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A website page detailing the upcoming open source version of Leveller (a
heightfield modeler) is now available at
http://www.daylongraphics.com/products/leveller/opensrc.htm
A banner graphic has been made for those wishing to help promote the
Open Leveller effort; for more info please refer to
http://www.daylongraphics.com/products/leveller/opensrc.htm#help
Ray Gardener
Daylon Graphics Ltd.
http://www.daylongraphics.com/products/leveller
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Ray Gardener wrote:
> A website page detailing the upcoming open source version of Leveller (a
> heightfield modeler) is now available at
Interesting.
But i have to say i don't completely get it. If making it open source
makes sense for you economically why the fund raising? Will you not
open source it when you don't get enough donations?
Christoph
--
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/ (Last updated 24 Jul. 2005)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/
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Christoph Hormann wrote:
> Interesting.
>
> But i have to say i don't completely get it. If making it open source
> makes sense for you economically why the fund raising?
It's more a matter of making sense logistically -- open source lets me
move into a more administrative role vs. day-to-day engineering.
The fund raising covers the public's purchase of the intellectual
properties plus some post-release work and support that will need to be
provided for devs, new users and existing users. Plus I want to code
comment and furnish the design docs to a professional level. I don't
want this turning into a repeat of HF-Lab/HLA/KLevel.
> Will you not
> open source it when you don't get enough donations?
You mean "if" right? The future isn't written yet.
But if it happens, the matter will just remain undecided. However, the
donation pool can only increase, even if slowly. The code won't go
anywhere, it will just wait until the target is met. That's one reason
25% of sales are given to the funding -- it guarantees that the fund
will grow (even if not at a breakneck pace.)
There is obviously some degree of faith involved. But I have faith. I
don't think getting, e.g., a mere 10,000 people to donate a mere $20
each is beyond the reach of modern civilization.
Ray
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> There is obviously some degree of faith involved. But I have faith. I
> don't think getting, e.g., a mere 10,000 people to donate a mere $20
> each is beyond the reach of modern civilization.
Well, how big is your user base in relation to 10,000?
--
"The rules of programming are transitory; only Tao is eternal.
Therefore you must contemplate Tao before you receive enlightenment."
"How will I know when I have received enlightenment?" asked the novice.
"Your program will then run correctly," replied the master.
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Daniel Hulme wrote:
> Well, how big is your user base in relation to 10,000?
I'm not at liberty to discuss internal business data while the products
are closed source, but I would say the numbers don't have a huge delta.
The 10,000 figure is arbitrary anyway -- one could just as easily say
5,000 and $40 per would still be well within their means. A few
corporate sponsers could easily reach the target without breaking a sweat.
The full user base of an open version is also different. There's more
problem domains being solved, hence a wider audience.
Ray
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Ray Gardener <ray### [at] daylongraphics com> wrote:
> That's one reason
> 25% of sales are given to the funding -- it guarantees that the fund
> will grow (even if not at a breakneck pace.)
Does it make sense to buy something which will probably be free in the
future? How many people would actually do that?
--
- Warp
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Ray Gardener wrote:
>
> The fund raising covers the public's purchase of the intellectual
> properties plus some post-release work and support that will need to be
> provided for devs, new users and existing users. Plus I want to code
> comment and furnish the design docs to a professional level.
I have quite a problem with this "public buying intellectual property"
(but this isn't specific to this case, i had the same with Blender for
example). First of all it's "buying the cat in the sack". And then the
idea of open source (IMO, others might see this differently) is that
making the software open source is of benefit for everyone involved. By
requiring 'the public' to buy it free you essentially say in this
particular case (in comparison to all the other open source software
that exists) the benefit is more on the public side so you require a
compensation. Whether or not this is justified for Leveller i can't
really judge.
> I don't
> want this turning into a repeat of HF-Lab/HLA/KLevel.
Hmm. I always thought Leveller had a different intention than those
projects (although they might claim they have the same intention as
Leveller :-)).
HF-Lab etc. seem mainly pure interactive heightfield editors/generators
and this is not much needed any more, let alone commercially viable
because of several reasons:
- support for higher color depth in general imaging programs, you don't
need to learn a new program to do simple heightfield sculpturing.
- increasing detail requirements make it less viable to edit
heightfields interactively as a whole and make heightfields less
interesting as a modelling concept for artificial terrain.
Now the idea of Leveller to me seems to be more than a pure heightfield
editor. I am not sure if this or better code/documentation/professional
support etc. make a difference but this will be interesting to see.
>
> You mean "if" right? The future isn't written yet.
Of course.
Christoph
--
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/ (Last updated 24 Jul. 2005)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/
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Warp wrote:
> Does it make sense to buy something which will probably be free in the
> future? How many people would actually do that?
There's definitely no way to please all the people all of the time; I
don't have any illusions about that. A lot of people will certainly just
wait it out and hope the "other shoe drops."
At the very least, this is a good opportunity to find out what the
public feels. And projects like Blender give me hope. I think overall
more people need to try this style of funding; it costs the public very
little in per-person terms but can provide so much more needed financing
for software development (which is still an expensive undertaking). Part
of my job is to help make people aware of where the value is, to not
just state the message but to sell it properly, so yes, I definitely
have some work ahead of me here.
To answer the question from another angle: eventually all software will
be so commoditized as to be free -- the question is, how long do we want
to wait? I think the person who can wait a year for OpenLev can actually
wait indefinitely -- to them it's a "nice to have" but not essential. So
I can't appeal to those people anyway. My audience is people who have
real genuine needs today or in the next nine months who would like to
move forward but haven't been able to budget $100 or more for it. If
they have $20 or $30, they now have input. I think this is the beauty of
a fundraising approach, that people who otherwise couldn't vote with
their dollars now can, by really lowering the barrier to entry. I think
PayPal even does micropayments (or will soon) but I haven't read up on
that yet.
Ray
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Christoph Hormann wrote:
> I have quite a problem with this "public buying intellectual property"
> (but this isn't specific to this case, i had the same with Blender for
> example). First of all it's "buying the cat in the sack".
I agree, but unfortunately being open can only occur in one direction.
The cat can't be put back into the sack either.
However, to help that I moved some of the internal Leveller classes into
the free open SDK, to give more of an idea of what kind of code quality
can be expected. And some of the plug-ins, Daylon XaoS and Defence
Condition are also open source. I've actually been doing open source for
several years, and the relationship with the original copyright holders
has always been positive. John Beale, for example, was able to promptly
get all the optimizations to the HF-Lab functions improved by the Erode
plug-in. All GPL, and it's worked well. The new SDK docs also give an
idea as to what to expect for the OpenLev docs.
For what's it worth, I'm really not interested in just dumping code. I
see so much of that from other people and it's such a big turn-off. I
want to set a really high standard of open source publishing, where
people get the resources to do their own mods and builds to near turnkey
quality. I wish I could have the Defence Condition tech docs better, but
with real funding, I'm aiming to get it right for OpenLev.
> And then the
> idea of open source (IMO, others might see this differently) is that
> making the software open source is of benefit for everyone involved. By
> requiring 'the public' to buy it free you essentially say in this
> particular case (in comparison to all the other open source software
> that exists) the benefit is more on the public side so you require a
> compensation. Whether or not this is justified for Leveller i can't
> really judge.
It's a good point. As a capitalist, I like the classic idea of the
marketplace. In the end, I'm just making an offer, and the other person
can decide whether it appeals to him or not. And it's nice to have all
different kinds of offers on the table -- choice is good. I don't think
there's any other way of deciding value in an ecosystem, so someone has
to make the offer to start.
Leveller began in pure demand-supply terms too... I was minding my own
business fiddling around with a little POV-Ray tool when people started
saying, "If you make it do this I'd pay such-and-such..."
>> I don't want this turning into a repeat of HF-Lab/HLA/KLevel.
>
> Hmm. I always thought Leveller had a different intention than those
> projects (although they might claim they have the same intention as
> Leveller :-)).
Yeah, to be technically fair I think KLevel was more Leveller-esque. But
at the time, HF-Lab and HLA were two of the only heightfield-specific
games in town that were FOSS.
> HF-Lab etc. seem mainly pure interactive heightfield editors/generators
> and this is not much needed any more, let alone commercially viable
> because of several reasons:
>
> - support for higher color depth in general imaging programs, you don't
> need to learn a new program to do simple heightfield sculpturing.
> - increasing detail requirements make it less viable to edit
> heightfields interactively as a whole and make heightfields less
> interesting as a modelling concept for artificial terrain.
I see heightfields as a datatype that will always (somewhere, somehow)
need an interactive editor. It's just one of those tools that is good to
have. A non-trivial percentage of people are actually interested in the
import/export modules, or some of the plug-ins. There's also the people
who have plans for future apps that are merely based on the code, such
as open equivalents of more expensive high-end apps. In this case they
can quickly and inexpensively gain a big lead in dev time.
> Now the idea of Leveller to me seems to be more than a pure heightfield
> editor. I am not sure if this or better code/documentation/professional
> support etc. make a difference but this will be interesting to see.
Yeah, that's where I'm at with it; just putting the offer there and
seeing where the interest is.
Ray
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