The Benefits of Open Source Development

[Rich Fireskull]

Hey there guys! It's another one of my rare threads.

There are countless examples of how Open Source Development is beneficial to a team; however, I will give you just one or two examples.

The Dolphin Emulator.

Dolphin was originally a closed source project that could emulate (roughly) a few commercial Nintendo Gamecube games, with Nintendo Wii game support added later in its life. If you do a bit of searching, you will find that the information all matches up and the Wikipedia article for the project is accurate. The project was basically discontinued, brought back, updated, and finally made into an open source project that anyone could add to or remove outdated changes in support of a more efficient way of accomplishing a single task to continue the development processes so that the end user may have a better application/emulator in the long run.

The change to go open source was made back in 2008, when Dolphin was still having trouble correctly emulating certain aspects of the consoles. After having gone open source, the Dolphin project lured in many developers who still contribute to the project today. The current stable version of the emulator was released one year and six months ago at version 4.0.2. You may think that one year is too long without having another stable release, but if you look at the current build of the emulator, you will notice that it is version 4.0-6725 (at time of writing, this version is 5 hours old). The Dolphin Emulator project would never have become what it is today if the original team had not pushed for it to become an open source project that anyone can contribute to.

Another benefit of open source development is that if one person doesn't know how to solve a problem, another can come in and make the change and push a new revision of the project out. To use Dolphin as an example again, I will note that the game Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader has just recently had its Zfreeze patch implemented into the new builds. Without this contributor built patch, the game would still be broken.

This is not an attack against anyone, but rather a good bit of information that can be useful for many things.

I'm going to tag a few people that may find this post interesting
@Shamus The Brute @xXWilee999Xx @Mike Wass @John Foulroberts

I hope you guys enjoy

 

[xXWilee999Xx]

Difference is that this isn't Dolphin, a game emulator. This is a lot less popular Disney MMO. Dolphin is very popular and it actually had a fanbase of great developers, while POTCO doesn't. Same thing with Toontown, Toontown actually has a much bigger fanbase with developers. Not with POTCO.

 

[Shamus The Brute]

Because he has a "special" way of expressing things to help someone like me to understand technical matters, I would like to publicly make a rare tag here to @Davy Darkrage to possibly ask him to express his own insight as to why an open-source POTCO emulator is the most efficient way to go.

(Sorry Davy to put you on-the-spot here but, 'your it ').

 

[Davy Darkrage]

I'm not positive that it's the best way to go about it, but I think it's something worth considering. There may not be many developers in the POTCO community, but its unlikely there would be anything lost (in that regard) by open-sourcing it.

It would, by design, allow the emulators to be governed by the community at large. It opens the door to more fragmentation because anybody could start their own server, but in the end the players get to choose what server to play on. So it gives them choices if they don't enjoy one particular server or another. Less opportunities for corruption.

It would allow malicious people to read through the code to exploit vulnerabilities, but, as long as daily backups are kept and the problem can be identified and debugged, it would harden the code base in the long-run.

Of course, the code (being Disney's) is still proprietary, and nobody has the right to re-license it.. but nobody has the "right" to use it to make a private server either.

 

[Joshua Daggerfire]

Difference is that this isn't Dolphin, a game emulator. This is a lot less popular Disney MMO. Dolphin is very popular and it actually had a fanbase of great developers, while POTCO doesn't. Same thing with Toontown, Toontown actually has a much bigger fanbase with developers. Not with POTCO.

I agree with Wilee, there just isnt enough programmers in the POTCO community. The only thing you will get by making this open-source is get more projects like Pirates of The Abyss or Pirates Reborn, which is projects with people who have no idea what they're doing, and are hoping to get a little bit of fame

 

[Shamus The Brute]

...and are hoping to get a little bit of fame

I would think that an open source project would actually deter the level of individuals gaining "fame" singularly for themselves (as forks would likely result but knowingly within the community, downplaying the overall 'hype' and desire surrounding the need for fame).

Besides, if numerous other projects spring up people will simply want to play on the server where the most interaction between other players co-exist (reducing the level of 'marginal utility' and [long-term] player happiness eventually perceived in so far as the availability/overabundance of too many emulators to have to choose between). Therefore, only key emulators would eventually thrive eliminating the apparent worry and overall threat people did feel initially towards the consequences resulting from an open-sourced project (if I am understanding this right).

 

[Rich Fireskull]

Therefore, only key emulators would eventually thrive eliminating the apparent worry and overall threat people did feel initially towards the consequences resulting from an open-sourced project (if I am understanding this right).

To try to answer your question, there is actually a fork of the Dolphin emulator that has rudimentary support for Wii U games (it can tell that the game is for a Wii U but the emulator is unable to actually emulate the game in its current state). I had to search for a while to find this, and it hasn't been updated in a while, or mentioned much at all on the official Dolphin forums, much less anywhere else.

There is the chance that this person who started this fork will actually get a working build, and make sure it is up to date with current official Dolphin builds and push it through, but that is unlikely. Also, there is Dolphin for Android Not much is known about it but it is in active development.

So yeah, forks can die out or come together and combine the advances they have made that the official project may not have. When this happens, the combined forks work on implementing their changes on and making sure they are stable and add them to the main project's repository/archive.

If I said something wrong, just tell me and I will try to clarify

 

[Sparky Wonderwolf]

I finally got around ton reading the entirety of this thread and am going to give my response. I'm probably an fanatic for open sourcing most things (I do understand that there are instances in which closed source is of more benefit). I say this with much of the experience I have gained familiarizing myself with computers and tech, specifically the cyber security field. As part of the curriculum when we learned of Linux & Friends, open source was a major necessity to know in order to pass for the course (though not necessarily for my certification). Ultimately, in the case of POTCO I don't really care who it is who says it: Open source will work better in the long run if there were an emulation of it. Davy basically gave a lay men's terms run down in a sense but I'm still going to post my own run down it. Truthfully an open source initiative would work better for our community because we do-in fact-lack the programmers that can help develop a working code for an emulation of the game. This if anything should be the primary reason, if not to unify the commUNITY, to push an open source initiative for an emulation of POTCO. I think its inevitable that an emulator will come-but my fear is one that the wrong closed sourced people will develop it (not that I'm saying TLOPO is that wrong people, we just don't know who or what may come along so I'm generalizing) and ultimately corrupt the system and forcing a smaller community to submit to them. Open sourcing it really would welcomingly enable the allowance of everyone's contributions to a working code. Not onlynthis but this could open up to bored, talentedrogrammers, to be involved rather than going through the hassle of applying for these projects and being carefully selective about it-it wouldn't be a concern, if anything the onlynconcern is for a community to let the world know (programmers) that this is something they can contribute to. There are so many people I meet everyday that are bored and can program like no other even for something they never used before. Some of the greatest developers at the greatest video game companies started out coding for open sourced projects for something they knew little about and now work for companies of much prestige in the MMO or gaming communities. In the long run it only benefits us. It could even expand the community and even further more efficiently and effectively develop features never before seen in addition to the already made game. Close sourcing has a lot of dependence on people getting on at a certain time and getting things done and having to compare with stress where as open source is more lax. It onlynbenefits us. Say what you will about vulnerabilities and hacking... If anything we can find it faster than Disney ever could as instead of 5-15 people analyzing bugged code you have thousands (assuming we have 2500). The fixes would happen faster than Disney could ever if there were an open source initiative. The true question is what are we waiting for? Why hasn't anyone started leading such an initiative or at least a project that will eventually lead to open source? That's a bit puzzling.

 

[xXWilee999Xx]

I finally got around ton reading the entirety of this thread and am going to give my response. I'm probably an fanatic for open sourcing most things (I do understand that there are instances in which closed source is of more benefit). I say this with much of the experience I have gained familiarizing myself with computers and tech, specifically the cyber security field. As part of the curriculum when we learned of Linux & Friends, open source was a major necessity to know in order to pass for the course (though not necessarily for my certification). Ultimately, in the case of POTCO I don't really care who it is who says it: Open source will work better in the long run if there were an emulation of it. Davy basically gave a lay men's terms run down in a sense but I'm still going to post my own run down it. Truthfully an open source initiative would work better for our community because we do-in fact-lack the programmers that can help develop a working code for an emulation of the game. This if anything should be the primary reason, if not to unify the commUNITY, to push an open source initiative for an emulation of POTCO. I think its inevitable that an emulator will come-but my fear is one that the wrong closed sourced people will develop it (not that I'm saying TLOPO is that wrong people, we just don't know who or what may come along so I'm generalizing) and ultimately corrupt the system and forcing a smaller community to submit to them. Open sourcing it really would welcomingly enable the allowance of everyone's contributions to a working code. Not onlynthis but this could open up to bored, talentedrogrammers, to be involved rather than going through the hassle of applying for these projects and being carefully selective about it-it wouldn't be a concern, if anything the onlynconcern is for a community to let the world know (programmers) that this is something they can contribute to. There are so many people I meet everyday that are bored and can program like no other even for something they never used before. Some of the greatest developers at the greatest video game companies started out coding for open sourced projects for something they knew little about and now work for companies of much prestige in the MMO or gaming communities. In the long run it only benefits us. It could even expand the community and even further more efficiently and effectively develop features never before seen in addition to the already made game. Close sourcing has a lot of dependence on people getting on at a certain time and getting things done and having to compare with stress where as open source is more lax. It onlynbenefits us. Say what you will about vulnerabilities and hacking... If anything we can find it faster than Disney ever could as instead of 5-15 people analyzing bugged code you have thousands (assuming we have 2500). The fixes would happen faster than Disney could ever if there were an open source initiative. The true question is what are we waiting for? Why hasn't anyone started leading such an initiative or at least a project that will eventually lead to open source? That's a bit puzzling.

"Truthfully an open source initiative would work better for our community because we do-in fact-lack the programmers that can help develop a working code for an emulation of the game." This is just simply incorrect. TLOPO has the devs, the problem is we haven't been doing much and I blame school. "I think its inevitable that an emulator will come-but my fear is one that the wrong closed sourced people will develop it (not that I'm saying TLOPO is that wrong people, we just don't know who or what may come along so I'm generalizing) and ultimately corrupt the system and forcing a smaller community to submit to them." It's ignorant to say it is inevitable. If you look into a problem really hard and really look around to learning how a system works, then getting through a certain obstacle isn't too hard. Then you're assuming that the general developers of TLOPO are the wrong developers, which is another ignorant thing to say if you don't know the team. Also, TLOPO has contacted other projects and people and they have all refused to work, so clearly having an open-source project wouldn't really change anything. Also, Toontown Fellowship was an open-source project. The only pull requests I noticed were just really tiny commits that any developer could do and even if some weren't like that and were useful, it was still something not that important and something a different developer could easily do. And that was a TOONTOWN project, so certainly no hope for POTCO for an open-source project getting experienced developers. I just really don't understand how you guys believe that if a project is open-source, only then will tons of experienced developers come in.

 

[Shamus The Brute]

...Say what you will about vulnerabilities and hacking... If anything we can find it faster than Disney ever could as instead of 5-15 people analyzing bugged code you have thousands (assuming we have 2500). The fixes would happen faster than Disney could ever if there were an open source initiative.

I think it's safe to say at this point that there will NEVER be a time where our community is completely rid of individuals whom do have malicious intent/publicly exposing vulnerabilities for their own gain. The post-POTCO era is certainly a fair enough testimony to this. While things have certainly calmed down a bit, we should not be naïve to think that things will stay like this forever and that also, our guard should be let down.

A great advantage of an emulator remaining open-source is that such vulnerabilities will actually improve things for the community in the long-run rather than ruin things (which is what we are all 'most' used to).

The true question is what are we waiting for? Why hasn't anyone started leading such an initiative or at least a project that will eventually lead to open source? That's a bit puzzling.

This is just my own opinion but I think that it is mainly because people do not want to contribute to something to where their own work will not permit them to receive due credit (for said time and labor). While that is certainly understandable, the underlying intent and motive behind such thinking is not 100% community-driven but rather instead...thinking based upon the (human) vice/enticement for personal recognition.

If personal recognition remains a underlying reason to disapprove support towards a POTCO emulator to become open-source, then developers essentially are creating a working emulator partly for themselves which is not the reason as to why POTCO became special in the first place.

 

[xXWilee999Xx]

I think it's safe to say at this point that there will NEVER be a time where our community is completely rid of individuals whom do have malicious intent/publicly exposing vulnerabilities for their own gain. The post-POTCO era is certainly a fair enough testimony to this. While things have certainly calmed down a bit, we should not be naïve to think that things will stay like this forever and that also, our guard should be let down.

A great advantage of an emulator remaining open-source is that such vulnerabilities will actually improve things for the community in the long-run rather than ruin things (which is what we are all 'most' used to).

This is just my own opinion but I think that it is mainly because people do not want to contribute to something to where their own work will not permit them to receive due credit (for said time and labor). While that is certainly understandable, the underlying intent and motive behind such thinking is not 100% community-driven but rather instead...thinking based upon the (human) vice/enticement for personal recognition.

If personal recognition remains a underlying reason to disapprove a POTCO emulator to become open-source, then developers essentially are creating a working emulator partly for themselves which is not the reason as to why POTCO became special in the first place.

The thing is, the only emulator I know of currently is TLOPO. Therefore, when you say "emulator", you must be talking about TLOPO. So, if you're talking about vulnerabilities for TLOPO, then I highly doubt ANYBODY in this entire community is skilled enough to reverse engineer the compiler we will be using.

 

[Shamus The Brute]

The thing is, the only emulator I know of currently is TLOPO. Therefore, when you say "emulator", you must be talking about TLOPO. So, if you're talking about vulnerabilities for TLOPO, then I highly doubt ANYBODY in this entire community is skilled enough to reverse engineer the compiler we will be using.

If I would have meant TLOPO to begin with, I would have certainly mentioned you guys by name. However, since I am both concerned with and looking at things with a set of eyes long-term (versus 'currently'), then I have every right to make such generalizations when I convey the word - "emulator."

Wilee, can you guarantee me that TLOPO will even be around in one or two years (with plausible proof)? IF so, they I will recant what I had said and therefore will refer to the connotation of "emulator" from this point forth as just - TLOPO.

 

[Sparky Wonderwolf]

"Truthfully an open source initiative would work better for our community because we do-in fact-lack the programmers that can help develop a working code for an emulation of the game." This is just simply incorrect. TLOPO has the devs, the problem is we haven't been doing much and I blame school. "I think its inevitable that an emulator will come-but my fear is one that the wrong closed sourced people will develop it (not that I'm saying TLOPO is that wrong people, we just don't know who or what may come along so I'm generalizing) and ultimately corrupt the system and forcing a smaller community to submit to them." It's ignorant to say it is inevitable. If you look into a problem really hard and really look around to learning how a system works, then getting through a certain obstacle isn't too hard. Then you're assuming that the general developers of TLOPO are the wrong developers, which is another ignorant thing to say if you don't know the team. Also, TLOPO has contacted other projects and people and they have all refused to work, so clearly having an open-source project wouldn't really change anything. Also, Toontown Fellowship was an open-source project. The only pull requests I noticed were just really tiny commits that any developer could do and even if some weren't like that and were useful, it was still something not that important and something a different developer could easily do. And that was a TOONTOWN project, so certainly no hope for POTCO for an open-source project getting experienced developers. I just really don't understand how you guys believe that if a project is open-source, only then will tons of experienced developers come in.

I struggle to understand your reasoning for the first part. The hassle and stress of studies on a select, exclusive group of what has been described as 8 people would have much weight lifted off their shoulders and stress if it were openly sourced andmainstreamed. Those select few wouldn't be the only ones contributing. I have met, once again, several people in and outside the internet in which would willingly contribute towards open sourced projects whether it be gaming or something like Linux. Open sourcing rids of the rising fears of spies, infiltration, who stole what code that technicallynwe can't replicate because it will emulate Disneys property, etc. Open source doesn't make it exclusive if anything its more inclusive and benefits more ttremoundously than it hurts. Because you can't collect funding to eithernpay for A) server expenses or B) developers not many have the time to commit something so closed and exclusive that has often in the past led to bureaucratic corruption and collapse rather than progress and unity.

I think it practically is inevitable and I just don't see how it won't happen. What isn't certain is whether it will take 2 years or 2 decades. The inevitably comes with the passion coming from the commUNITY.

Quicklynstating by the way I never at any point implied that TLOPO specifically is the wrong people, hence my parenthesis notation...

By no means though am I suggestingnthat all our problems will be solved if we open sourced it. That's like saying impeaching a leader will solve every problem which realistically it won't as it is what is done after what matters. I think something manyailntonrealize is the benefit of TT being emulated before we could: we can see what they did wrong and fix it, afore you say anything more allow me to remind you open and closed sourced emulations both had their issues. TT was lucky to have the fan base it had to add torave it closed sourced for the most part or at least attempt to. I think my friend at the same time that you also have yet to realize that you can't compare TT to POTCO as it is comparing apples to oranges and are two drastically different communities and games altogether, the ultimate outcome is dependent on how it is managed. And quite frankly in with the experience we had with closed source not even trying to open source it, we would be stupid to not attempt all options on the table. We've only gotten as far as making buggy potions and making a pirate as far as shown features goes and while yes it is far more diverse in code, any one with a brain knows that it doesn't take this long to develop those simple two things I two years.

I think I think it would be ignorant of the community to say that open source shouldn't be attempted. We haven't tried it we can't say it wontnwork because the apple trees died off. What if the orange trees don't? We don't know until we plant away, its not as if we can't go back if it doesn't work.

Lastly I'd like to highlight what Shamus said is that what made POTCO what it was is the community, which was the true thing that made POTCO what it is. An open sourced emulation would be very representative of our community of how tight knit we are.

 

[xXWilee999Xx]

If I would have meant TLOPO to begin with, I would have certainly mentioned you guys by name. However, since I am both concerned and looking at things with a set of eyes long-term (versus 'currently'), then I have every right to make such generalizations when I convey the word - "emulator."

Wilee, can you guarantee me that TLOPO will even be around in one or two years (with plausible proof)? IF so, they I will recant what I had said and therefore will refer to the connotation of "emulator" from this point forth as just - TLOPO.

You just asked a really huge question right there, I would have no idea if TLOPO would be around in one or two years. I'm not able to answer a question like that, nor would I even guess.

 

[Shamus The Brute]

You just asked a really huge question right there, I would have no idea if TLOPO would be around in one or two years. I'm not able to answer a question like that, nor would I even guess.

Nobody would; that's my whole point?

While I certainly hope TLOPO would still be around then, the point is when I refer to the word - "emulator" - that encompasses things in general, and not just currently.

Anyway , let's get back on track with this thread's topic of discussion, shall we?

 

[xXWilee999Xx]

I struggle to understand your reasoning for the first part. The hassle and stress of studies on a select, exclusive group of what has been described as 8 people would have much weight lifted off their shoulders and stress if it were openly sourced andmainstreamed. Those select few wouldn't be the only ones contributing. I have met, once again, several people in and outside the internet in which would willingly contribute towards open sourced projects whether it be gaming or something like Linux. Open sourcing rids of the rising fears of spies, infiltration, who stole what code that technicallynwe can't replicate because it will emulate Disneys property, etc. Open source doesn't make it exclusive if anything its more inclusive and benefits more ttremoundously than it hurts. Because you can't collect funding to eithernpay for A) server expenses or B) developers not many have the time to commit something so closed and exclusive that has often in the past led to bureaucratic corruption and collapse rather than progress and unity.

I think it practically is inevitable and I just don't see how it won't happen. What isn't certain is whether it will take 2 years or 2 decades. The inevitably comes with the passion coming from the commUNITY.

Quicklynstating by the way I never at any point implied that TLOPO specifically is the wrong people, hence my parenthesis notation...

By no means though am I suggestingnthat all our problems will be solved if we open sourced it. That's like saying impeaching a leader will solve every problem which realistically it won't as it is what is done after what matters. I think something manyailntonrealize is the benefit of TT being emulated before we could: we can see what they did wrong and fix it, afore you say anything more allow me to remind you open and closed sourced emulations both had their issues. TT was lucky to have the fan base it had to add torave it closed sourced for the most part or at least attempt to. I think my friend at the same time that you also have yet to realize that you can't compare TT to POTCO as it is comparing apples to oranges and are two drastically different communities and games altogether, the ultimate outcome is dependent on how it is managed. And quite frankly in with the experience we had with closed source not even trying to open source it, we would be stupid to not attempt all options on the table. We've only gotten as far as making buggy potions and making a pirate as far as shown features goes and while yes it is far more diverse in code, any one with a brain knows that it doesn't take this long to develop those simple two things I two years.

I think I think it would be ignorant of the community to say that open source shouldn't be attempted. We haven't tried it we can't say it wontnwork because the apple trees died off. What if the orange trees don't? We don't know until we plant away, its not as if we can't go back if it doesn't work.

Lastly I'd like to highlight what Shamus said is that what made POTCO what it was is the community, which was the true thing that made POTCO what it is. An open sourced emulation would be very representative of our community of how tight knit we are.

If Toontown could handle a closed source project, TLOPO can too. We have the right developers. Also, we have more than potions and make a pirate, we just haven't shown more. It should not even take 5 months for a good team to be able to develop potions and make a pirate, and it didn't (well, we did have stuff to do before working on potions after make a pirate.)

 

[Mike Wass]

I think the biggest issue is the reality that there are code stealers out there. If everyone had the code, there's bound to be a group of people who will rebrand the source and distribute it as their own. Which those new projects popping up would in turn hurt the community, which is not what any of us want.

(well, we did have stuff to do before working on potions after make a pirate.)

For those who didn't pick this up, HINT HINT. What comes before potions and after M.A.P.? My lips are sealed beyond that hint :x

 

[Charles Plankbutler]

Just so everyone knows, there is actually an open sourced potco project that's out.
https://github.com/POTCOHexadecimal/source

 

[xXWilee999Xx]

Just so everyone knows, there is actually an open sourced potco project that's out.
https://github.com/POTCOHexadecimal/source

Actually, it seemed to be either a troll project or an inexperienced project, knowing the person who made it.

 

[Joshua Daggerfire]

Just so everyone knows, there is actually an open sourced potco project that's out.
https://github.com/POTCOHexadecimal/source

All of that comes in the projects files on your pc if you downloaded POTCO