[loramin]

(Mandatory pre-amble: P99 source code is the hard work of a group of individuals who have every right to do whatever they want with it, and I in no way wish to pressure them in to doing anything they don't want to with their code.)

Originally Posted by Haynar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yes there are. And the majority who would look at the code, would be to find stuff they can exploit.

That logic has long been used to argue against open source in general (not game code specifically); just replace "exploit" with "security hole". After all, how could a project like Apache possibly be secure when anyone can just look at it's source code to find security holes?

The answer (and the reason why Apache safely runs the majority of the websites out there) is called "Linus's Law" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus%27s_Law). It states:

given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow

or more formally:

Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix will be obvious to someone.

Now of course that does depend on how many beta-testers and co-developers you have involved, but I'd be willing to wager that there are more than enough of us "good guys" (coders and testers) to more than make up for all the "bad guys" who would try and abuse the open code. In fact, my (completely un-backed up by facts) theory is that P99 would have less bugs and exploits if open sourced, not more.


EDIT: But again, it doesn't have to be an either/or thing; the devs could open source the non-exploitable parts of the code base, either as an experiment in open source or just to get the benefits of it on part of the codebase.