MORE Status Report (repost)

Tai'lahr · **Posted:** Sat Nov 28, 2009 2:20 am

Quatermain wrote:

Perhaps someone who is a little more programming savvy would like to create a poll and find out just how many current resources are available - mostly in terms of competent man-hours on a per-month basis.

It seems that a lot of people this poll would target have congregated over at the OpenUru website, so that might be a good place to post a poll or at least a link to a poll here.

Sensei · **Posted:** Sat Nov 28, 2009 5:35 am

Somehow I doubt that will stop people from hosting servers with the content in question.

Christian Walther · **Posted:** Sat Nov 28, 2009 12:38 pm

Quatermain wrote:

Perhaps someone who is a little more programming savvy would like to create a poll and find out just how many current resources are available - mostly in terms of competent man-hours on a per-month basis.

This has been attempted several times, without ever evoking any response from Cyan, as far as I am informed. Since Cyan seems to have a long history of reluctance to accept outside help, I think most have given up by now.

Tai'lahr wrote:

It seems that a lot of people this poll would target have congregated over at the OpenUru website

Not me, for the record - I haven't read OpenUru.org for months, I've concentrated on here and GoW for lack of time. High time to change that, I guess...

Tai'lahr · **Posted:** Sat Nov 28, 2009 3:00 pm

Yes, polls have been done before - and ignored by Cyan - but has a serious proposal ever been formally submitted to Cyan's legal dept.?

Christian Walther wrote:

I haven't read OpenUru.org for months

Yeah, discussion there dried up once they'd already discussed all the possibilities and couldn't go any further without more information from Cyan, but now would seem to be a good time for the technically able to discuss serious offers of assistance. Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic about RAWA's statement, but the door seems to be opening a little more and this might just be the time to go all the way and create a formal proposal to be submitted to Cyan.

Nalates · **Posted:** Sat Nov 28, 2009 4:17 pm

Proposals... I don't know. The informal consensus to "Rip & Note" seems to be making it's self known. It is being relayed to Rand/Mark/Cyan. I'm not sure what more could be effectively proposed... what would we propose that has not already been proposed?

While I'm not sure what is meant by a formal proposal, there are a few people that have written of proposals they made to Cyan.

The community has gone about as far as it can until we see the licenses. I assume any release of code will include the license. Once we know what the licenses say then people can form groups or move ahead individually. If any proposal is needed then at least we will be able to fit it to Cyan's ideas.

A survey of resources would be interesting. However, until we know what Cyan will let us do, we won't know who is going to want to work on adapting the code and setting up servers. There are likely going to be restrictions on how Cyan content can be used. Some restrictions may not work for some in the community. They may choose to move on to something else. Others may go to work trying to get Cyan to change the license. Others may accept them and move ahead. The point being that the available resources would change and make a survey taken pre-licenses outdated.

Once Cyan releases the licenses word will spread. Many of those interested in doing something with the code will get the word. We are likely to see more people posting. A survey then would likely be more meaningful.

JWPlatt · **Posted:** Sun Nov 29, 2009 12:39 am

Suggestion Two:

Please don't call it MORE, even informally. Rand's note (and the title of this thread) confuses the open source issue by invoking "MORE" which was not an open source proposal. The MORE Roadmap was a proposal which included only the plug-in to allow User Created Content, but no server or client sources. That was a different animal. Calling it MORE can make people nervous, wondering if Cyan is trying to backtrack, except vid who really would like to have MORE officially redefined so he can finally end his thread and suffering. A prompt and formal redefinition of MORE to incorporate the full open source plans would be my second (maybe) choice, but much less preferred. My primary choice, of course, is Open Uru.

Suggestion Three:

I agree with Nalates' abundant requests for the licenses. We can get a good move-on with resources, outlines and planning if we could only see the licenses, even if well in advance of the code. The "Guidelines for Official Story/Age Creation" was a good resource. The licenses, really the root of all that can be done, of which the Guidelines are a partial elaboration, would be even better.

Hey, come to think of it, those Guidelines were posted by RAWA only 16 months ago. Not the whole 24 months of being out of the loop as he would have us believe. Or is that just a rounding error?

Krepta3000 · **Posted:** Sun Nov 29, 2009 3:50 am

This is the first post I've made on MOUL forum in a very long time, and it will probably be the last for yet another very long time. I haven't searched through all the posts and threads to see if anyone has made my suggestion for me. But I'll make it anyway. Donate to Cyan! Come on, support Cyan, they are just barely keeping their heads above water?! Look at other open source projects out there, do you think they only get money from sales? No. They also get donations, from people who really care about the project. We all, obviously, really care about Open Uru, or whatever you want to call it, all I'm saying is Cyan should setup a Donate button, or they should setup something in Second Life where people can go and pay them L$s, which they can then convert to USD. I would donate right now, except I'm unemployed, broke, and going crazy trying to figure out how to make some money.

Ok, that's it, my last post for a looooooong time. Why? Well, I would explain, except I'd probably get very angry and I don't feel like expending the energy. Cya.

Karkadann · **Posted:** Sun Nov 29, 2009 5:36 am

I dont think Cyan takes donations but supporting their projects would be a reasonable alternative, instead of tearing apart everything they produce and converting it for Uru perhaps we should just back down from converting for a while and let Cyan do their thing. Give um a chance to get reestablished their not Microsoft ya know and they are the only ones that can give us Open Source Uru Live.

From a business point of view I think buying or subscribing to some of their products would be a better alternative then a donation. and as far as advertising is concerned word of mouth, I know between the lot of us we have a lot of mouths and can say a lot of words, So Speak up, Speak out, speak loudly, speak often, a closed mouth does not get fed.

Their are still ways to help Cyan and helping them may get us back in the Caverns sooner.

Word

Charura · **Joined:** Wed Oct 14, 2009 4:14 pm **Posts:** 1773

Quote:

I dont think Cyan takes donations

I wonder if one would send a certified check or money order in an envelope with no return address other than MORE FAN if they would use those funds towards the release of the open source or just use it on whatever project they are currently working on?

Karkadann · **Posted:** Sun Nov 29, 2009 6:59 pm

hmm the honor system, interesting idea. Or instead of a donation, make it a Xmas gift

Mac_Fife · **Posted:** Sun Nov 29, 2009 10:23 pm

Tai'lahr wrote:

Quatermain wrote:

Perhaps someone who is a little more programming savvy would like to create a poll and find out just how many current resources are available - mostly in terms of competent man-hours on a per-month basis.

It seems that a lot of people this poll would target have congregated over at the OpenUru website, so that might be a good place to post a poll or at least a link to a poll here.

Well, not so much a survey, but a number of people listed skills and availability on the OpenURU.org site, as part of establishing "assets": http://forums.openuru.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=35

Tai'lahr wrote:

Yeah, discussion there dried up once they'd already discussed all the possibilities and couldn't go any further without more information from Cyan, but now would seem to be a good time for the technically able to discuss serious offers of assistance.

It has indeed been quiet there recently. Not dead, just quiet. Some people are still working on age/story projects for when Cyan give access to the tools, but that's being done "in camera" so as not to spoil. On the technical side, yes, things were pretty much debated as far as was sane until more information came out of Cyan. There was a stab at guessing the kind of server configuration required, and pricing up the leasing ( http://forums.openuru.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=43 ), but we really needed the "proper" details from Cyan to go any further.

As JWPlatt says, the licences (plural - I'm sure, for example, that code and "content" will be covered by different licences) will give us the start - they'll define some of the scope by telling us what we have to use "as given" and what can be developed.

As for timescales: Well, Cyan are clearly busy - they have to support Myst for iPhone (and I think there are language ports for that going on?) and continue the work they're doing on MagiQuest. From what I can see, I expect the MagiQuest work will continue on beyond the "Chapter 1" mentioned on the MagiQuest website. Nothing in RAWA's post really tells us that anything is imminent, and with limited resources and FWIW, I'd say we'd be lucky to see anything "tangible" before March next year (purely guessing of course), although it should be possible to let us know the licencing arrangements before that.

Teedyo · **Posted:** Mon Nov 30, 2009 12:02 am

What I'd like to see is this: Cyan sets up a (ro)subversion repository with just the framework/structure of their build environment. Then, as pieces of code are 'cleaned', they are submitted to said repository. This would allow interested parties to familiarize themselves with the code in an incremental manner and when everything that can be released is; they would have a fairly good overview of the entire project and know where work needs to be done. It may even be possible to 'fill in' some missing parts and perform unit testing on some of these sub-sections as they are submitted.

I do think, however, that:

Code:

main() {
   //insert MORE here
}

would be a little too lean. ;-)

Eleri · **Posted:** Mon Nov 30, 2009 4:43 am

RAWA wrote:

I will also pass on apparent consensus that you (at least those who've written on the topic) are ok with having things that cannot be released ripped out and handed off rather than waiting for them to be rewritten, even if it means it won't work at all when initially provided.

I gather some of what needed ripped out was 3rd party stuff that Cyan can't legitimately leave in before they hand it to the Teeming Masses? I which case I think most everyone would be fine with you guys pulling that stuff out, and then handing it over so that it can be made to work.

Zenguy · **Posted:** Mon Nov 30, 2009 6:11 am

It's great to get this update - and the prospect of a server running again is a marvelous!
I'm pleased that Cyan is managing to keep its head above water - that in itself is an achievement these days.

It's also good to have RAWA contributions and humour back again:

RAWA wrote:

One question I can answer, sort of: When is "soon"? "Soon" is a highly-technical term here at Cyan. It means later than "Now" but before "Someday". In this case, it means that someone's spare cycles are being spent on it. Given the nature of "spare cycles", there is no set timetable. It'll get done when it gets done.
The complete scale goes something like this: Now, Very Soon, Soon, Later Than Soon, Sooner Than Later, Later, Much Later, Eventually, Someday, Forget It
Hope that helps.

Thanks RAWA, Rand and the rest of the Cyan crew.

Katva · **Posted:** Mon Nov 30, 2009 11:25 pm

Hats off to Zenguy-I agree.
Been quite a while since I felt like posting here but this is my only thought:

I am just glad that Cyan is still a working entity.

Where there is life there is hope.

thank you RAWA

Kate

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