Question: If I understand the licensing right, it is impossible for me to get the source code without paying at least $35,000 per year. I am not an educational institution, and I am not a company. I just want to hack in some changes into the sources. David Baker's seemed to indicate that I should be able to get the sources, but my reading of the license indicates that I can't.
Still not done. Look, you have to realize that no amount of DRM will prevent people from trying to hack this, and why should you honestly care about that? The only thing to keep secure is the points system, so you should process that on your server instead of client-side. Your rosetta@home system can augment that by securely evaluating submitted proteins for scoring. BOINC already does this internally and there's a great essay on this very issue. If people can create new clients that implement innovative ways to fold protiens, then so be it. Mabye we can combine r@h credits with foldit points to allow people to submit partially-finished protens to the rosetta system for further analysis. In a project like this, with lives that could be saved, openness can only make us stronger. If people can be trusted to fix protiens, then why not the code itself?
Open Source is a great idea but within the scope of a project like this, it presents formidable challenges. If you think the current development staff is "short-handed", think what is going to happen when more bodies are required for defect management (bug reporting), documentation, workload management (let's face it, someone has to keep track of what is being worked on), and quality control. I think that it would become more "hassles" than what it is worth to Baker Labs to consider this too seriously without taking all the other "burdens" into account. The project would lose cohesiveness too quickly if the work wasn't properly directed and many of the Open Source advocates would quickly become disinterested when they found that they weren't allowed to be "artists" and were relegated to the role of "contract programmers". I believe in Open Source but without the proper "command and control" schema in place, the "negatives" would far outweigh the "positives". Just my two cents for what it is worth.
Another old thread
Resolved? No it is not resolved.
Foldit is crashing on my ubuntu box 3 times an hour and I don't have source code to use to find fixes. I am starting to wonder why I'm still here.
I think your bug report more properly belongs in one of the similar Linux crash feedback items such as this one http://fold.it/portal/node/989138
This was a general discussion on open sourcing the fold.it game, and I think that has been answered, and anyone still campaigning for open source should read the post by tallguy-13088 near the end of this thread.