[Sandwich]

I've wondered about this concept for a few years now, so I figure I might as well see what you all think. Basically, the idea would be to have a campaign project forum and "internal" forum, both of which would be completely open to the public. People would be requested to post non-campaign-dev stuff in the "public" section of the forum, of course, but nothing would prevent them from hopping into the "internal", peeking around, hopefully falling in love with the campaign, and even lending a helping hand here or there. Tasks would, I guess, be doled out on a first-come, first-serve basis, as long as the person is reasonably competent.

Now, I don't really know how OSS projects are actually managed, coordinated, and run, so if anyone else does know these things (as I'm sure some of you do), enlighten me, would you?

And yes, before you ask, there is at least one campaign available to be open-sourced.

[NGTM-1R]

It might, it might not. Depends on the quality of the campaign. There have been campaigns I wished I never got internal access to, for example.

[karajorma]

What he said.

[Sandwich]

Assume it's a good campaign. If it truly isn't up to snuff, then suggestions can always be made to revamp it.

[aldo_14]

I considered it before, but I figured there were several major drawbacks (at least for the sort of campaign I'd like to make);
1/ The story isn't secret; and people rarely resist temptation
2/ Part of the attraction for campaign-makers - or at least for me - is the concept of ownership.  That is, everything you make is yours until release - you can coddle and reshape all the little secrets and surprises right up until the final minutes before release.  An OS campaign would remove that, IMO.
3/ Incohesive; eventually you need to have one person calling the shots or you end up with a muddy story compromised with too many ideas.  And too many giant capships
4/ Potentially disorganised; if it's 'open' to people dipping in, it's quite possible no-one will volunteer to do the more boring, sedate work.  Who wants to model a sentry gun when they can make the GTD Murderousvengenacecoolthing?

[jr2]

aldo's got some good points, but just because it's "open" doesn't mean that it doesn't have structure, right?  It'd still have a project leader, and different sub-groups would have their directors, too, if I"m not mistaken.  As long as there is a clear chain of command, I think it'd be alright, IMO... what's your opinion of that, aldo?  Do you think that would take care of 3 & 4?

[aldo_14]

aldo's got some good points, but just because it's "open" doesn't mean that it doesn't have structure, right?  It'd still have a project leader, and different sub-groups would have their directors, too, if I"m not mistaken.  As long as there is a clear chain of command, I think it'd be alright, IMO... what's your opinion of that, aldo?  Do you think that would take care of 3 & 4?

Nope, I don't.  The tighter you make the structure, the less open (appropriately) it becomes.  The more you take that approach, then the closer IMO it becomes to a 'closed' campaign with an open storyline.  I think the key feature of Open Source - anyone can dip in - is the key disadvantage of applying it in this way.  It's like a script where everyone writes a line - the distinguishing feature is the weakness.  IMO.

[Sandwich]

I considered it before, but I figured there were several major drawbacks (at least for the sort of campaign I'd like to make);
1/ The story isn't secret; and people rarely resist temptation
2/ Part of the attraction for campaign-makers - or at least for me - is the concept of ownership.  That is, everything you make is yours until release - you can coddle and reshape all the little secrets and surprises right up until the final minutes before release.  An OS campaign would remove that, IMO.
3/ Incohesive; eventually you need to have one person calling the shots or you end up with a muddy story compromised with too many ideas.  And too many giant capships
4/ Potentially disorganised; if it's 'open' to people dipping in, it's quite possible no-one will volunteer to do the more boring, sedate work.  Who wants to model a sentry gun when they can make the GTD Murderousvengenacecoolthing?

1) I thought I'd have that temptation as an admin, but honestly? I didn't. Yes, I visit the internals of some projects from time to time, see if they have any cool screenies, but the storyline? I'd rather experience it playing it than reading about it.
2) Ownership of nothing is still nothing, unfortunately. If a campaign isn't getting made in the usual way, then there's no real drawback as far as that's concerned.
3) Perhaps I was unclear - indeed, I believe I was. I'm thinking of one person in charge (the Supreme Commander ), guiding a team of whoever wants to in hammering out the mission outlines according to his storyline. The actual work on missions, models, and whatnot would be the primary open-source venture. After all, even in the open-source browser Firefox, you didn't have people coding in scientific calculators (much to CP's disappointment, I'm sure) or hard disk defragmenting abilities. The goal was a browser. In this idea, the goul would be to bring a certain storyline to life in-game.
4) I don't think that will be as much of a problem as one might think. Those "boring" sentry guns can be a lot less intimidating (regardless of the modeler's experience level) from a time-perspective. Less commitment required to bring it to completion.