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The Sims Online & "Open Source" Gaming Models
One of my old friends sent me a recent story from Business2 that talks about online gaming, combined with The Sims Online and community involvement in a game. It's not a very substantive piece, but a good discussion starter.
Quote from the article:
> Open source is an enormously successful method of
> software development, but so far it seems to work best
> on projects in which a relatively small, extremely motivated,
> often far-flung team can piggyback on the work done by others
> and develop more tools for the next set of programmers.
The author's impression of OSS development is skewed, I don't think he ever was involved in an OSS project himself.
Firstly, it has always been the rule that the core of an application is built by a rather small group of people. Every application core has a limited number of files/components with lots of interdependencies---there can only be a limited number of people who work at those at the same time. Building software is not like building a house where hundreds of people can lay down individual bricks as long as there is some master plan that tells them where to put them. It's more like erecting a big circus tent: of the people in the center, who pull up the actual tent (as opposed to those who set up additional stuff like trailers and cages), everyone has to know what the others are doing at the moment to prevent the thing from falling on their heads. Projects with a rather small, highly motivated team don't just work better, these are the only ones who work at all.
Secondly, I object to giving people the idea that successful OSS projects are "piggybacking" on other software. It's simly a fact of life that the times in which every program was written from scratch in Assembler are over. As software becomes more complex, more complex methods of building it have to be employed. You have to use sets of tools from various sources, re-use components, build upon the work of others, instead of re-inventing the wheel every time. Just because this is more visible in OSS projects, which display credits for the foundation they use instead of paying licence fees, that doesn't mean it's different from proprietary software.
Well, actually there is one difference: OSS projects that are also free software support the modern approach to software engineering much better. You can use them in your own work, which can in turn be modified, improved and used in other projects. Proprietary software developers, on the other hand, hide their work from each other and force each other to do exactly the same tasks over and over because everyone fears that giving away stuff for free wouldn't pay off in the end. Which is absurd in a way; imagine having to develop yet another stupid GUI widget that looks and behaves exactly like that from the competition, with the only difference that the development is payed by company B this time instead of company A.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
Well, I work on a Halflife mod. I'd say there are parallels, and there are differences.
Some Similarities:
- our mod team is international, and collaborates via the net
- anyone can contribute, and receive credit for their contribution
- mods rely on folks working together without necessarily getting pay for their work
- there is already a small community of independents producing work to be used in it, that hasn't been put into the project
- there's a large community of other mod developers, and we all kinda 'hang out' and help each other with techniques, approaches etc.
- anyone who contributes work, does it to give it to the community of players, moreso than for direct personal gain..
In our case, the source is closed. We've accepted the source under a license agreement (from the game manufacturer) that I'm not sure others wouldn't break otherwise. There are other reasons related to possible cheats (although I still think more eyes looking at the source is better for that in general).
Is it the same as OpenSource? No. Is it somewhat similar? In my opinion yes.
-- If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment. -- Harry F. Banks