forum.freeciv.org

Civland is dead... Well, R.I.P.
What I don't understand is why there was no warning about it. Davide's decision seems a little unilateral. Whatever...
But isn't there a way of getting all the information stored in Civland to recuperate/restore it somewhere else? Like Here?
There was a lot of good tips there... Sigh...

Arbogast wrote:Civland is dead... Well, R.I.P.
What I don't understand is why there was no warning about it. Davide's decision seems a little unilateral. Whatever...
But isn't there a way of getting all the information stored in Civland to recuperate/restore it somewhere else? Like Here?
There was a lot of good tips there... Sigh...

That's weird. Davide gave no explanations nor warning.

To lose the playing matches sucked, but the worst thing is that we lost the forum section, which contained the whole History of Greatturn and a enormous amount of discussion and ideas about the greatturn/longturn/freeciv concept. Remember that while THIS forum was down, discussions continued in civland.org, home of greatturn.org
If you connect to greatturn.org, now there's a static page in which Davide offers to sell (!) the data of the game.
This is even weirder. I told him many times that greatturn should rely much more on some $ given from the players, in a regular (althou voluntary) basis, and he always refused and/or applied heavy restriction to the idea.
Now, in change, he wants to sell the whole stuff for 180€, something around 140$. Of course it doesn't represent not even a fraction of the whole time/human effort he put in greatturn in these 2 years, but still, let's say I don't find it elegant.
Who will buy the software and the data? I can't think of any one else than the community itself. Now, in the case of the forum, is it fair to sell something community-made to the community? And by the way, what if a private (!) would like to purchase it? Ok, that would be quite weird, but even though, it would infringe some law, I think.

So, Davide, please let's discuss this. I know the community wants to thank you for the effort, and I believe that there could be also some will to thank you with some bucks. But we need some other hero to get pick your data, give it a shape and open it to the community. If he doesn't do it, the community will hardly give the time, effort and $ to thank you. In order to achieve this, data should be given for free. I know the code is in perfect shape so there will be little effort from your side to give the start kick.
If Davide agrees to let the software for free, and some hero appears to relieve him, I would gladly pay the expenses (DVDs/shipping).

Davide, dicci qualcosa!
Grazie ancora.

Piero

Now, when you are talking about donations to greatturn in freeciv proper forums, have you ever donated to this (freeciv) project? There can hardly be any forks like longturn or greatturn if freeciv itself cannot afford servers to run the development. http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Donations (It feels a bit weird that I've been (thought not recently) one of the people *paying* to the project, when I already give my time from half to full person year / year)

cazfi wrote:Now, when you are talking about donations to greatturn in freeciv proper forums, have you ever donated to this (freeciv) project? There can hardly be any forks like longturn or greatturn if freeciv itself cannot afford servers to run the development. http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Donations (It feels a bit weird that I've been (thought not recently) one of the people *paying* to the project, when I already give my time from half to full person year / year)

I just made a donation to the Freeciv project again now, specifically $100 to be spent on continous hosting of the http://play.freeciv.org server. This is in addition to the donations done previously.
It would be nice if the Freeciv donations page would be a bit more specific about the current funds of the Freeciv project, so that people know when the project is in need of funds. Transparency is also important
so that people donating know and trust that the funds will be spent sanely.

Furthermore, if the project needs more donations, then I think more funds could be donated if the Freeciv website and mailing lists more visibly announces that the project needs funding.

Well, if donations is the quickest way to get hold of the Civland files, let's do it!
As for the ethics of Davide's attitude... just don't let it bother you: the important thing is getting those files.

Arbogast wrote:Well, if donations is the quickest way to get hold of the Civland files, let's do it!
As for the ethics of Davide's attitude... just don't let it bother you: the important thing is getting those files.

I think that Davide should put the source code of Civland and Greatturn on Github, free for anyone to use. I don't support paying for any of the Civland files.
Releasing the source code is the only way that Greatturn will continue to exist, in my opinion.

I have never tried Greatturn or Longturn. Perhaps you could describe the features which are really neccessary to play a longturn game. Then perhaps someone will implement longturn support in the official Freeciv server.

My donation was specifically for paying the hosting bills of the Freeciv/play.freeciv.org server.

cazfi wrote:Now, when you are talking about donations to greatturn in freeciv proper forums, have you ever donated to this (freeciv) project? There can hardly be any forks like longturn or greatturn if freeciv itself cannot afford servers to run the development. http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Donations (It feels a bit weird that I've been (thought not recently) one of the people *paying* to the project, when I already give my time from half to full person year / year)

Nope.
And I also didn't donate to education help in poor countries, which I really care of, believe me.
I can't donate for everything I think it is good, and I have to make a choiche. Greatturn was a promising project, open and democratic, with lot of effort from his founder, Davide. Maybe I have been wrong, but I gave few bucks to GreatTurn. I didn't put a single line of code in Greatturn or in Freeciv cause I can't code, but I gave maybe a hundred of pages of suggestions and proposal both to the greatturn/longturn project and to the proper freeciv one.
About writing here, well: the GT forum was host by a server of Davide and now is gone. I thought Freeciv was the natural place where to post a discussion about this proble,m, where all the orphans of Greatturn could gather. I don't find anything bad on it.
About donating to Freeciv, well, my interest is in the online multiplayer "longturn" part of the game. I'm happy for you guys if you code new features, new units, new skins, new fabollous 3D graphics or whatever the community likes, but keep in mind that what I am really interested in is multuplayer features, and that somebody makes it easier to host and administrate longturn matches, or that someone DOES host and administrate them. For this I will be more than happy of leaving some bucks, althou it will not be 100$, as AndreaS.
About the longturn.org fork, I don't know. It is a radical fork which if I am not wrong goes quite far from the Freeciv main developing, so I would love that the next longturn-style project were INSIDE freeciv development. Of course this can start from the greatturn.org code which seems to be in optimal shape.
My bucks are just waiting for someone who takes care of starting the project.
Anyway, thanks everybody for your effort, I really appreciate it.

Of course it's your decision where you donate. I were just saying that even when you're playing gt or lt, you're still mostly using freeciv. Freeciv codebase is about 500.000 lines and last I checked longturn changes were in hundreds of lines - certainly over 99% of the codebase comes directly from freeciv project.

cazfi wrote:Of course it's your decision where you donate.

I need to stress that i'm not claiming that Freeciv itself is not dependant on other projects. The gtk+ -widget set our main clients are built on, alone is over 800000 lines of code according to OHLOH.

longturn.org has barely any changes, just a function or two. We don't really want to have different code, but this makes certain operations easier, though messier. You can successfuly run a longturn-type game without them. Our games have always been hosted on donated hardware, we therefore need no donations. If you want to donate, then yes, Freeciv is the best place. Frankly I'm appaled that the Greatturn guy wants money for his code and data. There is no problem for longturn.org to host the more relaxed greatturn-style games - we have the resources. Just dont expect the official competetive LT games to adjust in style - it's all about victory there.