Current Open Source Status

Hello guys,

I've had a reply from Bill regarding the whole company deal/open source situation.

It's pretty exciting (only because we've heard so little), and I think this could really be the beginning of the integration. However, it's not set in stone.
There's no point me repeating what's been said, so I'll just paste the email conversation below (from oldest to latest):

Quote :

-------------------------------------------------------
> On 9/6/2011 11:04 AM, Tristan Bacon wrote:

>> Hi Bill,
>>
>> Just wondering whether you had managed to sort out the press release,
>> and whether you were still interested in the Q&A session?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Tristan
>>
>>
>
-------------------------------------------------
> -----Original Message----- From: Bill Turpin

> Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 8:04 PM
> To: Tristan Bacon
> Subject: Re: Multiverse
>
> Hi Tristan, I'm working through a possible deal that might affect what
> we do in terms of open source. I need another 2 weeks to see how it
> works out.
>
> Thanks,
> Bill
>
----------------------------------------------------
On 9/29/2011 2:05 PM, Tristan Bacon wrote:

> Hi Bill,
>
> Long time no speak!
> Just wondering how things were coming along with the Platform? In your
> previous email, you mentioned a potential deal - what's happening with
> that?
>
> Thanks
>
> Tristan
>
-----------------------------------------------------
On 10/3/2011 8:00 PM, Bill Turpin wrote:

Hi Tristan, I hope you're doing well. We've been entertaining an offer
that would affect the future of the tech platform. At this point, the
opportunity has pretty much gone away. So, I can start thinking about
the open source again.

Do you have a preferred open source license agreement? It seems like
there are a lot of them out there.

Do you have a preferred open source hosting organization or website?

Thanks,
Bill

Discuss!

I think the MIT License is pretty good but I don't know that much. I think sourceforge is generally the go to place for open source projects.

Hi, guys, have a look on GPL and LGPL. Might be a option.

Quote :

Licensing Provisions
For revenue-sharing or non-commercial uses, Multiverse will license the platform to you without up front fees. In return, you agree to operate your world on the platform and within the Multiverse Network. Multiverse will collect end-user fees, as set by you, for subscriptions, access fees, in-world item purchases or any other purposes. Multiverse will retain 10% of the gross revenue from your world. In addition, Multiverse retains the collection costs, which are the actual costs associated with financial transactions, including credit card processing fees and billing-related customer service costs.

Even as open source, a contract can be made between multiverse and end-user. In my opinion, retaining 10% of gross venue for paying the freelancers developers, will be a good option.

Sounds interesting.

As you know with Multiverse's current terms, you have to host it on the actual platform, which means you have to use the general Multiverse client to log in. When you open the client, you are presented with lots of different games, which to me seems a little unprofessional from the developers point of view.
I can understand the company's motive with this process (the fact that everyone else's games gets some publicity), but it just makes the games look a little too indie (if you see what I mean)

We should just let players access the games using the developers own portals, like most big games have nowadays.
Tell me what you think.


With regards to the revenue aspect, doesn't open source mean that the code is free? Therefore, this eliminates the need to even involve the company in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to take the company out of the picture altogether, as Bill would never agree to a licence that removes any money-making opportunities for the company. I understand that completely.
We've got to think about this from both sides of the table. On one side, the company will want to retain some sort of power in terms of revenue sharing.
On the other hand, we've got the independent developers who want to get as much of their hard-earned revenue as possible.

My idea:
The company could offer a cheap server hosting package to the developers.
This gives the company a bit of profit, but doesn't scare off potential new developers.
(I appreciate that 10% isn't that much off the revenue, but it's difficult to justify any sort of loss in revenue for a game made using open source software, even if it was closed source beforehand)

Something for us to think about!

So, does anyone have any more suggestions as to which open source licence to use?

If we can get a general agreement, I can pitch it to Bill, and get things rolling!

Do you know what they are planning on including in the open source?

I think the best will be to make it MIT or BSD so that we dont all have to publish our quest structure etc

For scheduling purposes is there any rough estimate on when they are planning on converting to open source?

Not sure what they're planning to include in the open source. Hopefully, Bill will be signing up to the forum sometime soon, and he'll be able to address these questions directly.

With the timing, I should imagine we can start the transition within the next few months.
I'll continue working on it with Bill, and hopefully we'll get something sorted quicker, assuming everyone is willing to help out in some way.

Any word on what is going?

Nothing at the moment, I'll email him now to see what's happening

Right, I won't go into too much detail now, but the source code is currently being uploaded to SourceForge, and will be ready for distribution within the next 24 hours.

I'm currently co-ordinating with Bill on the uploading, and once the uploading is complete, and the project is organised, Bill and I will write up an official announcement.

Watch this space!

Tristan

Awesome

Hi,
Any word on if all was resolved?
Before I start headlong into working on a project I would like to know
if MV is now under the MIT license with the ability for me to create a
Game and sell it. If I read it correctly MV will be open source but my game content
will be proprietary?

By the way, I want to create a RPG that is not a MMO but I have no issues
with setting up some type of payment or Royalty system to compensate MV.
Is this a valid option?

Lou

It is completely open source and is available under the MIT license. You are welcome to donate money or code but you are not required to.

With the MIT license there is no requirement for you to open source your usage of the system. The requirement is that any source code you use that is under the MIT license must include the license somewhere in the code itself. We are currently working on adding it to every header of all source files.

Your assets and your modifications to the code do not need to be open sourced. We encourage people to contribute back to the community in any way they can. Some of that may be to release your code and assets as open source, but again it is not required.

There is a lot of confusion around the MIT License. Long story short it is the most liberal and free open source license available today. Essentially you can do whatever you want as long as the originally open sourced code has the license included in it.

Thanks for the info guys.
Time to start Coding.....