[MUD-Dev] Source Code Release

[Greg Munt]

On Fri, 13 Feb 1998, Ben Greear wrote:

[Much snipped]

> > It is popular for administrators to swap DIKU areas, to browse the web 
> > for area repositories. You might say that releasing your code with only 
> > one zone relieves you of any responsibility. I would not.
> 
> I don't see these as problems.  I don't physically have the time to write
> 10k rooms, and finding decent builders is tough, although I ahve a few.
> If there is a zone that someone else built, that will fit into my theme,
> why not use it?  Of course, I'd personally change it at least a little,
> adding or changing mob scripts and such...

The problem arises where stock areas do not easily fit into the theme. A 
further problem arises, where the mud has no real theme at all, and the 
areas are a hotch-potch of any area the administration can lay their 
hands on. (Island made the world irrelevant to the game, of course, but 
that is the exception to the rule, really.)

> > See: Medievia.
> 
> Yeah, thats the only topic that can get rgmd riled up for years at a time
> :P

And rightly so. But it illustrates very well how worthwhile it is, to 
include a license with a source code release.
 
> > > Source in html files strikes me as useless, no one wants to read the
> > > stuff, and if it's not easily installable and compileable, no one ever
> > > will.  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding....

[...]
 
> For instance, if I posted my most beautiful Red-Black binary tree code,
> would you read it?  I can't even remember how I wrote it :P

It would largely depend on whether just the code was available, or if 
detailed annotations were also provided...

--
Greg Munt, greg at uni-corn.demon.co.uk; http://www.uni-corn.demon.co.uk/ubiquity/
"Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow."