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Comment by mwest | Hacker News Reader

Incredible to see this hitting the BBC, although it's been discussed on HN already:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444122

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11448908

What is interesting is that they will apparently be releasing their work as open source:

"With that said, as far as we are concerned, this amazing journey would not have been possible without the contribution of the open source World of Warcraft community, especially those who were behind MaNGOS. We believe that we significantly improved their code base, with several interesting algorithms (for example the ongoing work on clustering). For now, our source code may be release 30th of April (educational purposes only) in the hope that it will be useful, and that it may help developers understand how a big project like ours was handled from the inside."

(from https://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=43600)

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The fan reaction is new information, although the article doesn't go in-depth.

Apparently there were ritualistic suicides of in-game characters on the server in light of the news, among other things: https://reddit.com/r/wow/comments/4e6zee/nostalrius_memories...

The server was packed even (perhaps especially) in its final moments, with the kind of crowds the official version never sees anymore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y86hk_93d4c

My initial thoughts were that such density in Ironforge is not much compared to Vanilla or TBC high pop realms(1) from back in the day(2), and that latency is painful to watch. Then he went outside and that explained the latency and also represented probably the largest crowd I've seen in one place. I hope Morhaime and some of the other guys at Blizzard see this video.

(1)By calling it a realm instead of a server I suppose I out myself as a former WoW GM.

(2) Fairly typical player density early in Vanilla (in an atypical and hillarious situation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ_WdYvwrDA

The server had 5x the population of a reatil Vanilla realm. Those were capped at 2,500 but Nostalrius regularly peaked near 13,000 concurrent players.

Their second server was also reaching ~5,000 players at the time they were shut down.

I was a raid leader/main tank for the guild who got the first ever Nefarian kill. We announced on forums that he dropped a head quest similar to Onyxia that turns in at Stormwind and people started flooding our server with new humans, thousands of them. It was insanity. To no one's surprise turning in the quest crashed the server...

It was honestly better in every single way than any vanilla WoW server ever was. Average online at any given time was >10,000 people.

When Nostralius surpassed blizzard in active players, they had to step in ;)

That's hilarious. There were also huge gatherings, etc. I found it easy to relate to the players as far as mourning the loss goes.

It reminds me of watching an MMO I loved, The Realm Online, die slowly. It's still technically around, but development has all but ceased and the player count is ~25. IIRC it was purchased by a family who eventually let all the programmers and artists go.

Would love to play Unreal Tournament here and there.. N64 Goldeneye multi-player shall suffice in the meantime

Two all time great shooters. Goldeneye, pistols only, health turned down.

I also loved all the boards an things you could do on UT, teleport disk and jumpboots for flag running etc.

Quake 3 Weapons Factory Arena mod was my jam. 16 vs 16 on dial up in ~2000-2002 was amazing. Tribes was also fun, as was UT2k3 with low grav. I always liked ridiculous mods. TF2 was / is also great, especially the madness that was 3-pg: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=egGAPrNCj0M and the Wacky Races maps: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oPP7PnEtTmQ

I still have UT99 LAN parties once in a while (maybe twice a year). Laptops and mice all over the apartment.

Something limited to "educational purposes only" is technically not "open source". (It doesn't fit the Open Source Definition, and licenses such as GPL would not be compatible with such restrictions either.)

I'm not normally a wonk about this kind of stuff, but this distinction seems significant in the context of blizzard apparently threatening fan-run servers with legal action.

open source means the source is open. that's all it means. free software is what you're referring to and it's something entirely different

Even without getting into Free Software territory, there are reasonable expectations about what open source means. It's not just "you are free to read the code". See:

- https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

What do you call source that is open to read then? It's definitely not closed-source.

I have always thought of source as either open (with many flavors of licensing) or closed.

I've also heard "source available" used.

Thanks, this seems to be the best nomenclature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software#Open-sour...

"Shared Source"

> What do you call source that is open to read then?

"Closed source" is the standard term. Since you seen to not like that term, you could go with "proprietary".

> "Closed source" is the standard term. Since you seen to not like that term, you could go with "proprietary".

Your definitions go contrary to the understandings and usages of every non-F/OSS person on the Internet.

For example, both "closed source" and "proprietary" are used to mean source-code-not-available in gaming circles.

Perhaps the open source movements should seek intuitive definitions of terms rather than invent vague nomenclature that only makes them unable to communicate with normal users.

The definitions of open source are actually quite technical. They are not vague like you suggest.

It's unavoidable that people will be confused about terms outside their area of expertise. Since you mentioned gamers: I shudder at the vast multitude of confusing terms the various gamer communities use, like for example in WoW.

However, I think you're overstating your case: I suspect few gamers, if any, will confuse leaked source code or code which you're not allowed to use in any way as "open source". I don't expect them to undestand every nuance, but surely even they understand source code you're not allowed to run or modify is not "open" in any meaningful interpretation of the term :)

> but surely even they understand source code you're not allowed to run or modify is not "open" in any meaningful interpretation of the term :)

"Run" or "modify" are not requisites in the common understanding of "open source"; legality of viewing is. "Open" to them usually means it can be distributed (to them) and read without breaking the law.

The definitions of open source are actually quite technical.

Says who? The Pope? Richard Stallman? Bernie Sanders? Some random self-appointed authority figure who goes by the name "the_af" on Hacker News?

Whose name is on the trademark application?

I'm not sure what you mean. I was replying to user twr who said:

> Perhaps the open source movements should seek intuitive definitions of terms rather than invent vague nomenclature that only makes them unable to communicate with normal users.

The "open source movements" he/she mentioned have very technical definitions of what open source means (of varying degree, of course, but have you tried reading the GPL? Do you think it's non-technical?). Of all the valid criticisms you could throw at them, "vague nomenclature" is not one. Their definitions of open source may be difficult to communicate precisely because they are very technical, not because they are "vague".

I think "who" was quite clear in this context. Do you disagree?

You are literally the first person on the internet I've ever seen to believe this. Everyone either doesn't know the concept at all, or knows it to be more or less exactly what open source people say it is. Its been well defined since my beginnings in the AOL cd era, pay per hour 28k modem days.

Its not just Foss people, its common knowledge among technical people.

If free open source meant the same as open source, then wouldn't they be called "oss people" and not "foss people"?

I've heard the term "published source" used when trying hard not to step in this particular pile.

From an article on gnu.org discussing related issues, here's a quote from author Neal Stephenson:

> Linux is “open source” software meaning, simply, that anyone can get copies of its source code files.

And the state of Kansas:

> Make use of open-source software (OSS). OSS is software for which the source code is freely and publicly available, though the specific licensing agreements vary as to what one is allowed to do with that code.

For me, the reason for the confusion comes from (1) the ambiguous use of the word "open" (visible) vs "closed" (hidden) and (2) the fact that I've personally never seen until now a project that was "source available" but not open to modify under some license, so I haven't had to deal with the distinction.

(And since I'm a little insulted by your incredulity that a technical person could believe that to be true, FWIW, it's common knowledge among English speakers when to use "its" and "it's".)

And here, even Richard Stallman admits the obvious meaning of the expression:

> However, the obvious meaning for the expression “open source software”—and the one most people seem to think it means—is “You can look at the source code.”

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h...

Indeed - "open" means open to modification.

There are many opinions regarding what constitutes "open source" (capitalized or not.) Those are two of them.

Yes, there are many opinions, but the most reasonable expectations are spelled out by the above links. These expectations are so common that anyone who uses "open source" to mean something different is being purposefully disingenuous. "Open source" is no longer an obscure concept, so fringe definitions are less acceptable.

Note this is unrelated to the many incompatibilities between the various open source licenses.

Also see: Microsoft's "Shared Source", an example of something that may look like open source but (with some exceptions) isn't. Disclaimer: no idea if this still exists, now that Microsoft seems to be truly embracing open source for some of its software.

English is not defined by any specific authority. All common usages are accepted, and open source as in visible source is a common usage, though perhaps not by people you spend time around.

People tried to redefine the term. Originally Open Source simply meant you had the source code and hey if you have it you can edit it because well you physically can edit it. This of course did not kill the original meaning it just added a new one. Because, English is happy to have a single terms mean multiple things.

Strictly speaking, "Fields of Endeavor" restrictions violate the OSD.

However, my guess (and that's all it is) is that in this case, the authors aren't actually interested in enforcing such a restriction, but rather added the "educational use only" line as part of an attempt to avoid any liability for subsequent use of the code.

I had an acquaintance who was sued by Blizzard under the DMCA for creating a game server for StarCraft. That was under Vivendi which they are no longer a part of, so maybe it's different now, but I would not trust them myself.

https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd

The people mindcrime was talking about trusting are the creators of Nostalrius, not Blizzard — though of course Blizzard will threaten you for publicly running this program just like they did Nostalrius.

Incorrect

It will also face the same fate of bnetd. Unless it gets hosted outside of the US jurisdiction (NZ banned software patents, but they sill enforce US copyright law; hence Kim dotcom).

I bet Blizzard will go after they OSS version too, just like they did with bnetd.

What copyright claim can Blizzard articulate against the nostalrius source code?

The source code and the database required to make it work contains the names of all spells, instances, quests and their briefings, NPCs...

Maybe they could even claim patents on the protocol? Who knows.

Well, Nostalrius was hosted in France (OVH), and it didn't change much.

Open source is ambiguous the only term thats clearly defined is Free Software. And GPL is Free Software RMS would jump at your throat for calling it Open Source.

RMS is not the only person allowed to define words.

The OSI would be pretty pissed at that definition also.

The GPL is an OSI-approved license. (Or do you mean the point that started this thread? I was only responding to the narrow point about the GPL and open source, not the larger one about the license for this server, which I think I agree with you on.)

MaNGOS is GPL-licensed so I would hope that they release their changes :)

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