I don't want to wait any longer. I am calling the poll here. I am going to make it open source for now and this can be revisited later if needed.

Discord poll from a year ago for historical records

Forward: If this could be shared around to get as many opinions as possible that'd be great. You can log into this forum using your Discord account. It only collects your email and username to facilitate registration. I'd like an accurate view of what the community wants from this project so I can make the right decision as all 3 of them can change the path greatly.

 

Explained:

1: Open source
Everything would be open source and published on GitHub. End of story.

2: Closed source
Everything would be closed source and only my server would run the files. End of story.

3: Half and half
This plays into my idea of an HB hosting service. With this, the server would be closed source and the client would be open source (or partially open source). What this would do is it would allow me to basically "rent" out hosting for HB servers but still give decent customization to server owners. I would provide all the infrastructure and software required to manage this (and even provide means to modify the server via extensive configurations and imported user code for more advanced changes) for a cost. This means anyone could click a few buttons and spin up their own HB server immediately without messing with hosts, code, or anything. This system would bring with it a constant flow of updates from myself for everyone. Feature updates would be packaged into options that can be enabled/disabled at will on servers. With this I would still run my own server, but such a system would very much so consume a lot of my time.

 

#3 wouldn't be off the table if closed source was selected, but it would be somewhat pointless if it was open source. Reason being is if open source is chosen, my focus will be on creating an open source environment in the code. Such features that #3 would require will be extremely complicated and extensive and I wouldn't want to open source my entire business model of offering hosting. So 1 and 3 are mutually exclusive, but 2 and 3 are compatible.

Additional note: If closed source/half is selected, I WILL release ALL code upon the end of life of my involvement in HB. That is, when I stop working on HB entirely. This applies to the half/half deal too. If/when I leave the HB scene, I will release the code for the server and client allowing anyone to run not only a server themselves, but the hosting service too.

 

#1 and 2 are conducive to getting things rolling quickly. #3 will delay things, but may present some interesting things to the community. I leave the choice to the community.

Had to recreate the forum after a migration gone wrong a few months ago. Only now got around to doing it. Reminder: You will need a forum account to access the game. You can login with Discord if desired, but you will still need to set a password as that is how the client will auth.