From knghtbrd@debian.org Fri Feb 18 11:35:14 2000
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 01:58:33 -0800
From: Joseph Carter
To: quake-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
Cc: Kevin Pulo , Conan Ford
Subject: QuakeLives "partnership"
Those who know me well know that I hate to ostracize anyone and that I
generally believe all differences can be worked out over time. No matter
who they are, a person can always learn from their mistakes. Nobody is so
bad that they deserve to be rejected from the community at large right?
This perhaps uncharacteristically optimistic view of people now seems
completely wrong now that I have gotten to know a little more about one
individual, Slade.
For those who don't know who he is, Slade is the leader of the QuakeLives
project. How you could not know who he is without having been under a
rock the past week or two is beyond me, but that's beside the point.
My first contact with Slade was on 13 January 2000 when Zephaniah Hull
asked me to speak with him on irc. He seemed a bit more interested in
convincing Zeph and I to drop QuakeForge and join up with QuakeLives than
talking about partnerships, but I chalked that up to sense of humor (I
might have made similar comments half-seriously in his position..) We
seemed to come to a nice agreement, all apparent humor aside.
I begin writing this message 16 January, only three short days later. No
longer do I believe any partnership with QuakeLives is possible. I intend
to discuss why, but first I think it's important to mention what
agreements we seemed to reach.
First, we would help him port our multiplatform support to his tree.
Second, we agreed that closed source proxies were not an effective long
term solution and that we would work with him to develop a better solution
possibly involving encryption and cheat fixes in the protocol (QuakeForge
has already begun working on protocol fixes for cheats as you may know.)
We also agreed that as long as his proxy was done in a manner which did
not violate the GPL, we would support its use as a temporary measure until
better and more secure solutions became available. We agreed this would
require changes to the QuakeWorld protocol and that we would work together
on the design so both projects would support the new protocol. In return
for all of this, we'd use a couple of the tweaks available in his tree
(which he could not stop us from using under the terms of the GPL anyway,
but I think it was at least good of us to offer something in exchange..)
I no longer believe QuakeForge would be successful in achieving the
objectives we had when we approached QuakeLives. I also no longer believe
a partnership with QuakeLives can have any positive effect toward our
project goals of portability, compatibility, and adherence to community
standards.
I also am forced to call into question Slade's own motives and sincerity.
Consider the following points:
- Slade dismissed the arguments relating to the GNU GPL many times. He
claimed that he was a Linux kernel hacker and understood the GPL very
well. (Not that the former necessarily would imply the latter, but it
wasn't my statement.) Interesting to note is that I could not find his
email address in the Linux kernel's CREDITS file. I would look for a
real name, except neither I nor anyone else I've asked knows it. As a
result, I'm forced to question his honesty.
- Slade claims to support the GPL fully. Yet his own words and his
actions contradict him. Please see the first attachment to this
message. Again I am forced to question his honesty.
- In that same attachment referenced in my previous point Slade claims he
gave anyone who asked within two days of release a full working copy.
In my second attachment I include a message from one user following the
development of QuakeForge sent within 24 hours of the QuakeLives
release requesting exactly that. He never got a reply, much less
source.
Further, the GNU GPL version 2 demands in section 3, clause (b) that if
full and complete source is not included that a written offer valid for
at least three years accompany the binaries. No such offer was
included. I now officially add my request for the full and complete
source to QuakeLives QuakeWorld 2.51.
- Every person he's talked to involved with QuakeForge seems to tell me
that Slade tried to convince them to drop out of the QuakeForge project
and join QuakeLives instead. So far only Zephaniah has joined
QuakeLives as a liason between our projects. The rest of our team
seems somewhat offended by Slade's unpartnerlike behavior, to coin a
phrase.
- Several interested parties have suggested on our development list that
they would like to build a set of (L)GPL'd pak files which completely
replaced Id Software's dataset. I've been suggested that this group
form a seperate project open to all quake source projects to build a
standard free dataset which all of us could use.
Slade suggested that since he was already working on such a project
that I simply send all interested contributors to his team and we could
just use the official QuakeLives dataset. He was not interested in
spinning the dataset project off into a seperate entity for the benefit
of all.
- Another point regarding pak files. Slade has already told me directly
he plans to break backward compatibility with bsp files at least,
probably more. I suppose there is no problem with him deciding to do
this necessarily, except that if he is going to do it in the QuakeLives
free dataset, it's not going to be useful to any project but his. He
did indicate that his dataset would in fact use these new formats.
While QuakeForge (and anyone else for that matter) could simply
incorporate code from QuakeLives to use his new formats, our project
goals generally call for a dataset all of us can use. If it is not
directly compatible with the original Id Software source release then
every project who is at all interested should be able to be part of the
decision to change formats.
- In the true spirit of partnership [sic], Slade routinely bashes every
project that isn't his. This includes his "partner" QuakeForge. He's
also told people QuakeLives is "pretty much it" as far as the future of
QuakeWorld is concerned. Go ahead---join #console on gamesnet and ask
him a question about the differences between the various projects.
If you do, be prepared to take his answers with a Siberian salt mine.
They're likely going to be mostly FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt)
against all competition, probably with little or no backing.
Slade's favorite piece of FUD is that none of the other projects have
solved the cheating problem. It's true that we have not yet
implemented our solutions completely, but we do have them. It's also
worth noting his own cheating solution was Copyright infringement and
worked for mere hours before somebody published an exploit. He'd tell
you that his release was just a beta and its security could not be
relied upon as a result.
In general, I don't believe Slade is sincere. It seems fairly clear at
least to me that he has been directly and indirectly dishonest with
QuakeForge and a lot of other people as a result. His claims have little
backing. Those claims which do have backing are cases of the pot calling
the kettle black, so to speak. He's demonstrated a lack of respect or
regard for the GNU GPL, for Id Software, for his "partners", and for the
free software and quake communities he claims to serve.
He believes that by rushing out with a release first he owns Quake and the
right to control it. He wants to dictate the future and the standards all
projects should be judged by. He does not care if his efforts fracture
the game or the community that cares about it because he believes that
anyone not doing things his way will very soon not matter anyway. Who
needs consensus or agreement when you control the standards, right?
Sounds to me like Slade needs a hard lesson in humility.
Further, and with no undue disrespect intended to the rest of the
QuakeLives team, it seems that he's more interested in collecting PR
people to make his project seem great than actual coders and designers to
help make his project great. I'd say there are a few really talented
people in Slade's team and I hope his attitude and the reprocussions of
his actions do not bring them down with him.
I also have a hard time believing the community will long stand for the
likes of Slade once a few more alternatives make themselves known. There
are a number of really interesting projects out there. It's not just a
case of QuakeForge vs. QuakeLives as some might want you to believe. In
the coming weeks we'll all hear about them I'm sure.
As I wrote this message, some words written by John Carmack recently in
email began to echo in my mind. I shall close with his words since I find
I could do no better:
If the DOOM scene is indicative, the first few months will just be
everyone playing around and feeling thems out. After everyone gets done
doing random things for a while, there will be more interest in forward
looking moves.
and in another message,
I hope that people keep compatability with the original game and mission
pack data as a goal.
--
Joseph Carter Debian Linux developer
http://tank.debian.net GnuPG key pub 1024D/DCF9DAB3 sub 2048g/3F9C2A43
http://www.debian.org 20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC 44F9 8FF7 D7A3 DCF9 DAB3