Open Source or Player Owned? Options

[KallDrexx]

Furthermore (sorry just read another post), we can't aqurie enough assets to make a new Wish, or at least it will cost a good bit (even IP assets). Therefore, we were going for a game that's only connection to Wish is basically the feeling we all got that got us hooked on Wish. Therefore, there is no reason to get stuff from Mutable Realms, especially since as skywise said, it is unlikely we will get anything for free.

[KevinMc]

OK, I'm not a business lawyer here... So I may be off base a bit.

But in order to sell shares, legally, I believe you need to incorporate? And then, I think there are specific methods and laws which must be followed regarding the public sale of stock?

Mythic raised the money for funding DAOC by going public. But Mythic was also an existing game company, with employees, and pre-existing products that were earning them money! You need something real for people to invest in, generally; we might get some money for having just dreams and aspirations, but not much. ;)

If you raise money in this manner, you are a for-profit business. You can NO LONGER have volunteers. See the UO and AOL lawsuits regarding volunteers and labor laws for more on this, but in short - volunteers can sue for back wages if they were working for a moneymaking business. Nonprofit organizations are OK on volunteers. For profit ones are NOT. No, waivers do not work to avoid this.

So, if you go public, your developer staff, artists, etc all now need to be paid, or you're asking for a lawsuit later.

You need a board of directors. You have employees instead of community. You have payroll. You have employee taxes. You have investors you are responsible to, or you (Board of Directors) get fired by the investors.

That's just issues off the top of my head. I'm sure I can come up with more given a few minutes. ;) The point is, public sale of stock is a HUGELY complicated endeavor, and not one to be entered lightly.

[Mole]

Kall and Sil are both right.

At this point, it would be pointless, silly, and a big mistake to look at acquiring any sort of "investors" either public or private.

Right now, what is PW? Right now we are just a bunch of ex-Wish testers with an idea, and a lot of time spent in IRC. How many of us will be around after a week? After a month? After six months? If Wish had never existed, how many of us would be here?

How many of you have ever been involved in an online development community? I'm not talking about a group of people who generate a new board for NWN either, but real development? How many of you have been involved in a project that took over 6 months to complete? Over a year to complete? Longer?

I know some of you are thinking that what does it hurt talking about this stuff now? At this point in PW's life it hurts a lot. We have more important things to worry about. Until we actually have a product to show, even a crappy product, we should not even be having this discussion.

We are not a company! Are we paying people's salaries? Are you going to pay mine? If we form a "company" at this point, again it is pointless.

For now, everything that we do should be open source and GPL. Everything. There should be no talk of company or investors. Let's get our deliverables in order, develop some product, and worry about hurdles like capital when we get to them.

We already know that MR is NOT going to give us anything, so quit bringing that up as well.

Do I sound a little harsh? Yes, I probably do. Ask yourselves this question: Do you want this project to even have a chance of success, or do you want it to fail right from the beginning?

If you want to succeed, then you'll understand why I'm right about this. When the time comes, I'll be more than happy to let you guys talk about this stuff. :)

[cixelsyD]

Another perk of being community owned is think of the marketing we could do with that.

"The first MMORPG that is player owned, player developed, and player run!"


Unique right from the start. As mentioned earlier some sort of beta would be needed to get people interested in buying part of the game.

[Vampirian]

KevinMC

I am glad a lawyer finally posted. And yes you are correct in saying that once we start accepting monies we do become a for-profit company.

However, and if you have the time it would be appreciated, we can sell off privately held certificates and not be a corporation.

This would be no different that 10 people going into business as an LLC.

And if I am right, I can fill out such paper work in 15 minutes, as I have done it many times.

The big difference here is it would be privately held NOT publicly.

And I believe if we research it we can start off the project under a non-profit type heading. With a written contract stating that such investment/donations will become privately held stock once the company is converted to a for-profit entity.

I will look into this further.

[Vampirian]

As for funding being to premature...

There is no such thing. All we are doing is discussing possible avenues. To actually put this in motion right now would be premature, but to plan for it and brainstorm is not.

[Matto]

This is the same idea I proposed yesterday in another thread. Of course I agree with it, but it will as with everything else need good planning.

[Foresteer]

i personaly think open-sorce then jsut charge for bandwidth... if it isn't viable to be open sorce then we can look at other options

[vandinos]

I just think of the mess Ultima Online became after their source code was released by accident, it's been years and they can't stop the hack programs and scripters

[Matto]

thats a very valid point.. By being open source there is no-one forcing us to release absolutely everything, I believe the only requirement is that we give back to the community any additions to the open source software components we use(fair enough), anything we create aside from these componants is ours to what we like with. maybe for the time being we should hold on to them until we are able to make clearer choices.

I think we'll have to review very carfully any licences applied to each individual componant we use, to make sure we comply as expected.

[Gempana]

I think if you use any GPL-components your whole product has to be under the GPL.

The exact text is:

You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.


This means, you can't even buy a component from another company as it wouldn't be possible anymore, to freeliy distribute the software.

Personally, I wouldn't go for GPL...

[Chris]

As I said in another thread, it is possible to use proprietary libraries in GPL code (see the GPL FAQ, section "Can I write free software that uses non-free libraries?").

[graverotgod]

Hey I actually found this website due to an associate of mine running a google search for different open source engines and you popped up. He posted some of your concerns with developing an mmorpg on our forums, and I decided to come over here and see how you where all coming along!

I noticed this particular thread and I had to pipe up about the Licensing delimma you currently seem to be having.

I saw an earlier post stating that with GPL software you do not have to release the modified source if you are not distributing/selling it. So as far as server architecture goes, since there is no need to distribute the software, there is no need to release the source...

And as for the client, you could always use Irrlicht (which has come along way btw) for the 3D engine, merge it with and NDK that is also considered royalty free or public domain (there are a million of them out there, it really just takes some looking) and you won't be required to release the source.

Irrlicht's exact license is as follows:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Irrlicht Engine License

Copyright �© 2002-2005 Nikolaus Gebhardt

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.
2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.
3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

However releasing client source may not be a bad idea in the end, and this all depends on how secure the communications between client/server are.

UO's problem with their source getting leaked was the ENTIRE architecture was leaked... There's very little you can do with their leaked client source, however they did make some incredibly stupid decisions when it came to security... in an mmorpg client to server relation should always follow this pattern:

client -> requests permission to perform a certain action
server -> verifies client is permitted to perform the action then performs ALL calculations itself if possible/authorized, and DUMPS the request if not.
server -> Tells the client what the result of their request was. (Speedhacker trying to run at 2x speed gets whiplash effect. While person trying to skewer him with sword hits)
client -> Outputs pretty graphics showing the player what happened.

As you can see from the example above (and I'm sure your programmers and developers already understand this concept) is that the server is the boss, and the client is just some software that (while very important!) just outputs pretty graphics, and is a means for the player to tell the server what it WANTS to do.

The server should disregard anything it doesn't understand. It shouldn't even be possible for the client to TELL the server what it's doing, but only request it be allowed to perform an action. Finally the game should happen ON the server, the client only displays the results.

As soon as you blur that line, hackers and exploiters will take advantage of the fact. I gaurantee it. ;)

You build it right and you can release the source to the best hacker in the world... Which kinda makes the whole releasing the source code point mute to say the least... and may allow for the community to get better if their are members present who want to help make the client better.

Just my two cents. And if anybody wants to come over and say hi to some fellow developers feel free! The URL is blackrak.com

[emeraven]

I think I remember this thread, thanks for the info by the way, but if you check the dates this was back in January. It was a big question for a while but it was resolved.

I think we are pretty much set on using Orge 3D for now, though I'm not the best person to answer this question, I would say that includes the client.

[Fuinelen]

jep ... Irrlicht is a full game engine, but Ogre is the better real time renderer. it's pretty amazin actually, from a performance and ease-of-use point of view.

bbye,
Sammy

[Atlantis]

Just my 2 Cents:
You all miss an important fact: Ads.
Google buys Youtube for 1,6bn$.
Why? Not becorse people are paying for it. Not becorse capacity and bandwith are for free.
Becorse you can earn $$$ with ads. (As long as you get a massive target audience.).
So if we would have > 2k active players, we could pay a pretty amout of bills out of it.

[Minthos]

Just my 2 Cents:
You all miss an important fact: Ads.
Google buys Youtube for 1,6bn$.
Why? Not becorse people are paying for it. Not becorse capacity and bandwith are for free.
Becorse you can earn $$$ with ads. (As long as you get a massive target audience.).
So if we would have > 2k active players, we could pay a pretty amout of bills out of it.

NECROMANCY!

[Jerky]

Heh, this thread is almost 2 years old, just to point out. We should probably archive things or hide them older than a certain age.

[KallDrexx]

A post saying I was right is def worth archiving