[DGD] DGD & MySQL

[Shentino]

I'm afraid both of you (or at least one of you) are making the rather
incorrect assumption that I wish to profit from my SND's Not DGD
project.

My intentions are to spend MY time writing up MY project for no money,
so that OTHERS (who, unlike me, aren't all the geeky types that I
*would* be if I actually pull it off).

In that sense, my efforts are based purely upon charity, and I really
couldn't care about profits.  Yes, I realize that by doing so I am
forgoing the opportunity to make lots more money working as a
programmer.  However, I value helping others out enough that, to me,
it is worth it to do so.

Making it possible for others (who may or may not share my
"expertise") to run muds on isolated (read: unshared, private, secure,
theoretically unsnoopable and unhackable) servers without worrying
about the inevitable fees that any organization would charge for the
bother of tying up precious corporate resources that could be turned
to other profitable activities, is something that I value.  It would
make me happy if DGD's functionality were made available to more
people, including those who don't have the cash to float a server, and
due to DGD's licensing, are forbidden from accepting donations to do
so.  MUDs may be low-end in resource usage, however, they still
require an environment to operate in/under, and that environment is
what entails the expense.

I have looked, and apart from a generous volunteer who gave me a shell
account (which I'm still using to try to get phantasmal up and
running), I have found ZILCH on hosting.  Every place I've been to
charges for even a minimal service.  Even the 5-dollar donation site,
while nice and grateful, has restrictions on port count (kiss
phantasmal goodbye, klib backdoor/normal telnet/ssh/mudclient), and
one still has to cough up the 5 bucks and somehow get it delivered.
Internet transactions, even small ones, in turn usually require a
credit card.  Getting one is yet another hassle.

So basically, anyone wishing to host a mud must either

1)  pay for hosting themselves, or make a deal with someone else to
share the expenses
2)  run a commercial enterprise and have a mud running as a parasite
3)  get lucky enough for someone to volunteer them a shell account