DragonBox OpenSource Coding Competition - Rules (DRAFT!)


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Funny:


At the moment, we would have more entries, if open source would be a rule. :)





11 vs 9
 
I could not vote, would need an option " I may participate if open or closed, but prefer that to be dev´s choice"


According to what I read so far here, better options for a pool could be


1- won´t take part if not open. (open as rule)


2-don´t care, may participate anyway, but closed would allow me a better entry. (open as dev´s choice)
 
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... Just for laughs, I'd also be interested in throwing in whether the person is employed or not into the statistics, and if they are, whether they use open/closed source in their workplace.

I´m a freelance artist (illustration, movies, design, etc) so you can count me in on the unemployed part, hehe. Use both open and close.


If what you mean by that question is "can you afford time and money on a non-profit hobby or project you enjoy?", the answer would be no, couse doing such means I´m not working and also not looking for new jobs, double loose.


Still, I manage to pull my helps on things I believe every now and then. ;)
 
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Is the OpenPandora about openness and community engineering, or is it about games? Is it for hacking, or is it for gaming? Would it even exist if people didn't like to play games on the go, most of them closed-source ROM's?


Do we want more and higher quality entries into the competition, or do we want to promote the community contributing to common property codebase?


If we didn't get to see the most intricate and novel games entering the competition because of the open-source requirement, what difference would it make? Did the games and the code suddenly cease to exist because a good concept or game didn't get to enter the competition? If there was no game or concept and [closed] code to begin with, can a small promotional compo with a 200€ grand prize be expected to be the main motivation to develop something remarkable that otherwise would never see daylight?


Are concepts valuable contribution in and by themselves - do we cherish introducing fresh ideas in form of new gameplay mechanics or art design - or is code the only fruit of labor that we consider valuable for the community? If you're analyzing, evaluating and enjoying a beautiful painting - getting influenced by it - but the artist refuses to share the details on how it was composed or where the inspiration came from, do you consider it "open" or "closed"?


What is of value, what do we want to promote?


Clinging to ideologies, or worse yet identifying with them, just seems so useless when the reality doesn't give a damn about abstract bullshit. Instead it all comes down to what do we want to create and what are its implications.


These were some obvious questions that I needed to ask myself when trying to determine my stance on the issue.


Discuss.
 
Discuss, my friends, discuss. And most important: take your time.


(meanwhile i made a solid step forward in my secret project)
 
If i take a screenshot (i can do it), i'll have to paint it black, and write "top secret" (in black too) on it.
 
Ok, here's for you, but don't tell anybody:

top secret.png
 
Oh Noes! I've seen it. Does that mean I have to sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) now? :p
 
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HA!


I have applied a "remove secret post paint-it-black" filter in photoshop and I now know the full truth!


Sorry, I will have to release it...

secret.jpg
 
The part I don´t understand, where people want to enforce open source, is the actual need to ENFORCE it.
I don't get why anyone should be forced to release the source code if he/she doesnt want to.

Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything, or am I missing something? Is participation to the contest obligatory now?

Well if it's written in the rules then you're forced. of course you're not obliged to participate, but in the end it could hinder someone to enter.


If the contest is all about opensource software, i'm fine with that. on both sides you'll lose entries, making it "forcibly" open source or not. but please, let the authors at least choose a license to their likings. I personally dont like the GPL, i'm more a friend of BSD or MIT licenses.
 
I could not vote, would need an option " I may participate if open or closed, but prefer that to be dev´s choice"
First of all: Thinking about others is not the point in this poll! This poll is only for developers and their own decisions...


So, you say, that you entry will be better™, if its closed, but you would also commit some entry, if you have to open your source. That would be answer two. ;)
 
You would get an unfair advantage if you could participate in the contest using a code base several man-months worth as a starting point, and be allowed to keep that code secret.

I really don't see any advantage here. There are thousands of open source frameworks out there which can be used in this competition. What makes you believe that a closed source code base is worth more than open source code bases?


I am still sure that the deadline of the competition has the biggest impact on the quality of the entries not open or closed source.


For the pandora I think the best way is to let the developers decide whether or not they want to release source, because more software is better then open software but that's just my opinion. If I find time for the competition I would not release my code but I would be okay if I would not get any price (But not because of the closed source but because of the fact that I worked on that project far more than 2 months).
 
I detect, that I can add answers without loosing votes, so if you have good answers, which are not represented in the poll yet, please tell me, that I can add them. ;)
 
You would get an unfair advantage if you could participate in the contest using a code base several man-months worth as a starting point, and be allowed to keep that code secret.

I really don't see any advantage here. There are thousands of open source frameworks out there which can be used in this competition. What makes you believe that a closed source code base is worth more than open source code bases?

The difference is that closed source devs can use (most) open source frameworks, while open source devs cannot use closed source frameworks. I don't think open source is inherently better or worse than closed source - both can be crappy or excellent. It's just that - assuming some closed source code is not completely useless - some closed source devs could potentially have an advantage over other closed source devs and over open source devs. I would be fine with that if after the contest, the end result would be that now everyone gets that same advantage (because the previously closed source would be opened up).


Sports analogy: suppose you're organizing a cycling race, and there are two factories of bikes, factory O and factory C. Participants can tinker with their bikes to make them better. However, if you buy a bike from factory O, you have to allow others to see and use your design mods, while if you buy a bike from factory C, there is no such obligation, and you can even use patents to prevent others from using the general ideas behind your design mods. I don't know which factory currently has the best bike models to start from. Would you consider it to be a fair race if some participants can buy bikes from either factory, while other participants can only buy bikes from factory O?


The point is: what's the goal of the race? Improving the quality of the factory O bikes (which is what I assumed to be the goal, since the race was called "Factory O cycling race" and it was organized by someone who claims to be working for factory O), or getting as many cyclists as possible in the race?


I don't agree with the statement "more software is better than open software". This could be true in the short term for people who are only interested in running software, not creating it. But in the long term, it's not even true for those people. "More software is better than open software" is exactly the reason why so many people are now struggling with their modern hardware to get a decent framerate on a game they own which was designed for a 200MHz cpu: that's because they only bought the binaries, and even though it should be relatively trivial to play that game on the 1GHz machine they have today, they cannot do it because they're forced to wait until someone does the huge work to make an emulator for their old hardware so they can run their binaries through that emulator, and even then, the emulator overhead is probably going to be too big to get it to run full-speed even though they're using hardware which is an order of magnitude faster.
 
Please always look ahead! One day the pandora will not be sold anymore and a new fancy console or even a mobile phone will replace it. Would be great, if some of the old games, emulators or applications could be ported to the new device, wouldn't it?


Of course, this argument doesn't counter for every software. Such a software like the PND maker is very useless on other devices. But for most applications and games my argument is valid. ;)
 
If the contest is all about opensource software, i'm fine with that. on both sides you'll lose entries, making it "forcibly" open source or not. but please, let the authors at least choose a license to their likings. I personally dont like the GPL, i'm more a friend of BSD or MIT licenses.
You and me both. When GNU puts out a contest they are free to make GPL a requirement, and probably would. I didn't see anything in EvilDragon's idea that would even suggest it needed to line up with GNU so I think you're safe there :p
 
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I don't think anyone here would argue to make the GPL required. I do like the GPL, but I think it would be a bad idea to make it a rule that that has to be the license.


Anything approved by either the FSF or the OSI would be fine imo, see e.g. Wikipedia for an overview. This includes the Apache license, BSD, CC-by-sa, GPL, LGPL, MIT, MPL, QPL, etc.
 
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