The Retrobution team's lead developer has responded to our petition: "It's my choice what I choose to do with my own work, just because I'm in the OpenFusion team doesn't mean my personal projects all need to be open source."
We expected them to say this, we aren't trying to force anybody to release something they don't want to. This highlights the importance of our petition- it's on the record now that they do not wish to release their existing fork of OpenFusion to the public. Ask yourself... why not? If the community shows them this is what we want, maybe they will change their minds.
--- F.A.Q. ---
Q: But isn't Retro open source already?
A: Existing forks of OpenFusion on github that are meant to be compatible with FusionFall Retro are hundreds of commits behind and contain a plethora of bugs. There's also not any up to date gruntwork with accurate drops/locations for the NPCs as they were in 2019/2020.
Q: Why should they feel obligated to release an open source server for FusionFall Retro?
A: The Retrobution leadership is part of the OpenFusion team whose stated mission is to preserve FusionFall in it's original state... but what about the original state of FusionFall Retro? The servers you can play today are heavily modified versions of what was available in 2020. There is no place that you can easily download usable versions of historical builds to host a single player server for yourself to play on. When the community mostly agrees that Retro is the best version of the game, why can you host an Academy server easily but finding software and builds for Retro is nearly impossible.
Q: Why should I care? How does this affect me?
A: There are many things that were added to Retro you may never get to experience. Guide Vendors, Sitting emotes, the 2019 gingerbread gazebo. Stuff Retrobution has no plans to bring back or make use of. Only 4 versions of FusionFall Retro have been publicly archived and they are missing a lot of the event material many people never got a chance to play. Our petition calls for the release of these builds so that players may experience what they were like. Additionally, many people in rural areas have limited access to the internet and it would greatly benefit many to have a singleplayer option for what is known to be the best version of FusionFall.
Q: Why don't you just do it yourself?
A: That's not the goal of our project. We are python developers that have in depth knowledge of what it takes to mod the game. The server software for FusionFall is coded in C++, a language we have very limited knowledge of. The Retrobution & OpenFusion teams already have private forks of the server software that is compatible with Retro. For the public's benefit, we argue that this software should be open source.