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> non-trivial amount of third party code, including console stuff which is under strict NDA This just seems like a lazy excuse. Ok so some of the code can’t be

> non-trivial amount of third party code, including console stuff which is under strict NDA This just seems like a lazy excuse. Ok so some of the code can’t be released. Fine, what stops you from open sourcing the rest of it that isn’t licensed? The OS community will surely fill in The blanks.

Imustaskforhelp 2y ago
exactly. I do think that the source code of source was leaked. Its just that valve has to themselves give the code of source. FLOSS community would really do it. Trust me.
- account42 2y ago
  Well for the FLOSS community to do anything Valve would not just need to release the coede but also put it under a free software license, which isn't the case even for the game code released here. Modders in general won't care though.
L3viathan 2y ago
Well in a sense you are right that it is lazy, in that it would be quite a lot of work to disentangle those parts. So they could probably do it, but it would be costly, while just releasing the TF2 code is basically free.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Don't bother with subtle disentanglement. Just take an axe to it and release a broken mess. It will be fixed and running within a month.
trinix912 2y ago
It depends on how the code is structured. It might be that the licensed parts are sprinkled throughout the functions, or that they would have to reorganize things to not reveal too much about a specific NDA'd technology (like a console SDK)... The resulting code might end up being just as useless as no code at all, and I assume it would be very hard to get the management to allocate resources for that.
- account42 2y ago
  Perhaps, but a multiplatform codebase won't call the console SDK directly from hundreds of random functions. And even if the developers were that crazy those calls need to be excluded when building for other platforms so can also be stripped form the source code in an automated fashion.
  - xienze 2y ago
    > Perhaps, but a multiplatform codebase won't call the console SDK directly from hundreds of random functions. You’d think so, but some developers have a very adversarial relationship with abstractions, such as abstracting away platform-specific code behind a common interface. It happens more often than you’d think. > And even if the developers were that crazy those calls need to be excluded when building for other platforms so can also be stripped form the source code in an automated fashion. So they’re going to leave people code that either doesn’t compile or, if it does, doesn’t work? And what’s stripped out may have very important technical considerations that might only be known based on which function calls were yanked out.
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      > So they’re going to leave people code that either doesn’t compile or, if it does, doesn’t work? I think that in general, potential open source developers would not care at all about that. Some code (that doesn't yet work) is better than no code. As someone else mentioned, a motivated open source group could probably easily fill in all the missing gaps within a month.
mtkd 2y ago
There is always the risk that some of the code (non 3rd party) may look a lot similar to code of a previous employer of the person that committed it It's all legal risk with little commercial upside

Imustaskforhelp 2y ago

exactly. I do think that the source code of source was leaked. Its just that valve has to themselves give the code of source. FLOSS community would really do it. Trust me.

account42 2y ago
Well for the FLOSS community to do anything Valve would not just need to release the coede but also put it under a free software license, which isn't the case even for the game code released here. Modders in general won't care though.

L3viathan 2y ago

Well in a sense you are right that it is lazy, in that it would be quite a lot of work to disentangle those parts. So they could probably do it, but it would be costly, while just releasing the TF2 code is basically free.

lupusreal 2y ago
Don't bother with subtle disentanglement. Just take an axe to it and release a broken mess. It will be fixed and running within a month.

trinix912 2y ago

It depends on how the code is structured. It might be that the licensed parts are sprinkled throughout the functions, or that they would have to reorganize things to not reveal too much about a specific NDA'd technology (like a console SDK)... The resulting code might end up being just as useless as no code at all, and I assume it would be very hard to get the management to allocate resources for that.

account42 2y ago
Perhaps, but a multiplatform codebase won't call the console SDK directly from hundreds of random functions. And even if the developers were that crazy those calls need to be excluded when building for other platforms so can also be stripped form the source code in an automated fashion.
- xienze 2y ago
  > Perhaps, but a multiplatform codebase won't call the console SDK directly from hundreds of random functions. You’d think so, but some developers have a very adversarial relationship with abstractions, such as abstracting away platform-specific code behind a common interface. It happens more often than you’d think. > And even if the developers were that crazy those calls need to be excluded when building for other platforms so can also be stripped form the source code in an automated fashion. So they’re going to leave people code that either doesn’t compile or, if it does, doesn’t work? And what’s stripped out may have very important technical considerations that might only be known based on which function calls were yanked out.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    > So they’re going to leave people code that either doesn’t compile or, if it does, doesn’t work? I think that in general, potential open source developers would not care at all about that. Some code (that doesn't yet work) is better than no code. As someone else mentioned, a motivated open source group could probably easily fill in all the missing gaps within a month.

mtkd 2y ago

There is always the risk that some of the code (non 3rd party) may look a lot similar to code of a previous employer of the person that committed it It's all legal risk with little commercial upside