[HTC Desire S] thantos2024:
Actually, when it comes to shareing tweaks etc, venom doesn't share. Ever. No exceptions. If they even think that the smallest piece of their coding, even when it is dead and cannot be used to activate anything, exists in a file the will point blank refuse to allow it to be used. This I know for fact from personal experience. (Before I released Desire XS, I spent a lot of time cleaning out a one su Rom that had some items in it that had been kanged from various devs, I had it all cleaned apart from a few bits of dead code that might have belonged team venom, but I wasn't sure, so I contacted them, explaining the situation and offering to send them the apk to look at so they could see whether it was actually their code, and if I could still release the rom if it was as the code did nothing any more. Their entire response was "lol NO".)

Personally I do not believe that this kind philosophy contributes towards the community as a whole and just promotes elitism among devs as people try to find a way to out do each other and refuse to share improvements to try and keep themselves 1 up on the "competition".

However, that said, team venom did custom build the code for their roms, and therefore have every right to protect that code in anyway they see fit. Don't forget, that once you share something once, it is then open for use by anyone under XDA rules, no picking or choosing who can and can't make use of it.

Hence why they only use members of team venom to do ports to other devices, if not, the rom that is ported can be used in whole, or part by anyone else, including all future versions except when there is a major code change. You see the problem, if they agree to let someone port it outside of team venom, then that port, along with all tweaks has been made available to another dev, that means they can't say no to anyone else using it providing that credit is given saying where it came from. They would have copies cropping up all over the place, and they would more likely than not also be the ones who get bombarded by people with complaints if that dev then breaks things within the venom tweaks package.

It may well be this issue more than any other that is why team venom won't share their work. After all they put a lot of time into getting their tweaks pack just so, and the last thing they want, is to find themselves dealing with butchered versions of it, causing no end of problems with people's devices, and, by association, running down the name that they have worked hard to build for themselves within the community.

On the other side of the coin their are devs, such as lowveld and garleest who go in a completely opposite direction to try and help out and support projects other than their own, both of these devs contacted me through the thread an pm offering support and advice on how to proceed, how to work with the smali correctly, and allowing to be able to take apart things within their own roms in order to see how things worked, and what changes where needed to make things behave in certain ways. Truth is without them and others here at xda this rom may well not be what it is today. This is why I will always try to ensure that all credit is given to people in the op, and those who guided me through in the early days such as lowveld, garleest, amidabuddha will always be given credit in the op of all my roms as I very likely wouldn't be here without them.

It is also why my sharing policy is simple, take it, use it, just add a credit for any work I took the time to do, we all want the same thing when all is said and done, to make the best rom possible, and the more people that work together, to bring.the best parts of different roms together the better the end results.

There is one other question I ask myself, that I think I will leave you all the judge on.

Can I really class myself as a dev? I ask this as I like to think that I am more than someone who just ports, after all this isn't just a case of copy and past, I have altered the code to enable things like quick settings, the landscape mode in XSV etc, and while some things I got walked through on who to go about doing them, others I have had to learn for myself. But, I certainly am not in the same league as the likes of lowveld and team venom yet, who have rewritten entire sections of code and built code from scratch for things like their tweaks packages etc. (although I am working on getting there.)

So, what do you guys think? Have I really earned the right to call myself a dev, or should I really still be classed as more of a porter still for now?