Announcement Regarding the Status of Zelda Classic Development

[Gleeok]

On September the 13th, 2023, three developers and members of purezc, Connor Clark, Emily, and Deedee, perpetrated an act so brazen as to possibly be considered the worst offense in the history of Zelda Classic. These three have willfully and of their own volition betrayed the trust of Armageddon Games, ZC developers, and the entire Zelda Classic community when they executed a removal and deletion of the master codebase on github used for development of the ZQuest and Zelda Classic programs. This codebase is now located in a private repository where there is no access by anyone. In short, they stole the property of Armageddon Games and conspired to retain it for themselves for personal interests. There are really not many words I can use to express this betrayal of trust placed in them.

The investigation into this matter and into events which may of preceded it of the last two years is still ongoing, so I will not speculate as to motives as of yet; except to say that the differences between forking, cloning, or mirroring a repository from what they have done is that all past forks, subscribers, links, etc. now point to their own private organization rather than that of Armageddon Games, and the simple facts regarding the byproducts of this move allude to a motive which requires, at least in part, the appropriation of the userbase as well. I will remind everyone that ZC is not a personal project and that developers should not be making modifications to the core program for selfish reasons.

Therefore Connor Clark, Venrob aka Emily, and Dimentio aka Dimi aka Deedee, are hereby banned for life from all Zelda Classic development, including, but not limited to, access to development forums and to all code repositories used for official ZC development. Because of the nature of this offense, the confession from each of them, their refusal to return what they stole, their contempt to other developers and staff, and other reasons which will not be disclosed here, there is no possibility of appeal at this time.

Until this situation is resolved development of ZC will remain on hold for the time being. We are also in agreement with many complaints from users of the ZC community that the focus and direction the program has taken recently is not in the best interests of the average user or even the community as a whole. On a personal note, I am very sorry to have to share this bad news with you all; this is not the direction anyone was hoping for when ZC became open source almost nine years ago.

[MasterSwordUltima]

Unfortunate that this sort of thing happened, however grateful that actions have been taken to remedy the situation.

[BFeely]

Isn't their repo public now? Couldn't you just clone it and host it back in your organization?

[Asuna Yuuki Nagato]

Isn't their repo public now? Couldn't you just clone it and host it back in your organization?

Yes, this is the new official repo:

https://github.com/ZeldaClassic/ZeldaClassic

This is the stolen repo:

https://github.com/ZQuestClassic/ZQuestClassic

[vegeta1215]

The way it sounded like things went down was that 1) the now banned developers copied the original GIT repo into their own account, cutting off other AGN ZC team members, and 2) after doing so went back and deleted the original GIT repo, so it appeared their copied repo was the one and only ZC. Is that correct? I totally missed when all this happened and tried to catch up, but I didn't get a reply to my December post, so I wasn't sure.

Based on the posts from the last few days, am I right we were able to get the original repo back? If so, I'm so glad Though since the now banned developers took the ZQuest Classic name (which Zelda Classic was changed to at some point) when they copied the original repo, we had to revert back to the original name of "Zelda Classic" right? (which I actually prefer).

But yeah, if the now banned developers weren't happy with the way things were going with ZC, they could have done a fork, which is the whole point of forking software! I don't remember seeing an explanation as to why they didn't do a fork, so to me their actions came off as really pretentious and without regard to the history of ZC and all the developers that came before them.

[BFeely]

Actually it had been renamed to https://github.com/ArmageddonGames/ZQuestClassic for a while, before the repo got transferred to the ZQuestClassic organization.

What happened recently was Gleeok downloaded a source snapshot of the ZQuestClassic repo then uploaded it as an "initial commit" to ZeldaClassic/ZeldaClassic repo.

He could have easily just pressed the Fork button on the repo and automatically got a copy under his full control preserving the commit history in the process, as their repo is still fully public.

In addition, after forking, you can "detach" a fork by going to https://support.github.com/request/fork

[Gleeok]

The way it sounded like things went down was that 1) the now banned developers copied the original GIT repo into their own account, cutting off other AGN ZC team members, and 2) after doing so went back and deleted the original GIT repo, so it appeared their copied repo was the one and only ZC. Is that correct? I totally missed when all this happened and tried to catch up, but I didn't get a reply to my December post, so I wasn't sure.

Based on the posts from the last few days, am I right we were able to get the original repo back? If so, I'm so glad Though since the now banned developers took the ZQuest Classic name (which Zelda Classic was changed to at some point) when they copied the original repo, we had to revert back to the original name of "Zelda Classic" right? (which I actually prefer).

But yeah, if the now banned developers weren't happy with the way things were going with ZC, they could have done a fork, which is the whole point of forking software! I don't remember seeing an explanation as to why they didn't do a fork, so to me their actions came off as really pretentious and without regard to the history of ZC and all the developers that came before them.

Sorry for not responding, I figured the next update would help explain the situation, but we haven't gotten there yet.
Unfortunately, no. They just stole (transferred) the entire repo and still have possession of it. It had nothing to do with being unhappy with ZC since they were the only ones working on it at the time.They simply wanted nothing to do with agn, so they made their own website and misappropriated the entire project. It really is that bad, and we have all the receipts to back up these assertions. Even now, you will not find any mention of www.zeldaclassic.com or Armageddon Games from any of their links either at purezc, github, or any of the rest of it. Moreover they have been going around to Zelda sites and removing or altering the history of the zeldaclassic project even though AGN has been the home of Zelda Classic for 25 years! purezc is entirely complicit in this act of betrayal.

Actually it had been renamed to https://github.com/ArmageddonGames/ZQuestClassic for a while, before the repo got transferred to the ZQuestClassic organization.

What happened recently was Gleeok downloaded a source snapshot of the ZQuestClassic repo then uploaded it as an "initial commit" to ZeldaClassic/ZeldaClassic repo.

He could have easily just pressed the Fork button on the repo and automatically got a copy under his full control preserving the commit history in the process, as their repo is still fully public.

In addition, after forking, you can "detach" a fork by going to https://support.github.com/request/fork

Let's not entertain too much speculation please.
We have multiple repositories in the background you are not aware of yet, and two have full history. The repo in question was made public for vetting and various purposes; it is branch-specific and gigabyte+ of unwanted and unused cruft were simply left out of it. If you are interested in making sure we maintain the history I'll be happy to send you a message and a link when this happens in the next week or two. I do believe it is important as well. Thank you for your concern.

[vegeta1215]

Sorry for not responding, I figured the next update would help explain the situation, but we haven't gotten there yet.
Unfortunately, no. They just stole (transferred) the entire repo and still have possession of it. It had nothing to do with being unhappy with ZC since they were the only ones working on it at the time.They simply wanted nothing to do with agn, so they made their own website and misappropriated the entire project. It really is that bad, and we have all the receipts to back up these assertions. Even now, you will not find any mention of www.zeldaclassic.com or Armageddon Games from any of their links either at purezc, github, or any of the rest of it. Moreover they have been going around to Zelda sites and removing or altering the history of the zeldaclassic project even though AGN has been the home of Zelda Classic for 25 years! purezc is entirely complicit in this act of betrayal.

Wow, that is really terrible. I just don't understand some people I tell you what, Raichu86/Wild Bill (RIP), a friend and long time member of AGN who originally founded PureZC, would never have stood for it. He loved AGN and loved Zelda Classic. In my opinion everything they did is a betrayal of him as well.

Anyways, thanks for the update. I'll be curious to hear more later on.

[BFeely]

GitHub is based on Git which means getting possession of your own repo from it is completely trivial.

[Moosh]

Moreover they have been going around to Zelda sites and removing or altering the history of the zeldaclassic project even though AGN has been the home of Zelda Classic for 25 years!

Do you have some examples of these sites? I've heard nothing about any such effort, and find it unlikely given how little outreach the ZC community has had. We're pretty isolated and have barely put in any effort to advertise the program to the greater internet or even other Zelda fan sites lately despite declining interest. So I'd be surprised to hear if someone did put in that effort.

I'm also kinda surprised that PureZC actually removed the AGN link on their about page. Pure is one of the slowest moving sites I know and they got on that change with unprecedented speed. I'd have figured they'd just forget it was there. There's probably more links buried in the forum's many old pinned topics that they have forgotten. In fact...Yup, there we are.

Sorry for not responding, I figured the next update would help explain the situation, but we haven't gotten there yet.
We have multiple repositories in the background you are not aware of yet, and two have full history. The repo in question was made public for vetting and various purposes; it is branch-specific and gigabyte+ of unwanted and unused cruft were simply left out of it. If you are interested in making sure we maintain the history I'll be happy to send you a message and a link when this happens in the next week or two. I do believe it is important as well. Thank you for your concern.

Are you at liberty to share anything about the planned direction for the AGN repo and what cruft is being done away with? Understandable if it's all being kept hush-hush for the moment, just curious how the two versions will differ and why users would want to pick one over the other.