Dolphin as an Ecosystem Absence of Ethical Judgement Implications

DosDawg posted 9th of June 2011 in Community Voice. 11 comments.

I thought oddly of the reference to the release of Dolphin as an ecosystem. I pondered that for some time, and couldnt understand how this reference came about.

As expressed from gnu.org/philosophy:

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DosDawg•9th of June 2011

"Ecosystem"

It is a mistake to describe the free software community, or any human community, as an “ecosystem,” because that
word implies the absence of ethical judgment.

The term “ecosystem” implicitly suggests an attitude of nonjudgmental observation: don't ask how what should happen, just study and explain what does happen. In an ecosystem, some organisms consume other organisms. We do not ask whether it is fair for an owl to eat a mouse or for a mouse to eat a plant, see more

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CALTRADE•9th of June 2011

That is interesting, but a more important question in my opinion is whether Dolphin is truly "open source". It might be open source in some technical or legal way, but I am not sure it really operates in "the spirit of open source". In a true open source community, they may be a group of programmers working on the core code, but the community contributes to the code and improvement of the software. That doesn't happen here - there are common sense fixes that everyone needs see more

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Andrew Boon•9th of June 2011

Pretty much the only imposed condition that somehow limits "freedom" within Dolphin "ecosystem" is the license that requests a fee in case of reference removal. In every other sense people can do what they want - modify, re-sell, trade mods, discuss, etc. etc.

Contribution of code is also welcome, Caltrade. In fact we've given write access to SVN to a few non-BoonEx developers in the past and we always happily consider any suggested code improvements. This is the same with see more

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CALTRADE•9th of June 2011•to Andrew Boon

There are tons of code contributions that happen all the time here, that never get put in the product - removing the promo block for logged in users, making it so the return character works in blog posts, adding a php block, getting rid of those cartoon characters in the avatar directory, getting rid of the "Orca" name - and on and on. Often we will discuss this in the forums and publicly wonder why the improvements made by the community are not put in the code, but no one from Boonex see more

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Andrew Boon•9th of June 2011•to CALTRADE

Suggestions that don't get included into the main version are normally those that can't, for some reason, be included. So, the D8 is an attempt to reassess the core to make way for more changes. same applies to some of the mods - we discussed how we plan to include so of the commercial mods into the core, as soon it is ready to accomodate.

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LightWolf•9th of June 2011•to Andrew Boon

Wait that makes no sense Andrew,your statement "Suggestions that don't get included into the main version are normally those that can't, for some reason, be included".

If your developers can not do it , then how can they create mods that do it? Developers, even some of yours that say they can't do it, manage to do it, and charge a hefty price!

I take offense to that statement Andrew. We are NOT children, we are (maybe were now) loyal members that have been with Dolphin for a long see more

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DosDawg•9th of June 2011•to Andrew Boon

Andrew, in reading CalTrades responses here, what I gather from him is that its not that there are suggestions being requested from BoonEx specifically. What is being referenced here is the fact that there are those in the community who have done the legwork, and who have provided the sourcecode and the lines where that code should be placed. So if the patch or fix is provided from a community member, how is it that these fixes are not implemented into the next patched version?

The forum, which see more

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tomakali•10th of June 2011•to DosDawg

Like, why Deanos tools are not included or atleast adapted in the core. When Deanos can provide a mod for free i think he will be glad to know that his mod is going to be a part of the core in the future Dolphin.

if one can make a difference, when 100 devs are ready D8 will be phenomenal.

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Nathan Paton•10th of June 2011•to tomakali

I don't think Deanos Tools itself should be implemented (it's a module), but it's features should definitely be included in the core product.

I don't usually use third-party mods and modules, but when I do, I always look towards Deano's offerings. His modules have shown that there are some noticeable holes in Dolphin's default feature set.

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tomakali•11th of June 2011•to Nathan Paton

Sure, Deanos tools should be a core implementations. unlike other modders, Deanos is Admin centric, which is of a great use to site-admins.

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DosDawg•13th of June 2011

Andrew, is there any update on that compiled list of what will be released in now two weeks?

what can we expect to see get addressed?

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Dolphin as an Ecosystem Absence of Ethical Judgement Implications

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