The Mana World Forums

EDIT: Can you please delete this post. I do not wish to share any more details due to the negative nature of this community.

Sorry.

Is this an attempt to steal our badly needed development team
other than that it seems interesting

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We can just take back from the pixellation work you come up with.

Good luck.

Are you going to follow the terms of the GNU General Public License, including content?

When you do I will gladly answer any questions you have about the TMW engine.

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Crank wrote:Well I would only have to keep the source under the GNU license. Considering all sprite and music and such will be 100% custom I see no reason to share that also.

When you don' t see the reason you don't understand the system of free software and free content. Too bad, no support for you.

By the way, the link doesn't work (server doesn't respond - not even to pings)

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Crank wrote:... I see no reason to share that also.

Reconsider.
Why? Simple, open content fuels better software, everywhere.

How?
When there is more open content, more people have the ability to develop programs. Because coders, who can't make art, are able to use graphics from other projects to start with on their own. The more open content, the more people who want to help out with the content; and the more open content, the more people who find projects, and are able to help the project. The more popular these open source projects, because of the open content which makes them possible, the more people who find the project, resulting in more people working on the project. The more popular these projects become, the more people want to learn how to program, and those people who want to learn how to program, are able to study from other open source projects (which were made possible from open content). So open source, and open content, promote learning. When more people learn how to help out, people are able to help out more, and get more finished. More people can learn from a greater amount of people, making more people be better educated in software development. With more people who can program well, the higher quality our software becomes.

Another thing to think about, thatRed Hat wrote: "The concept behind open source is not new. For centuries, universities and research communities have shared their work. Monks copied books by hand. Scientists publish new discoveries in journals. Mathematical formulas are distributed, improved, redistributed.

Imagine if all of this past knowledge was kept hidden or its use was restricted to only those who are willing to pay for it. Yet this is the mentality behind the proprietary software model. In the same way shared knowledge propels the whole of society forward, open technology development can drive innovation for an entire industry."

Also, when you open source your project, you will be able to get so much more done, in a so much quicker time. It would be best for your project for sure, considering you plan on doing all the graphics over again, and you only have ONE spriter ATM.

I also think right now is a really poor time to do a total conversion of TMW, considering 0.1 isn't...exactly...done. It's just plain too early for this, considering the whole game needs more work in the whole coding department.
I'm all for a total conversion, LATER, when the game is actually ready for it. If I were you, I would take your team, and make them work on the TMWServ, and get out a 0.1 release of TMW. Then, you can start your TC.

If you decide to go with open content with your game, and you take your team and help get 0.1 out; I am sure you would be much more welcomed. As it is, this whole thread belongs in off-topic chat.

But, we do plan on giving back to the TMW community once we get going of course.

Honestly those seem like empty words. (The whole design principles/ethics conflict between TMW and your project)

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Crank wrote:You ask me to make it open source graphics and such but I'm not the sprite artist, they don't want it to be open.

Of course you can force them. You just need the balls to tell them "Either you license it under the GPL or we won't accept it" like we do.

Its either let you leech my **** or you'll give me the silent treatment.

Who is the one who intends to leech years of software development from whom? Not that there is anything wrong about that. The Mana World is free software, after all (free as in freedom, not as in free beer). But I think that it is a bit hypocritical to accuse us of wanting to take without giving when we are the ones who let you (and anyone else) use everything we ever created.


This project believes in the free software and free content philosophy. You are treated as seriously as you do too. There is of course nothing wrong from the legal point of view to use open software with propietary content, but don't expect us to help you when you do that.

Crank wrote:You ask me to make it open source graphics and such but I'm not the sprite artist, they don't want it to be open. I cant force them.

You said in the OP that you are the owner of your project.

Crank also wrote:Me - Owner/Coder

Therefore you are in charge of all licensing, right? If so, how are you going to license all the content? If you are going to leave the licensing up the artist (like you suggest you are doing), the artists could cause you a lot of troubles. (e.g. The artists decide to keep their own content, and not let you use it.)

How much are you paying your devs, and how much are going to charge for the product?

Crank also wrote: Also, we have more than one sprite artists. You should actually read my first post [...]

I read it, and when I read it first, you had one.

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Actually within the limits of the license of your source code, you could charge for the service of managing a server and sell accounts, but you could not control any competition spawned from the same codebase. Also if this is viable business for you, we (at least I) encourage it. We are probably not going to do this on the long run, though.

With my understanding of the English language, I have not seen a single accusation of stealing in this thread.

Also no statements have been made in the name of this project AFAIK. Only individuals have been stating that they will not personally support you because of ideological reasons.

Also we do not care all that much for the credit. It's nice if you mention us, but it's within the GPL for you to do whatever you want to do with our codebase as long as you still keep your codebase under the GPL. Also from my part I see no obstacles for providing you with technical support if you need any to get started. Also no objections for cooperating later on.

Graphicswise, as you have stated, we are different and non-compatible. I just fail to see the benefit of you closing up your graphics and content license. Does it really take something away from you if someone later on randomly decides to use some of your content for their project? At least I would be honored. Also this way you can scout other similarly licensed projects for usable stuff. Please relay my thoughts on this to your art department.

Licensing is usually a delicate subject and prone to misunderstandings. Especially between people with different cultural backgrounds and/or less legal experience/vision/knowledge.

So just clear this up and have a group hug or something before this gets even more out of hand. There is no problem, just some friction caused by people not fully understanding each others messages and intentions.

Rotonen wrote:With my understanding of the English language, I have not seen a single accusation of stealing in this thread.

I agree. Len joking referred to it, but thats all (one nice thing about the GPL is that it prevent theft). I think it was all just a misunderstanding about the content. It's clear now that your content won't work for this project, and as the code is GPL, any changes you make we can port back to this project (as has been done with code from other spinoffs, as Crush mentioned).