Frequently Asked Questions

Here is a collection of questions that either I've been asked frequently or I believe people would be asking for.

Why is Kosaka not open-source?

Kosaka is (or aiming to be) a commercial product

While I've had very decent success with Flashcord's donations, I am very skeptical that in the FOSS world you can make a profit, especially with a Discord Bot such as Kosaka. Marketing and spreading the word about this Discord Bot is a SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult task than I have expected and I doubt I can rely this time on people willingly deciding themselves to throw their money at me (Flashcord had HUNDREDS of users, Kosaka has yet to reach in the double digits... Safe to say just leaving a donation button out in the wild isn't going to work).

Furthermore because of how Kosaka is structured, it is ungodly easy to rip code and dump them into another bot, something that I fear (and have feared with as well Flashcord equally in the past, hence its very restrictive license), I strongly believe the Discord Bot market is an incredibly daunting challenge to get yourself into, a lot of bots have already well established themselves and if I dare open-source Kosaka with features never before seen, I run the risk of other bots just yoinking my code while adding credit that's barely noticeable anywhere on their bot. Yes, I am aware there are licenses to prevent this very problem, but for the lack of a better word I am too scared shit-less of it happening anyway and as I am not able to engage in any legal battle due to my very unfavorable financial condition I'd rather take the nuclear option and just not risk to begin with putting my code up online. It also doesn't help that I've naturally always have been overprotective of my work especially during it's early stages.

So does that mean Kosaka will never be open-source and will introduce "premium" features?

It all depends on popularity and how much I feel like I should be rewarded for my work.
IF Kosaka becomes extremely popular to the likes of Flashcord then YES, Kosaka will be open-sourced as then I will have a greater chance of having generous people hand over donations, supporting my work and helping me out.
Otherwise I did set up a donation goal on Ko-Fi that will change over time depending on how much I worked on Kosaka, the goal's target is intentionally hidden because I do not want to pressure people into donating in the name of the Kosaka project due to how expensive and most importantly time consuming it is to work on. If that genuinely bothers people however then I will make it public.
As for the premium features... Maybe.
It's no secret that it doesn't cost me anything to host Kosaka 24/7 but like I established earlier, well I have to live right? These students debts ain't gonna pay themselves! Let's be real, spending time programming Kosaka is fun and all but I could just get a regular, infinitely higher paying job for a single month instead.
I have thus thought about giving Kosaka a premium tier, something where you just have to spend 1€ on Ko-Fi ONCE and then you are forever a premium user. I haven't implemented it yet and I'm really unsure if this is a good idea due to well, obviously it being a red flag since Kosaka is still very much a "freshly taken out of the oven" bot. Hence the maybe.

How often does Kosaka updates?

I'm aiming for a biweekly update schedule, although certain updates (notably v2.4.0) may take significantly longer due to the amount of testing I have to do. The Sirio Network discord server is incredibly dead and truly makes bug testing on a larger scale a true pain in the butt, and I really don't want to push broken code to everyone else.