[MUD-Dev] Source Code Release

[Greg Munt]

This isn't a flame. Well, at least, I don't intend it to be one. There is
a lot of rambling, and probably more bad assumptions. This may or may not
be related to the ambiguity and 'fuzziness' of the subject matter. 

On Wed, 11 Feb 1998, Richard Woolcock wrote:

> Greg Munt wrote:
>  
> > I am wary of what will happen to my code - what it will be used to create
> > - once I have made it available to the general public.
> 
> I'm also considering releasing some code, and have similar worries...
> The real difference is that there is already an (old) copy of my code
> which was stolen, and is floating around on the net.  Even if I release
> my code, it was written when I was still learning C and some of it is
> very badly written.
> 
> Could I really bring myself to drop such a mud on the mudding community?
> No...not normally - but at least it would be far better than the hacked-up
> mess floating around at the moment (which some people who have copies of 
> are even selling, because I refuse to give out the code).
> 
> At least if I did, it would be the first (to my knowledge) 'stock' leveless
> mud (merc2.1 based), which might at least bring a little variety to the
> stock scene.

Summary: you think that you should release crap code to the community,
because its 'less crap' than that which is currently circulating - and
does provide 'a little variety to the stock scene'. 

Whilst this certainly does have its own merits, this also leads us into
evaluating muds based on their levels of constituent excrement. Perhaps we
should focus on reasons for releasing the code. 

To "improve the community"? To "increase the quality of the average mud?" 
To "develop the stagnating mud field"? 

Define 'improvements'. Define 'quality'. Define your aims. By releasing
our code, are we trying to make things 'better'? (Define that too.) Or are
we simply trying to mix our crap with the crap that is already there, to
produce, not, as we might like to think, something 'better', or
'improved', or of more 'quality', but rather, something more akin to what
*we* want, what *we* look for in a mud, what *we* aspire to. Are we
looking to improve the community, or mould it into our own image? 

Do we seek to advance, develop, improve - or do we seek to replace LP,
DIKU and Tiny with something of our own design? Is the dominance of a few
mud types good? If our mud replaced the big three, would we be
disappointed? Regretful? Egotistical and joyous? 

>From Keegan's JOMR paper, we know that unless a base becomes publicly
available (read: stock), it will wither, die and be forgotten. Do we
release code to prevent this happening? If so, why don't we want our code
to become forgotten? 

Those scratch-authors among us, who deride the more popular uses of stock
code (*ahem*), now face a dilemma. The reasons that we write from scratch
are many. Not least is the unwillingness to adopt old, (what we consider
to be) bad designs. We seek to redress the balance by releasing our
scratch, 'better', 'improved' code. Assuming that our code (like the big
three) survives ten years, will be then look back in horror, in the
realisation that our work has become what we most despised about the
mudding field? 

Let us now consider how stock code is used. Ignoring any possible hidden
agenda of egotism, we release our code. What do we want that code to be
used for? Arguably, we want it to make things 'better' - our own
definition of 'better'. What we consider the better attributes of a mud,
we would most certainly have put into our own. We are trying to propogate
our own ideas and wants to the community. Yet, when those, and only those,
very ideas and wants (i.e. the code that we release) are used, we deride
it, hate it, and sometimes (this is certainly true in Reese's case)
attempt to reverse the decision of releasing the code in the first place. 

If we were pure egotists, we would want to see unmodified versions of our
code spread throughout the net. Wouldn't we? Perhaps, perhaps not. A
steady flow of uninspiring stock muds condemns the base to ridicule on
usenet (who claims that stock DIKU is a good piece of code?) - and
indirectly, condemns us to it, too. 

So, we want our code to be used, certainly, but we want it to be the base
for improvements. Probably the most important question to ask, is: do the
people who download our code, share our goals, our vision of what the code
will be used for? In the vast majority of cases, the simple answer to this
question is a firm and definite NO. As has been remarked to me in email
recently (hi, Ling) as far as most people are concerned, there is no
'community', there is certainly no 'field'. They are 'in it for the fun
and not for life'. They have no interest in chasing things towards their
definition of 'better'. The simple fact is, they do not care. The big
three can dominate for the next ten years, too, it doesn't matter to them
in the slightest. Richard Bartle, the other half of Essex MUD, has stated
that he believes that there will be no 'field' until it becomes more
commercially-orientated - that free muds are themselves directly causing
the stagnation that I have become disgusted with, a disgust which I have
registered occassionally on usenet. That many of today's muds "are free,
and worth every penny." Today, anyone can run a mud. (Whether anyone
*should*, is a totally different matter.) A lot of the people who set up
these muds have been defined as 'clueless newbie morons'. But, without
them, would muds even exist? 

We seem to have been conditioned into thinking that without
freely-available code, muds are doomed. In the free sector, this is
certainly the case. The free sector is doomed without free code, and
without the much-derided clueless morons to run them. The commercial
sector is (and possibly always was) in a better place to 'improve' the
so-called mudding field. Why? Because developers in the free sector have
no incentive to work at things, to improve, to create better shit. Those
who do work hard, to force improvements, are not really in the free sector
at all - they are in the commecial sector, simply with less (read:  no)
resources. 

This thread asks a question which has no real answer. It states what is
good, and what is bad, about releasing our code to the masses. But it does
not answer the question, "Am I adding any value, by releasing my code?" 

--
Greg Munt, greg at uni-corn.demon.co.uk   "I'm not bitter - just twisted."
http://www.uni-corn.demon.co.uk/ubiquity/