Project Name Etc...

Would renaming this fork of openBVE be considered? That's the one big thorny issue that I'm currently torn about.

There are too many forks out there of openBVE, and having new features that deviate from all the other branches will get confused easily, not to mention michelle's forking guidelines in the development docs.

I do not cosider this a fork, since the main development has been cancelled by Michelle and now is being resumed, from the point and in the direction Michelle was last at.

But it's still starting/continuing independent development of the program based on a copy of the source code (i.e. independent from the original group of developers). A fork is the independent development of the software based on source code of the main project.

I get and respect your point, but I don't agree. I'd consider this a change of team as it occurs in any long running software project.

The main reason for my opposition to using the name openBVE is because it's currently a power vacuum, and there are way too many groups claiming to be the continuation of openBVE, but no one to officiate it. A new name would make it clear that this is new development team continuing development, with the new features added associated to this new identity.

As an add-on developer, it'll be easier to say "Download openTS, the route willl work on it" than "Download this specific branch of openBVE, available from this thread in BVE Worldwide. Don't download the one from Site X or Site Y, however".

I respect the team's decision, whether they stay status quo, or rename the project.

Note: Thread split from main build discussion.

joeyfjj wrote:Would renaming this fork of openBVE be considered? That's the one big thorny issue that I'm currently torn about.

There are too many forks out there of openBVE, and having new features that deviate from all the other branches will get confused easily, not to mention michelle's forking guidelines in the development docs.

First off, a blunt assessment- I'm by no means sure that you realise that you're contributing to the problem you describe yourself.
You've started another 'official' builds site, with your own position on what should, or should not be posted there.

There were already plenty of sites providing Michelle's last build, and one more only adds to the problem.

With that off my chest, onto more interesting discussion.


Forks:
To the best of my knowledge, there has only been one other 'fork' with any sort of technical progress made.
This was (is) Jakub Vanek's port to SDL2/ OpenTK.
Jakub has contributed various lumps of code to these builds, and his 'fork' is I suppose an ancestor of these.

None of the other builds I've come across demonstrate any interesting technical progress, or coherant plans to take the simulation forwards.
Shadow93's build (1.4.3a) is very slightly faster than Michelle's last, but only due to the fact that it's been compiled with a later and more optimized version of the .Net compiler. It also breaks path resolution on non-Windows operating systems, and has a pointless compiler flag set.

As far as I know, no-one has posted a build numbered above 1.4.3a

The Name:

joeyfjj wrote:As an add-on developer, it'll be easier to say "Download openTS, the route willl work on it" than "Download this specific branch of openBVE, available from this thread in BVE Worldwide. Don't download the one from Site X or Site Y, however".

This bites both ways.
openBVE is currently a recognised brand within the simulation community, and renaming breaks the association.
Google for openTS routes, and nothing comes up, compared to the wealth of content available for openBVE.

Team:

joeyfjj wrote:The main reason for my opposition to using the name openBVE is because it's currently a power vacuum, and there are way too many groups claiming to be the continuation of openBVE, but no one to officiate it. A new name would make it clear that this is new development team continuing development, with the new features added associated to this new identity.

Frankly, there's been a power vacuum since Michelle left.
Odakyufan did a little, but it was essentially nothing much more than maintenance.
As a community, we cannot just sit back passively and wait for one of the mystical founders to turn up and give us a new version- If we want things to happen, we must do them ourselves.

This build will only go places if the community wants it to.
Anything else is pointless.

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

I support Chris' version being called OpenBVE. I can't think of anyone else currently working on the program, and I'm sure if there was it wouldn't be an issue to collaborate - meaning all features are available in one version.

I totally understand where you are coming from, Joey, but I feel that splitting into different sims is only going to divide the community even more than it has been the last few years. That would be a shame now that things are starting to improve again.

I think that the intention was to make the sim work with material from non-BVE sources in the fullness of (Michelle's) time, so a name change would make more sense a that point, if it's ever reached.

Otherwise, as other development has been minimal in any other way, it seems people have choice of the last "official" build, or that which Chris is working away on and which will probably become (because of it's features and refinement) the standard in the future.

I agree with his point that setting up multiple places hosting the program, especially if it's the same build as elsewhere, isn't helpful.  Finding add-ons is the tricky part, not finding the program.

Thanks to all that responded: perhaps I was thinking too much about it.

Chris:I did contact a developer on the original dev team, asked them if they're okay with a mirror and if they could send me the files, got both approval and an updated, unreleased version of the program from him, and put that up.

At this point I'm realising that I'm getting too invested into something trivial, so I'm ending my participation on this topic.

Maybe the way forward (for now) is to call our version "OpenBVE X.X.X (BVEWW version)"?

See the announcement on BVE-T regarding their development.

Deliberately splitting this into two parts

This post is with a moderator's hat on.

I'm aware of things happening on other boards.
You're absolutely welcome to post there if you so choose, but please note the following:

• This build is not a BVE-Worldwide 'official' build.
  
• Any opinions I express are my own, not that of BVE-Worldwide, *UNLESS* specifically noted.
  
• Please don't start flamewars etc. on which build is best. Posts of this nature will be deleted.
  
• Similarly, please don't trash their boards, and respect any decisions they make regarding this build/ board- Your actions reflect on all of us.
  

Thanks.

Greater Anglia Metro wrote:Maybe the way forward (for now) is to call our version "OpenBVE X.X.X (BVEWW version)"?

See the announcement on BVE-T regarding their development.

As far as I can see, they're doing nothing more than posting Joeyfiji's page as the 'official' one.
They are absolutely within their rights to do this. (Note my post with the moderator's hat on above please)

I'm not a fan of starting to append stuff to the build numbers etc. but will consider this if the situation gets out of hand.

joeyfiji wrote:Chris:I did contact a developer on the original dev team, asked them if they're okay with a mirror and if they could send me the files, got both approval and an updated, unreleased version of the program from him, and put that up.

Not trying to blame you at all- It's your prerogative to post as you see fit
The community will decide in the fullness of time which 'fork' to follow.

thehoviskid wrote:I think that the intention was to make the sim work with material from non-BVE sources in the fullness of (Michelle's) time, so a name change would make more sense a that point, if it's ever reached.

If you find the development version of Object Viewer (Earlier in the builds thread somewhere, not going digging just at the moment, or just roll from the latest source), you'll find that it now loads Loksim3D objects, but with some issues.

I've also got a parser for TGA images written, but it isn't really ready yet:
https://github.com/leezer3/OpenBVE/pull/59

Progress will be made on these fronts in the fullness of time, but at the moment, I'm primarily concentrating on getting some of the biggest issues with the current versions properly fixed.
Properly moving bogies with no hacks was one of the biggest goals here, and the next on my list is a replacement for the train.dat / extensions.cfg files.

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

leezer3 wrote:Deliberately splitting this into two parts

This post is with a moderator's hat on.

I'm aware of things happening on other boards.
You're absolutely welcome to post there if you so choose, but please note the following:

• This build is not a BVE-Worldwide 'official' build.
  
• Any opinions I express are my own, not that of BVE-Worldwide, *UNLESS* specifically noted.
  
• Please don't start flamewars etc. on which build is best. Posts of this nature will be deleted.
  
• Similarly, please don't trash their boards, and respect any decisions they make regarding this build/ board- Your actions reflect on all of us.
  

Thanks.

I've made one post there that said the following:


"I think it's great that development is now continuing after so long.

This is already reminding me of when OpenBVE was initially developed and some people carried on developing for BVE4. Before that, there was at one point people who developed for BVE2 when BVE4 had been around a while.

Surely the best show of loyalty to those who originally developed OpenBVE would be to continue development and avoid the program becoming stagnant and incompatible like BVE4 did."


I called it the BVEWW build as it seems to be developed on this forum and with input from our members.

I'll make sure I don't mention the other board again.

Moderator's hat:

Mentioning BVE-Terminus is fine, but please keep it civil, and respect their decisions.

If they wish to delete all mention of this build, it's their prerogative.

Bve Terminal is now the Official place to get the latest version of Open Bve.

Although stating that it came from someone connected to Michelle does not really mean that's the case and apparently it does not work correctly.

As far as I am concerned Michelle never said official, what she did try and do is to make people join in making what she had done better as a group.

Instead she was assaulted by negative comments about the sim and not much in the way of positive feedback.  

People on any forum have and were guilty of that.

Do I think that separate working on the sim helps it's development?

Not at all, for a start one version of a fork makes no difference to the user and the many others just leave them thinking Open Bve is to much hassle to bother using.

When it never was thanks to Michelle.

These forks don't really add to the sim at the moment, that only happens if there was a developer out there that would use them!

So they mean fork all to me...

Who else is actually working on the sim currently? I'm only aware of Chris' work.

Personally I think we should collaborate work wherever possible and keep the OpenBVE name.

Moderator's hat:


Rehashing old ground will not help matters- Please try and keep prior arguments and Michelle out of it.
Whilst I'm leaving the post for the moment, recriminations about why things failed in the past are not helpful.

If you have concrete objections, that's fine, and I'll by all means listen to them.

Suggestions will be listened to, and acted upon in time if I can

Stevegr wrote:
These forks don't really add to the sim at the moment, that only happens if there was a developer out there that would use them!

So they mean fork all to me...

Most of the features I've added are ones, I'll absolutely be using. Some examples:

• Plugins playing sounds from specific cars- Want this for the Western.
  
• Plugins adding messages- I want this for both the Western and improving the simulation of my steam engines. There are multiple ways for these to fail, or when I want to add messages.
  
• Odometer function in animated objects- I wrote a whole set of functions in BVEC_ATS to compensate for the lack of this when building the valve gear on the Manor and the most recent version of the 81xx
  
• Bogies- I'm  currently using one of the physics based hacks. This causes issues with train lengths, and having to manually edit weights.
  

If you've got something you can't do with the current version, please post, and I will see what I can do to make it possible.
No promises, but I'm actively looking into possibilities.
That's all I can really say

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

I can't remember if I posted this already but animated objects playing sounds would be excellent. 

Time triggered sounds like church bells (so they'd sound on time independent of player's train's delay)

Also, sound loops attached to animated objects would be nice (crossings, etc.)

Having been in contact with Odakyufan, please find below some points from him.

**Note:** I have requested that he either posts or provides me with an ‘official’ statement. These are points made in a chain of emails.

•   Neither this build, or any other build (site) is in his eyes ‘official’ or has any sort of approval from him. The only official source he considers to be him via email, or another new website if he so decides.
  
•  This build is not endorsed by Odakyufan, Michelle or Anthony.
  
•  The name openBVE is contentious. Please find below a direct quote from the email chain:
  

 

The name is one of the things that is very difficult. As I'm sure you are aware, openBVE is a recognised 'brand' and ditching it would have almost certainly been a mistake. What the alternative is, I don't know......

 
I find that view to be highly contestable. Take the Mona Lisa as an
example. The Mona Lisa could be said to have been abandoned by its
author more than 500 years ago. Then in 1883, someone made an adaption
(Le rire), and someone else in 1919 (L.H.O.O.Q.), among many others.
They understood to rename their adaptations as to not lead people to
mistake them for the original. You on the other hand not only release
newer "versions" of the Mona Lisa, but also call yourself da Vinci (in
your domain name).
 
 

We discussed this (and I've spoken to several Linux distribution package maintainers about it) and couldn't see any better route than the one chosen.

 
You could have started by not calling your website The openBVE Project
since that name refererred to the team that created OpenBve. We put it
in the "copyright" attribute of the binaries in the later days.
(Originally, the website was in there, but that changed too frequently
to be stable). Now, people searching for us on the internet using that
phrase will stumble across your site, and think it's us.

---

Points from me:

All I can really say is that the community will have to choose it's own way.
I've got no desire to cause a rift, but at the same time, I'm not willing to sit back and let things ride any longer- Things have been stalled for many years, and waiting for one of the original team to provide a 'new' update may never happen.
Furthermore, the original project ethos was that of open-source, and in the best open-source tradition we have created a fork, improving (In my eyes) on the original.

This sim was brought into existance on the back of an existing series of simulators (BVE, BVE2 and BVE4) and in may ways can trace it's lineage back further to Mechanik and Train Driver 3.
However, I do not claim that this fork is 'new' , but rather a continuation, at least in the open-source sense of the original project.


Dropping the name openBVE would mean dissociating ourselves from many years of content and cause nothing but confusion within the wider community who have never heard of these political issues.

This is clearly different from the Mona Lisa-
openBVE (Or whatever you choose to call this simulator) is not the work, but rather a vessel for routes and trains produced by many different people from many different countries.

---

If I receive & post a statement from Odakyufan, or he chooses to post, please respect his point of view.
Mine differs, and who does that make right?

I do not know, and the community as a whole will have to decide the route it takes.

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Its a problem which will increase with time.
Speaking simply as a route/rolling stock provider, at this moment all my downloads will work using the last "official"  incarnation, v 1.4.3.0 - all well and good!
And of course my stuff will also run with your forked version(s) too. I have given links to your project site on Celtictrainsim.com site, to encourage use of the forked version for improved compatibility.
There is possibly going to come a time for both Windows or Linux users when ongoing system upgrades will prevent proper running of the last "official" version. What are we all to do then? Unless continuous development goes ahead everything will fall into chaos/disuse. This is clearly not a desirable state of affairs. Unless or until the original program team, or it's "heirs", step up and recommence development then it seems fair that the name "OpenBVE" should be available to those who would keep the project alive. Perhaps it may end up with more than one fork and more than one compiler, hopefully as a fully open project. The name "OpenBVE" needs to figure in these forks as an appendix, perhaps. Rather like there are many named versions of Linux.
That's my thinking anyhow.

Tricky point:

Now, people searching for us on the internet using that phrase will stumble across your site, and think it's us

Well, that's a valid point, and if someone is looking for an older version of the simulator with less functionality, I can see how that might be a problem in the long term.  But why would they be, in the long term?




I think though, the point he's missing in all this is that you're doing some fairly hefty work on the simulator (rather then the add-ins) over quite a period of time... because nobody else is.  It's like saying that bookshops and libraries must only provide editions of Pevsner's Buildings of England written during the authors lifetime. 

It's not as if the last stable release was in a state of perfection or had completed Michelle's own "road map", and the tinkering being done is of no value.

None of the original authors of the sim seem to have any inclination to take the development forward in any meaningful way, and are happy to sit there presiding over being "official".  If that was working, we wouldn't have 475 different sites all mirroring the official documentation, and providing the "last" stable release, would we? 

As Mr Graymac says, the "current stable version" could at some point simply be a "version"- are the "us" referred to going to come out of hibernation when that happens?  Can't see it myself.

The website is about a project concerning openBVE.  It is, isn't it?  That that's what should be called!  Or "The un-bugging of Open BVE", would that be preferred?

Maybe the "us" should consider adopting the fork as stable once it's got to that stage, say thank-you, and offer to host it on the "official" site?

While I am in no way suggesting the rights on intellectual property are unimportant, but in the spirit in which the community of the simulator is supposed to work, I'd be expecting the "official" team to either embrace the progress, or do it themselves.  It seems churlish to expect no-one else to do so, or to try and make it harder for anyone to find it when someone does.  Put up or shut up and all that. 

So, if you have to change the name to avoid rocking the boat, so be it.  But I'd ask those who would be rocking the boat, "officially" what alternative they're providing?  It's not like oBVE was a staggeringly new idea compared to may other propriety sims out there, is it?  So I'd say to the "official" us, someone is willing to do whay you won't/can't:  let it go, and accept the credit for what you did, and be grateful that that's being built on, rather than overtaken by something with another name that outshines it.

A bit like on the Posiedon Adventure- all those people who refused to leave the ballroom and said they were staying where they were- that turned out well, eh?

Turn oBVE into a web-museum, and move on, if that's what has to happen.  After all oBVE came about, in part, because the author of BVE4 had stopped development and it was getting harder to run.

This is very personal and in no way with a moderator hat. (It never is unless explicitly stated, but here I want to be extra specific!)

I am very conflicted in regard to Odakyufan. On one hand I value him as a route dev and for all I know his plugin is really great work as well. On the other hand: He never was very visible in OpenBVE as a program. I was never even aware he had anything to do with the core before Michelle departed - leaving us with little more than his word on his role. Maybe he was what he claims to be, maybe not. He did some minor changes after Michelle departed, which makes me give him the benefit of the doubt, but I can't be sure. But there is something else I can be sure of: Michelle is Mrs. OpenBVE, hands down. It is her child, and she was very specific on what OpenBVE's name means. There was never ever any doubt on that. She valued its openness and absolute freedom even more than her own wishes. She was specific about those, too; but also that there are things which would make her go, but that she never would clamp down on it. Public Domain in absolute consequence. Thus Odakyufan's actions upon her departure really are a betrayal on the very philosophy of this whole project - the very first thing he did was emphasise that German law does not know public domain and that he thus considers the rights to default to basically him being the one and only truly legitimate owner. Also in other more personal than factual aspects he did a really thorough job of confirming most prejudice there is about people from the German railway fan scene (which, for some reason, is a magnet for people ranging between weird and totally antisocial)... He, his claims and his actions are neither convincing nor sympathetic.

BTW, I think Mona Lisa is a really bad comparison. Linux, as Gray noted, or Minecraft are way better analogies. Taking a broader look one could also mention things like Star Trek Continues, where fans non-commercially continue from where official production once was abandoned.

Addendum

I have a suggestion which could serve as a compromise: As soon as you get to a state where you can make a stable release with distinct new features, release it as... OpenBVE 2.0! Close enough and far enough. Just like Star Trek Continues' other project name: Star Trek Phase II

Reading through this thread a couple of things come to mind;

1. Did Michelle ever get permission to use the name BVE? If we have to compromise I think we should use the term "OpenBVE Project Vx.x", close enough but still different.

2. This is pathetic.

3. Let's get on and do some development, bring the simulator and the community up from it's knees and make something we can all be proud of.

4. If things carry on like this it will be back to BVE4 days when nobody new was entering the scene because it wouldn't work on Vista or 7 without downloading and messing with DLLs.