Aihuxl.110 net.games.rogue utzoo!decvax!harpo!ihnss!ihuxl!ignatz Thu Apr 8 13:17:42 1982 Consideration and Ethics I've been following the fracas between Ken, ucbvax!hamachi and the world with great interest. Far be it for me; I am only an egg; but I think we are seeing a situation that both has grown out of hand, and implies some lack of consideration, and understanding of the ethics and responsibilities in this situation. So permit me to natter: 1) Ken has provided--and I admit, I don't know the history or possible other developers--a game that many people enjoy and use. I have an older copy of the game, and I find the code fairly well written and documented, and voluminous. Indeed, more work has gone into this than on many business projects I've seen. The work represented is considerable. Even in the business world, maintenance would be an ongoing effort; yet not only is this being done on Ken's own time, as a student (At least, it sounds like he is) but we all seem to *expect* him to update and redistribute the game, maintain the changes, etc. I think we owe him any and all help we can. If anyone accepts the game and enjoys playing it, it seems to me that we owe him the help of reporting bugs--and if a fix is found, why don't we give Ken some help? It's a big job...and if there was a good reason for not giving the fix, tell us that; not just that you don't have to. It sounds petulant, and doesn't convince me, at least. 2) Ken has no *legal* right to insist on the fix. You're quite right. And I'm not at all impressed with the lack of foresight that was evidenced by Ken's call --implied or stated--to mail complaints to hamachi. Had this been in response to one-to-one queries, maybe; but the net reaches scads of people, and is *not* a good tool for resolution of "real-time" problems. People read their netnews whenever they can get to it; and the situation can arise that a fairly trivial problem, which can be (and sounded like, for a bit, it had been) solved, while late-readers still deluge the target with mail. This was a problem that could have--and should have--been simply stated as, "Bug X has surfaced. It evinces itself in the following manner, on source release YY.XX. Does anyone have an idea for the fix?". There is nothing unusual or improper about the author and maintainer asking this, and as was seen, responses usually show up. Individual spats don't belong here. 3) Yes, as bug fixes appear, they should be applied. But to minimize both different versions of the game, and net distributions, it's not uncommon to batch them. The issue at stake is that a bug appeared BEFORE distribution, whereas most appear AFTER. It is not at all unreasonable of Ken to want to avoid propagation of a known glitch, which will just have to be fixed later and will result in bug reports for some time after the fix goes out. The other bugs seem to be ones that Ken will have to take time to find and fix. If this has been done, yes; it is improper to distribute the game without applying them. Otherwise, Ken has to tradeoff between the people who want "newer, better" versions of Rogue, and the usual (in theory) approach of finding and fixing bugs before adding enhancements to the product. All on his own time. 4) Regarding the so-called 'gcore' bug: This doesn't appear to be a bug. The program isn't misbehaving; somebody is violating the system rules. It would seem that providing enhanced security would be lower in priority than fixing and enhancing the games capabilities when properly used. You will never be able to stop scores of skilled, trained people trying to break your code; the most you can hope for is to stay ahead. The government and certain companies have interests which are sufficiently important to expend the resources to (hopefully) make systems with "hard" security. I ask you--with the limited development resources at hand (Ken), is Rogue security worth the effort? Sorry about the flame; but I'm looking at a situation which displays a lack of professional consideration and courtesy, an exercise in pettiness on all sides (Especially concerning abusive replies from the net), and the expansion of a petty problem into a totally unwarranted state of war between Ken,hamachi and some people on the net. Please! I hope I haven't offended Ken, hamachi (Whoever you are), or my fellow netters. If this were another situation, I'd never have named names, but everyone here would know what I meant. I enjoy your (electronic) company, and just want us all (self included) to think a bit before the magic fingers type. Eh? *Whew!* Looking forward to peaceful days, Dave Ihnat Analysts International Corp. at Bell Labs Indian Hill, IL ihuxl!ignatz ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.