26 May, 2008, Asylumius wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
I think most of us are in agreement that paying somebody to create your dream Diku based MUD for you, and/or charging people to play your Diku based MUD, is a no-no. That's not the point of this post.

Assume for a moment that you've created a custom codebase and were to release it under whatever license you want. Would YOU be willing to release a codebase and allow people to profit from it?

How "open" are all of you willing to be? We've argued over the GPL / Diku license quite a bit, but if it were you, what terms would you lay down? For fun, let's just assume that this imaginary codebase will wind up being as popular as Diku, Merc, etc.

Would it be the GPL? BSD? A variant? Public domain?

I've never built a MUD from scratch, and the only thing I've ever uploaded anywhere was a ROM deriv, which pretty much writes it's own terms. Personally, my answer would depend on if I plan on running this codebase as a public game for the long term. If so, I would definitely release it without any of the MUD-specific content (areas mostly). Beyond that, I'm not sure exactly, but I think I'd go with something pretty open.
26 May, 2008, Guest wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
If I had created a custom codebase and was ready to release it to the public, in all honesty, I'd probably want to profit from it myself. None of the GPL family of licenses allow a successful business model to really develop. Someone is always free to take your work, modify it, then release it all for free with no revenue generation. It tends to undercut the original author in bad ways I don't particularly like.

What I'd want is a license that allows people to use the code, modify it, and distribute derivative works, but I'd want royalty provisions attached so that people using it have to agree to pay me a certain amount of money per year. I know, sounds completely counter to how "open source" should work, but hey. I'm a capitalist. It's what we do :)

If a license like this exists already for open source, I haven't seen it. The whole OSS movement seems to be about code communism and not making money.
26 May, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
That is a point of view based on a rather traditional (some would say outdated) view of the software industry, where one buys a shipped product and that's the end of it. That is not necessarily how things work anymore, and there are several companies based on open source models. Although the nominal "product" is free, the real product is the expertise that went into developing that product. The company can make money off of consulting work on its own product, technical support, customization, etc. Obviously this requires a little bit of thinking outside the box, but it's far from impossible and there are already several companies that operate under this model.

For MUDs the model is all the more applicable because presumably it is not only your code that makes your game work but also the content. If the only value of a game is its codebase, and not the game logic and area files, then I'm not sure that game would really be a successful one to begin with.

A commercial license where one pays fees of some kind doesn't go against open source. Just look at e.g. MySQL's dual license.
26 May, 2008, Asylumius wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
I guess I don't so much mind the concept of "code communism". For something that I consider a hobby, profit isn't my primary concern. If I were to develop a MUD, it would be with the players in mind, before anything else. After that, with the community and other developers in mind.

If all I wanted to do was make a profit, I would basically start my own Iron Realms. I would invest some money into a small team of programmers and design highly extensible engines that I could charge a lot of money for. This, of course, would be harmful to the "community".

I would be far more inclined to charge money for a web app, design templates, etc. Perhaps thats the separation for me: MUDs are the hobby, web development is more of a professional avenue. I'd have a hard time thinking of a MUD project as a business.

I think the reason that the OSS movement seems to be about code "communism" and not making money is because it is. Sure, there's money to be made in open source, but if that's why you're in open source, you're in the wrong market.

This begs the question, how much money can one individual expect to make from coding a MUD engine for profit? Assuming we can't all start large, profitable companies like Iron Realms, does the (probably) small amount of money made, compared to the thousands of hours invested, mean much? Even if it's done partially as an enjoyable hobby and partially as a business, it seems like a bad way to get rich.
26 May, 2008, Mabus wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
I am a fan of the Apache License.

It allows for modification, redistribution, commercial or non-commerical usage and does not require modifications to be released. It even allows partial usage of its license and the ability for creators of new software to change portions of the license to better suit their own requirements.

When I first got into modifying CoffeeMUD I looked over the license, and I thanked Bo Zimmerman for using it. He chose a license that is very non-restrictive, and gave others the freedom to do with his software whatever they chose to do.

You can find a copy of it here.
26 May, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Asylumius said:
Sure, there's money to be made in open source, but if that's why you're in open source, you're in the wrong market.

Tell that to my classmates who went to work for Mozilla and are making near 6-figure salary on their very first job out of school. :smile:

The thing about MUDs is that there are really two components: (1) the actual codebase and (2) the game being played. You might not make money off of the codebase, but you can definitely make (at least some) money off of the game. And if you release the code in a community-focused style, you will even get bug fixes sent back to you…
26 May, 2008, Asylumius wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
DavidHaley said:
Asylumius said:
Sure, there's money to be made in open source, but if that's why you're in open source, you're in the wrong market.

Tell that to my classmates who went to work for Mozilla and are making near 6-figure salary on their very first job out of school. :smile:

The thing about MUDs is that there are really two components: (1) the actual codebase and (2) the game being played. You might not make money off of the codebase, but you can definitely make (at least some) money off of the game. And if you release the code in a community-focused style, you will even get bug fixes sent back to you…


Fair enough, but this sort of reminds me of all the guys I knew in school who wanted to get into video games. Sure, out out of every hundred (or thousand) of guys who wants to make the latest and greatest video games might get a job working for a game studio. Yeah, there's Mozilla and MySQL and Sun and a handful of places where you can make some decent coin doing open source, but its a tiny margin of the people who contribute to open source projects.

I was thinking more on an individual level than anything else. Could you code the next "big" open source thing alone, in your basement? Sure. It's just not very likely. But yes, there's definitely room for profit in open source, but there's a lot more guys like you and me than there are guys making 6 figure incomes out of college.

As for MUDs, the only codebase I ever played or worked with is ROM, which doesn't have a high degree of separation between the "engine" and the game logic, skills, etc. Aside from the areas, pretty much everything is compiled straight into the "engine". You could code an engine that allows for a high level of customization and make a profit, but assuming you're only in it for the money (and not the fun), you could probably make a lot more money coding for somebody else.

I'm not saying that a MUD as a business model is doomed to fail, I just think that it's not a very smart option unless the money is nothing more than icing on the cake of enjoying a hobby.
26 May, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Comparing money-oriented open-source and hobby-oriented open-source is not really a good comparison. So I'm not sure it makes sense to compare the many people who contribute to open-source because they believe in it and the people who go work at open-source companies.

Asylumius said:
I'm not saying that a MUD as a business model is doomed to fail

This is still not making the distinction between paying for the codebase and paying to play the game. I'm not sure the two are the same at all. (Besides, this isn't necessarily just about open-source anymore.)

Asylumius said:
I just think that it's not a very smart option unless the money is nothing more than icing on the cake of enjoying a hobby.

Well, that much I agree with. :wink: I make a whole lot more at my day job than I think I could make with MUDs…
26 May, 2008, Asylumius wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
DavidHaley said:
This is still not making the distinction between paying for the codebase and paying to play the game. I'm not sure the two are the same at all. (Besides, this isn't necessarily just about open-source anymore.)


I was referring to charging for a codebase. Pay-to-play is an entirely different scenario. Given the popularity of MUDs today, I would imagine it would take quite some time to build up a playerbase large enough to mean much profit. I can't imagine pay-to-play being very profitable unless it were on the scale of Iron Realms.
26 May, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
If you do not think that pay-to-play is profitable, how can you even start thinking that you could make money selling your codebase? If people buy your codebase, presumably they want to be making money off of running a game with it, but if you think that venture is a bad one from the get-go, who exactly do you think will be buying the codebase?

Anyhow, it wouldn't take many players to make a "profit" strictly speaking, if by profit you only mean recuperating hosting costs and so forth. If you factor in how much money you could have made doing something else (e.g. a programming job) then sure, you would need an awful lot of players to rival that. In my case I would need to have a very considerable number of players to bring in the kind of revenue my job does, so I don't think running a MUD commercially would be viable for me unless I did it primarily for the enjoyment or as a side thing of sorts.
25 Jun, 2008, darkraider wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Personally if i ever created a codebase I would not want or expect to profit off of it. I am a huge beleaver of open source and I stand by open source software and licences. I would how ever not release my code untill my mud is no longer being played.
25 Jun, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Open source is not equated with absence of profit. I am however mystified at how one can be a huge believer of open source and yet not release code openly. :thinking:
25 Jun, 2008, darkraider wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
DavidHaley said:
Open source is not equated with absence of profit. I am however mystified at how one can be a huge believer of open source and yet not release code openly. :thinking:


I agree open source is good in the fact that it allows a community of people to add and fix code that you developed look at mozzilla they develop open source software yet the still push a profit. If i did my own custom codebase i might even release a opensource lite version of my mud, but once my mud is no longer in operation i would release the full code after my mud is shut down. I am mystified by that same factor how can someone be big on open sourse and not release any of there code publicly. now yes most muds dont want others having there code because of compition but releasing a lite version in fact would help other and you can keep out the code that you wish not to be shared ie automated questing system.
27 Jun, 2008, Conner wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
darkraider said:
Personally if i ever created a codebase I would not want or expect to profit off of it. I am a huge beleaver of open source and I stand by open source software and licences. I would how ever not release my code untill my mud is no longer being played.

darkraider said:
DavidHaley said:
Open source is not equated with absence of profit. I am however mystified at how one can be a huge believer of open source and yet not release code openly. :thinking:


I agree open source is good in the fact that it allows a community of people to add and fix code that you developed look at mozzilla they develop open source software yet the still push a profit. If i did my own custom codebase i might even release a opensource lite version of my mud, but once my mud is no longer in operation i would release the full code after my mud is shut down. I am mystified by that same factor how can someone be big on open sourse and not release any of there code publicly. now yes most muds dont want others having there code because of compition but releasing a lite version in fact would help other and you can keep out the code that you wish not to be shared ie automated questing system.


I think I've bolded all of the pertinent points here.. isn't there a name for this sort of posting? :rolleyes:
06 Dec, 2009, Korimyr the Rat wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Asylumius said:
Assume for a moment that you've created a custom codebase and were to release it under whatever license you want. Would YOU be willing to release a codebase and allow people to profit from it?


Yes. If I make something useful, I want people to use it– and get as much out of it as possible. It is easy for me to understand the motives of people who make things and wish to profit from them. It's easy for me to understand the motives of people who make things and wish to distribute them for free. I can definitely understand the motive of releasing something for free and then demanding that other people not sell it. If I wanted it sold, I'd be selling it myself.

What I can't quite understand is the motive behind distributing something for free and then insisting that people not use it for a profit, especially when they would have to put their own work into it to do so. Of course, I would want them to keep distributing it for free, and I'd hope they would even distribute their own contributions to it, but I just don't understand not wanting people to be able to make money from it. It's like giving someone a knife and asking them never to use it at work; it's a fine gift and useful, but why would you want to limit the way they use it?

Of course, I respect authors' prerogative in this matter and wouldn't violate their wishes, even if I can't understand their motives.

Asylumius said:
How "open" are all of you willing to be? We've argued over the GPL / Diku license quite a bit, but if it were you, what terms would you lay down? For fun, let's just assume that this imaginary codebase will wind up being as popular as Diku, Merc, etc.


I'm not familiar with the different generic licenses.

I'd want my name and the name of my software to appear on the login screen of any MUD using my codebase and any derivatives.
I'd want my code to be free to distribute, but not to sell.
I'd want my code to be free to modify.
And I'd want my code to be free to use for any non-malicious purpose as long as my attributions are preserved.

Of course, the more widespread my code becomes, the better it suits my purposes.

Asylumius said:
I've never built a MUD from scratch, and the only thing I've ever uploaded anywhere was a ROM deriv, which pretty much writes it's own terms. Personally, my answer would depend on if I plan on running this codebase as a public game for the long term. If so, I would definitely release it without any of the MUD-specific content (areas mostly). Beyond that, I'm not sure exactly, but I think I'd go with something pretty open.


I've never done it either. I can write legal agreements that make sense, I can write licenses, but I simply can not code worth a damn.

Biggest issue is that anything I work on, whether it's custom code or derivative, I'm still going to be bound by the license for the game system I'm adapting. Otherwise, I'd want the license to be as open as possible.
06 Dec, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Korimyr the Rat said:
What I can't quite understand is the motive behind distributing something for free and then insisting that people not use it for a profit, especially when they would have to put their own work into it to do so.

There are various reasons, such as:

* You've signed an agreement which prevents the mud from being used for profit, and your licence is required to reflect that restriction.

* Your codebase includes other code that cannot be used for profit.

* You've also released a separate commercial licence, or have granted exclusive commercial rights to another party.

* You want your game to be played for free - if you wanted players paying for the service, you'd be the one selling it.

Korimyr the Rat said:
I'd want my name and the name of my software to appear on the login screen of any MUD using my codebase and any derivatives.
I'd want my code to be free to distribute, but not to sell.
I'd want my code to be free to modify.
And I'd want my code to be free to use for any non-malicious purpose as long as my attributions are preserved.

Of course, the more widespread my code becomes, the better it suits my purposes.

Korimyr the Rat said:
I simply can not code worth a damn.

It strikes me that your preferences are based on your own needs. If you could code, you might well find yourself having a different attitute, particularly if you'd invested years of effort into creating a mud.
06 Dec, 2009, Korimyr the Rat wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
* You've signed an agreement which prevents the mud from being used for profit, and your licence is required to reflect that restriction.
* Your codebase includes other code that cannot be used for profit.


Well, yes. Certainly. But those are based on someone else having already been possessed by that motive I can't fathom.

KaVir said:
* You've also released a separate commercial licence, or have granted exclusive commercial rights to another party.


I can understand wanting to profit off of one's own work.

KaVir said:
* You want your game to be played for free - if you wanted players paying for the service, you'd be the one selling it.


That connects to my idea that if I wanted my work to be distributed for money, I'd have charged for it in the first place. I can understand this, though I wonder at what point a MUD stops being the original coder's game and becomes the game of the people coding and building on a particular instance of it. This is a good point, and I shall have to consider it further.

KaVir said:
It strikes me that your preferences are based on your own needs. If you could code, you might well find yourself having a different attitute, particularly if you'd invested years of effort into creating a mud.


I haven't ruled out the possibility that I'm biased. I just think that if I'd invested years into something and released it to the public– in whatever form– that I could think of dozens of things that would offend me more than someone finding a way of profiting from it. Most of which I'd have no control over, and the few I could put provisions against in a license, codethieves would just go ahead and do anyway. This specific distaste for profit breaks my teeth. It's even stronger in other Open Source gaming communities– Roguelike aficionados seem particularly passionate.

I'm not trying to speak ill of anyone. This attitude just baffles me.
06 Dec, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Asylumius said:
Assume for a moment that you've created a custom codebase and were to release it under whatever license you want. Would YOU be willing to release a codebase and allow people to profit from it?

How "open" are all of you willing to be? We've argued over the GPL / Diku license quite a bit, but if it were you, what terms would you lay down? For fun, let's just assume that this imaginary codebase will wind up being as popular as Diku, Merc, etc.

Would it be the GPL? BSD? A variant? Public domain?


Oh wow, this is a great resurrection. I must have been banned/toaded/suspended during this,
cuz I don't remember it and definitely wuda commented.

The codebase I maintain has a Public Domain release. That's my answer. I don't bother with that
GPL or BSD or whatever junk. I don't see any advantage to restricting it, and I see advantage in
letting people do whatever their perverse little hearts dream, and the law allows.

The codebase I maintain does also have a "proprietary" release, but that's mostly because that
version has a bunch of docs I did not write that are not openly licensed.

Quote
I'm not trying to speak ill of anyone. This attitude just baffles me.


I think there's a context of history in terms of licensing and profiting that has colored the
way many view it. Just as one example, there was this dude that coded up a from-scratch
cleanroom implementation (DGD) of a popular mud type (LP) and licensed it for commercial
use in a very reasonable way…people had to pay him a certain amount of their revenue,
that sort of thing. But the mudding community is as full of weasels as any comparable hobby,
and this guy's life turned into a constant effort to just get paid, so finally he just said
"screw it. Flat license of $50,000 up front for commercial use."

That's from the "owner" side.

From the player side, there's the muds that claim to be free but in fact you have to
pay 75 funpoints (purchased with real money of course) to, say, advance past level 5.

IMO some of this anti-commerce attitude is from the community having seen enough
clumsy/crude/insulting behavior where money + muds get mixed up together. Wrong or
right, justified or not, I suspect that's where a lot of the automatic suspicion comes from.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
06 Dec, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
IMO some of this anti-commerce attitude is from the community having seen enough
clumsy/crude/insulting behavior where money + muds get mixed up together.

Or that when something starts as free, it's extremely hard to make people start paying for it. A culture of free does not want to pay.

Of course, a culture of paying has a lot of trouble doing things for free, too.

The fact is that, for whatever reason, the MUD community – in particular the Diku branch of it – is basically allergic to the word "money". If people run MUDs and spend a lot of time on them (and money on hosting, necessary for large enough games), it's supposed to be out of passion and love for the game.
06 Dec, 2009, Orrin wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
IMO some of this anti-commerce attitude is from the community having seen enough
clumsy/crude/insulting behavior where money + muds get mixed up together.

I think it's less to do with marketing, and more to do with an expectation that MUDs should be non commercial and therefore completely free. People don't tend to complain so much about graphical MMORPGs with microtransactions who advertise themselves as "free to play" because the expectation is that it will be a commercial game.
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