? Is CJs work not good enough? Do we need to get other inexperienced programmers to come and mod it?

[Elianto]

I don't think the question rised due to CJ lack of ability (the community and the AGS won't be what it's now if CJ wasn't good).

Of course it seems that at the moment CJ doesn't feel like he wants to release it opensource....

[scotch]

Of course CJ's work is good, and we don't need others to come in and mod it, but there are many things that some people want that CJ has no intention of adding to AGS himself.  Personally I would have a go at adding hardware accelerated graphics support (optional of course), or the ability to have backgrounds compressed as jpgs or the ability to resize games running in windows. If the code really is hard to understand then I probably wouldn't be able to do it anyway though, and some of these things may be added in time.

Personally I think the benefits outweigh the downsides, but then I couldn't care less if someone can decompile my games.  However if CJ wants to work on it alone then that is good enough reason for me not to have it opened it up.