PE
PolyibousExtreme,
I appreciate the apology.
You asked why I didn't reach out to you, but we were already in contact. You filed an enhancement request with the HOTR project while you were building OutputHooker. I did the work and told you it was completed and would leave it open if there were problems after you checked it out. But you closed it without a word, shortly after sending you the message. By your 4th release I still didn't know OutputHooker existed. The contact was there; you just didn't use it.
What's genuinely sad is that I would have embraced OutputHooker. I would have stopped my own development on the MameHooker INI side for you. We could have built something together because that's what this community is supposed to be about.
Instead I found your GitHub on my own, saw a credits section with three names that didn't include mine, and recognized my own class member functions, globals, and core HOTR architecture throughout the code. I could have overlooked the lack of contact. I could have overlooked the use of the code. But no credit, and what appears to be a deliberate effort to obscure the source, that was too much.
Open-source runs on trust, and right now that trust is broken. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I'll be temporarily privatizing the repositories while HOTR is in active development. This change will be made not because I have lost faith in this community, but because I have to be able to trust who I'm sharing it with. And I fully intend to release everything when it is completed.
Just so it is clear for you and everyone in this community: I'm not going anywhere. I'm still building, still committed to HOTR, and this community means a lot to me. I've never asked for anything from it, not even to promote my own work. While I am not in a position to collaborate with you directly after this experience, I welcome anyone else in the community who wants to work together. They can reach out. That door has always been open, and it always will be. That's how this was always supposed to work.
Darren