The ContentDB is doing its own thing!

[KGM]

I have not been interested in Minetest for a long time, because I don't like and therefore don't use FOSS licenses and thus the Minetest community actively prohibited me from posting my work on this forum, making it effectively impossible for me to publish my non-FOSS stuff properly.

But enough crying for now. Recently, I noted something much more disturbing!

I knew that there was some ContentDB out there since it came into existence, but I didn't care, because I knew, that at least when it came into existence, it had little importance at all.

Things changed rapidly!

Suddenly, by chance, I noted that that ContentDB was now integrated into Minetest itself, as the only in-game Installer for mods and Subgames!

This would not have been a problem, but rather an improvement, if the ContentDB belonged to the Minetest Community, or at least to the one who originally developed Minetest, celeron55.

But that is not the case!

The ContentDB is managed by Rubenwardy, some developer who has merely contributed a part to modern Minetest.

This would also not be an issue at all if he managed things in a transparent way and let the community decide upon key features.
But he apparently does neither of both.

I don't know of any documentation, describing all the important key features so others can comprehend them. For example, I don't know of any documents that describe how the hidden rating of the ContentDB entries is calculated.

Also, I did not notice any polls or so, regarding the calculation of the ratings, or any other of the ContentDB's core features.

So I suspect that:

1. Rubenwardy decides on everything regarding the ContentDB fully autonomously, not taking into account the community's opinion.

2. Rubenwardy does not maintain the ContentDB's documentation properly, making it hard for anyone to even comprehend the controversial properties and features of the ContentDB.

In particular, I don't like that Rubenwardy manages the internal ratings of the ContentDB's contents in such an intransparent and autocratic way, because this means that he basically decides which contents become popular and which don't!

Also, I don't like the way the ContentDB's rating scheme works as it is today:
If you wonder where I got that information from, (remember: I did not find it in the docs): My brother looked up the ContentDB's source code, revealing some of its dark secrets.

For example, the ContentDB's rating strongly depends upon some strange "isFOSS" property of the content.

Items that don't have that property generally get their rating, and with it, their "popularity", divided by ten!
I did not notice the community authorizing this tremendous hit against software that is not free enough according to Rubenwardy!

[LMD]

Spoiler

I am not supporting KGM's criticism despite being his brother. I had a look at the sources to examine the scoring, though.

[Napiophelios]

life is not a popularity contest
If you don't like it, don't use it

Find something better to do with your time

[KGM]

I see your point, But why not have some fair rating system??? I think that that would be an even better solution than to ignore the unfairness!!!

[Hume2]

I have not been interested in Minetest for a long time, because I don't like and therefore don't use FOSS licenses and thus the Minetest community actively prohibited me from posting my work on this forum, making it effectively impossible for me to publish my non-FOSS stuff properly.

But enough crying for now. Recently, I noted something much more disturbing!

I knew that there was some ContentDB out there since it came into existence, but I didn't care, because I knew, that at least when it came into existence, it had little importance at all.

Things changed rapidly!

Suddenly, by chance, I noted that that ContentDB was now integrated into Minetest itself, as the only in-game Installer for mods and Subgames!

This would not have been a problem, but rather an improvement, if the ContentDB belonged to the Minetest Community, or at least to the one who originally developed Minetest, celeron55.

But that is not the case!

The ContentDB is managed by Rubenwardy, some developer who has merely contributed a part to modern Minetest.

Don't be jealous.

This would also not be an issue at all if he managed things in a transparent way and let the community decide upon key features.
But he apparently does neither of both.

What key features would you like to be done differently and why didn't you suggest it before?

I don't know of any documentation, describing all the important key features so others can comprehend them. For example, I don't know of any documents that describe how the hidden rating of the ContentDB entries is calculated.

Would you like to help with the documentation?

Also, I did not notice any polls or so, regarding the calculation of the ratings, or any other of the ContentDB's core features.

And what key feature would be done differently if you could submit your one vote?

So I suspect that:

1. Rubenwardy decides on everything regarding the ContentDB fully autonomously, not taking into account the community's opinion.

And what is your opinion?

2. Rubenwardy does not maintain the ContentDB's documentation properly, making it hard for anyone to even comprehend the controversial properties and features of the ContentDB.

Do I see a volunteer to help him?

In particular, I don't like that Rubenwardy manages the internal ratings of the ContentDB's contents in such an intransparent and autocratic way, because this means that he basically decides which contents become popular and which don't!

Did you try asking him politely at least?

Also, I don't like the way the ContentDB's rating scheme works as it is today:
If you wonder where I got that information from, (remember: I did not find it in the docs): My brother looked up the ContentDB's source code, revealing some of its dark secrets.

Propose a better rating system.

For example, the ContentDB's rating strongly depends upon some strange "isFOSS" property of the content.

Items that don't have that property generally get their rating, and with it, their "popularity", divided by ten!
I did not notice the community authorizing this tremendous hit against software that is not free enough according to Rubenwardy!

So all what's going on is that you are jealous at other people's mods and therefore you're blaming CDB.

[rubenwardy]

because I don't like and therefore don't use FOSS licenses and thus the Minetest community actively prohibited me from posting my work on this forum, making it effectively impossible for me to publish my non-FOSS stuff properly.

Sounds like your problem, not my problem

ContentDB belonged to the Minetest Community, or at least to the one who originally developed Minetest, celeron55.

The ContentDB is managed by Rubenwardy, some developer who has merely contributed a part to modern Minetest.

This would also not be an issue at all if he managed things in a transparent way and let the community decide upon key features. But he apparently does neither of both.

ContentDB belongs to the community. I host and manage it, exactly like how sfan5 hosts and manages the server list and its arbitrary heuristic. The policies of ContentDB has been decided in collaboration with other Minetest staff and with involvement with the community. You can suggest policy changes on the issue tracker: https://github.com/minetest/contentdb/issues/new/choose

I don't know of any documentation, describing all the important key features so others can comprehend them. For example, I don't know of any documents that describe how the hidden rating of the ContentDB entries is calculated.

This is a discrepancy that I have now corrected: https://content.minetest.net/help/top_packages/

not free enough according to Rubenwardy!

No, according to the open source initiative

[paramat]

KGM,

Rubenwardy is one of the highest contributing and most trustworthy core devs. Celeron55 trusts him.
He discusses CDB development in-depth with others in the IRC development channel.
Decisions in Minetest development are not decided by the community or by polls, they are decided by the core devs.
Your suspicions / accusations are ridiculous, paranoid and untrue.

Nothing can be hidden in open source software, as you know because you state that your brother looked at the CDB source code. MT is inherently transparent and no core dev can change that.
The ratings system of CDB do not decide popularity, they just decide ordering of content, everything is still there to be chosen from. If a user never looks at content nearer the end of a list that is their mistake.

Content being downrated for not being FOSS is reasonable and natural for MT.
This subject was discussed in detail in the forum and at Github, so the community was involved.

This is a very silly, childish and rather unpleasant unfounded attack, you are being very foolish =)

[KGM]

At first, a little clarification:

I like the design and the functionality (except the rating system) of the ContentDB.

I think it's technically well-made software, and I acknowledge that Rubenwardy put so much time into it. Regarding how polished ContentDB is, it must have cost him a lot of time.

My concerns are of a different nature:

As I'm somebody always playing through hypothetical future scenarios, I noted that Rubenwardy could have changed the content ranking system back then without anyone even noticing it. What I wanted to do with the above salty post is to create some sort of awareness, so that Rubenwardys ContentDB development is somehow controlled by the community, because the ContentDB became the in-game installer and thus a crucial part of Minetest.


Why should the community have a say here?


The first reason why the community should control Minetest development is that they are the clients. They are the ones for whom Minetest was made, and therefore, they should have a say regarding the current development of Minetest.


The second reason for a community-controlled Minetest is that Celeron55, the founding father of Minetest, seems to be not willing to control it. Let me explain this in more detail:

Celeron55 laid the foundation of Minetest.

As I know very well from my programming experiences, laying the foundation is the most difficult and most important part of making a program.

Therefore, I think that Celeron55 is the single one who has done most for Minetest.

Thus I think that he is the only one who could legitimately claim the control over Minetest.

But he is not willing to control Minetest.



Now, what has changed since I made this post?

Rubenwardy improved the docs, adding a page about the ranking system, and demonstrating that he's willing to develop the ContentDB transparently!

Several dudes viewed this post, creating at least a little awareness in the community!

So all in all, the problem is about to vanish now.



What are my concrete objections against the ContentDB?

At first, notice that the main issue discussed in my above post is not about concrete issues with the ContentDB, but rather about little involvement of the community in ContentDB development.

But I also have a concrete objection against the ContentDB's current content ranking algorithm, because it diminishes the score of nonfree packages. I don't like that because I think that the client's attitude towards the content should determine the score and that you don't have to guide them by implementing something like a score diminishing for unfree software. If they all don't like unfree software, why don't you simply give them a button to vote it down?

To underline the ineffectiveness and sometimes reverse effects of trying to guide the peoples' opinions I have the following example:

All over the world, the media stresses how bad Racism is.

They do this for a very good reason, to prevent the world from becoming a really bad and uncomfortable place.

however, recently I saw many people somehow celebrating Hitler's birthday on Reddit.

I bet that this is mostly because the media attempted to guide them.

The media tried to end Racism, but they effectively made people celebrate Hitler's birthday!

You see, they tried to end racism, but because they tried to do this by sort of manipulating the people, they just created even more.

People get it when they are manipulated in such a dumb and obvious way, and they often react by developing in just exactly the way the manipulator didn't want them to.

If you want people to learn that something is bad, then simply let them figure it out for themselves.

The same goes for bashing nonfree software.

Why don't you simply let the people, the end-users, figure out that it's bad if it is so bad?

Why do you try to manipulate them by simply showing the free software rather at the top of the list?

Why don't you let them judge the nonfree software themselves?

I think that this attempt is, just like the medias attempt to end racism and spread openness, the wrong way to promote something.



Finally, some replies to some replies:

At first, some replies to criticism:

I have not been interested in Minetest for a long time, because I don't like and therefore don't use FOSS licenses and thus the Minetest community actively prohibited me from posting my work on this forum, making it effectively impossible for me to publish my non-FOSS stuff properly.

But enough crying for now. Recently, I noted something much more disturbing!

I knew that there was some ContentDB out there since it came into existence, but I didn't care, because I knew, that at least when it came into existence, it had little importance at all.

Things changed rapidly!

Suddenly, by chance, I noted that that ContentDB was now integrated into Minetest itself, as the only in-game Installer for mods and Subgames!

This would not have been a problem, but rather an improvement, if the ContentDB belonged to the Minetest Community, or at least to the one who originally developed Minetest, celeron55.

But that is not the case!

The ContentDB is managed by Rubenwardy, some developer who has merely contributed a part to modern Minetest.

Don't be jealous.

Why should I be jealous?
Remember, I have not created any content for Minetest for years, because I think that game development is quite worthless.

This would also not be an issue at all if he managed things in a transparent way and let the community decide upon key features.
But he apparently does neither of both.

What key features would you like to be done differently and why didn't you suggest it before?

I'd like the rating system to be changed, as broadly discussed above.
My brother actually made a GitHub issue regarding this right before I made this post, so he actually suggested changes to the rating system before I wrote this post.

I don't know of any documentation, describing all the important key features so others can comprehend them. For example, I don't know of any documents that describe how the hidden rating of the ContentDB entries is calculated.

Would you like to help with the documentation?

How should I? I did not write the program to be documented. I don't know the important details.

Also, I did not notice any polls or so, regarding the calculation of the ratings, or any other of the ContentDB's core features.

And what key feature would be done differently if you could submit your one vote?

The rating system.

So I suspect that:

1. Rubenwardy decides on everything regarding the ContentDB fully autonomously, not taking into account the community's opinion.

And what is your opinion?

My opinion is that the rating system should not incorporate any sort of ideologic user guidance.

2. Rubenwardy does not maintain the ContentDB's documentation properly, making it hard for anyone to even comprehend the controversial properties and features of the ContentDB.

Do I see a volunteer to help him?

I may help him with the actual programming, and if I do so, I may document what I added, but I won't document his work because I don't know substantially more about it than everybody else.

In particular, I don't like that Rubenwardy manages the internal ratings of the ContentDB's contents in such an intransparent and autocratic way, because this means that he basically decides which contents become popular and which don't!

Did you try asking him politely at least?

My brother did, with his issue.

Also, I don't like the way the ContentDB's rating scheme works as it is today:
If you wonder where I got that information from, (remember: I did not find it in the docs): My brother looked up the ContentDB's source code, revealing some of its dark secrets.

Propose a better rating system.

downloads/time

For example, the ContentDB's rating strongly depends upon some strange "isFOSS" property of the content.

Items that don't have that property generally get their rating, and with it, their "popularity", divided by ten!
I did not notice the community authorizing this tremendous hit against software that is not free enough according to Rubenwardy!

So all what's going on is that you are jealous at other people's mods and therefore you're blaming CDB.

No, because I don't have any packages on the CDB that could be wrongfully downrated.

Rubenwardy is one of the highest contributing and most trustworthy core devs. Celeron55 trusts him.

Yes, that's all true. He works very hard to improve Minetest for all of us, and he succeeded in doing so.
However, that does not mean Rubenwardy can't make mistakes or should manage Minetest the way he wishes to, disregarding the others. However, don't think he would manage Minetest autocratically anyway, even if he could.

He discusses CDB development in-depth with others in the IRC development channel.

But CDB development is not important to just the developers, but rather, it is important to the Minetest Community as a whole.

Decisions in Minetest development are not decided by the community or by polls, they are decided by the core devs.

So you think the core-devs should usurp Celeron55's game?
I don't think so and suspect that Rubenwardy would disagree on this too:

ContentDB belongs to the community. I host and manage it, exactly like how sfan5 hosts and manages the server list and its arbitrary heuristic. The policies of ContentDB has been decided in collaboration with other Minetest staff and with involvement with the community.

Your suspicions / accusations are ridiculous, paranoid and untrue.

OK. I don't get the reasoning here. That sounds like an irrational opinion to me.

Nothing can be hidden in open source software, as you know because you state that your brother looked at the CDB source code. MT is inherently transparent and no core dev can change that.

Seriously? you as a programmer should know better! It has been proven that it's even impossible to create an algorithm that simply determines whether some given program halts or not that works for all possible finitely long programs! And you assert that given any source-code, one could easily comprehend it's behavior!

The ratings system of CDB do not decide popularity, they just decide ordering of content, everything is still there to be chosen from. If a user never looks at content nearer the end of a list that is their mistake.

What you basically say here is that if somebody lets himself being manipulated (by the ordering) it's their fault, not the manipulators' fault.

Content being downrated for not being FOSS is reasonable and natural for MT.

I don't get the reasoning here, too. Maybe that's my fault? Or may this really be yet another irrational opinion?

This subject was discussed in detail in the forum and at Github, so the community was involved.

The policies of ContentDB has been decided in collaboration with other Minetest staff and with involvement with the community.

The question is not whether or not the community was involved, but whether it was involved enough. You really should put more effort in sensitizing the community for CDB development.

Now, I'd like to praise Rubenwardys reaction:

I don't know of any documentation, describing all the important key features so others can comprehend them. For example, I don't know of any documents that describe how the hidden rating of the ContentDB entries is calculated.

This is a discrepancy that I have now corrected: https://content.minetest.net/help/top_packages/

Big thumbs up for that! Intransparency wrecked!

ContentDB belongs to the community.

This is a great attitude! I don't know if I would be able to have such an attitude.

[Napiophelios]

you're a lunatic.

[Hume2]

Why should the community have a say here?


The first reason why the community should control Minetest development is that they are the clients. They are the ones for whom Minetest was made, and therefore, they should have a say regarding the current development of Minetest.


The second reason for a community-controlled Minetest is that Celeron55, the founding father of Minetest, seems to be not willing to control it. Let me explain this in more detail:

Celeron55 laid the foundation of Minetest.

As I know very well from my programming experiences, laying the foundation is the most difficult and most important part of making a program.

Therefore, I think that Celeron55 is the single one who has done most for Minetest.

Thus I think that he is the only one who could legitimately claim the control over Minetest.

But he is not willing to control Minetest.

OK, so you have 1 vote against 50, good luck :D

Why should I be jealous?
Remember, I have not created any content for Minetest for years, because I think that game development is quite worthless.

Then you would be going to make some content if you succeeded. From your previous posts, it's clear that you just want to be proud at your mods. If not, it's even worse. You're only complaining but you aren't willing to contribute and all what's going on is your ideology.

Do I see a volunteer to help him?

I may help him with the actual programming, and if I do so, I may document what I added, but i won't document his work because I don't know substantially more about it than everybody else.

So you are basically telling people what to do without doing anything useful.

Propose a better rating system.

downloads/time

-1

He discusses CDB development in-depth with others in the IRC development channel.

But CDB development is not important to just the developers, but rather, it is important to the Minetest Community as a whole.

Decisions in Minetest development are not decided by the community or by polls, they are decided by the core devs.

So you think the core-devs should usurp Celeron55's game?

If Celeron55 didn't agree with it, he wouldn't let them do that. Logic.

Nothing can be hidden in open source software, as you know because you state that your brother looked at the CDB source code. MT is inherently transparent and no core dev can change that.

Seriously? you as a programmer should know better! It has been proven that it's even impossible to create an algorithm that simply determines whether some given program halts or not that works for all possible finitely long programs! And you assert that given any source-code, one could easily comprehend it's behavior!

You are talking about something different. All used algorithms are known and therefore it's transparent. What the algorithm does is another thing but you are free to examine it yourself.

And by the way, this doesn't apply there because here you have only a single algorithm, not infinitely many of them. And also that doesn't hold for algorithms with finite memory.

Content being downrated for not being FOSS is reasonable and natural for MT.

I don't get the reasoning here, too. Maybe that's my fault? Or may this really be yet another irrational opinion?

You might have already learnt from your previous posts that we don't like proprietary stuff. So yes, it's your fault that you still haven't learnt it.

This subject was discussed in detail in the forum and at Github, so the community was involved.

The policies of ContentDB has been decided in collaboration with other Minetest staff and with involvement with the community.

The question is not whether or not the community was involved, but whether it was involved enough. You really should put more effort in sensitizing the community for CDB development.

In other words, you weren't involved in the discussions and therefore you claim that the community wasn't involved enough.

You are not the community and you aren't even any essential part of the community since your main activity is complaining and proposing ways to bypass the rules.

[Wuzzy]

Why is free software important? And why should anyone care? Well, because by default, copyright laws around the world dictate that creative works are not freely sharable. You (almost) always need permission. Copyright law by default strips you the liberty to copy a work, to share it with others, and to change that work. Copyright law also applies to software. Copyright law does benefit the copyright holder, obviously, but at the expense of the liberty of everything else.

Free software zealots like me see this as an injustice which must be ended. We don't buy into the notion that a single “author” deserves so much power. It is unjust because it gives the copyright holder unjust power over their users. You talk a lot about injustice, but have you considered the inherent injustice in the copyright system?

One way to combat this injustice, obviously, to develop more free software. Another way is to actively promote free software and to *not* promote non-free software.

Your main criticism is about non-free software being punished and that it isn't fair. Well, the developers of proprietary software aren't playing fair either. Why should we feel obliged to support them or even give them a platform.

Therefore, I fully support this policy. It is silly that rubenwardy just unilaterally introduced such a policy for no reason. It did not fall from the heavens, it's based on us being very pro-free software and very anti-non-free software.

But this policy is mostly theoretical anyway, as people who absolutely want to insist on their state-granted copyright power are pretty rare in this community. And even then, if you do insist on your copyright power 100% for your thing, it's generally very much frowned upon, and you're going to have a hard time to justify yourselves. Trust me, we've been there before.

Almost all of the software in this community is free software. Almost everyone in this community who is a developer contributes to the commons by releasing their work as free software. This is a good thing because others can build on that work without fear of lawyers. Most members in this community accept that contributing to the free software commons is what brings Minetest forward.

Now imagine how our community would look like if everyone would insist 100% on their state-granted copyright power, and denying everyone else to copy, share and adapt their mods/games. This would be perfectly legal. But there would be no collaboration, and it would be a more hostile atmosphere, because of the constant fear of being sued if you dare to copy someone else's copyrighted image. The community would not be the same, and I would not want to be member of such a community.

Free software is and always was one of the core values of Minetest, and that's not going to change just because a single user disagrees.

Finally, if you still are a defender of proprietary software, I have a serious question for you: Why would anyone want to post a mod or game deliberately under proprietary terms in our community in the first place? I mean, what is the possible benefit for you? It can't be money, since we don't make any money off Minetest here. So what is it?

[LMD]

what is the possible benefit for you?

I suppose KGM's "possible benefit" would be proper attribution.

[KGM]

Some recent replies showed me that my position is yet to be fully understood.

Therefore, I will clarify my position now, by reacting to the most recent replies:

-----------------------------------------------------
Edit: I messed up the quotes here:

Spoiler

Why should the community have a say here?

The first reason why the community should control Minetest development is that they are the clients. They are the ones for whom Minetest was made, and therefore, they should have a say regarding the current development of Minetest.

I agree with you there, why do you repeat what I said before?

-----------------------------------------------------

... OK, so you have 1 vote against 50, good luck :D ...

Where are the 50 votes?
Wow! 50 voters seem to represent the entire community here!

Why should I be jealous?
Remember, I have not created any content for Minetest for years, because I think that game development is quite worthless.

Then you would be going to make some content if you succeeded. From your previous posts, it's clear that you just want to be proud at your mods. ...

Yes, I have played with the thought to do game development for recreational purposes, and because of the nice way the ContentDB works, if I were to use one of my favorite licenses for newly developed content, I would get my contents rating divided by 10!

Do I see a volunteer to help him?

I may help him with the actual programming, and if I do so, I may document what I added, but I won't document his work because I don't know substantially more about it than everybody else.

So you are basically telling people what to do without doing anything useful.

Ahem, mister! I said I may help him with the actual programming!

Propose a better rating system.

downloads/time

-1

So whats your counterargument here? Is it too transparent for you?

Decisions in Minetest development are not decided by the community or by polls, they are decided by the core devs.

So you think the core-devs should usurp Celeron55's game?

If Celeron55 didn't agree with it, he wouldn't let them do that. Logic.

1: He did not agree with them usurping his game yet because they did not try to really usurp his game yet. Seems logic.
2: Tricking someone into agreeing on something that's bad for them is no morally good thing, even though they agree with it then.

Nothing can be hidden in open source software, as you know because you state that your brother looked at the CDB source code. MT is inherently transparent and no core dev can change that.

Seriously? you as a programmer should know better! It has been proven that it's even impossible to create an algorithm that simply determines whether some given program halts or not that works for all possible finitely long programs! And you assert that given any source-code, one could easily comprehend it's behavior!

You are talking about something different. All used algorithms are known and therefore it's transparent. What the algorithm does is another thing but you are free to examine it yourself.

And by the way, this doesn't apply there because here you have only a single algorithm, not infinitely many of them. And also that doesn't hold for algorithms with finite memory.

Let me take this apart:

"All used algorithms are known and therefore it's transparent":
Any program consists of easily comprehensible parts, yet their composition may be extremely hard to comprehend!

"What the algorithm does is another thing but you are free to examine it yourself.":
So how does the source help me, if I don't comprehend what it really does?

"And by the way, this doesn't apply there because here you have only a single algorithm, not infinitely many of them.":
You got me wrong here!
I did not say that it is impossible to make an algorithm that checks whether infinitely many algorithms halt in one finitely long "sitting"!
I simply stated that regardless of which algorithm you may come up with that tries to solve that task, it will fail for some finitely long programs, not being able to distinguish whether they halt or not!
So regardless of which algorithm X you use to check whether program P will halt or not, you may find yourself in the bad situation that algorithm X does not work for program P.

"And also that doesn't hold for algorithms with finite memory.":
Yes, but:
1: Most popular algorithms defined are no finite ram algorithms!
Take for example the Euclidean algorithm: there is no upper bound on how much ram it may use!
2: I see your point, that in the end, there is no infinite ram and therefore these abstract algorithms can't be run in real life, but:
Even though the problem is solvable for finite ram machines, it is extremely hard to do so. This is because you can only analyze finite ram machines because they are isomorphic to DFAs, and DFAs have only finitely many states. However, a program may have soo many different states that you should not dare and try to check whether it will halt or not (With only 6 GB of ram you may already get up to approximately 10 to the power of 10000000000 different states!).
To summarize:
The claim "And also that doesn't hold for algorithms with finite memory." is a practically irrelevant nitpick. That's why it's so hard to reverse engineer malware, even for experts!

Content being downrated for not being FOSS is reasonable and natural for MT.

I don't get the reasoning here, too. Maybe that's my fault? Or may this really be yet another irrational opinion?

You might have already learnt from your previous posts that we don't like proprietary stuff. So yes, it's your fault that you still haven't learnt it.

Who is "we"? are you and Paramat (and some other overly active FOSS extremists) the whole community?

This subject was discussed in detail in the forum and at Github, so the community was involved.

The policies of ContentDB has been decided in collaboration with other Minetest staff and with involvement with the community.

The question is not whether or not the community was involved, but whether it was involved enough. You really should put more effort in sensitizing the community for CDB development.

In other words, you weren't involved in the discussions and therefore you claim that the community wasn't involved enough.[/quote]
No, I did not claim that because I was not involved, but because I noticed that the topic as a whole had not enough visibility. I hope that my engagement to sensitize the community for it will change that tough.

You are not the community and you aren't even any essential part of the community since your main activity is complaining and proposing ways to bypass the rules.

1: Yes, I am not the community, but you and your few foss extremist friends aren't the community either!
2: No, I don't propose ways to bypass the rules, I propose freedom for nonfree software and real democracy in the community!
I don't get wich of my proposals you interpret a loophole to bypass the rules, and I think that that's not my fault. I don't propose things that bypass the rules, but rather openly propose the abolition of bad rules.
3: Complaining about the right things often makes a tremendous difference!

Now I will comment Wuzzys objection, and becuase it's that densely packed with pretty good arguments, I will do so by inserting my comments, enclosed by hyphens.

Why is free software important? And why should anyone care? Well, because by default, copyright laws around the world dictate that creative works are not freely sharable. You (almost) always need permission. Copyright law by default strips you the liberty to copy a work, to share it with others, and to change that work. Copyright law also applies to software. Copyright law does benefit the copyright holder, obviously, but at the expense of the liberty of everything else.
-Yes, that's true.-

Free software zealots like me see this as an injustice which must be ended.
-I can fully understand this opinion. Even though I don't think so.-
-I would not even say that my opinion would be a more justified view of the whole, it's just different.-
-My opinion is that copyright applied to software is a way to make it easier for an author to control what is done with the software. Even if there were no copyright on code, authors still could protect their code by integrating self-destruction mechanisms and similar stuff into obfuscated programs.-
-So in my opinion, copyright applied to software is simply a better alternative to self-destruction sequences in the code restricting the usage.-
We don't buy into the notion that a single "author" deserves so much power. It is unjust because it gives the copyright holder unjust power over their users.
-Again, I don't agree here, but this opinion is fully understandable.
You talk a lot about injustice, but have you considered the inherent injustice in the copyright system?-
-Yes, I also feel that intellectual property is somehow not a "natural" law, but because (at least for programs) you can enforce essentially the same thing using self-destruction mechanisms and similar things, I think that it is nothing more than a good replacement for those "natural" mechanisms an author may use to protect his programs if there were no copyright, and therefore, i think that (at least for programs) copyright is justified, because it replaces an overly costly natural "self-defense" mechanism authors may use anyway.-

One way to combat this injustice, obviously, to develop more free software.
-Good idea!-
Another way is to actively promote free software and to *not* promote non-free software.
-Bad idea!-
-Remember those people celebrating Hitler's birthday on Reddit?-
-I bet that that happened mostly because the media tried to abolish racism using manipulative means!-
-Abolishing racism is a great thing!-
-On the other hand, trying to abolish racism by manipulative means is simply super stupid because it will likely lead to even more racism!-
-Even if free software was better than non-free software and copyright was injust you would do the wrong thing by trying to manipulate the people using tricks like strongly biased rankings!-
-It's not the goal that's the problem here, but the means you use to achieve it!-
-Therefore I think that even if I were to agree with you on everything else, I would not agree with you on the ContentDBs downrating mechanism for nonfree software, because I think that such manipulative means simply aren't the right thing to do. (Except maybe if it's about life and death or so.)-

Your main criticism is about non-free software being punished and that it isn't fair. Well, the developers of proprietary software aren't playing fair either. Why should we feel obliged to support them or even give them a platform.
-Because you don't want to manipulate your clients?-

Therefore, I fully support this policy. It is silly that rubenwardy just unilaterally introduced such a policy for no reason. It did not fall from the heavens, it's based on us being very pro-free software and very anti-non-free software.
-Yes, I already noted that many of the most active developers on this forum are very radical FOSS extremists, but I also noted that there is a huge discrepancy between the number of those FOSS extremists and the number of all Minetest users. The latter is much larger.-
-Therefore, I think that it's wrong that these FOSS extremists decide most things.-
-That being said, I think that it's in particular wrong to state that the community ("us" in the text above) would be very anti-non-free software.-
-I propose that one sensitizes the rest of the community for these topics, so the community decides as a (more or less) whole.-

But this policy is mostly theoretical anyway, as people who absolutely want to insist on their state-granted copyright power are pretty rare in this community. And even then, if you do insist on your copyright power 100% for your thing, it's generally very much frowned upon, and you're going to have a hard time to justify yourselves. Trust me, we've been there before.
-So why don't you, the FOSS extremists, remove those regulations if they are that theoretical anyway? You'd do me a big favor by doing so.-

Almost all of the software in this community is free software. Almost everyone in this community who is a developer contributes to the commons by releasing their work as free software. This is a good thing because others can build on that work without fear of lawyers. Most members in this community accept that contributing to the free software commons is what brings Minetest forward.
-That's great! But why do these anti-non-free-software-rules even exist then?-


Now imagine how our community would look like if everyone would insist 100% on their state-granted copyright power, and denying everyone else to copy, share and adapt their mods/games. This would be perfectly legal. But there would be no collaboration, and it would be a more hostile atmosphere, because of the constant fear of being sued if you dare to copy someone else's copyrighted image. The community would not be the same, and I would not want to be member of such a community.
-Understandable. However, you should try to convince people in a proper way rather than trying to manipulate them, even if they are hard to convince. Else you risk the counterproductive effects that usually come with attempts to manipulate someone.-
-Also, you're dealing with an extreme here, whereas my vision is a community where there are freely licensed things aside non-freely licensed things, depending on what type of licensing is more suitable for the particular, and while treating that extreme, you also make my vision sort of impossible.-

Free software is and always was one of the core values of Minetest, and that's not going to change just because a single user disagrees.
-Allowing non-free software to exist (equally rated) beside the many FOSS contents in the ContentDB does not automatically mean losing FOSS as a core value of Minetest.-

Finally, if you still are a defender of proprietary software, I have a serious question for you: Why would anyone want to post a mod or game deliberately under proprietary terms in our community in the first place? I mean, what is the possible benefit for you? It can't be money, since we don't make any money off Minetest here. So what is it?
[/quote]
-It's two things:
1: You can enforce attribution better using stricter licenses.
2: With some non-FOSS yet still very free licenses that have an NC (Non-Commercial) clause, you can securely avoid that anyone abuses your free software to make money in an ethically disputable way by selling slightly modified versions of your FOSS contents to those stupid enough to buy them.-
-So yes, you got me right, I would consider extending the group of licenses that are allowed, allowing "ex-FOSS" licenses with additional NC clauses, a big step forwards. And seriously, I don't know why anyone should be against that, I mean unless they want to make money with Minetest.-

[Wuzzy]

FOSS extremists

I have to get that one out of the way right now:

You seem to use the word “extremist” as a derogatory term. However, extremism is not neccessarily a bad thing. You can be extremist about many things. For example, most people today are against slavery. And not just a little, they are against it in all of its forms. That's an extreme position. The MODERATE position on slavery would be that some slavery is OK, as long you just treat your slaves well. If extremism is always bad, than being 100% anti-slavery must also be bad. I disagree.

Yes, I have played with the thought to do game development for recreational purposes, and because of the nice way the ContentDB works, if I were to use one of my favorite licenses for newly developed content, I would get my contents rating divided by 10!

Stop playing the victim here! You're not the victim just because we refuse to promote your proprietary software equally well as the free software that makes 99% of the Content DB. Non-free licenses only benefit the author, i.e. you, but not the community. But being libre is one of the key reasons that makes this community great. I think focusing the promotion mainly on the FOSS side in a FOSS-dominated community is really not far-fetched. You're not the victim, the license choice lies 100% in YOUR hands. It is YOUR choice to not contribute to the free software commons, yet you complain you're not getting a free pass.

-My opinion is that copyright applied to software is a way to make it easier for an author to control what is done with the software. Even if there were no copyright on code, authors still could protect their code by integrating self-destruction mechanisms and similar stuff into obfuscated programs.-

Of course we are also against obfuscation. If your software is heavily obfuscated, it doesn't quality as free/libre anyway. I mean, this just makes sense, if you make it DELIBERATELY very hard to study your code. You're going to have a REALLY hard time if you want to push your obfuscated code down our throats here.

-My opinion is that copyright applied to software is a way to make it easier for an author to control what is done with the software.

This is great for the copyright holder, but at the expense of everyone else. Monopolies are always great for those who hold the monopoly. This ideology is completely at odds with a community which creates cool things together.

1: You can enforce attribution better using stricter licenses.

[citation needed]

You're basically claiming that the attribution clause in well-known FOSS licenses is broken and can't be enforced, or at least can't be enforced well enough (whatever that means). This is a bold claim. Do you have any evidence that supports your claim?

-Yes, I also feel that intellectual property is somehow not a "natural" law, but because (at least for programs) you can enforce essentially the same thing using self-destruction mechanisms and similar things, I think that it is nothing more than a good replacement for those "natural" mechanisms an author may use to protect his programs if there were no copyright, and therefore, i think that (at least for programs) copyright is justified, because it replaces an overly costly natural "self-defense" mechanism authors may use anyway.-

As I said, if you use such mechanisms to deliberately (!) make studying your code as hard as possible, your software very likely won't qualify as free/libre. That's also not the reason why copyright exists btw. But this is a different story.

Also, the term “intellectual property” is a misleading propaganda term. It is a muddy term that throws together concepts like copyright, patents, trademarks into one big thing, although those laws historically are quite different from each other, as they exist for different reasons. Also, they are all distinct from actual property, which relates to physical objects. Calling it “intellectual propety” leads to concepts like “stealing software” or even “software piracy” when actually you just copied it (just without permission). Please don't use this term.

2: With some non-FOSS yet still very free licenses that have an NC (Non-Commercial) clause, you can securely avoid that anyone abuses your free software to make money in an ethically disputable way by selling slightly modified versions of your FOSS contents to those stupid enough to buy them.-

This argument is flawed in that it looks at all commercial uses, and views them all as equally evil. Not everyone who wants to make a buck of something has evil intentions. But the NC clause doesn't care. As soon as a single penny changes hands, it's forbidden. A single ad banner on a homepage can already be a violation as well, no matter how relevant it actually is to the work in question. That's pretty harsh. I just cannot consider NC licenses to be “very free” as you do. It doesn't make sense to me.

Your very point is discussed in depth (and refuted) in <https://freedomdefined.org/NC>.

Also, another thing is, the CC NC clause is absolute garbage (my opinion). From the licensee's viewpoint, you're fucked. You can never be really sure if your use of the work is actually non-commercial and thus OK. The definition of “non-commercial” is so vague, that it's easy to be treated as commercial entity even if no money changes hands.

https://freedomdefined.org/NC

There are many arguments in this page, but the most relevant one for Minetest is that NC is also incompatible with all free cultural works. You cannot combine free software with NC works. NC works can't be incorporated into Minetest. NC works can not be incorporated into free games and mods without losing the “free software” status.

Therefore, I reject NC, and I also contantly annoy people with this when I see they insist on NC.

-Therefore I think that even if I were to agree with you on everything else, I would not agree with you on the ContentDBs downrating mechanism for nonfree software, because I think that such manipulative means simply aren't the right thing to do. (Except maybe if it's about life and death or so.)-

Actually, I would have liked it more if non-free software wasn't allowed in the first place, but I failed.
Note that hosting propriary software on a prominent platform like Content DB also means actively endorsing it. In other words, we are supporting the enemy.

It seems that this downgrade was sort of the “middle ground”.
Also, this treatment of non-free software isn't a secret. See also: https://wiki.minetest.net/ContentDB#On_software_freedom

-That's great! But why do these anti-non-free-software-rules even exist then?-

Because our community grows and there are constantly outsiders trying to change us. It's also to show our clear stance on this subject.

-Also, you're dealing with an extreme here, whereas my vision is a community where there are freely licensed things aside non-freely licensed things, depending on what type of licensing is more suitable for the particular, and while treating that extreme, you also make my vision sort of impossible.-

It's always more suitable and more convenient for the copyright holder to insist on their state-granted copyright monopoly power. Of course it is. The problem is that everyone else is fucked. Copyright is selfish. Free software is community.
As for Minetest, non-free software is technically not banned on our forums. But it IS heavily frowned-upon.

[LMD]

This (free vs proprietary) has already been discussed in depth.

And by the way, the Apache 2.0 is one example of a free license enforcing "proper" (included in the software) attribution.

Besides, if your content isn't properly attributed by a fork/collection on CDB, you can always contact rubenwardy and ask for better attribution.

[Hume2]

(wrong citation)
I agree with you there, why do you repeat what I said before?

I did not say that, you messed up the quotes.

... OK, so you have 1 vote against 50, good luck :D ...

Where are the 50 votes?
Wow! 50 voters seem to represent the entire community here!

So 1 against all the people who downloaded Minetest yet? Better?

Then you would be going to make some content if you succeeded. From your previous posts, it's clear that you just want to be proud at your mods. ...

Yes, I have played with the thought to do game development for recreational purposes, and because of the nice way the ContentDB works, if I were to use one of my favorite licenses for newly developed content, I would get my contents rating divided by 10!

Don't be jealous.

So you are basically telling people what to do without doing anything useful.

Ahem, mister! I said I may help him with the actual programming!

Yes, which is not actually useful since nothing is going to change here.

-1

So whats your counterargument here? Is it too transparent for you?

It doesn't involve the is_foss flag and thus I don't like it.

If Celeron55 didn't agree with it, he wouldn't let them do that. Logic.

1: He did not agree with them usurping his game yet because they did not try to really usurp his game yet. Seems logic.

So now you claim that they did not.

2: Tricking someone into agreeing on something that's bad for them is no morally good thing, even though they agree with it then.

Who is supposed to trick whom? Who said that it is going to happen?

Let me take this apart:

"All used algorithms are known and therefore it's transparent":
Any program consists of easily comprehensible parts, yet their composition may be extremely hard to comprehend!

It might be but is it? And even if it was, it would be hard for the author as well. In the worst case, you can perform the same algorithm for your data and see what you get.

"What the algorithm does is another thing but you are free to examine it yourself.":
So how does the source help me, if I don't comprehend what it really does?

It's your problem then.

"And by the way, this doesn't apply there because here you have only a single algorithm, not infinitely many of them.":
You got me wrong here!
I did not say that it is impossible to make an algorithm that checks whether infinitely many algorithms halt in one finitely long "sitting"!
I simply stated that regardless of which algorithm you may come up with that tries to solve that task, it will fail for some finitely long programs, not being able to distinguish whether they halt or not!

You are talking about algorithms generally but here you have one specific algorithm.

So regardless of which algorithm X you use to check whether program P will halt or not, you may find yourself in the bad situation that algorithm X does not work for program P.

And you also might not.

"And also that doesn't hold for algorithms with finite memory.":
Yes, but:
1: Most popular algorithms defined are no finite ram algorithms!
Take for example the Euclidean algorithm: there is no upper bound on how much ram it may use!
2: I see your point, that in the end, there is no infinite ram and therefore these abstract algorithms can't be run in real life, but:
Even though the problem is solvable for finite ram machines, it is extremely hard to do so. This is because you can only analyze finite ram machines because they are isomorphic to DFAs, and DFAs have only finitely many states. However, a program may have soo many different states that you should not dare and try to check whether it will halt or not (With only 6 GB of ram you may already get up to approximately 10 to the power of 10000000000 different states!).
To summarize:
The claim "And also that doesn't hold for algorithms with finite memory." is a practically irrelevant nitpick. That's why it's so hard to reverse engineer malware, even for experts!

I know but it's not important anyway.

You might have already learnt from your previous posts that we don't like proprietary stuff. So yes, it's your fault that you still haven't learnt it.

Who is "we"? are you and Paramat (and some other overly active FOSS extremists) the whole community?

It's me and everyone on the forum who doesn't like your suggestions. As you might have noticed, you are the only one on the forum who claims to like them.

In other words, you weren't involved in the discussions and therefore you claim that the community wasn't involved enough.

No, I did not claim that because I was not involved, but because I noticed that the topic as a whole had not enough visibility. I hope that my engagement to sensitize the community for it will change that tough.

Ah, so now it's not because you weren't involved in the discussion it but because you didn't notice it.

You are not the community and you aren't even any essential part of the community since your main activity is complaining and proposing ways to bypass the rules.

1: Yes, I am not the community, but you and your few foss extremist friends aren't the community either!

I don't claim otherwise.

2: No, I don't propose ways to bypass the rules, I propose freedom for nonfree software and real democracy in the community!
I don't get wich of my proposals you interpret a loophole to bypass the rules, and I think that that's not my fault. I don't propose things that bypass the rules, but rather openly propose the abolition of bad rules.

Proposing ways to change rules to benefit from the modified rules is actually also a way of bypassing them, even though it's not forbidden by the rules.

3: Complaining about the right things often makes a tremendous difference!

And who decides what things are right and what are not?

-Because you don't want to manipulate your clients?-

Commercial companies usually manipulate with people far more. Remember all the ads which make the people need total crap which they normally wouldn't need at all.

-I propose that one sensitizes the rest of the community for these topics, so the community decides as a (more or less) whole.-

Define what means that community decides something. From what you say, it seems that community can decide something if and only if you succeed with your opinion.

-It's two things:
1: You can enforce attribution better using stricter licenses.

You want to be proud, I see.

2: With some non-FOSS yet still very free licenses that have an NC (Non-Commercial) clause, you can securely avoid that anyone abuses your free software to make money in an ethically disputable way by selling slightly modified versions of your FOSS contents to those stupid enough to buy them.-

There are also FOSS licenses like GPL which force the people to share the source code together with the modified product. Also all SA licenses force the people to use the same licenses work for this purpose in a way.

-So yes, you got me right, I would consider extending the group of licenses that are allowed, allowing "ex-FOSS" licenses with additional NC clauses, a big step forwards. And seriously, I don't know why anyone should be against that, I mean unless they want to make money with Minetest.-

There's no need to forbide commercial usage if the license can make it unbeneficial anyway.

If you don't agree with something, you can make your own Minetest. Nobody prevents you from doing that.

[Mantar]

-My opinion is that copyright applied to software is a way to make it easier for an author to control what is done with the software.

"Control over the use of one's ideas really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult." - RMS