That isn't what is wrong with all of this Reika, the problem is you wanting to "approve" everything. If someone has a vision with their mod pack, why should they bend to your will? I honestly don't know why you worry yourself to death over someone misusing your mod, this is a game built for a young demographic, the last thing you need to worry about is someone breaking your balance. Have you ever played a kitchen sink pack in your life? Every mod breaks another but that is okay because it is fun. And that is what matters. You treat your mod usage like a business policy when you actually designed it because you enjoyed making it and I *think* you enjoy people playing something you made, but you are ruining it for yourself.
People WANT to play your mods, but they want to play them their way. Who cares if they automatically hit end game because a silly mod author ore dictionaried your bedrockiumwhatever. Isn't enjoying the mod what matters? No need to be the fun police.
I have never seen you before today, so I will assume you have never seen my past explanations about
why I am so tense about people modifying the mod.
The full explanation is
here - and yes, I expect you to spend 5 to 10 minutes reading it - but long story short it is because during the glory days of FTB Monster, from about November 2013 to May 2014, it went very,
very badly. For
six months straight, I had more people modifying and breaking my mods than people running functional versions, and the
vast, overwhelming majority had the audacity to blame
me for the resultant effects. People did things like removing machines they had no idea were crucial, and then whined about how the mod was broken. They unified materials or power and then whined and moaned about how RotaryCraft was overpowered. Others upset more nuanced systems - like the balancing designed to discourage machine spam, then complained when the wall of machines hurt their performance. Some had servers wiped out by the fact that the extremely powerful endgame became too easily accessible.
And a
huge number posted all over the internet and went to everyone who would listen about how my mods were broken. Buggy. Garbage. Over that six months, my userbase
plummeted, because the entire community, save for small alcoves of it, turned into a giant echo chamber about how my mods were the worst in years and the first piece of advice given to every server and pack dev I could find was "remove RotaryCraft". Even on these very forums, just about every thread mentioning a bug, lag, or other undesirable behavior had at least one person, often more, blaming
me for the result because of the rumors that drowned out anything I could do to fight them.
Many of these rumors still exist over a year later.
Most also came to me, harassing me over the problems they brought upon themselves. I got entire essays of vitriol about how the mods were barely worth their disk space, about how I was the most incompetent developer since EA, or how the world would be a better place if I were to step into traffic. On average,
five people a day dropped walls of text on me, and countless more left random hate mail, sucking up not only about 30 to 120 minutes of my time trying to refute their points - a necessary task because to these people and most readers, non-addressal is implicit admission of truth - and making me incredibly exasperated. Ever wonder why there are instances of me ridiculing someone for something like not understanding how to download files or ignoring a flashing notification? Often times, they had the bad luck of getting read after a five-page diatribe over why everyone in the community should shun me. Most even went further, spewing personal attacks, threats, some involving real-world actions, and
even harassing people that associate with me.
One person tried to sue me over their server's demise at the hand of griefers armed with RC items.
Now, it is even
worse. Not only would full open permissions bring back
all of the problems above, but now that something like 30% of the community hates me and wishes for my head on a stick, they are going to
love the opportunity to use my own mod against me, deliberately breaking it and giving apparent credence to all those rumors -
most of which were started by other mod devs fully aware of their own dishonesty, by the way - generating endless streams of bug reports, making it look like a laggy or unbalanced mess, and a particularly nasty few may even try nastier things I cannot predict.
Now to answer your questions:
Why are some of you so protective over your code to the point of hostility and paranoia when it is an add-on to a base game that you had no say in creating?
Because something like 50% of the community is like "
f you, we own it as much as or more than you do", and acts like every whim they give - often in an aggressive and demeaning tone at that - must be immediately satisfied and that anything else makes you a selfish tyrant. Just look at the "me vs RF" debates as a good example of that. Spend 2 years making, perfecting, and maintaining a mod with an intricate system all built around its shaft-based power system? As these people would have it, all that has to go out the window because "player choice is king" and if you refuse, "I'll just make my own version and then noone will use your s***y crap".
You can't monetize your mod directly, why is close source beneficial? Or how is open source bad?
I cannot speak for other developers, but I use visible source. This allows the benefits of having the source publicly readable - such as additional 'eyes' to catch typos or aiding people in writing wikis - without the things inherent in true open source licenses I do not want, things like "I basically relinquish any ownership of the project. If you want to copy it, change one variable name, and re-release it, go ahead!". Given my treatment by the community, this is an especially serious concern.
Past notifications, why do you not want your mods in a mod pack? I can understand a few bug reports, but that is all I understand about this
...Who told you I was opposed to having my mods in packs? I am opposed to having
broken versions in packs, especially if that version is taken as the "real" RC or people's first impressions are getting ruined by things like pack-created exploits (or worse, fundamentally gutted mods).