[MUD-Dev] Source Code Release

[coder at ibm.net]

On 12/02/98 at 11:09 AM, Greg Munt <greg at uni-corn.demon.co.uk> said:

>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'. 

There are two implicit questions:

  What purpose do you have for your code and its resultant binary product?

  What duty do you consider you owe the field?

>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? 

Not true.  You are ignoring the exceptions to his patterns.  Is MUD2
forgotten and withered?  Is Avalon with its roots all the way back in the
IOWA project a decayed and ineffectual historical footnote?  

Often the exceptions are more inportant than the rules for determining
structure.

Many tend to discount MUD2, Avalon, Gemstone etc as they are not heavily
discussed on Usenet.  Is Usenet activity a valid measure of a MUD?  What
of the pre-selection which Usenet and newsgroups make of their
participating publics?  It would be easy to argue that there is little to
no coverage of MUD2 purely due to its commercial nature and its resulting
"unpopularity" with cash strapped college students.

Yet, Avalon continues to be profitable (as of last I heard), and I suspect
that there are more ex-MUD2 and MUD2 players on the planet than there are
for *any* other single code base.

You need to be careful with your definitions in areas like this.

>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? 

There is much to argue against "stock" in its anti-elitist plebian
squalor.  There is also much to argue on the side of popularity not
equating to actual value.  In the end is either argument worth more than
phosphor its written on?

Devolve to the "old" world of literature.  

There are hundreds of Mills And Boon formulae romances (Harlequin for the
US-centrics).  They are simple, repetitive, factory productions.  Their
literary quality could be said to be close to zero.  They are also
immensely popular and make their publishers, and occassionally their
authors, considerable sums of money.  Yet, more literarily acclaimed
writers continue to flourish or at least starve slowly (there are very few
who make more than a modest living writing).  

Starving artist or philandering pimp?  Should the "artiste" sell out to
money?  

Look at the area of pulp fiction in the earlier parts of this century. 
Much of it was and is pure dreck.  Not a little is now acclaimed as being
truly masterful and worthy of great recognition.  In those days it was all
dime store novels and trashy magazines with buxom button bursting maids
about to be ravished by saturine villains but for the daring rescue of the
over-gallant hero.  Those pulps no longer exist, or do only in
unrecognisably altered form.  However some of those tales we now recognise
as truly great literature, despite or because of their cleavage
palpitating content.

Are MUDs and MUD servers going to prove any different?  Does anyone here
really think that MUD servers in 10 years will bear anything but a faint
and shadowed resemblance to current servers?

>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. 

And condemnation by Usenet is to be considered a worthy condemnation by
peers or valid authority?

>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. 

True.  Its a tool -- they get their job done or thier whims assuaged. 
'Nuf said.   There is enough evidence elsewhere in the computing field to
abley demonstrate.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...