Why I avoid giving help regarding my Growtopia tools
Posted on 04/22/21 19:45:00If you've ever been to my personal Discord server (which is now closed down, more on that in a later post) you may have noticed that I am extremely cold to anyone that has come to ask for simple advice on their project regarding Growtopia. I wish I didn't have to be like that, but I've been left no choice, because of copycats.
Copycats
Most of the time when someone from a Growtopia background ends up coming to ask advice from me regarding any software project, it ends up being "hey, can I copy your work" in one way or another. I wouldn't mind or even have to answer that question if the project in question was open-source with a copyleft license, but more often than not it's about my web-tools. The most common case is my old "Cernodile's World Planner" that I created back in 2017 which I have not updated for a few years now - to solve that issue, I let a good friend of mine healLV host and maintain it on their website. However, some people did not get the memo - I still get messages from people trying to ""continue and maintain"" my work, when I have clearly emphasised and redirected people to use the version on okass.net which has all the bugfixes and item data updates they could ask for. Some people still have kept pushing after I've told them that I have no intentions to support their copy nor explain what anything does.
Claiming ownership
I'm going to use my world planner here as an example. The gripe I have with people making copies is removing the attribution. They change the tool's attribution to make it look like they did all the work - or if not removing attribution then claiming that I authorized it. I've done no such thing!
Really!? You're really going to do that?
Now I understand there's reasons to changing product name, but this is just blatant lie if all you've done is change the product name, remove all notices of me existing within the project and claim it as your own. And most importantly - this is not an open-source project. If I have not given you explicit permission on it, which I almost never do, then at best you can tinker around with it locally, but not put it out there to claim as your own. This is not only unethical towards me, but it's also unethical towards healLV who put effort into creating the patches.
Not everyone is like this
I understand that not everyone is like this - and I do apologise to those who came to me without such intentions only to be turned down by me being cold to them. I decided it's healthier for me to stop invites to my personal Discord server and cut down the last communication line I have with Growtopia's community. I would like to emphasise that I do not actively play the game anymore and I have no interest in JavaScript anymore - both of which are now haunting me because of these people.
Thanks for reading!
Socials & where to find me
Matrix space: #main:cernodile.com
Matrix DM: @joann:cernodile.com
