The new MWSE-Lua interface

[akortunov]

deal with draconian Linux-hyperfocused practices

This "Linux-hyperfocusing" is not intended. Since Windows users already have Morrowind, MGE and MWSE, they often do not bother to contribute OpenMW at all.
Linux and Mac users do not have a good way to play Morrowind (WINE provides an unstable result, even without MGE and MWSE), so there is an only option for them - to help to develop OpenMW.
As a result, we have developers for Linux and Mac, which can make development and packaging process handy for them and which can handle OS-specific bugs, and have users to test these changes.
For Windows we lack of such developers, and when someone encounters a Windows-specific bug, in many cases we can just say that we sorry.

[Chris]

It's more of "Graff is a massive autist and thus the only one still maintaining a stable doom sourceport, especially one as incredibly messy as gzdoom".

Graf is hardly the only person regularly working on GZDoom. I count three or four other developers that regularly contribute, and a few others that occasionally make pull requests (plus the odd random person that turns up wanting to contribute code). That Graf so heavily invests in the project is what you'd want and expect from a leader/maintainer that cares about the longevity of the project (though even he has a day job, and has been known to just disappear for days or weeks at a time; the project survives and continues with the help of others during those absences).

That doesn't speak at all about the quality of Doomsday VS G/Zdoom

Even while it was still under development, there were complaints of Doomsday being fundamentally unstable and mods being system-specific. The Doom64 Absolution mod from years ago being one such example, even though the engine was cross-platform the mod required Windows for its plugin, and so I had to run the Windows build of a cross-platform engine in Wine (only recently did someone finally make a GZDoom-based version that can work natively).

[SeaFox]

It seems this debate may be the result of two incompatible goals.

1: Maximize stability and security. (Sandbox, no plugins allowed)
2: Maximize power of mod creators to produce mods quickly and easily. (No sandbox, plugin architecture for game engine)

Simple solution: provide the option for OpenMW users to disable the default sandbox mode and allow use of plugins. This could easily be done in an ini file, or in the game launcher.

[NullCascade]

It seems this debate may be the result of two incompatible goals.

1: Maximize stability and security. (Sandbox, no plugins allowed)
2: Maximize power of mod creators to produce mods quickly and easily. (No sandbox, plugin architecture for game engine)

Simple solution: provide the option for OpenMW users to disable the default sandbox mode and allow use of plugins. This could easily be done in an ini file, or in the game launcher.

Came up on the last page, and last time some of these ideas were hashed out. Big man says no. No removing the sandbox, even with an ini setting.

[SeaFox]

It seems this debate may be the result of two incompatible goals.

1: Maximize stability and security. (Sandbox, no plugins allowed)
2: Maximize power of mod creators to produce mods quickly and easily. (No sandbox, plugin architecture for game engine)

Simple solution: provide the option for OpenMW users to disable the default sandbox mode and allow use of plugins. This could easily be done in an ini file, or in the game launcher.

Came up on the last page, and last time some of these ideas were hashed out. Big man says no. No removing the sandbox, even with an ini setting.

That seems a bit extreme. Any idea why?

[sjek]

Sandboxing by default, and having to opt-into it is all well and good. It'd be pretty easy to determine sandboxing at game launch and set it up accordingly. Unfortunately this idea has been brought up before, and I'm pretty sure Zini shot it down hard.

+1
Edit: .......

[NullCascade]

It seems this debate may be the result of two incompatible goals.

1: Maximize stability and security. (Sandbox, no plugins allowed)
2: Maximize power of mod creators to produce mods quickly and easily. (No sandbox, plugin architecture for game engine)

Simple solution: provide the option for OpenMW users to disable the default sandbox mode and allow use of plugins. This could easily be done in an ini file, or in the game launcher.

Came up on the last page, and last time some of these ideas were hashed out. Big man says no. No removing the sandbox, even with an ini setting.

That seems a bit extreme. Any idea why?

As mentioned before (and probably drowned out by all the noise) there will be a separate discussion about the choice of language before we get started on the design document; but just the language, the question of sandboxing is not open to discussion.

Emphasis mine.

From what people have discussed with me in PMs (though I couldn't find a quote in my direct googling) it stems from, I kid you not, a fear of viruses.

[SeaFox]

It seems this debate may be the result of two incompatible goals.

1: Maximize stability and security. (Sandbox, no plugins allowed)
2: Maximize power of mod creators to produce mods quickly and easily. (No sandbox, plugin architecture for game engine)

Simple solution: provide the option for OpenMW users to disable the default sandbox mode and allow use of plugins. This could easily be done in an ini file, or in the game launcher.

Came up on the last page, and last time some of these ideas were hashed out. Big man says no. No removing the sandbox, even with an ini setting.

That seems a bit extreme. Any idea why?

As mentioned before (and probably drowned out by all the noise) there will be a separate discussion about the choice of language before we get started on the design document; but just the language, the question of sandboxing is not open to discussion.

Emphasis mine.

From what people have discussed with me in PMs (though I couldn't find a quote in my direct googling) it stems from, I kid you not, a fear of viruses.

Interesting. I would not think that there would be much risk of viruses. Any risk that does exist would be mostly for users of Windows anyway.

[Chris]

Simple solution: provide the option for OpenMW users to disable the default sandbox mode and allow use of plugins. This could easily be done in an ini file, or in the game launcher.

That's just ignoring the issue. The point is to encourage mods to avoid it, to avoid stability issues with the engine, and to not open the system to attack. The modders that want to use a plugin will just go and do that, telling users to enable external plugins to make things easy for them*, and users will largely do it because there's a mod or mods they want that need it and they don't fully understand the repercussions. It's entirely self-defeating.

* I don't say this negatively. It's understandable for developers to take the path of least resistance, or to take the path most obvious to them. We do it all the time. But just because it's easy or obvious doesn't necessarily mean it's the best way, and giving an easy workaround to take the easy/obvious path doesn't effectively encourage best practices when they don't align.

[SeaFox]

The point is to encourage mods to avoid it, to avoid stability issues with the engine, and to not open the system to attack.

Yes, but as I said before:

It seems this debate may be the result of two incompatible goals.

1: Maximize stability and security. (Sandbox, no plugins allowed)
2: Maximize power of mod creators to produce mods quickly and easily. (No sandbox, plugin architecture for game engine)

Simple solution: provide the option for OpenMW users to disable the default sandbox mode and allow use of plugins. This could easily be done in an ini file, or in the game launcher.