It's not like the rules code (the thing people are actually interested in improving) is at all useful without a Stern machine. And the backend code hasn't changed much since the 90s. There's nothing fancy or secret about it, so nothing to steal.

Besides, tens of thousands of companies invest tons of money in their open source projects. Open sourcing something isn't giving it away, it doesn't work like that.

Even if some op was stupid enough to put untested custom code on their route machine, Stern could easily add restrictions like free play to modified code. The whole 'oh no someone's going to break the game' thing is overblown anyway. The backend has tons of safety checks to make sure nothing gets locked on.

If it was a thankless chore to design and create the boards then yeah, I'd totally have just used existing ones (although I would have used OPP, not shelled out for proc), but for me it isn't. I learned a ton and I enjoyed most aspects of it. All part of the experience. When I show my machine to someone and go 'I built this' and they ask what i mean, I can say 'everything'. Boards code, playfield, wiring, etc.

Also I don't like the idea of running a pinball machine on top of windows/Linux, let alone needing a whole small desktop in there. Slow to boot and too many things to go wrong.

Picture in my avatar for reference. I grabbed a video at one point:

I never publicly announced it or made a thread or anything. I had some posts about it on my blog, but s combination server and backup drive failure plus some mysteriously missing other backups means that blog is lost never got any interest on it before, so I didn't put a lot of time into documenting things, but if someone wants to know anything about it I'm happy to expound. I've gone into detail via a few pms to people in the past.... I wanted to bring the game to pintastic the first year but due to a lot of connector problems (lesson learned: buy a good crimper, use locking housings, and don't mount boards upside down under the playfield) it isn't reliable enough to move. As long as it sits in the corner though it's been pretty reliable, so I've been content to let it sit and try to make my next game solid.

Exactly - can't you see that this would cost Stern a lot of time and money, for very little benefit and probably a lot of extra work / headaches?

Also, it would be bad to say Stern should just deny support to open source modified games. They would get many support phone calls, where the caller would probably say "it's the original code", only to discover later after wasting a bunch of time that the game was using modified code. Ultimately Stern would end up denying support to older games, that they are currently nice enough to assist people with via phone support even though they are out of warranty. They would have to get more strict about support, because of all the wasted time.

But companies *do* it. And they keep doing it. So it's not a sink of money, they're getting more back from it.

You could just use MPF and a laptop and recode any Spike machine to do whatever you want, for free.

Assets like art and video are not available to you anyway because of whatever copyright restrictions or however it is termed.

MPF is open source. If you want to make your point, that seems like a great place to start by contributing to development there.

And code an entire game from scratch on specialized hardware no one else has instead of just fixes to existing code

I have a feeling the link to the source code was taken down after people started taking the piss out of the quality of it. You can still find it here:
http://www.benheck.com/Downloads/amh/AMH_code.zip

What I would like is companies properly following the GPL/open source licenses. For example, Big Guys Pinball ripping off QEMU, PPS also were playing a bit fast and loose with what they were doing with their remakes.

The issue isn't that we don't understand modern design and coding practices, it's that we understand business.

Stern & JJP aren't going to allow some anonymous person to screw up a machine that may be on route. There are already plenty of reasons people can get turned off of a machine, why would they create another. They are in business to sell machines, and want to control the experience as much as they can. If your physical mods can void the warranty, what do you think their perspective on code is?

Retrofitting legacy code to make it open and extensible is not cheap or easy. Trust me, I've spent millions trying it in the past with limited results.

Businesses don't create open source for the fun of it. They do it for direct revenue, through support subscriptions, or for some other indirect reason, like creating a digital asset ecosystem that generates revenue in some other way. This is a manufacturing business and is not a good candidate for this approach in the foreseeable future.

At the end of the day, open source code isn't going to sell very many additional machines, so it won't happen.

Will a niche company do it? Maybe, but it will likely be seen as an experiment and won't be a commercial business like the big two.

Yes, people that don't agree with you just don't understand it....... that's definitely the problem here.....

I wish my f@cking toaster code was open source so I could make a 3 1/2 setting! This whole 3 is too light and 4 is too dark bullshit is getting me down. I demand perfect toast.

If so, that's really sad for multiple reasons.

1. If you don't like the quality of open source software, dig in and make it better. I tried to do this with the AMH code by giving Ben a patch for the lamp driver code. It didn't end up getting incorporated, but it's his code and his decision to make. I could still have used it on my own machine if I owned one.

2. If AMH was marketed as an open source game with open source software, then when final software finally came, they decided to close the source because they weren't happy with the comments they were getting, that truly sucks. Maybe that's not really the reason behind it, but it does seem like that might be the case.

mcdonalds has released the Big Mac sauce recipe, just sayin.

It only took 40 years

This is the crux of the issue. What is the business case for expending the time and money to do this? How many more machines will they sell against the cost to create, maintain and support a software model built on open source? At the end of the day, Stern, JJP, etc., are not 501(c)'s

TBH I have no idea why the link to the source was removed, just a wild ass guess seeing as the rest of it was left up there, just the main game source was removed.

At the end of the day, Ben is a jack of all trades, so it's not a personal dig at him. Hell the first time I wrote pinball code it was downright embarrassing, but it's a learning curve. Just a real shame that Spooky don't go for something like Github for source revision control, rather than lumping it all into a single file. It would mean that the community could work together to make it better.

EDIT: It seems some of the files are on Github, just not the main game code:
https://github.com/LonghornEngineer/Pinheck_Pinball_System

100% this.

If the OP put together a valid business case with a defined, guaranteed ROI for going open source, I bet companies would listen to the argument at least. As it stands, it's just a guy on a message board asking for something he wants (or demanding it).

There is a valid business case, MPF and Gerrys offerings both have an open source component to them:
https://github.com/preble/pyprocgame
https://github.com/missionpinball/mpf

As for ROI, it means they have libraries with more features/bugfixes etc, meaning the hardware they sell is more attractive. But this is something that will only ever appeal to boutique makers, not to someone like Stern/JJP.

It is Thousand Island dressing.

Since when is it the customer's job to make business models for the companies?

That's literally what it is. A guy on a forum is saying we should have access to the source code of our games. And he's right.

MPF is a non-profit, and I don't see the code for Lexi Lightspeed up anywhere, though to Gerry's benefit he has stated he will post that at sometime in the future.

I believe he is wrong, and I think there is little to no positive benefit that can come from it.

No, he's not. He's right in saying that he *wants* the source code to the games, I do too, I think it would be cool. The whole "should" thing though speaks to a sense of entitlement that a lot of pinheads seem to have. It is Stern/JJPs intellectual property, there is little to no upside of going to open source for their particular business that I can see, so if I were them it would be WAY down the list of priorities if even on the list at all.

Like I said, open source *components*, in the example of Lexi Lightspeed, it'll be using some form of pyprocgame, which has contributions from the P-ROC community.

In any case, both Stern/JJP use open source software in the form of Linux. I know it might be hard for you to understand how a business can make a profit from producing open source software, but many do.

So there's been no positive from people introducing tournament roms + fixes, home roms, etc for existing games?

If it's better for the hobby, the companies "should" try to do it, as they live and die by that. In a simpler case, whoever owns the rights to the classic sterns "should" release the source code to them. There's no downside for them, they're not in the business anymore. Just throw the disk up on github and let the community take care of it. It'd be better for everyone involved.

Is it actually viable for modern games? I don't think any of us know their business internally well enough to say. Would it be better for pinball if they did? Yes. Will they bother if no one asks for it? I doubt it. If it turns out to be impossible on their end after everyone asks for it, would they do it? No. So the best course of action is to ask for it. But no one listens if you just ask politely, so we need to demand it.

Pretty sure they released a video of how to make it

No, not everything that is good for the hobby is good for the business. You are just spouting hyperbole to try and make a point that doesn't exist. If Stern/JJP were going to "live and die" by releasing their code open source then they would have done so by now.

There's no downside that you know of. For licensed games I think it is a complete non-starter. For older unlicensed games, maybe. Still don't see the benefit to Stern here, other than dubious good will from some small segment of gear head pinball collectors who also have old Stern unlicensed games.

Demand all you like. Start a petition. Storm the gates of Stern, demand your right to their source code and save the pinball hobby. Your time to waste I suppose. Just like mine was in this thread, which has now eaten up too much of it.

I'd like the ABS and Stability Control manufacturers to open source their algorithms. Customizing brake activations based on tire types can offer improvements over the "one-size-fits-all" routines.

Bosch, Delphi, WABCO; are you with me?

Did you forget your sarcasm font?

I can't image the legal issues if they opened that up to the public.

I understand it and have been in the tech business for a long time. As I said before they are making their money on something else, like services, or maintenance fees. Open source OS's, DB's, virtual machine tools, they all make money, that's the business model.

Name one other manufacturer that provides open source to allow you to control how it operates.

I prefer they use their R&D money to design better games, not to rewrite code.

There's alternatives to P-ROC boards for people who don't want to re-invent the wheel but also want to save some money. P-ROC is like the Cadillac of pinball controllers but some of us have Kia budgets and are willing to do a little more DIY.

http://pinballmakers.com/wiki/index.php/OPP

So there's this chart function in Excel that I just don't like. If Microsoft would just release the source code to Excel as open source, I'd be happy to update it and share it with the world.
On the other side of the planet:
A startup pinball manufacturer needs to code a ball search routine. Hey let's just lift this open source code that Stern developed and base our code off of that! Faster software development time for the new startup, but at who's expense?
See where this is going???
I see the answer to the ops request for open source as NO.

Guess I wasn't making my point clear. Microsoft putting Excel out as open source makes about as much sense as Stern putting out their software libraries as open source. Others could poach the code for their own purposes and benefit ($$$$$$$).

So do you have the toolchain necessary to build new firmware for these games? Willing to pay $1000 (or more) for a compiler license? How will you compile in graphics and audio files that contain copyrighted/licensed material? Will you buy a license for the RTOS used in the code? How about other third-party, closed-source, licensed libraries that Stern might be using? Do you expect Stern and other manufacturers to populate a JTAG port on their production hardware so you can debug your code changes?

Are non-coders willing to pay more for their pinball machines so a small percentage of customers can do those things? How else will Stern pay the higher license fees to IP owners and to their staff and lawyers to make the changes necessary to release the source code? Do I really want Stern software engineers working to make Open Source releases instead of delivering new code? Reviewing every issue and pull request that comes into their repo?

What sort of leverage drives your demand? "Do it or the undersigned won't buy your games"? Will Stern volume increase by even 1% if you can get the source code to their next title?

This is embedded software. How many hardware products have voluntarily released their code as Open Source, as opposed to doing it because they based their code on existing Open Source code that required it? Why should pinball manufacturers be any different?

Your point was clear. But some open source advocates don't want to hear that opinion, so they ignore it. In my opinion, most open source projects that are not able to monetize themselves through a decent support stream end up abandoned. Open source programmers are great at starting projects... but they never seem to be able to fin... oh, a butterfly.

Squirrel!!!!

You mean the Thousand Island Dressing?

BIG MAC SAUCE

Ingredients: Soybean Oil, Pickle Relish (Diced Pickles, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Sugar, Vinegar, Corn Syrup, Salt, Calcium Chloride, Xanthan Gum, Potassium Sorbate [Preservative], Spice Extractives, Polysorbate 80), Distilled Vinegar, Water, Egg Yolks, Onion Powder, Spices, Salt, Propylene Glycol Alginate, Sodium Benzoate (Preservative), Mustard Bran, Sugar, Garlic Powder, Vegetable Protein (Hydrolyzed Corn, Soy and Wheat), Caramel Color, Extractives of Paprika, Soy Lecithin, Turmeric (Color), Calcium Disodium EDTA (Protect Flavor).

Contains: WHEAT, EGG, SOY.

I'm sure you have skills and might be able to figure out how to fix some of the software glitches. the problem lies when tom, dick and harry go to town and start hacking on, and distributing their fixes to others. This will undoubtedly cause more issues then it solves. Especially with newer machine that have warranties on them. I'm sure JJP, Stern and others don't want to be liable for others incompetence when game code could essentially cause major malfunctions. If I was Chaz, Lloyd, Frank or another tech I would be pissin my pants if this were to come to light.

yes, exactly.

AMH source was removed because someone was trying to build their own copy of the game.

Malfunctions are probably the least of their worries. I assume they could disclaimer of warranty/liability/merchantability out of that ("hey, you signed on for open source to run our hardware - not our problem") But then you have other legal issues to consider:

Unlike software that is created in-house, “open-source code comes from an amorphous community of unknown people, and parts of it are much more likely than homegrown software to have been copied from someone’s proprietary code,” writes Scott Wilson.
Open-source codes also can't guarantee that it doesn’t infringe on some third party’s intellectual-property rights — and there's no legal protection if is does. In other words, your business would have to fend for itself if it were sued for patent, copyright, or trade-secret infringement over code. My company had this problem and it nearly destroyed us. Someone went and put in what they thought would help our company and users. Turns out that was intellectual property of someone else. Six months later, we received a court notice.

How Open Source Nearly Killed My Business
By John Rampton

You get what you pay for.

So, now their copy will only be able to run the officially released v23 code or their modified code based on v22?

Reverse engineered the code?

PinMAME can help you reverse engineer code. I've done that with some of the classic Bally stuff. While you can take the ROMs and just run them through a disassembler, that won't tell you what code vs data is. You need to see it run to get the actual code segments lined up correctly.

Pinball is one electronics item where you are LUCKY in most (not all) cases to be able to obtain a schematic, let alone software code. Many other electronics items good luck to obtain a schematic.