@TGM: Interesting post, many good points, glad I'm not the only one who can point out the nonsense :-)
@superman:
> Playdip was UNKNOWINGLY plagurized by the programmer...his programmer
> did it. The owner (goes by Avalanche) did NOT know of this issue until
> you brought it up to him .
>
> The programmer was then fired, and a new one was hired AND he fixed
> the issue by adding the appropriate pages.
First off this is the first I've heard of someone being fired, where are you getting that from? How could Avalanche know when he outsources development to Romania?
Here are some e-mail snippets between me and Avalanche when this first came out. If you have an open mind, and you're not actually Avalanche*, I hope you'll consider them.
(*He used two puppet accounts in a Wikipedia edit-war where he vandalized the webdip section, so it's not a totally baseless suspicion)
Here he says he "paid a programmer to work with open source code". Pretty hard to reconcile with the rogue programmer story.
> > [Avalanche]
> > While I am sympathetic for your situation, the fact
> > that I paid a Rumanian programmer to work with open source code has nothing
> > to do with the fact that you have to deliver pizzas to pay your studies.
> [Me]
> As I said it's not your fault that you ran into an unscrupulous
> developer; I only mentioned this to try and help explain why your
> crediting them is hurtful to me, and so explain why I'm so keen to get
> an explanation. If someone stole thousands of dollars from me I
> wouldn't want to credit them on the front page. :-|
I'm referring to an ad on playdip's front page for the Romanian company, which is odd if he's insisting someone get fired.
Here Avalanche says it happened unintentionally, defending the devs:
> I don't understand why you would see the need to release another version of
> the PDF, as the intrusion of the license code was unintentional and we are
> now fully compliant.
The concern is about keeping the details private, not about a troublesome developer
Here he lists the areas of the work done which justify the dev costs:
> But most of the work done was on the point-and-click interface, removing
> judge bugs still in there, user management, and of course the website
> functionalities and the forum
He lists "removing judge bugs" without listing "writing the judge", and the point-and-click interface without listing the map or order generation/validation code it built on; it's a list of changes, not a feature-set by someone who thinks it was done from scratch.
Finally, here he gives the cost:
> I asked them to create a Diplomacy website for me, the end result went
> live in December 2007 as Playdiplomacy.com -- quickly (more so than I
> expected) growing to be the biggest Diplomacy site out there.
>
> Still, since December 2007, a lot of changes have been made to it. And
> since I don't code, I paid the Rumanian programmers to do it. So far,
> I didn't pay them 1000 euros like you said in your PDF, the total cost
> is currently at over 5000 euros. Plus hosting.
Having supposedly just learned that the 5000 euros paid for a whole system was actually for changes to an existing, complete system, doesn't he seem pretty accepting of the 5000 euro fee?
There's no doubt he knew the site was forked from open source code, and that the code was changed to remove any resemblance (not only the license/credits removal and appearance change, but even filenames and hidden labels were systematically renamed. This is like reordering sentences and replacing words with synonyms in an essay; no purpose except to hide similarities).
Once it was spotted only the bare minimum changes were made as needed to comply with the license, and the story was that it was an honest mistake and that the code was only "inspiration" anyway. Nothing about a rogue programmer which got fired
You can legitimately debate whether you prefer playdip, how much the changes might cost, who first proposed using existing code, whether the aim was to build a hobby site, etc, but you *cannot* claim that Avalanche was unaware that he was using plagiarized code
@superman if you prefer playdip of course continue using it; what bothers me is just that playdip's origins are treated like a dirty secret, not that people use a fork of webDip. There are many good forks which fill different niches, you don’t need to ignore facts to use playdip and appreciate Jan's changes
@spyman: I understand where you're coming from; no-one wants to restart a conflict, playdip does now meet the license terms, it should continue to thrive like all other webdip forks, and I'm not going to go out of my way to try and tell people what they don't want to hear. But I'm not going to shy away from pointing out any nonsense which excuses someone who took full credit for work that wasn't fully theirs (to put it mildly).
There's no reason people can't both enjoy playdip and also know where it came from, without needing to be enemies, and it's the only thing I'd like in exchange for a lot of work. *Friendly* competition with shared history being a positive thing rather than something to be hidden, I think it'd be better for everyone. Jan/Avalanche just doesn't need to spread misinformation to be recognized and paid (back) for his legit contributions
Public Diplomacy Game // General Assembly
// Anonymous // Public Press Only // PPSC
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