DATELINE: MMOFPS GameScape / Among myriad 7 Days To Die dedicated servers.
It is in my opinion that all software should demonstrate the so-called Four Software Freedoms which means that, while it can be ethical to charge money for your product, you must provide the user with the source code, the permission to modify &or distribute the source code, and the ability to use their modified versions in whatever manner they see fit. Furthermore, let me posit this: If you want me to use your software, but you will not show me the source code, you have only one possible motivation for such actions, that motivation being that your software is not very well-written, and if I see proof of this in the form of source, I am likely to write the same program, but written well. Please, do disagree with me, and give me another possible motivation for using the keeping of your software proprietary as a way to keep your users in a subjugated state – I would absolutely adore to be wrong about this. Know that I have never been more sincere; I am truly bothered by the idea that there isn’t an explanation for making closed-source software that doesn’t imply lack of morality in the creators, and I would appreciate an alternative theory that is not idiotic (but I cannot as of yet think of one).
Proprietary software that succeeds usually develops a so-called API or Application Programming Interface. These standards attempt to make closed-source programs such that third-party software is able to communicate with the software and utilize the service/s it offers in innovative manners. Now, phenomena similar to API has appeared in numerous dedicated server builds of MMO video games. Most of these work by allowing the system operator to connect to a telnet-based socket that outputs a readable log as well as accepts certain defined commands. This is so wildly inefficient in comparison to open-source that I’ve decided to do something about this API sleight of hand bollocks clearly meant to distract us from that the notion of keeping most software closed is ludicrous.
An open-source project we’re heading up called TNA, an acronym for TNA’s Not API, seeks to find the similarities in various MMO video game dedicated server build’s back-ends, social-media-platform-based token nonsense, general API on the w3/html spec & beyond; we then aim to – through making TNA such that software vendors will wish to design their API to easily plug into the TNA Specification – standardize all API knowing that to do so will reveal how much money, time, & even non-imaginary resources such as effort/energy, are wasted by the keeping proprietary of software that could, if its source were made open, evolve wildly more quickly & do much more for the world.
The initial implementation of this TNA Standardization runs on the grapevine’s very own zombie grindhouse pve sandbox 7 Days To Die Dedicated Server. As soon as the source is cleaned and made portable, TNA For 7 Days To Die Dedicated will be up for clone, edit, fork etc on github, SDF, and somewhere locally at the grapevine.
We’ll be discussing initial features in this motd’s comments thread for the time being.