Sharing is Caring

[Blizzard]

Unless it's all hard-coded by M$ into your processor! You'd have to reimplement the entire circuitry, and not even Linus Torvalds is up to that.

everything was free

Commonly known by the two names "open-source software" or "D00D, COMUNSM!!!!! WE CQN SNIG BEASTS OF ENGLAND THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER THE INTERNATIONALE ALL DYA LNG!!!! LAWLZ!!!!!! WUR SO 13337!!!!!!"

o.o; The perfect code is related to encryption, not to a computer instruction set. As I said, it's not possible.

And people who make their stuff open source are obviously proud of their (good) work.
Open source, to me, epitomises one part of the 'sharing' in the debate's topic (... 'caring' is for illegal stuff <3)

Actually it has nothing to do with that. In fact I've seen a lot of open source stuff that is simply crap. :/ A lot of open source activists don't really have an idea about programming and even if they do, they mostly don't have the proper education to use it well. One of the worst things I have seen with open source projects was the incredible lack of proper documentation. Whenever I have to use an open source library I end up going through the code and cursing the author's mom 5 times a minute because I can't find the shit I'm looking for, because he was a lazy ass and didn't type down any documentation. That's very irresponsible.
"Why should I use YOUR open source software if I have to go through the code to learn how it works? I'd rather make my own especially because of the fact that 90% of the stuff I go through turns out to be so badly made that it's way less work to make my own library or system rather than fixing up yours."

Sharing is cool, but there's a reason why most open source software is free as well. Keep that in mind. (With closed source the replication and theft of code is made harder than with open source.) Just take a look at RMXP's scripts. How many crappy scripts are out there? You don't wanna know. And they are all open source. Now, how many people so far have managed to reverse-engineer DREAM so far? And I'm not talking about decrypting the fake .dll and simply using the decryption code, I am asking for the manual decryption of an encrypted file and reverse-engineering the encryption algorithm using that file or more files.
My scripts are open source because I wanted to share them. The scripts in my game are not open source because I don't want to share them. I don't want people to be easily able to replicate what I have done, what took me years to do. How would you feel if you put 3 years of your life into a game and a month after you release it, you find a clone on the internet using the same engine claiming to be completely original? They shamelessly STOLE your game and there's not much about it that you can do. There will always be somebody who will try to steal it if you don't protect yourself and closed source is one of the safest protections that there are because it's somewhat of an encryption.

*stops*

[tSwitch]

Spoiler: ShowHide

[Reno-s--Joker]

@ Blizzard: I understand. I see that my lack of position as a coder has led me to draw a wrong conclusion. Perhaps it is more the opposite to what I said, then. ^-^

This I think is true theft, and really enrages me. Closed source commercial programs can just get pissed over money losses when their products get 'stolen', but open source freewares get pissed over something much deeper - like you said, the 3 years of your hard work and life.
NAMKOR's awesome illustration (<3) probably applies to these closed source things.

I have a question which I'm not sure of what the answer is: would open source programmers share their codes in order to improve them? Or something else?

Now, how many people so far have managed to reverse-engineer DREAM so far?

... are you not proud of DREAM? I sure as hell would be...

[Blizzard]

Of course I'm proud of DREAM. Not because of what I accomplished but of what I learned how things can be done.

Also, yeah. Open Source programmers share their code out of different reasons. One of the is that others can easily alter the code to suit their needs. Another one would be (like you said) for others' suggestions of improvement. I like to release code as Open Source myself if I don't intend on selling the resulting application. DREAM is not Open Source because the encryption is based on an algorithm rather than a key. Algorithm encryptions are broken the instant somebody discovers the algorithm so I had to hide it. It's true that I didn't put much effort into hiding the code, but it will keep amateurs at bay anytime. xD

[shdwlink1993]

Totally. It would keep amateurs away from using it. (However, if that amateur is using VX, they have no choice but to break the dll just to use it. (WHY, oh Enterbrain, WHY would you REMOVE the require function from VX? WHY???? ) )

[Blizzard]

They did WHAT?! O_O But that's completely stupid. You can't use any external .dll then. D:

[Starrodkirby86]

I guess Enterbrain isn't showing that Sharing is Caring by removing external DLL support.

On the DREAM Note, I think it's time to start optimizing the code or upping its security...though you don't really NEED to do that. Unless...you're like shdwlink.

[fugibo]

They were also pretty dumb about how they removed the ability to require *.so files. For those who don't know, they allow for much better extension than any other option in Ruby, plus a lot of stuff (like networking) had to be re-implemented for RMXP just because they couldn't load the pre-made stuff that comes with Ruby (and is free to use).

[Reno-s--Joker]

Of course I'm proud of DREAM. Not because of what I accomplished but of what I learned how things can be done. Happy

Also, yeah. Open Source programmers share their code out of different reasons. One of the is that others can easily alter the code to suit their needs. Another one would be (like you said) for others' suggestions of improvement. I like to release code as Open Source myself if I don't intend on selling the resulting application. DREAM is not Open Source because the encryption is based on an algorithm rather than a key. Algorithm encryptions are broken the instant somebody discovers the algorithm so I had to hide it. It's true that I didn't put much effort into hiding the code, but it will keep amateurs at bay anytime. xD

That's a really good attitude to have. You might get really inflated if you're proud of what you achieve instead. :|Not cool.
I never thought of the code alteration (probably because I've never had the skills to do it XD) but yeah, that makes it awesome! <3

I understand - keeping stuff you intend for commercial sales closed is perfectly logical. I think even if people requested it from you (because they think it's awesome or something) and just say WOW, YOU'RE AWESOME for about 5 seconds, it won't be enough appreciation for all your hard work. Especially considering most RMXP Scripts are just plug-in-and-don't-know-what's-going-on. Like good things become cliche, awesome stuff gets forgotten if everyone can use it anytime.

.... I think I'm one of those amateurs.


...
^-^; I'm not going to lie... you all lost me on the dll stuff. :|
But from what I can hear I'm glad I didn't go with VX in the end.

[shdwlink1993]

The dll stuff was about DREAM.dll. There's no way to use it in VX short of getting the code from the dll. That also makes for a large amount of holes in certain things people like doing with their scripts.

@NAMK: LOL @ The Piracy Guide.

[Reno-s--Joker]

D: Gee, to what purpose of Enterbrain's?
Sometimes they do make strange decisions between the versions I don't understand. :|

^-^ Thanks for explaining shdwlink. <3

[Blizzard]

I think that they pretty much limited themselves and their customers by not allowing the use of external .dlls. :/

[fugibo]

I'm gonna release a closed-source module for RGame that will allow for encrypted games :/ Fortunately, the LGPL allows this