MC-Market Community,
Note: Please leave any questions or concerns in the thread below, I'd love to hear what you have to say. This thread was originally posted on Spigot Forums so consider reading from the perspective of an amateur developer, not an entrepreneur/marketeer.
ABSTRACT Obligation and passion; the two true motives for writing code. Having volunteered at dozens of Minecraft servers, I've never felt obligated nor passionate to write code at the whim of someone else’s needs. It’s difficult to be passionate about writing code for someone else’s vision, and impossible to feel obligated without being paid. Almost all Spigot developers have volunteered at someone else’s server at least once before eventually gravitating towards; (1) freelancing for bad pay; (2) working for a large-server for bad pay; (3) publishing paid plugins; (4) focusing on open-source projects; (5) creating own server; (6) losing passion for programming. This phenomenon is caused by a poor social dynamic in new projects. The effect… unoriginal servers and increased burn-out within the development community.
OBLIGATION is the enemy of improvement. For an intermediate developer to lock themselves to a server owner or customer base, it's an unnecessary tradeoff stunting growth for short-term monetary gain. Motivating yourself to code the wishes of your boss based off the promises of monetary gain is no way for a beginning developer to improve their own skills and follow their passion. Boss in the scenario means both customer or manager, applying to (1) freelancing and (2) working for an enterprise, or (3) creating paid plugins.
PASSION is energy. Seeing the product of your labor energizes you and keeps you motivated. Launching your own server and seeing it succeed can be one of the most gratifying and energizing things. The issue however; it's easy to get burnt-out whilst working alone and it can be very difficult to find a partner who you see eye-to-eye with and share a similar vision. Picking the wrong partner can just as easily be the reason for burn out as well. That's where open-source comes in; a great way to collaborate with others and contribute back to the community. Although this doesn't come with the amount of fulfillment launching a server has, at least you don't get burnt out as easy. What if we got the best of both worlds?
INTENT Whether a project be created for the purposes of pecuniary gain or simply as a hobby, the power politics between 'staff members' is almost always an issue. The over-competitive and political environment in development stages of a server puts an unequal pressure on developers further causing burn-out. As a volunteer, no 'manager' has the right to ask you for a timeline or to adhere to their vision. Any manager or server owner who does is either manipulative or incredibly immature. Many servers claim to be community-oriented, yet fail to put their users nor ethics over profits.
YOU won’t make a living off selling your amateur Spigot code, please stop trying. By putting your intermediate code behind a copyright wall of proprietorship, you stunt your growth as a programmer. Contributing and participating in open-source is a fast-track towards improving and learning skills more valuable than any server-owner could pay you. The only obligation you should have is towards improving yourself and growing a programmer. Spigot is the best introduction to programming, but isn’t a life-long career.
This summer, I intend to start a new project. A Minecraft server that is fully open-sourced (under AGPL) and has workflows to automatically build & push any merged pull-requests onto the production server. This means that anybody could contribute to the project and see their changes on the server in as little as 24 hours. The side benefit being all pull-requests are an open-forum, with the community being able to input opinions and debate issues before PRs are merged. This would promote a true community approach towards server development. For a player to create a suggestion, directly talk with a developer, see your idea become code, then be pushed to the server introduces that player to programming in an open-source and supportive community. That open-source mentality will stick with them forever.
Full regulatory compliance, ethics, and user-privacy first. No in-game purchases available. Free speech respecting, no invasive tracking or advertisements. OOP Principles & best practices used to do things the right way, not the easy way.
If you resonate at all with my message, reach out via MC-Market conversations or email. No matter your age, experience, or resources- passion & self-obligation can go a long way.
Theodore Bong
github.com/TheoBong
[email protected]
Start a Conversation
Note: Please leave any questions or concerns in the thread below, I'd love to hear what you have to say. This thread was originally posted on Spigot Forums so consider reading from the perspective of an amateur developer, not an entrepreneur/marketeer.
ABSTRACT Obligation and passion; the two true motives for writing code. Having volunteered at dozens of Minecraft servers, I've never felt obligated nor passionate to write code at the whim of someone else’s needs. It’s difficult to be passionate about writing code for someone else’s vision, and impossible to feel obligated without being paid. Almost all Spigot developers have volunteered at someone else’s server at least once before eventually gravitating towards; (1) freelancing for bad pay; (2) working for a large-server for bad pay; (3) publishing paid plugins; (4) focusing on open-source projects; (5) creating own server; (6) losing passion for programming. This phenomenon is caused by a poor social dynamic in new projects. The effect… unoriginal servers and increased burn-out within the development community.
OBLIGATION is the enemy of improvement. For an intermediate developer to lock themselves to a server owner or customer base, it's an unnecessary tradeoff stunting growth for short-term monetary gain. Motivating yourself to code the wishes of your boss based off the promises of monetary gain is no way for a beginning developer to improve their own skills and follow their passion. Boss in the scenario means both customer or manager, applying to (1) freelancing and (2) working for an enterprise, or (3) creating paid plugins.
PASSION is energy. Seeing the product of your labor energizes you and keeps you motivated. Launching your own server and seeing it succeed can be one of the most gratifying and energizing things. The issue however; it's easy to get burnt-out whilst working alone and it can be very difficult to find a partner who you see eye-to-eye with and share a similar vision. Picking the wrong partner can just as easily be the reason for burn out as well. That's where open-source comes in; a great way to collaborate with others and contribute back to the community. Although this doesn't come with the amount of fulfillment launching a server has, at least you don't get burnt out as easy. What if we got the best of both worlds?
INTENT Whether a project be created for the purposes of pecuniary gain or simply as a hobby, the power politics between 'staff members' is almost always an issue. The over-competitive and political environment in development stages of a server puts an unequal pressure on developers further causing burn-out. As a volunteer, no 'manager' has the right to ask you for a timeline or to adhere to their vision. Any manager or server owner who does is either manipulative or incredibly immature. Many servers claim to be community-oriented, yet fail to put their users nor ethics over profits.
YOU won’t make a living off selling your amateur Spigot code, please stop trying. By putting your intermediate code behind a copyright wall of proprietorship, you stunt your growth as a programmer. Contributing and participating in open-source is a fast-track towards improving and learning skills more valuable than any server-owner could pay you. The only obligation you should have is towards improving yourself and growing a programmer. Spigot is the best introduction to programming, but isn’t a life-long career.
This summer, I intend to start a new project. A Minecraft server that is fully open-sourced (under AGPL) and has workflows to automatically build & push any merged pull-requests onto the production server. This means that anybody could contribute to the project and see their changes on the server in as little as 24 hours. The side benefit being all pull-requests are an open-forum, with the community being able to input opinions and debate issues before PRs are merged. This would promote a true community approach towards server development. For a player to create a suggestion, directly talk with a developer, see your idea become code, then be pushed to the server introduces that player to programming in an open-source and supportive community. That open-source mentality will stick with them forever.
Full regulatory compliance, ethics, and user-privacy first. No in-game purchases available. Free speech respecting, no invasive tracking or advertisements. OOP Principles & best practices used to do things the right way, not the easy way.
If you resonate at all with my message, reach out via MC-Market conversations or email. No matter your age, experience, or resources- passion & self-obligation can go a long way.
Theodore Bong
github.com/TheoBong
[email protected]
Start a Conversation
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