Gideros Open Source - What's next?

Mells

Hi everyone,

according to what @atilim said in the official announcement, the open source version might become available in the coming days.
Now to make it clear for everyone, unless I'm missing something :

Long Story Short

1. Gideros dev team can not invest resources on the development of Gideros (or less than before, on the side of projects that took priority to pay the bills). That means (again, unless I miss something) that Gideros' development has stopped or will be slower than before.
The team said they will keep on working on it for their own projects and release the improvements (thanks!), but that means [a] it would take them extra time to package the new version, communicate, create the docs (again, it's an investment and it's only tied to their willingness to do the extra effort) and [b] the development will be led by their own needs and not by community's feature requests (and that makes sense).

Understand : The dev will be stopped or slow. And if the team is not directly getting paid for doing it, the community has little to no right to do feature requests.

2. @ar2rsawseen said he will keep on working on Gideros and I think that it's a very nice move from him (understanding that this is done on his spare time, that he could spend with his family or building other projects).
But I believe it's just him being nice, and not wanting to let us down. And more realistically I believe he won't be able to do it for long.
He is talented, and might want to move to another project (and again, that's totally understandable).

Understand : I see no reasons for the team to actively develop Gideros if there is no clear benefit in doing it (vs labor of love).

3. Support : it's a lot of work. The community members will be able to help each other for some time, but this won't last long. Again, @ar2rsawseen won't be able to dedicate time to that task anymore. Everyone here is nice and helpful, but that's not enough if we talk about a tool that people use for their business.

Understand : Over time, quality support will stop being provided.

I tried to be as objective as possible, I don't see myself being totally wrong with those expectations.

Now... what's next?

What do you think should happen next?

Please don't say "Gideros should develop [insert random feature] and that will make it such a great tool!".
Consider that the team is :

• working on something else which means they won't be able to do it even if they wanted
• or that they have their own priorities which means they have to develop other features first for their own needs and they might not be interested in those requested features at all
• or that support won't be provided for those features which means you'll be on your own and will wait long time for bug fixes

1. Thinking that the competition is won over the amount of features that a product provides sounds nice but it is being unrealistic.
2. Adding features when there is no money available is not even an option.

It's very important to understand that when the development is not funded by customers, you lose :

• leadership (who will lead the dev)
• incentive for anyone to do anything (who wants to be involved)
• vision (in which direction should the product be taken)

Exchanging money for a product sets the right level of expectations.
No money, no right for expectations.

Paid is sometimes better than free, you see.

Questions

1. I am asking if anyone here has a well-thought idea, experience in that domain, that would help take Gideros as a product to the next step?
2. What are the bugs that must absolutely be fixed in the existing version of Gideros?
   Imagine the next version is the last version ever of Gideros, what should be fixed so you can keep using it for at least 1 year more?
   

ar2rsawseen

Very legitimate questions that I would want to hear the answer too

Only correction, I did not say that I would work on Gideros in a sense as I did before. Rather I will be using Gideros for myself and my client projects, thus will be fixing bugs affecting me and my client and adding features needed for me or my clients (or hiring someone to do that).
I assume the very same goes for Atilim.

Additionally from community's interest and recommendations, it is possible that I will provide licensing for common interfaces (Ads, IAB, Controller, Gaming, and others to come) in a subscription based market place which would hopefully give me funds to work on them and keep supporting.

So it is hardly a "free" work.

But as I said, I'm still interested in the answers to @Mells questions

john26

An additional question I have is whether there will be one or two versions of Gideros. Ie will @atilim continue to make commits to the open source Gideros project (on Github) or will he fork off a private version and make changes only to that? This is a hugely important question I feel.

Personally I feel it would be better for everyone if there is only one version of Gideros on Github. It avoids confusion about different versions and means the open source project retains its lead and founding developer.

ar2rsawseen

@john26

or will he fork off a private version and make changes only to that

why would he ever do that? For now I don't see any reasons, except to make a merge later

john26

Well he might not want to share all the work he does in future, due, eg, to client confidentiality etc. Or he might want to avoid negotiating with other programmers about how the project should develop given he has written it solo up till now. But if you are saying it's unlikely he will work on his own fork then that's all to the good. The question is really whether Atilim will be a regular contributor in future.

Mells

I guess when the move to open source is official (statement on the blog I assume?) we will know exactly what the community can expect.

Well he might not want to share all the work he does in future, due, eg, to client confidentiality etc. Or he might want to avoid negotiating with other programmers about how the project should develop given he has written it solo up till now.

@john26 I would think like you that there are many reasons why the version available for all would not be the most advanced one (but maybe the most stable?) and lot of developers will have their own custom version.
Whether due to client confidentiality, or to keep ownership and sell their work.

Plus, packaging things so that they are submitted to the core being another investment of time, I'm not sure that everyone will have the willingness to share their changes and improvements.

To me it's not "who will contribute" but more "what is the incentive for contributing?".
Why would anyone invest time, write quality code, docs, and share it with everyone. And deliver support.

I look forward to reading an official statement.

OZApps

The bigger question is how many would be able to use the OpenSource opportunity. As @mells has pointed out, those that can work with the C++ source and compiler settings and 3rd party libs could use and extend the OpenSource code for personal use. However the remaining populace that would like something that works, like a couple of comments ago this could get to be frustrating and difficult.

Then there is the other side of things, where developers simply compile the OpenSource code, call it something fancy in a local language like Mandarin or similar and make it available as a Game maker or some sort of application (like @Mells provided some examples earlier).

These are some of the issues that would be faced by @Atilim, at the end of the day, it is letting go of an IP and labour of love, where others might make use of the opportunity (financially).

It would be nice to assume that updates would flow freely and everyone would enjoy the fruits of the communities labour because it is OpenSource. The reality of the matter is that there would be several updates and very few of those would be pushed back to the openSource repository.

To cite an example, @GregBug could have a version that has TNTAnimator, Particles and Joystick in-built as native, similarly other developers could have their own versions and some might be available for sale.

The biggest variable in this equation is the License the OpenSource Code is released under and then how many would follow that licensing agreement.

I look forward to the site to see the announcement when the code is released, persoanlly my focus is to see if it can be utilised in a project the way I thought it to work. If it doesn't, then the source would not be of much use to me. Similarly other devs might have specific views and IF they can achieve that, not sure if they would then want to share that source code. So it would be interesting to see the original source (when it is released) and the community updates (when they are pushed). Someone might build gideros for Linux, who knows what might happen.

OZApps

And with blatant flaunting like this http://www.techinasia.com/indonesia-game-developer-toge-productions-accuses-chinese-pirate-stealing-infectonator-survivors-and-more-games/

is there anything left in terms of ethics, moralities, etc? Everything is all about Money.

keszegh

openfl and libgdx seem not to be dying while being open-source, so i believe it is possible to keep it going for gideros, yet i don't know the ways.
you/we should look around how other open-source projects survive, especially the similar ones.

Mells

@OZApps

Then there is the other side of things, where developers simply compile the OpenSource code, call it something fancy in a local language like Mandarin or similar and make it available as a Game maker or some sort of application (like @Mells provided some examples earlier

In that case (thinking about your last link too) that might be comparing oranges to apples.
Stealing an IP and selling it for profit without any kind of permission (hence.. stealing) can't be compared with opening the code under a license that might allow people to resell it if they want.
I guess it all depends on the license. So previously I did not say it was bad, illegal or immoral : just that it's a possibility and that a conscious choice should be made about that. If a company can resell the code, they might also want to reinvest part of the profit made and contribute to the core even more.
If the original developer can't do it, you then have the possibility that others will.
Compared to keeping the source closed.

But let's try to keep the discussion focused, we agree that the world is full of people with bad ethics but it's slightly off-topic here : I'm too afraid the original questions will be lost and forgotten

OZApps

@Mells, the last link was not about your post, and the money was not related to your suggestions either.

My point on that link was to what level do people stoop. I saw a couple of guys compile the source code at Beer SDK and put them on the app store, I saw my own sample code being used and the list goes on... This just scares the developers from posting their code.

I had a Property.lua library that I had made for use with BeerSDK, and due to some reasons, I had it removed. Even to date that library is seen in many apps despite the fact that it is no longer available for use.

Back on topic: only AFTER the source is released and developers take to it, can we know if there will be features and further releases. Let's see how it all unfolds. In english there is a saying, "Out of sight - out of mind". By not seeing any movement either a v2 release, or the source or any other communication, we could have a situation for Gideros.

Disciple

Making Gideros open source is a decision that could either prove right or wrong for the survival of the project, time will tell. I just don't think we should assume that the natural course of it is to wane until it disappears. Nowadays there a lot of tools that are open source and have gone a long way and keep building a strong development and community. I don't know much about how open source works regarding the coding and internal management, but if there are all these projects that have done well, why should Gideros go the other way if it's such a great program?

I considered Gideros in the first place because of its ease to get started with it (I come from AS3 so it wasn't difficult), the fact that it supports both iOS and Android in such an easy way as exporting the project (and probably some other things later, but it's still very simple compared to coding for each platform separately), the screen resolution adaptation without having to mess with it on a lot of screen sizes, and last but not least, the fact that it is was free so I could try if it was suitable for me and then consider a subscription. What I mean is we have a great tool here (and everyone must have their own important reasons for choosing Gideros over other programs), and now it's even completely free with no subscription, what can be bad about it? I can't see a reason why it shouldn't last except for the fact that there isn't enough people interested and/or capable of keeping the project going. I don't know anything about C++/C so I am very interested but not capable of helping in those matters, but I think there are a lot of people who could. That said I'll give my opinions about the questions.

1. I don't know how the project will be managed, but I think Gideros can be known far more than it is now and attract much more people who will be interested in using it and willing to help on building the project. In my opinion, Kickstarter can be a way to push this forward. If we can get Gideros to be known by a larger community its chance of keeping on will increase. If a campaign is run to help the project there's the possibility of using the funds to advertise Gideros to a much wider audience. Even the campaign itself might help to give it publicity. The funding should also help to be able to support developers like @atilim or @ar2rsawseen to pay for their time spent on it, or other people who would be willing to. There are many successful campaigns out there, especially when it's a promising project (and Gideros is one of them for sure).

2. I haven't found any important bugs that I recall at this moment, and as you said not to mention this or that feature then that's it

jdbc

I guess LuaJit and native bindings with ffi to replace plugins based on Lua C API is a mandatory step.

ar2rsawseen

@jdbc but thats already possible

jdbc

@jdbc but thats already possible

Yes I know but I mean LuaJit out of beta state. Anyway I will try some OpenGL and 3D with ffi :-)

Mells

thanks for your participation.

Disciple said:

I just don't think we should assume that the natural course of it is to wane until it disappears. Nowadays there a lot of tools that are open source and have gone a long way and keep building a strong development and community

True. I guess my own perspective is that there are many more that failed and I think by default that's what happens. That's the natural course.
Lack of leadership/communication/incentive, etc.. so many reasons why. It takes a lot of skills, experience and investment to make an open source project succeed.
But I agree with you, one should not assume about what happens next.

Just wait.... and see.