Thanks for your patience! I think we are at a point where I am happy to consider open sourcing LCPDFR. There are a few caveats, however, mostly due to licensing and how the project is associated with us:

• The source code would be hosted on our GitHub repo with a GPL-license, with no third-party binary distribution (I am thinking either only binaries on the official repo or on the website here, still need to figure it out)
• More than happy to give you full permission on GitHub to manage the project as I do not intend to be involved
• If you plan to create any communities surrounding the development (reddit, discord etc.), please check with me first as I would like to have administrator there since our name is being used

These rules are preliminary, and we can of course revisit and see how things go, but that is how I feel about it currently. Let me know what you think.

I'm very happy! Thank you guys for allowing this, and for making it actually happen 😃

Do you have discord? I would like to ask you some further questions regarding the rules!

You can PM me for more details, but I think we should keep a record in this thread of the most important points in the interest of transparency.

Alright! I mainly want to ask about the non third-party binarys because i have features planned that would include third-party binarys such as:

 

bass.dll - Audio library that i use very often and can be found in many of my GTA IV Mods.

bass.net.dll - .NET Wrapper for bass.dll.

and IVLauncherAPI.dll - This dll is not yet created, and i'm not yet sure if i will name it like that, but i'm planing on to include LCPDFR stats on users profile (Which are not yet available in v1.4 but will be in v1.5) in the GTA IV Launcher that i'm creating, and for that i'm also creating an API for it so LCPDFR can update the stats via the API. That was a feature that i was most excited of actually because it would also give me a good reason to finally create the API.

 

I know that it could sound sketchy with the "IVLauncherAPI.dll", but i really don't have bad intentions to use it. I basically wanna revive the already implemented statistics sync in LCPDFR. And i think it would fit nicely on the profiles of users in the IV Launcher!

 

If we could find an agreement over this that i'm allowed to implement those libraries, this would be more than lovely.

Greetings!

1 hour ago, ItsClonkAndre said:

Alright! I mainly want to ask about the non third-party binarys because i have features planned that would include third-party binarys such as:

 

bass.dll - Audio library that i use very often and can be found in many of my GTA IV Mods.

bass.net.dll - .NET Wrapper for bass.dll.

and IVLauncherAPI.dll - This dll is not yet created, and i'm not yet sure if i will name it like that, but i'm planing on to include LCPDFR stats on users profile (Which are not yet available in v1.4 but will be in v1.5) in the GTA IV Launcher that i'm creating, and for that i'm also creating an API for it so LCPDFR can update the stats via the API. That was a feature that i was most excited of actually because it would also give me a good reason to finally create the API.

 

I know that it could sound sketchy with the "IVLauncherAPI.dll", but i really don't have bad intentions to use it. I basically wanna revive the already implemented statistics sync in LCPDFR. And i think it would fit nicely on the profiles of users in the IV Launcher!

 

If we could find an agreement over this that i'm allowed to implement those libraries, this would be more than lovely.

Greetings!

You'd be able to use third party binaries, but per the GPL you can only link to libraries that are also an equivalent open source license. I think we could add exceptions here (and there's also the system library exception in the GPL) but the expectation is probably that any further linked code would also be open source.

 

Lennart however is talking about the distribution of the resulting LCPDFR binaries from the source code compilation.

I just want to say, I wish everyone involved in this good luck, godspeed and I will pray that everything works out. Now all I have to do is buy GTA IV again.

On 6/25/2022 at 7:07 PM, Cyan said:

You'd be able to use third party binaries, but per the GPL you can only link to libraries that are also an equivalent open source license. I think we could add exceptions here (and there's also the system library exception in the GPL) but the expectation is probably that any further linked code would also be open source.

 

Lennart however is talking about the distribution of the resulting LCPDFR binaries from the source code compilation.

Problem is that the bass library isn't open source and so will be the launcher api library. If you guys could add exceptions there, that would be great.

We can always have a custom license to handle third party libraries, that is not a problem. However, if you plan to develop your own project (the launcher), it seems a bit odd why you would not want to pursue an open source route for that while asking for LCPDFR to be open source.

I mean the launcher is already out and i do make most of my project open source but i just haven't made the launcher open source yet, also because i want to keep it safe with all the networking code in there. I don't want someone to hack my server or something.

 

It's another story with LCPDFR because the project is discontinued, and it would be a shame to just let it die rather then to let the community create new stuff for it. The IV Launcher isn't discontinued. I'm working on new updates for it. If i didn't want to work on the IV Launcher anymore and if it isn't open source yet, i would also make it open source so that someone else can continue working on it.

Do you guys have a special GitHub Account on which you will publish LCPDFR or will you publish it on the LMSDev GitHub Account?

That is not a problem, I was just curious about the nature of the project. And yes, we will most likely host it on my GitHub account. We should have some more news to share in the next few days 🙂

As a first step in preparing the open sourcing, we have revived the online services. You can read more about it here: https://www.lcpdfr.com/forums/topic/123098-lcpdfr-online-services-returns-track-your-stats/

Oh that's lovely!

Any updates you guys want to announce? 🤠

I really do not want to give any definitive dates or promises as it is always hard to say what might come up, but realistically it will go open source this month. Not unlikely that it happens this weekend, but I cannot guarantee.

I read the entire thread, I just want to confirm is LCPDFR coming back? I never had a chance to experience LCPDFR!

 

Would definitely love to see LCPDFR return. GTA IV is one of my favourite games in the series and I have so many good memories of playing LCPDFR between 2011-2015 and it's great the game actually runs decently on modern hardware now.

@ItsClonkAndre When you get a chance, please send me a PM with your GitHub username so we can do an initial test of the source and whether it all builds correctly for you.

15 hours ago, LMS said:

@ItsClonkAndre When you get a chance, please send me a PM with your GitHub username so we can do an initial test of the source and whether it all builds correctly for you.

Alright! Username sent!

To update everyone on the progress: Code was cleaned up and repo shared a week go, @ItsClonkAndre is confirming that everything compiles and works for him and then we will make it publicly available for everyone else.