The State of the 3DS CFW scene

As many people may know, I created a small guide to understanding CFWs and to explain the current CFWs. I did this because I love CFWs and I believe one glove does not fit all. I also did this to help the community by explaining the features of these CFWs and break them down into an easy to follow and understandable guide. But I also did this to bring attention to difference CFWs to help the community really figure out what CFW works best for them. I like I said, I love Luma3DS and I see how it got to the number one spot, but it's not the only CFW. Which brings to why I am making this blog/rant.

Luma3DS isn't the only CFW, it's great, but it's not the only CFW. I respect and adore Aurora Wright, her and I go way back. But the simple truth is, there's more than just Luma3DS and Luma3DS does not fit the needs for everyone. I say this because all of this Luma3DS spam has actually hurt the community. I've seen countless CFW threads get spammed with, "WHY WOULD MAKE ANOTHER CFW WHEN WE HAVE LUMA?!?!?" and devs are basically bullied off this site in the name of Luma3DS. Devs have to defend their project or announce that it's no threat to Luma3DS or community will attack them. This is not acceptable, we are a homebrew community. We used to never hinder projects, when Wood R4 came out it wasn't spammed with, "JUST BUY AN ACEKARD 2I AND USES AKAIO!" The community was just happy to see more projects coming from the community. Nowadays devs are actually wary of releasing their projects on the Temp, I know this because I have been talking with burned devs. Devs who released their work and were burned from the community for simply trying something different. Devs who do tough it out just end up ignored and their work gets forgotten about, then abandoned. There was even a few times when the Temp Wiki was vandalized changing the CFW page "There's only Luma3DS :P" Funny as it is, it still shows just how bad the community is becoming.

I am not blaming Luma3DS for this because it's neither Luma3DS nor Aurora Wright who created this problem. It's completely the community that is at fault. The community seems to have become this cult movement where they feel the need to spread the name of Luma3DS and defend it from any thing they see as a threat. The community has become stagnant and the idea of breaking the mold has become scary to the community. And this is not ok. This community is killing itself from within by not allowing projects to thrive, they are basically hurting the community. And this doesn't just hurt the CFW community, this has been hurting the Temp as a whole. Devs see how our community treats other devs and they just don't want to deal with the community if they think their project is only going to get attacked. This is not something a Homebrew community wants to have happen, we want devs to come to our site, and we want them to be welcome here.

This is something I've been watching for months and even experienced on my own thread and in other threads.This mindset has really tore the community apart and killed projects before they could even get off the ground. And it saddens me to talk/work with these devs who were burned by the community that should have welcomed them.

Just to make one thing clear, I don't say this because I am a Corbenik user. In fact I don't just use Corbenik, I also have Luma3DS on my CTRNAND. As well I have been using several privately developed CFWs. I say this because these private CFWs I use shouldn't be private and these devs should be allowed to share their work without fearing the community.
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ih8ih8sn0w
(fair warning, i have been dead for the past month or so, I might not grasp the situation completely). <rant>You are trying to argue against the same people who cannot even add a payload and assign it a button without asking for help. While I agree that this is an issue (first hand experience: I get noobs on discord who question why I do the things I do for some reason), I believe that part of it stems from the guide only giving one option and poorly explaining that there are other options (I could honestly rant about this at a later date about how the guide has gone to shit from the beginning). Devs shouldn't let idiots get in the way of releasing something, if they have something that they believe is good then they should just release it and tell the illiterate/ignorant/circlejerkers to fuck off. The target audience of the CFW is clearly not the ones who cannot maintain their own console without help from the outside. As a Corbenik user, I was sad to see that it is ded, but like cakes, I will probably stick with it until the very end. </rant>
 
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Molina
And piracy users ask why is there not more people who dev? Why the dev is so slow? etc etc...

Bof, they dev very usefull things for free, for a community, not just for themself, but when they releases people keep spitting on them 'cause "it's not good enough".

Be grateful or get nothing.
 
The Catboy
@ih8ih8sn0w
The issue isn't their level of intelligence, it's the number of them. Like I said in another comment, most of the CFW threads end up being mostly the dev defending their project. A person can only take some much and if the vast majority appear to not want something, why continue to support/defend it?
The issue is that the people I am talking about are the loudest in the CFW community. They spam other CFWs until one side gives up.
 
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porkiewpyne
The black-or-white-only, like-whoring, meme-ing culture in addition to the anonymity of the interwebz. Everything has to be either the second coming of Jesus or it's the lovechild of Satan and Cthulhu. Everybody expects everyone else to have the exact same moral threshold and that their level is best. There are no repercussions for saying whatever BS unlike IRL where doing the same thing would probably get them pummeled bad. That is, of course, if they even had the guts to say it. It's really sad and sickening that when we should all be united, we end up divided :(
 
I
There's always RXTools :rofl2:
But seriously though, Luma fits all my needs but I still won't name it the best or the only CFW. (Mostly because I'm a newb but whatever)
 
ih8ih8sn0w
@Crystal the Glaceon then the staff should step in for once and contain the idiots instead of letting shit die from it. Too bad that won't happen because who cares about the people trying to keep the community alive.
 
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The Catboy
@ih8ih8sn0w
There's really one big problem right now. The site is understaffed. I love the site, but I wish they would bring back the old Mod team. When I first joined, there was GMs and Mods. GMs oversaw the entire forums, well the Mods oversaw sections. There also used to be 2 to 3 Mods to a section. They weren't really confined to these sections, but they were basically responsible for them.
I feel like if we had a Mod team, we would see less of these problems. Because right now, the staff is overworked and very thin.
 
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WeedZ
I like the centralized cfw idea. I wish @Aurora Wright would make luma compatable with third party plugins, kind of how cakes was suppose to be. it would be cool to have ntr type plugins (screen capture, cheats, etc) that could be toggled via settings.
 
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WeedZ
My concern is with the lack of popularity there would be a lack of support. Im interested to see what options it has now though.
 
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The Catboy
WeedZ
You know what would make it more popular? If people start noticing it and noticing the cool things it can do.
Seriously, I replaced my main bootloader with it months ago. Why? Because it's just a simple drag n' drop bootloader. Seriously, no configuring or renaming. Just drag the shit you want to boot into the folder and it's on the menu.
 
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Bubsy Bobcat
Although I now do have a recommendation for A9LH guides that might have this whole "luma only" thing, especially for the two main ones. And that's when it gets to the part of installing CFW it should have something like (with having corbenik as an example) "If you're interested in homebrew development and tinkering more with your console's features and settings then we recommend installing Corbenik CFW so click here for instructions on how to install Corbenik" etc. etc.
 
The Catboy
Bubsy Bobcat
Guides aren't an issue. Honestly, if you need a guide, it's best to stick with Luma3DS. It's not the content thats the issue, just the cult-like shitposting and the lack of control in the scene that's an issue.
 
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Uwabami
You left out the small detail that most of those "new CFWs" are Luma forks witthout new features. Yes, Luma itself started out as a fork, but Aurora put in some major work and really useful features before she actually split off development from the original branch and now nobody can deny Auroras great service to the community.

Why are 0-feature forks bad? Well, first of all, they make it look like the "dev" did all the work themselves until you see it's just another Luma fork with the only real change being the name. This has happened in the PS3 community and was not good for it - every kid who figured out how to compile a CFW did so and it was a big, fat mess. Second, supporting masses of CFW is a nightmare - don't believe me? There's still people using rxTools. And that was actually a legitmate CFW with people working on it.

If a "dev" has really done more than just fork Luma, change the name (and especially the credits, of course) and then maybe some minimal changes like the font or only remove features (like SaltFW) - then yes, that's a welcome change IF and only IF the changes would not be accepted into Luma's repo for some reason. SaltFW could have been added to Luma's makefile as an alternative build.

You already made it clear in the SaltFW thread that you don't care what changes CFWs bring or how they are disrespectful if they just fork and rename Luma as long as new CFWs keep coming in. I disagree, it's making the rxTool mess worse by adding even more clutter to the pile. And before you cite Corbenik and Cakes, they are no forks and are actually useful.
 
The Catboy
Uwabami
I don't address those because often times they are forks that remove stuff. I am indifferent about those because I can see the need for them and also see why people don't like them. At the same time Luma3DS started out as fork from ReiNAND that just added stuff.
I also try to stay out issues that don't relate directly to CFW itself. I just avoid personal dramas because I just don't want to get involved in something that will require sides that will only divide a community.
Forks that do nothing new often get their rightful attack. But I would like to cite Corbenik on what I am really talking about. A good chunk of the first posts on the thread was just, "Why do we need another CFW? We have Luma!" "No one wants another CFW!" ect. These are the posts I am talking about.
 
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Uwabami
I know Luma itself is a fork, I said so in my post. The only reason you could have for forking off Luma to make your own CFW is if it has changes Aurora won't accept to her Repo for some reason. This is by the way the reason Aurora split of from ReiNAND. It's always better to improve what's already there, as long as you don't have a dramatically new and improved way of doing things.

The main problem is clutter and slow adapters like the users that still use rxTools. Convincing them they are using outdated software is troublesome, just ask the people here or on discord helping out those users.

Corbenik and Cakes both have another way of doing things, are not meant for "normal" users and offer unique features. So I agree people hating on them are stupid. The fork "devs" on the other hand deserve every spiteful post they get.
 

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