Will TMW Ever Make Money?

Post by **Crush** » 15 Sep 2005, 16:01

do you think that tmw will ever reach a so high quality that someone will start to try making money with it? as you know TMW is licensed under the GPL, and the GPL explicitly allows people to charge other people for copying the software as long as the customer gets the right to do so, too. you are also allowed to charge people for using a service you provide based on GPL software.

so everyone could open a TMW server and could charge people for playing on it. it would be the same as taking money from people for using webspace on your linux server.

to gain an advantage over the free servers the commercial servers could even improve the server software without having to publish the changed sourcecode because the server software needn't be published. according to the GPL you have to provide the sourcecode when you distribute binary copys of the changed version of your software, but as long as you use the changed version only for yourself noone can force you to publish your sourcecode changes.

HaLLanHype · Post by **HaLLanHype** » 15 Sep 2005, 16:10

Doubt these guys will ever charge and why pay for one when the main one is free and there will be other free ones out there

Post by **Talaroc** » 15 Sep 2005, 16:19

I can see where that might be a problem, if some company decided to really improve on the server software, offer more bandwidth, and whatnot. And there are companies out there assholish enough to do it. Perhaps an extra "terms of use" agreement you must agree to before using or modifying the server software to say it, or derivatives of it, may not be used to provide for-pay service?

Post by **Crush** » 15 Sep 2005, 16:43

the question is: can large servers exist without a pay-to-play system? at the moment we got like 12 players playing at the same time. but when tmw ever gets popular we will maybe have over thousand players on the server. running it could become too expensive. we would be forced to take donations. and that could already be seen as a pay-to-play system. and i don't think that a really big server can run on donatioins on a long term basis. one day we may perhaps be forced to decide between charge people for playing on the official server or closing it.

Post by **ElvenProgrammer** » 15 Sep 2005, 19:21

You can already donate to TMW and even if the max we had on the server was 30 players at the same time I guess, we have a lot of people willing to contribute, and many of them already offered our servers to host TMW. Of course we don't have any warranty that they suddenly will change their mind in the future.

ktm · Post by **ktm** » 15 Sep 2005, 20:23

someone could create his own server content, stick all the required files into a passworded archive (i think physfs supports that already, right?), thus keeping everything (mostly) gpl-conform (apart from the bit where they need to store the pw in the source). but of course the content quality'd need to be superior to the free stuff, else noone'd pay anything.

Post by **Rotonen** » 15 Sep 2005, 21:53

GPL doesn't cover art well, does it..? So original non-GPL content cannot be added to a GPL server (if they code their own client, that is, the client is usually the easier part and they'd have our client as a good referrence anyway)..?

Well a good way to earn money with TMW would be via franchise: If we have a lot of fans, I think they would gladly buy a TMW t-shirt or a coffee mug to support us.

Post by **Kineticstorm** » 15 Sep 2005, 23:15

TMW t-shirt!! Awesome!
I can imagine how many girls I can get with that shirt!

...
None!

But I'd still want one.

maci · Post by **maci** » 15 Sep 2005, 23:34

rotonen
franchise is sth really different.. mcdonalds does franchise...

i guess you mean merchandising

Post by **Modanung** » 15 Sep 2005, 23:50

maci wrote:franchise is sth really different.. mcdonalds does franchise...

Don't you mean 'french fries' instead of 'franchise'?

And ohyea, merchandising would be cool indeed. But it's a bit early for that I guess.

A t-shirt with "MAGGOT!" in nice, big friendly letters and an enlarged maggot printed on it.

Post by **Crush** » 16 Sep 2005, 00:12

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchandising
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchising
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_fries

just to make that clear

but i would be really interested what your reaction would be when someone decides to open a commercial tmw server. would you oppose him, support him or wouldn't you care?

Post by **Bjørn** » 16 Sep 2005, 00:51

I think we should support people that set up a TMW server, even if they charge for playing on it. If this would really be commercially interesting that'd actually be quite cool I think. In contrast we'll always make sure there's at least one free to play server available, operated by an open community of developers and contributing players.

_MeLo_ · Post by **_MeLo_** » 16 Sep 2005, 08:43

Great idea Bjorn i love the fact that TMW will stay free forever :p

brower · Post by **brower** » 16 Sep 2005, 09:11

sure it will be free 4ever (i pray 4 it)

Bear · Post by **Bear** » 16 Sep 2005, 18:35

What i think.... If TMW wants money... develope a system for it.

Make it so no one needs to pay, but many people will O>O

Like in Maple Story, they have the Cash shop, you can use money to buy special items.