I have decided to write down a bit about the situation as I see it (now).
Why shoud pak128 become “open”?
There are various good reasons.
To be honest, I probably lack the utter devotion needed to maintain 128 alone. Managing the set in Napik's grand style, doing practically
everything, is out of question. I know how to use the Paint and possibly basic tasks in Gimp, but that's it; I'm not doing any graphics, at least not on a scale where it could make a difference. But that shouldn't be necessary. This leaves me with working on DAT and config files, translations, communication, convincing people to do things for the set, including them...
It doesn't seem like much. But having to cover all aspects of a project isn't really fun. It is a demanding and often unsatisfactory role. I hate to put it so bluntly but my free time is getting more and more scarce and I'm not content with slaving away on Simutrans every minute of it. I have been instinctively avoiding going into “full action mode” for quite a long time, but now I really have to. And I won't be able to do that for long time – at least not fully.
So, what now... Of course I planned for this. I believe the relicensing process is key to changes I am proposing.
I would like to allow more people to actually participate on small tasks like fixing single bugs, or adding new features on the level of config file switches and such. They will have to have access to the files – probably all of them, or vast majority – and this is where having some license information is needed. To put it simply, the game needs rules. So far it was all general consensus and ethics. And many of the graphics are actually donated as “
for Simutrans only”. But if everything is made available, this status can't be upheld.
I am in process of contacting all known authors of objects in 128, asking for permission to reuse their make under these new conditions. This will take a while.
The parts of set that won't get permissions will be gradually removed from official releases. That's because the license is meant as a contract, protected by law. Using it for data without original owner's permission constitutes violation of law. We are not going to do that!
Instead, the license used allows “
aggregation with other works (which implies under different license terms)”. This might be a way to keep some critical objects usable for a while before they are replaced. But it's not preferred solution.
Once the set is 100% clean, the old objects can become addons.
As you can see, the changes linked with license change will ultimately serve more goals:
- Shift some of the work from maintainer to potential helpers from community. This has been already proven as feasible during this summer, when I was away for two months; Whoami, Frank and Wernieman made a lot of both small and bigger changes and fixes – huge thanks! I wasn't sure if it's possible, but now there are no doubts.
- Allow the community (read: other people) to work on the pak as well, even if they don't belong to the "invited group"
- Achieve through the license a better name and status in the Open Source / Free Software circles where new contributors are likely to come from. (Yes, there are people out there who won't touch software with a stick if it isn't Free with capital F. And some of them should be worth attracting.)
- The general chaos will allow us to rid of old stuff without much additional impact
- Removing some of the restrictions on data usage means that in future, choosing people for maintaining the set will be based more on actual fitness for the position than just level of trust. (Yes, that is part of that. But not everything.)
- If everything goes downhill and the pak collapses, parts of it will still stay reusable.
So that's the general outline. Thanks for reading.
