[MUD-Dev] Re: Commercial-use Restrictions on Code Bases (was: help me find 100% fre (fwd)

[J C Lawrence]

------- Forwarded Message
From: mk270 at cam.ac.uk (Martin Keegan)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
Subject: Re: Commercial-use Restrictions on Code Bases (was: help me find 100%  free  graphical mud)
Date: 3 Dec 1999 17:30:37 GMT

In article <384714F6.62949986 at spam.free.gamecommandos.com>, Ilya wrote:
>Martin Keegan wrote:

>> single one they want. By no coincidence whatsoever I have been writing
>> a component of just such a system ... :) and shall probably be releasing
>> it (the networking code) this weekend.
>
>I love it!  What other components are envisaged, exactly, and who
>is to be working on them?  Or shall we use the power of the site
>and this usenet group to promote and recruit that as well?
 
Assuming the code actually works, there is a gang of people here at
Cambridge threatening to write all the other bits. The division we see
is roughly: socket code, database/memory management, parser, game mechanics.
I expect the game mechanics stuff not to be under the LGPL, unlike the
other bits. What's more important than the bits themselves is the
interface between them. In particular, I think the best approach would be
to see what can be taken OUT of a mud (socket stuff, database management)
and separating that, rather than imposing some a priori design structure
on the whole thing and then finding that it doesn't work (e.g., the way
someone might want to implement an internal MUD language might cut
across both parser and game mechanics...))

The point is that a coder should be constrained by existing code as
little as possible.

The only sane way to do that seems to be modularity that works. Having
a system not crippled by ancient licensing mistakes will prevent
Diku style fragmentation - there'd be no way to fork off separate codebases
permanently: either your mud would sit on its changes, or it'd distribute
them and they'd get folded into the main development tree.

>We'd love to!  What would you suggest?  I've been working on an article,
>elusively wandering around 95% complete after three rewrites in the
>last week, which at least espouses moving towards the commercial-use-ok
>code bases.  I still hope to have it done very very soon.  The words
>are all there I think, but there is still something feeling incomplete.

Can I see a copy of this article? Sounds interesting.

Mk
------- End of Forwarded Message


--
J C Lawrence                                 Home: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                              Other: coder at kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--


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