Hi the_kay!
First of all: thank you for your honest words. I really appreciate this. And don't care about the problem that I might take this personal. I understand that this is your general attitude to this topic and of course, I accept it. So nothing about this is regarded to be personal.
By the way, I try to live ethical, too, and I'm vegetarian as well (for 15 years already).
Anyway, back to the topic. I can understand your turn to free software. Especially in times like these, when big companies use their software to spy out the user's system and behaviour, it is desirable to be able to validate the source code, so you can be sure that nothing like this happens to you.
But on the other hand, software development is hard work and takes far more time than the average user would expect. And usually, in the world we all live in, a hard working person gets paid for the effort he gave. You wouldn't build a house with your own hands for months and when you're finished, you'd just say "now all of you may do what you like with it", would you?
The fact that some developers grant users the right to use their software for free should not be misinterpreted in the way that all software should be free by default. If some developers wouldn't get paid for their work, a lot of good software would never have become reality, that far is clear. And even if Linux and many of its applications are free software, you can't question the fact that they just copied many ideas and concepts that were developed by people who worked and got paid for it.
So I think, your ideal of free software without exception is really just an ideal, but sadly not realizable, as it would mean that people would have to work for nothing. Especially if the work must be shared as open sourcecode when done. Transfer this to the real world and you have communism (not that I want to call anyone a communist, I'm far away from that).
Now don't get me wrong: I think, open source software is great and I really like Linux and the people who work for it so hard. I just think, it has to be a free decision for everyone what you do with his work.
As for me and UT2004CacheExtractor, the following applies: I originally wrote this program for my own use. I just wanted to have a tool that saves me the work to copy and rename the files from the cache directory manually. When friends of me saw what I made, they also wanted to use it and so I put some more effort in it, added a GUI, implemented more options and the like. And as you know, I don't take anything for it. Everyone may use it as he likes.
There are several reasons why I won't publish the sourcecode at this time: First of all, it is not very cleaned up and optimised in its current state. It also lacks sufficient comments and developer documentation. Another important reason is that the project isn't finished right now. I still plan to implement further functionality (such as a real file dependency check for maps and their associated files) and don't want anyone else to mess up the source and develop the program into a direction that I don't want it to go at the moment. See, if I put all the effort into a project, I in the end want to have what I had in my mind when I started working on it, and not what anyone else thinks it should be.
Imagine, you start painting a picture with a vision in your mind and finish the upper left corner. You wouldn't give it to anyone else to finish it as he likes, before you can do it yourself, would you?
Well, the last of all reasons is that there are always some smart asses around who start discussing about the source code and start glutting you with shoulds and shouldn'ts that really don't interest me at the moment. All I want is to get this thing to work as intended. I don't care if anyone has the opinion that the configuration has to be stored in XML format or whatever sick ideas some people have.
Anyway, if the program is finished in my eyes someday and the unlikely case should happen that I find the time and the will to optimize the source code and write comments and developer documentation, I might indeed publish the project as free software and put it on GPL or whatever. To do this, another few hours or days have to be invested to check out all the rights and implications that such a license brings with it.
As for help or not, I must say that I have some friends who play UT 2004 under Linux, and Splatter, who plays on the TCP server regularly, even plays it on a Mac. But somehow, I just don't get the feedback that I'd need to make the program work properly under those OSes. Some don't have the time, some don't understand what I ask them to do, some don't seem to able to contact me and others just take ages of time before they reply. Altogether, I must say: I use UT2004CacheExtractor under Windows. I can test it there and eliminate any bugs or issues that may arise. If the users of alternate OSes are not interested in bug fixes, this is their own fault. Maybe, this will just lead to the result that I'll drop any support for other operating systems one day. We'll see.
Anyway, the_kay, I respect your attitude and (as already said) I don't take anything personal. I hope, the same counts for me, as nothing that I wrote was meant personal to you, ok?
Regards,
Coco.
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