Re: Harsher action for copy paste
I think the scenario set out by Jayde does constitute theft. If I collaborate with someone, that gives me no right to just take the entire project, and do my own thing with it, then release it under my name and my name only. Collaboration means working with others toward some mutually acceptable goal. It would be no different if I were to allow a friend to stay with me in my apartment, and then he ended up leaving with my TV. That is more tangible, maybe you can get the police to step in and try to get the TV back. Code is intellectual property, it represents the culmination of effort. And, while you might not identify code by one line, or while one line of code may not be unique or significant, the classes and objects represented by those classes, and higher up the tree, things like your game engine; all those things represent intellectual property.
Then we have people who say yes do more with others, work together, collaborate more, one person can't do all this work. Form teams, we need bigger games from larger teams. Well, would any of you honestly be motivated to form such a team if this could be the result of your work? What if code is stolen by one member after tens of thousands of hours were pumped into a large project? I think people are just not motivated to go down this path, and I sure can't blame them, for the reward is likely to be a bite in the ass. So, if we want to see bigger games, actual development teams starting up, then we need to do something about this. We need to get rid of people who are known to do this, I say known, not suspected, as I don't want to allow this to devolve into a witch hunt. I'm not sure how, but if at all possible, we need to become more proactive about this. Right now, the only thing that is being done is reacting to case by case situations. We need to allay the fears that code stealing practices are - I don't want to use the word welcomed - but perhaps loosely tolerated here. Then, off forum, if you are told by someone who is your friend, look what I have, and you see this type of thing, disassociate yourself from that person. Remember, you have your entire lives to make friends, but you want real friends, not these fake friends who only care about you as a source of something; whether that be entertainment, someone to kick around, code, whatever else. Also, if you know of anyone who is doing this, write the devs privately, either on Skype if you have them, or if they have a contact email or something on their website.
Mosquitoes breed in stagnant waters. Right now, this forum is a breeding ground for those code stealing little buggers. I don't have the answers on how to stop this, I'm not a developer, and I'm not that clever. It will take multiple heads coming together to begin to come up with a viable solution, not just one. On top of that, the solution needs to be fair to everyone, making sure not to come down on people who don't deserve it. I do feel strongly about this though. Having come to some sort of resolution, I feel that in time, this will cause others to feel a bit safer in spreading out the effort.
Of course, devs also need to tighten their security, perhaps not going so far as the measures Ethin has laid out, as I don't see how that can really be called suitable for smaller projects, but limiting exposure to code is certainly a start. I can list out some practical things that come to mind, just using common sense. First of all, dropbox. Limit the number of people you allow to be in your beta dropbox if you have one. I would say no more than 10, and I see that as pushing things. Your code should never be stored in that folder, for any reason, for any length of time! I don't care if Dave says it won't run on his system, but it will on everyone else's, so you decide to give him a development build. Let's say you make the game in Python, and you know he has it on his system, no, stop right there, compile it, cythonize it, bundle it. Never give debug builds as pure source code. I would also be wary of anyone I knew was a developer joining the beta dropbox, because they might want to try to decompile the code and reverse engineer it. I would only allow devs in a beta dropbox if I were very sure of them. This also goes for any other method of sharing things. Also, don't bring any other developers into your group without talking it over with the entire group. Even if you had the initial idea, and feel like you're the leader, talk to everyone and gather opinions. Maybe someone knows something about this person that you don't, and that information is vital to have. I wouldn't even send code to my good friends if I weren't certain about their security consciousness. Because, while they might not attempt to do you dirty, they might end up getting the code stolen from them, because someone found it through NVDA remote or some such thing.
Then you need to be good at reading people. You need to be able to evaluate them, look past their outer persona to what's at the core of them. You need to become adept at evaluating people, which is harder over the net. Hell, some of these people you may only know over the net, which is even more tricky. Sorting out who your actual friends are, and who are just tag-alongs who want to reap some sort of reward for following after you is vital. A good friend could see that 8th on your table and you not being there, would leave it sit. A good friend would be there for you no matter what, and not give bullshit excuses for why they weren't. Bad friends will give platitudes, but bail on you when you need them most.
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