waiting for resolution RAZBAM Situation Post Archive (will be deleted)

[LordOrion]

42 minutes ago, Hog_driver said:

Hope it's not an incoming train!

Ouch

[Nightdare]

19 hours ago, Mad Dog 762 said:

the modules will be left in limbo

That's an assumption

if ED is to be believed, they have had safeguards since the Hawk trouble (and would be rather foolish not to)

 

9 hours ago, nessuno0505 said:

and everybody will no longer care about the strike eagle doom

I would sooner believe this to happen to a less popular plane

On the list of "planes people care about" the Eagle is pretty high

[Ignition]

On 8/21/2024 at 9:36 AM, nessuno0505 said:

I agree, but Razbam being more screwed than ED, since DCS keeps going with other modules and 3rd party developers. The more modules will arrive in the next months / years, the less the absence of Razbam's will be relevant. Within 3 years we will be occupied to fly the hercules, the eurofighter or maybe the intruder (who knows) and everybody will no longer care about the strike eagle doom, be it a persistently unfinished module or a deprecated one.

 

I care very much for the F-15E, in fact is the only aircraft in DCS I truly care.

[Super Weasel]

I just want this to be over

[vfas25]

Loved the F15E what a pity. Hope DCS or Heatblur decide to remake this fabulous icon. Or probably purchase RAZBAM's and continue developing it.

[Horns]

On 8/21/2024 at 8:36 PM, nessuno0505 said:

I agree, but Razbam being more screwed than ED, since DCS keeps going with other modules and 3rd party developers. The more modules will arrive in the next months / years, the less the absence of Razbam's will be relevant. Within 3 years we will be occupied to fly the hercules, the eurofighter or maybe the intruder (who knows) and everybody will no longer care about the strike eagle doom, be it a persistently unfinished module or a deprecated one.

 

Without meaning to take us OT, the Eurofighter might be one thing that would cause me to miss a fully developed F-15E module if we don't get one - it would be fun to get some kind of feel for the difference between a multirole fighter built to emphasize strike like the mudhen vs a swing-role fighter built to emphasize air-to-air like the Eurofarter

[Guest]

11 hours ago, vfas25 said:

Or probably purchase RAZBAM's and continue developing it.

Tbh this is the outcome I’m hoping for.  I’m concerned that even if the business issues can be resolved the bad blood between RB and ED is too great for there to be a long-term ongoing relationship.  But it also is a waste of a valuable asset to let the F15E die.  ED buying the code seems like the easiest approach. But this is all speculation 

[Alpiinoo]

This nonsense is getting longer and longer. I think a conclusion should be reached soon, please don't keep people waiting.

[SkateZilla]

On 8/21/2024 at 6:10 PM, Nightdare said:

That's an assumption

if ED is to be believed, they have had safeguards since the Hawk trouble (and would be rather foolish not to)

 

I would sooner believe this to happen to a less popular plane

On the list of "planes people care about" the Eagle is pretty high

If Timeline's are to be believed,

- RB's F-15E Contract Agreement was signed before VEAO's departure abandoning the Hawk, thus any subsequent License Agreement Changes for new Licenses does not apply.
- Per RB's discord, they themselves don't even have the source code(?), let alone ED, per the team members, the code is with Galinette (Avionics) and Cpt. Smiley (Flight Model).

So the Hawk Situation and resulting Agreement changes should be taken with a grain of salt here,
People either don't know or often forget, both RB and IRiS had announced agreements to do the F-15 as far back as 2012.

Edited August 26, 2024 by SkateZilla

[Guest]

1 hour ago, SkateZilla said:

- Per RB's discord, they themselves don't even have the source code(?), let alone ED, per the team members, the code is with Galinette (Avionics) and Cpt. Smiley (Flight Model).

If true, that is a recipe for disaster and total amateur hour.  

Are they saying that binaries have been installed on thousands of user PCs where literally no one but the author has seen or even can see the source code?? So this code isn’t going through any kind of security audit/code review process?  How does RB know that the author isn’t infringing IP/using classified materials/creating security vulnerabilities/installing malware? I guess that explains the radar timebomb….

And of course, that raises serious business continuity issues.  Basically it means that this project was always likely to be a dead end bc as soon as there was a falling out with any of the coders the whole codebase becomes unmaintainable.  Crazy

Edited August 26, 2024 by wombat778

[SkateZilla]

11 minutes ago, wombat778 said:

If true, that is a recipe for disaster and total amateur hour.  
 

Are they saying that binaries have been installed on thousands of user PCs where literally no one but the author has seen or even can see the source code?? So this code isn’t going through any kind of security audit/code review process?  How does RB know that the author isn’t infringing IP/using classified materials/installing malware? I guess that explains the radar timebomb….
 

And of course, that raises serious business continuity issues.  Basically it means that this project was always likely to be a dead end bc as soon as there was a falling out with any of the coders the whole codebase becomes unmaintainable.  Crazy

Well, Clearly if RB had the code, they would have been able to remove the TimeBomb code Galinette put in place.

That being said, it's all speculation as the status of all the source code files,

It is common place for authors to keep their code, as it is their work, 

Example: Falcon 4.0

Edited August 26, 2024 by SkateZilla

[stonewall197922]

9 минут назад, SkateZilla сказал:

Well, Clearly if RB had the code, they would have been able to remove the TimeBomb code Galinette put in place.

That being said, it's all speculation as the status of all the source code files,

It is common place for authors to keep their code, as it is their work, 

Example: Falcon 4.0

 

If it was RB`s TimeBomb, so it`s one more "nail in their coffin".

Edited August 26, 2024 by stonewall197922

[SkateZilla]

6 minutes ago, stonewall197922 said:

If it was RB`s TimeBomb, so it`s one more "nail in their coffin".

 

Galinette posted and clarified this already, 
It is a failsafe that he put in, which was not related to anything w/ ED or RB, just standard practice most software engineers use when doing Post-Payment contract work.

Edited August 26, 2024 by SkateZilla

[stonewall197922]

13 минут назад, SkateZilla сказал:

Galinette posted and clarified this already, 
It is a failsafe that he put in, which was not related to anything w/ ED or RB, just standard practice most software engineers use when doing Post-Payment contract work.

 

Anyway, this situation is between ED and RB. What Galinette did is horrible. RB signed contract by their own will and they read it before signing. They agreed to terms. If you didn`t paid for a year why you continue to work on a project? And even releasing it to EA? Users should not be involved.And by using users RB just worsens all.

P.s. Putting such "failsafes" in project, prooves to me in my opinion-"Stay away from RB modules"

Edited August 26, 2024 by stonewall197922

[SkateZilla]

4 minutes ago, stonewall197922 said:

Anyway, this situation is between ED and RB. What Galinette did is horrible. RB signed contract by their own will and they read it before signing. They agreed to terms. If you didn`t paid for a year why you continue to work on a project? And even releasing it to EA? Users should not be involved.And by using users RB just worsens all.

 

Horrible?, Hardly.

99.999999% of Contracted software engineers put in TimeLocks for Post-Payment contracts,
Otherwise, companies would take code and run.

Edited August 26, 2024 by SkateZilla

[stonewall197922]

9 минут назад, SkateZilla сказал:

Horrible?, Hardly.

99.999999% of Contracted software engineers put in TimeLocks for Post-Payment contracts,
Otherwise, companies would take code and run.

 

They should better thinking and working  on contract terms when signing it. My own opinion - no more purchases of an RB`s modules after that.

Edited August 26, 2024 by stonewall197922

[Guest]

1 hour ago, SkateZilla said:

It is common place for authors to keep their code, as it is their work, 

Example: Falcon 4.0

 

Funny you mention Falcon 4.0, because I can speak from personal experience on that since I was at one point a Falcon BMS developer.  During my entire time with BMS, there was a shared code repository to which all developers had access.  We absolutely did NOT have a system where individual authors kept their source to themselves and only gave the rest of the team binaries.  

Crazy to me that a free volunteer project had more professional source code management than a commercial product like the F15E

EDIT: think about it this way -- RB almost certainly had to represent and warrant to ED that the F15E was/would be developed in compliance with all laws, not infringe anyone else's IP, not contain any malware, etc.  If RB has no access to the source code, and has no idea what it is in it, how can they possibly confirm that those representations are accurate? 

Edited August 26, 2024 by wombat778

[Guest]

55 minutes ago, SkateZilla said:

Horrible?, Hardly.

99.999999% of Contracted software engineers put in TimeLocks for Post-Payment contracts,
Otherwise, companies would take code and run.

 

To me this is crazy.  Both as a lawyer and software developer.  When a company hires a software developer as a contractor, standard practice is to specify that all code is a “work made for hire” and thus is the property of the company doing the hiring.  Failure to do that is basically malpractice by the lawyer involved.  The idea that you have a product where every source code component is owned by the individual developers and not the company is practically guaranteed to fail. 

[Nightdare]

4 hours ago, SkateZilla said:

If Timeline's are to be believed,

- RB's F-15E Contract Agreement was signed before VEAO's departure abandoning the Hawk, thus any subsequent License Agreement Changes for new Licenses does not apply.
- Per RB's discord, they themselves don't even have the source code(?), let alone ED, per the team members, the code is with Galinette (Avionics) and Cpt. Smiley (Flight Model).

So the Hawk Situation and resulting Agreement changes should be taken with a grain of salt here,
People either don't know or often forget, both RB and IRiS had announced agreements to do the F-15 as far back as 2012.

 

 

If ED didn't renegotiate those contracts after the Hawk, then they'd be fools to accept any new modules under the old contracts

 

Also: if the old contract was mostly the same except missing the "hand over sourcecode on completion" clause, it still would entail that the developers do the heavy lifting before ED says if a module gets accepted to the shop or not.

 

Now,... how badly do you want your modules to be accepted by ED and be able to earn back all that unpaid work...?

 

 

[some1]

ED themselves are not interested in taking over maintenance of 3rd party modules. They don't have the source code and they don't need it. That's what ED devs posted on the Russian part of this forum. They claim to be a store front and nothing more, product support is on 3rd parties. 

[Nightdare]

2 hours ago, SkateZilla said:

Horrible?, Hardly.

99.999999% of Contracted software engineers put in TimeLocks for Post-Payment contracts,
Otherwise, companies would take code and run.

 

 

Then RB was only on borrowed time until they had their own 'Hawk-Debacle'

Let's say this whole dispute didn't happen, but RB and one of their programmers had a falling out halfway through the F-15 Early acces?

Then what? There would be an unusable module in EA, until either the issue with the developer was solved or the 'locked' code was replaced

[Nightdare]

3 minutes ago, some1 said:

ED themselves are not interested in taking over maintenance of 3rd party modules. They don't have the source code and they don't need it. That's what ED devs posted on the Russian part of this forum. They claim to be a store front and nothing more, product support is on 3rd parties. 

 

Is the A-10 3rd party? Spitfire? Apache? Hornet? Thunderbolt?

No, so they can't state they are merely a storefront, they have the capacity to develop and maintain modules and do so under their own brand

Though I can understand them not wanting to take over maintenance for a party that already is receiving payment to do it from the customers (and also to keep trust with the current 3rd parties, not acting as some kind of 'lord giveth/lord taketh away entity) and function only as a storefront for them

 

I'm guessing wrestling IP ownership/income from 3rd parties when things go sideways is another hassle they don't want to deal with

[SkateZilla]

2 hours ago, wombat778 said:

Funny you mention Falcon 4.0, because I can speak from personal experience on that since I was at one point a Falcon BMS developer.  During my entire time with BMS, there was a shared code repository to which all developers had access.  We absolutely did NOT have a system where individual authors kept their source to themselves and only gave the rest of the team binaries.  

Crazy to me that a free volunteer project had more professional source code management than a commercial product like the F15E

EDIT: think about it this way -- RB almost certainly had to represent and warrant to ED that the F15E was/would be developed in compliance with all laws, not infringe anyone else's IP, not contain any malware, etc.  If RB has no access to the source code, and has no idea what it is in it, how can they possibly confirm that those representations are accurate? 

 

Falcon 4.0 is not BMS.
Falcon 4.0 developers kept their code, the developers confirmed it in recent interviews. 

That being said, that's why I put the "?" next to RB doesn't have the source, because it would seem odd w/ everyone being remote workers, not to have some type of online repository to upload/download/sync too.

Edited August 26, 2024 by SkateZilla

[some1]

15 minutes ago, Nightdare said:

Is the A-10 3rd party? Spitfire? Apache? Hornet? Thunderbolt?

No, so they can't state they are merely a storefront, they have the capacity to develop and maintain modules and do so under their own brand

They are a store front in the context of 3rd party modules. ED barely has the manpower to support their own modules, without inheriting somebody else's messy code.

As an analogy, Valve also can make their own games, does not mean they are responsible for fixing every other game they sell on Steam.

3rd party modules come with additional risk for us customers, something that wasn't loudly mentioned before, but the current situation shows quite plainly. 

Edited August 26, 2024 by some1

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, SkateZilla said:

Falcon 4.0 is not BMS.
Falcon 4.0 developers kept their code, the developers confirmed it in recent interviews. 
 

Err, how is that possible?  I mean, I had (and still have) access to the full Falcon 4.0 source code on my hard drive.  If the developers all "kept their code" then how do I have it?