Something about mods and the relation they have with their developers.

[hoodedice]

A few days ago (yesterday), a sorta long time member (registered May 13) decided to quit. While quitting from a community usually invites tearful long have-a-potato messages, this young member decided to take his work with him. Which again gave the community some extra work: That of retreiving said mods.

According to a Moderator: "You should avoid removing content posted by yourself if people rely on it (releases, etc.)."

Is a standing rule. Which hasn't yet been written down. Plus some licences also specify that you cannot take down a project which has been open-sourced

If you want to work at building mods/textures/custom games/ whatever, remember. Your work is your ownn and you will be credited for it, but it also belongs to the community and they have a right to accessing your work when you release it, like it or not. And once it is released, no existing copy of it that people rely on can be removed, unless there is a grave reason for doing so.

However, the world is round, the sun rises in the east and there are stupid people that do it because they are stupid. Or something.

Now, what can we do in case a dev decides to ragequit and take his work with him? For this: some of us have thought of the following pointers:

1. Make this an essential rule "You should avoid removing content posted by yourself if people rely on it (releases, etc.)." Edit the rules tab at the top of the page to include this.

2. Make it obligatory for every mod to use the mod repository (https://forum.minetest.net/mmdb/) for uploading mods. This has many benefits over the old github zip release and the forum attachment thing. For one, there will be greater incentive to develop the mod download thingy in the game. With auto-updating mods, the game will become much cleaner.

3. Remove the ability to delete forum attachments, or the ability to remove mods from the repo (if there is already a feature to delete mods at all).


For me, I think that forum attachments are nasty, and that updating the repo and tools in the game are much cleaner ways to install and use mods.

[VanessaE]

Actually that quote comes from the Rules page. However, it needs to be strengthened greatly.

[rubenwardy]

The mmdb needs to be able to "get zip from github" on add new version.

[jojoa1997]

I dont think it must be manditory for a user to use mmdb/github/attachemnet because they can cause problems. Though i agree that once mmdb has a github getter then i would love to use it. Also a suggestion for mmdb is that it also shows releases people make on github.

[Sokomine]

It would be great if mmdb could be developed further. Right now, it's quite a lot of work to get a mod "released". New modders may have to understand Github to a degree first; then they have to enter it manually into mmdb (also some work), and an attachment in the forum couldn't hurt either. For players, mmdb IMHO is the easiest way of installing mods, and the project ought to be continued/improved.

There is probably no safe way to deal with ragequits. Perhaps moving a mod to mod releases ought to require the moderator to save a copy of the mod and the initial posting so that it can later be restored.

[leetelate]

a) a ragequit? - i always miss the fun since i am antisocial
b) i love the forum attachments - delete ability of uploaded errors would be nice (timed? 5 minutes?)
c) i still can't use github because i still do not understand it - oh how i have tried to use it!