Do scripters get ripped off?

I had a vague sensation about this when I joined, but I decided to put it off a bit until I had more experience. Then I had it said to me by a very experience scripter and that really bothered me. It bothers me more when I see people on the General forum complaining that they can't get a safezone combat system (on sale at L$1000) for free, and then getting an offer from someone to make them one for L$50. Think that would have happened if he'd been asking for a free skin that was just like a L$1000 one?

I mean, I know lots of folks are passionate about coding and don't worry so much about the money, but once during a single SL login I paid L$300 for a hairstyle and then got handed an auto-routing HyperTeleport script for free... wuh?

I think you'll see a lot more "ripping off" of scripts because there's many useful and sometimes very advanced scripts that are released open-source in the scripting library that people had come up with on thier own to make a profit with. that's usually why I'll only charge about $5-$50L for something that just effects a basic game mechanic (color changing, flight scripts, vehicle scripts, etc.), as opposed to creating a very complex "engine" such as a pacman game, combat flight sim, or other similary intricate things.

yup...

Because a lot of coders have no self esteem and do not value their skills.

I find that scripters also like to show each other up...a LOT!
Ask for a scripter to do something original, and all you hear is crickets chirping.
But ask them to make a cheap knockoff of someone else's work, and they'll knock down your door to be the first to do it.
It's a sick kind of competitiveness.

Nonetheless, there are SOME of us that are happy to do original work and collaborative design according to spec.
You just need to develop a good stable of "Developers" instead of "Sqrypt-kiddeez".
We also know each other, usually, and can make referrals if a project design is outside our desired or experienced field of design. (For instance, I can do a lot with just about anything that DOESN'T tie to the outside world, though I am weaker in manipulating textures and anims and stronger in manipulating particles, prims and data. Ask me to connect to an outside DB, though, and I would take longer to complete a project because I would have to teach myself along the way.)

You're welcome?

--From the person who made the Auto-Routing HyperTeleport Script.

The exact opposite is true actually, coders just understandably think differently than the rest of the world.

The first thing you learn in Computer Science class is that it is a waste of time to develop code that does the same thing as something that has already been written. Why reinvent the wheel?

So for the sake of the "science", we develop this lassais-faire attitude toward reusing code written by others, and dont mind it much when others reuse our code.

Many programmers do not consider it "being ripped off" but it is actually an honor to have a piece of code you wrote be used in someone elses project. Especially when it is a use you never thought of, and your name gets put in the credits.

(I got a great example of this, I needed an animation vendor, and could not find one for sale anywhere, so I took someone's free texture vendor script, added a poseball function, and created an animation vendor script, which I give away free. I kept all the authors credits of the original, and just added my own.)

It is the exact opposite of the "business norm", because in our minds programming is not about putting out product, but contributing to an art form.

A warning though: this is not a universal sentiment among coders. We have to respect "Do not use without permission", "Not for resale", and copyright and copyleft notices left in the code.

While a lot of us write code for fun, and because we like to show off we give a lot of our code away for free, we still like to earn a few Lindens every now and then.

Agreed!

I wouldn't call many of the folks here "script kiddies". There's some great stuff being given away for free.

Nonetheless, when I'm trying to make headway as a scripter, the thought of something I spent a long time writing and put on sale for L$1000 being attacked for not being free and then undercut to L$50 is not something I relish much!

It's the free market economy at work

Just me, but this is a game, so I'll give away code -- or not -- as the mood strikes me. But it's not polished code suitable for sale; more like code fragments or hacks. To very good friends that I trust (you know who you are) I'll share the Good Stuff. Anyone else ... please note the deft manner in which I ignore your request.

But ... case in point: I once had someone I'd met the day before IM me asking for help in fixing a buggy script object, ostensibly so that they could use it. They caught me at a good time, so I diddled on it -- but soon (based on our interchanges) I began to strongly suspect that my new friend was going to take the script and attempt to sell it himself. In the end I handed him a working version of the object he told me he needed. With a no mod / no copy script in it. Am I a bitch? Sure. But I didn't deprive him of anything, and in fact gave him what he (initially) asked for. But I don't like being taken advantage of.

A Final Thought: ever think about the actual RL monetary values being paid to scripters for custom coding jobs?

Jess

Because coders are more likely to be well paid in their first life, and value their time more than the relatively small amount of money they could expect to be paid for it in SL.

Unless someone's willing to pay me contract rates or their equivalent in Lindens, they shouldn't expect me to spend my "downtime" doing the stuff I do in my "uptime".

This is one of many reasons I don't use X-Flight, won't use X-Flight, and discourage people from using it. Not only is it spammy and annoying ane a really twisty bit of code... and way overdesigned for the task most people use it for (flying above the ground-effect ceiling to get to skyboxes), it's also NOT legitimately in the public domain. The comments in the source do NOT grant anyone the right to use it the way it's being used... on the contrary, they indicate it's proprietary, ask you NOT to pass it around, and it sure looks like someone ripped it off.

It kind of annoys me when some artistic type angsts about being ripped off, then when they go to leave I hear "Carbon Rod: All Go" as they put on their X-flight-based booster.

There's something I've termed "The Francis Chung Principle". Meaning, if you're going to script, don't just script: build the builds, make some clothes, get a good feel for the inside and outside of Second Life, and essentially, do what you want (as long as it's within Community Standards, LOLEX). Francis is known as a proficient scripter, but not just for that. I find there are many multitalents in SL who do have mad scripting skillz and additional paints in their arsenal.

Excellent scripts within a powerful package command a higher price, and collaborations with friends can be a big boon. A recent example would, of course, be this. And it's priced fairly too IMGO, and yet, not so low that you'd reasonably demand it as a freebie.

I'm not the best person to say this either, because for generally effective purposes, I don't script. I don't build. I do, however, use Second Life as an uberglorified 3D chatroom, enlightenment awakening tool, and source of official religion, and that's good enough for me.

Is there an open source alternative, which does cater for just the features people casually want to use it for? I've not seen one...

Exactly, I've not seen one. X-Flight has many variations but I don't ever remember seeing Mr. Goodwill Epoch dictating his wishes on how he wanted it to be distributed. I've used X-Flight, and kinda felt guilty with that ??? above my head. Later on in my Second Life, I got a ROAM which has flightaccel anyway.

It's like doing needlepoint without needles.

Reality of this virtual reality, when some Resis say everything that can be done has been done here, ooo no! There are LOTS OF HOLES, SO MANY VOIDS THAT NEED A GOOD STUFFING!

A recent practical example is Cubey Terra's DIY plane kit, which I blogged about. There had been a big gap since the last widely-used "plane kit" in SL, and a lot had changed since then. I praise Cubey for this.

It takes just one person (perhaps two) to make a new, open-source flight accelerator. Make it elegant, extensible, opensource if so wished.


And the stars will continue to shine brightly!

Hank's Open-Source, Route-Finding, PTP Teleportation Script goes unmentioned.

While I will agree to an extent. There is the fact that we are using the exact same build/scripting tools and you can only manipulate the functions in so many ways until your airplane becomes a rock. The range for llSetBouyancy() only has a small range in which the vehicle either falls, floats infinatly up or hangs in the air just right to act more like a plane. The uses for angular and linear motors are the same way, too little force and the vehicle does nothing, too much force and it becomes un flyable. Link messages have little real use other than relaying bits of info between prims and sometimes they are flakey. There are only a limited number of ways you can rotate a texture on a prim before it looks bad, you can't even set one side to rotate in one direction or the other to rotate in reverse like a plane propeller for example. Until the tools become more powerful and perhaps we can assign specific motor functions on a per prim basis i.e. a plane elevator is the elevator, a motor script function would provide just the Y Axis forces that an elevator would perform controlled via the main root but the forces would be exerted at that part of the plane as opposed to having an angular motor rotate the plane at the root's Y axis centerline which isn't a good feel for realism when we already have a good physics system in SL that looks like it could handle it. Perhaps if MONO gets implemented to replace the current LSL, we get HTML on a prim, perhaps then the origionality could come back until of course it all gets done and then the cycle will repeat.

I won't deny I've writen scripts designed to mimic scripts by other scripters, usualy at clients request (like the script is no-mod and it doesn't work properly or they want new features). I don't usualy step on other scripters toes, but i have from time to time writen scripts explicitly to change the scripting market place.

I'll second this, because I found this very easy to setup and use!

I love the menus and things, it works very well. And you nicely fixed a bug (or something, I swear I put it on and went WOOSH) that sent me about 12k meters after my first attempt at wearing a version.

Granted, 12km in under 5 minutes, in world, isn't bad!

Some people are coders but aren't artists. (Hello! )

In fact, I half wonder if people who are good builders, but only average-ish coders, are giving away their scripts to devalue the market for pure scripts and enable them to hire better coders at lower prices.

Silly to try and compare code to anything else. It doesn't really work like anything else and scripters tend to be like cats, territorial and prone to fighting

I think scripters tend to think they can do better and the playing field is much more level than other areas to let them go and do so. I know thats what I did with my vendors and I did base my script off someone elses to avoid reinventing the wheel.

I think generally the population of SL grossly undervalues scripting. There's a hell of a lot available out there for free, tons of work for the common good (XYtext is a good example). People are complaining about the price of Crystal's Fragfoo yet forget she gives away her FreeView script (When lots of people sell hugely overpriced TVs which for some reason are lapped up) but yet they don't complain about paying premiums for things like skins or clothing.

Of course there's a lot of overpriced scripted crap out there but I think thats mostly because people don't have an idea of how easy or hard X was to script compared to clothing or prim objects where they can just look at it and have an instant idea.

but what about Hank Ramos's Open-Source, Route-Finding, PTP Teleportation Script??

Pricing in SL is erratic across the board. Scripting, however, seems to be high on the "value" list with many people. I have found that my scripts sell better than anything else I do (with the possible exception of custom building...in which I provide scripts anyway).

The problem is essentially that very few people are able to understand the true value of a script OR how to find quality scripts. Of course...without actually being able to look through the actual coding of a script, it's also hard to determine if the code is quality or not.

It still amazes me that so many scripted objects use PUBLIC chat channels for their commands...

Lots of scripts I look at also include clunky code-groupings that could easily be streamlined...or use unnecessary lag-inducing functions.

ANYWAY...I'm fallin' off on a tangent.

The short of SL is:

--Anyone can learn to texture.
--Anyone can learn to build.
--Anyone can learn to code.
--Everyone is going to value things differently as long as the market remains as disparate/disjointed as it currently is.

The only remedy you have:

--Innovation.

But then...hasn't that always been the way of things?

HELLO YUMI!!!

Coding can sure count as an art. This is what Francis Chung taught me. Or like that movie Pi, "Mathematics is the language of nature".

I knew this one d00d who built like crap, but then made awesome textures patterned out of his LSL scripts. He just copy-and-pasted, and WOWZA, he was onto a new kind of art. Sadly, due to personal reasons, he has since left SL.

But! There's more happiness on the way!

Furthermore, I know some esteemed coders who started off as sucky builders, and I pounded them to do more, and whelp, they are not so sucky now (by their own admission). So I'm glad that happened, and I'm looking for more.

Hey who knows, someday I might be doing scripty schtuff! (Thanx to peeps like Eggy for all the encouragement, hehehe.) I'm leaving that door open until Sere tells me otherwise.

TRIPS THROUGH THE TIMELINE!

A fundamental problem with what I said, I realize, is that there is only one Francis Chung. One Francis Chung who made some terribly embarassing, shoddily-constructed stuff early on. It must be this way, I surmised, because I beg for copies and she won't give me them. (Ask her about her pillow fighting gadget.) So this is the point at which all analogies bend, and then break. Which is both a comedy and a tragedy unto itself.

Moral of the stories: if you can't do something (yet), get help from a stranger-cum-friend!

And we're not alone!

There's one I've been handing out to people, getting feedback, testing. You want a copy? IM me in-game.

Some of the copies of X-Flight that I've found contain comments in the source that indicate it was written for a particular group, and that it wasn't to be shared beyond members of that group. I've found these same comments in more than one variant. I really can't treat it as legitimate open source until I get an explanation for these comments.

Which is why I'm working on my replacement.