Spring Engine version 101.0 release is a good occasion to both, turn to history and talk about our common future.
The Spring Engine is unique in its universality. It is true that lately the Spring Engine has been widely criticized for not being efficient enough and for the fact that the decision-making on issues stops due to overwhelming differences – first of all among the members of the community.
It is absolutely natural for such a diverse community. When the first version of Spring Engine was released, its founders did not in the least think that there would always be consensus. Spring community’s strength comes from taking different views and opinions consideration. Decisions debated within the community can either be taken as future features or not.
We all know that after some conflicts in the past, a centre of domination raised in the community. And then those who found themselves at the top of that pyramid were tempted to think that if we are so strong and exceptional then we know better than anyone what to do.
License
Someone thinks that GPL is the only right and true way of living on that sinful planet. They fear the low “bus factor” of close source programs.
If developers of NOTA disappear for some reason, then all work at the close-source program will be lost, that happened already few times with other stuff contrivuted as closed source to spring too. Now you see why making project open-source would be big benefit for all.
Instead of releasing the “unitsync” under LGPL license, you create obstacles or, in other words, “Put a spoke in someone’s wheel”.
Of course, the world is changing and the Spring Engine community must be consistent with this natural transformation. NOTA team is ready to work together with all community members, but we consider the attempts to block someones and not to block the others for the same deal as extremely dangerous. They can lead to a collapse of the entire community relations. Then, indeed, we would be left with no other rules than the rule of the force. We would get a world dominated by selfishness rather than collective work.
We suggest, however, we should take a wider view on this issue. We are all different. And we should respect that. We should all remember what our past has taught us.
Announcement for forum
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This is new notAlobby. This lobby satisfy GPL license demands and its new official client for NOTA.
The new lobby is not linking unitsync.dll as previous version of the lobby did. Now, we are using own way of identifying games versions and maps. For the first look it seems that new lobby is not supporting other games/projects. It is true, but only in part. We had to choose technical solution which doesn’t ruin our time-budget and at least satisfy our needs. To make it compatible with other game projects it would take much time and other resources from us. We hope you understand this decision.
Of course, this does not mean we are not open for real cooperation in the future!
Technical things
The obsolete lobby which was considered to crossing rules of this community is no longer available on:
Its sources won’t be released. Let’s think that “the school bus” knocked down the computer where the sources were stored. We no longer support it and no longer distribute it. We also actively remove any problematic old content – e.g. if there exist some forgotten link or version of given client (so we encourage you to contact us in case you find such thing).
We hope that our future relationship will be guided by common interests and expect that there will be no big fights once we do this step.
As reaction for this announcement (and as long we will follow what we promise above), we expect that:
- NOTA project won’t be no longer blocked in any sense on this forum and springrts page
- All filteres blocking referencing NOTA projects pages, blocking NOTA news in all spring rts channels will be removed
- Also there wont be done any future actions to NOTA content on springfiles.com and other shared repositories
- There will be removed any other technical or personal provisions blocking specifically NOTA related stuff in shared infrastructure.
We also hope any member of NOTA dev project will be no longer target of extra moderation effort 😈 (that was joke).
Speaking openly,
- danil_kalina (NOTA Game Lobby developer)
- PepeAmpere (NOTA project representative)
(announcing this together, so from this time new lobby is part of NOTA project, to make that clear for people from outside and to be sure there is just one point of contact for any future issues)
Short version with discussion is on springrts forum.
This article is uncut version of our official new lobby announcement on SpringRTS forums. The full version reveal our motivations more to be sure all ideological opponents have enough flame-war ammunition :). In all cases we still try to be constructive!
