Feedback & Discussion for: Open source upon closure

[Maziel]

Lutagar said:
So Halaster has said there was a time he'd considered closing armageddon, and I can see the merit in the idea.

In the event that Armageddon is closed will the codebase be made publicly available?

Oleupata said:
Probably not. In order to do that we'd have to track down basically everyone who contributed and get their agreement, is my understanding.

I'm not a professional coder, albeit am transitioning into that field. I do work in IT and did work as a Claims Examiner. I talked with ChatGPT, a coder, and can give you an extremely relevant RL example.

Here's the conclusion I've come to.

If the past coders contributed their code to the game on a volunteer basis and did not expect to retain any rights in the code, it may be possible for the producer to make the code open source without their permission.

I think past coders could possibly release their code without consulting with Armageddon, however, since they're not under any obligation not to do so.

Furthermore, Apocalypse uses an older version of the Armageddon codebase. Not only that, but they're making continued improvements with no obligation to release their changes. Because it was likely a former producer who released the code (probably Nergal) - it wasn't an unlawful hack or something, and the code isn't licensed. I would bet their code contributions are minor compared to code developments on Armageddon over the past several years, but I have no way of knowing.

Apocalypse is open to players and has been operating for years now.

Are they under any legal threats? Have any past coders risen up against them? Has Armageddon taken any action against them?

The answer to that question is the same as the following: would there be any legal concerns with open-sourcing Armageddon?

No.

[Qzzrbl]

It's probably either a courtesy thing, or that they flat-out don't want to release their codebase to the public.

Either scenario is okay, imo.

[Halcyon]

I would advise anyone with the code not to release it if Arm were closed.   I dont want an outside party to think they can harass staff into game ownership.

[Maziel]

It's probably either a courtesy thing, or that they flat-out don't want to release their codebase to the public.

Either scenario is okay, imo.

Since an older version is already out there, open-sourcing it would give them more ownership over it. Apocalypse would likely use the more updated stuff, maybe merging some of their older changes, and posting their improvements (as per their license agreement) for Armageddon to integrate if they approve them. Even if the license agreement doesn't mandate Apocalypse to do so, scenarios like this encourage Apocalypse to send improvements upstream so that they will easily get improvements back from Armageddon in the future. Otherwise, as is, you have branches that aren't benefiting/recognizing Armageddon as root.

Also, playing Armageddon because you explicitly approve of the current staff/moderation/storytellers/etc rather than it having the most updated code sounds like a win/win for all parties involved. 

That gives Armageddon staff more ownership on the community front.

But I didn't create this thread to do a pro/con analysis etc., just to simply state that there aren't legal concerns.

[Maziel]

I would advise anyone with the code not to release it if Arm were closed.   I dont want an outside party to think they can harass staff into game ownership.

We're one big dysfunctional family, and the paranoia and drama are on both sides. When you guys have whoever in your discord making noise, it's not part of a group community agenda from Jcarter/Pooch/whatever. It's due to the person's past experiences, their general disposition, and the environment/context in which they find themselves.

Edit: And, again, older code is already out there. Open-sourcing allows taking ownership and licensing Armageddon code that's already unlicensed in the wild.

[Maziel]

I would advise anyone with the code not to release it if Arm were closed.   I dont want an outside party to think they can harass staff into game ownership.

... also, given that a public apology wasn't issued to affected parties who were actually sexually harrassed in addition to offering their acceptance back into the community (correct me if I'm wrong, I read about 25% of the biggies), I can't imagine that staff have been harassed very much. Much less under the pretext of being harrassed to shut down their game to cause them to open-source it.

To me, it comes off as I don't want anybody enjoying the things I enjoy outside of how I intend for them to be enjoyed, even if it means taking it from myself which I think is pretty self-describing. And is part of why we have so many issues as a community in the first place.

Edit: also, they are already enjoying things outside of how they're intended to be enjoyed. So that's a double self-spite face punch.

[mansa]

The DikuMUD codebase is available to download here:
https://dikumud.com/

The DikuMUD license changed in 2020, to be a LGPL license, for those who wanted to update their codebase and follow the new license rules.
Under the current (old, inherited) license, ArmageddonMUD has a few hoops that needs to go through in order to publish it.

See https://dikumud.com/dikumud-license/ for more details.

[Halcyon]

I would advise anyone with the code not to release it if Arm were closed.   I dont want an outside party to think they can harass staff into game ownership.

... also, given that a public apology wasn't issued to affected parties who were actually sexually harrassed in addition to offering their acceptance back into the community (correct me if I'm wrong, I read about 25% of the biggies), I can't imagine that staff have been harassed very much. Much less under the pretext of being harrassed to shut down their game to cause them to open-source it.

To me, it comes off as I don't want anybody enjoying the things I enjoy outside of how I intend for them to be enjoyed, even if it means taking it from myself which I think is pretty self-describing. And is part of why we have so many issues as a community in the first place.

Edit: also, they are already enjoying things outside of how they're intended to be enjoyed. So that's a double self-spite face punch.

I dont own the code.  I dont serve on staff.

I said what I meant.

[Maziel]

The DikuMUD codebase is available to download here:
https://dikumud.com/

The DikuMUD license changed in 2020, to be a LGPL license, for those who wanted to update their codebase and follow the new license rules.
Under the current (old, inherited) license, ArmageddonMUD has a few hoops that needs to go through in order to publish it.

See https://dikumud.com/dikumud-license/ for more details.

Even under the old DikuMUD license, this wouldn't have prevented Armageddon from posting their code (with DikuMUD restrictions - no commercial, inform before publishing, their credit etc) on Github. With whatever additional license Arm staff wanted to license their own part of the code under.

Source: Read the old DikuMUD license and didn't see any conflicts. Also, GitHub is full of DikuMUD derived codebases with the DikuMUD license intact per the language.
See: https://github.com/stefanludlow/OpenRPI/search?q=Sebastian for an example.

[mansa]

There's been some moderation reports in this thread.

Please don't use homophobic phrases on the discord  or GDB ever.

[Brytta Léofa]

(I am not a lawyer; implicit caveats throughout...)

the code isn't licensed

"that's worse though, you see that that's worse?"

"Not licensed" doesn't mean what you think. Under US law the code is copyrighted. Given the lack of a legal framework assigning rights to "the Armageddon producers" or whatever, every coder who's contributed probably has standing to sue for copyright violations. To sue whom? probably not Armageddon for running the code. Probably anybody who posts it online though.

A license would give you, as a non-author, specific rights to use the code beyond what copyright law gives you. Because the code is not licensed, you do not have those rights and could be sued for copyright violation if you publish the code.

[Kialae]

I'm not an American citizen, so I can't read your silly laws. :3

[Brytta Léofa]

If Arm staff wanted to move towards owning having well-defined rights to the MUD's source code, probably something like this would work:

- Create a new github repo. Select a suitable license to be used for all contributions.
- Make the repo a dependency for the Armageddon engine.
- Contribute new code modules to the repo. That code never existed with ill-defined license terms, sweet.
- Over a ten-year period, replace all Armageddon code with clean-room rewrites in the new repo.
  - tbh you probably can't do this in a way that would pass scrutiny vs being sued by a big software co
  - but in practice you only have to exceed the bars of "DikuMUD authors aren't suing us" and "was definitely not a copy and paste job"
- ??
- profit (if you really want to)

[Brokkr]

To be clear…

A Producer did not release the code which went on to be the code leak that gave rise to Apoc.

A Storyteller who was made a Storyteller in order to increase the security of the website instead used their access to force their way into a part of the website they did not have access to. There they found CGIT which only select Admin+ Staff had access to, and copied what was there without permission or authorization.  Which is why it was split into chunks the way it was.

Do not attempt to legitimize the theft.

[Halaster]

There are no plans to close the game.

And if the game closed, the code would not become open source.  The end.

[Maziel]

(I am not a lawyer; implicit caveats throughout...)

the code isn't licensed

"that's worse though, you see that that's worse?"

"Not licensed" doesn't mean what you think. Under US law the code is copyrighted. Given the lack of a legal framework assigning rights to "the Armageddon producers" or whatever, every coder who's contributed probably has standing to sue for copyright violations. To sue whom? probably not Armageddon for running the code. Probably anybody who posts it online though.

A license would give you, as a non-author, specific rights to use the code beyond what copyright law gives you. Because the code is not licensed, you do not have those rights and could be sued for copyright violation if you publish the code.

Apocalypse doesn't seem to think it's worse.

I don't have a fine-grain understanding either, but it's very clear from examples to be functionally a non-issue, to say the least.

Way before Apocalypse ever existed, when I brought this up several years ago, no one said 'we probably couldn't legally do that.' There was dogpiling, folks like Malifax, other, but not one person gave that argument.

What's changed? Nobody was talking about it then, and since then it's already been out in the wild with no legal copyright ramifications whatsoever.  There are also rumors about the game possibly closing and drama going on. Okay.

Why?

Is it because Armageddon is also derivative and infringing copyright from Dark Sun? With the logic that nobody should be able to love something the way that you want it to be loved, Wizards of the Coast should have shutdown Armageddon ages ago. Luckily, they're more lenient then some of their love children are to their own respective families.

If Arm staff wanted to move towards owning having well-defined rights to the MUD's source code, probably something like this would work:

- Create a new github repo. Select a suitable license to be used for all contributions.
- Make the repo a dependency for the Armageddon engine.
- Contribute new code modules to the repo. That code never existed with ill-defined license terms, sweet.
- Over a ten-year period, replace all Armageddon code with clean-room rewrites in the new repo.
  - tbh you probably can't do this in a way that would pass scrutiny vs being sued by a big software co
  - but in practice you only have to exceed the bars of "DikuMUD authors aren't suing us" and "was definitely not a copy and paste job"
- ??
- profit (if you really want to)

I think you're confused with the DikuMUD authors line? You're definitely confusing me. Nothing is violating Diku stuff whatsoever there. You know there are lots of open source diku-based MUD codebases on github, right? It's not violating their license, you just include it along with any licenses for your own code.
I also don't understand your line about scrutiny and big software co line.

The steps are this simple.
-Post your shit on Github.
-When people fork it and make pull requests (updates from their branches), merge those if you like them and implement them in Armageddon.
-Anyone wanting to use Arm code and have the best experience will use your code + license instead of the unlicensed bit out in the wild, effectively making all Armageddon code licensed by you. Meaning you can now be in control as root and take improvements upstream, if you want them.

Note that only step #1 is technically mandatory. It's a 1 step required plan, two step optional, last step automatic.

To be clear…

A Producer did not release the code which went on to be the code leak that gave rise to Apoc.

A Storyteller who was made a Storyteller in order to increase the security of the website instead used their access to force their way into a part of the website they did not have access to. There they found CGIT which only select Admin+ Staff had access to, and copied what was there without permission or authorization.  Which is why it was split into chunks the way it was.

Do not attempt to legitimize the theft.

Without any logs to scrutinize or faith that logs were ever scrutinized, I think that's as likely as the alternative I've heard. Saying that I'm attempting to legitimize theft is about the same as saying you're either 1) attempting to scapegoat a former storyteller and save face, or 2) make this conversation derail about points that are extremely unintersting, divisive, and unimportant in the general context of how Armageddon relates to being potentially open sourced. I started this conversation far before any of these events happened. But it would be unfair to say that you're attempting to straw man this discussion any more than it would be to say that I'm trying to legitimize theft.

[Maziel]

There are no plans to close the game.

And if the game closed, the code would not become open source.  The end.

Conversations don't stop just because you want them to.

You're complying to expectations that I'd rather you not - that you're failing to learn anything. Neither from your predecessors nor your own experience.

[Halaster]

There are no plans to close the game.

And if the game closed, the code would not become open source.  The end.

Conversations don't stop just because you want them to.

You're complying to expectations that I'd rather you not - that you're failing to learn anything. Neither from your predecessors nor your own experience.

I didn't say you couldn't have a conversation.  My point was that regardless of the outcome of your conversation, the code would not be released.  My apologies if it came across as an attempt to end the conversation.

[Brokkr]

Without any logs to scrutinize or faith that logs were ever scrutinized, I think that's as likely as the alternative I've heard. Saying that I'm attempting to legitimize theft is about the same as saying you're either 1) attempting to scapegoat a former storyteller and save face, or 2) make this conversation derail about points that are extremely unintersting, divisive, and unimportant in the general context of how Armageddon relates to being potentially open sourced. I started this conversation far before any of these events happened. But it would be unfair to say that you're attempting to straw man this discussion any more than it would be to say that I'm trying to legitimize theft.

The two of us have different access to the facts.  We have not publicly said how the theft happened before, simply that it was stolen.  Folks seem to want transparency, so there it is.  Asked for and delivered.

[Maziel]

There are no plans to close the game.

And if the game closed, the code would not become open source.  The end.

Conversations don't stop just because you want them to.

You're complying to expectations that I'd rather you not - that you're failing to learn anything. Neither from your predecessors nor your own experience.

I didn't say you couldn't have a conversation.  My point was that regardless of the outcome of your conversation, the code would not be released.  My apologies if it came across as an attempt to end the conversation.

If I were to tell you that I represented a community, and I wasn't going to change my mind about x (where x changes based on context and somehow affects the community or its direction) regardless of what developments happened or what points were raised by my community, and never offered my own points for discussion, what would your impression be? And when things are discussed, they're under the veil of heavy moderation (or double standards) so that whatever is represented is the narrative that's wanted, rather than the actual. I do appreciate, btw, that the latter isn't your stated intention here.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Ashen Sea is being made by a literal genius developer and her friends. Kind of the 'show the right way' to do things mentality instead of fixing what you already have. But I've always had a soft spot for Arm and would like it to fix its problems. It's the game I played every day after school at the public library with my brother (in college) after my sister ran away. I've always wanted it to embrace its dysfunctional family and optimize for maximum openness and care.

[Halaster]

If I were to tell you that I represented a community, and I wasn't going to change my mind about x (where x changes based on context and somehow affects the community or its direction) regardless of what developments happened or what points were raised by my community, and never offered my own points for discussion, what would your impression be? And when things are discussed, they're under the veil of heavy moderation (or double standards) so that whatever is represented is the narrative that's wanted, rather than the actual. I do appreciate, btw, that the latter isn't your stated intention here.

If you were to tell me that you represented a community, and that you weren't going to change your mind about releasing the source code of that community's work, then regardless of what I wanted, I would have to accept that fact.

[Maziel]

If I were to tell you that I represented a community, and I wasn't going to change my mind about x (where x changes based on context and somehow affects the community or its direction) regardless of what developments happened or what points were raised by my community, and never offered my own points for discussion, what would your impression be? And when things are discussed, they're under the veil of heavy moderation (or double standards) so that whatever is represented is the narrative that's wanted, rather than the actual. I do appreciate, btw, that the latter isn't your stated intention here.

If you were to tell me that you represented a community, and that you weren't going to change your mind about releasing the source code of that community's work, then regardless of what I wanted, I would have to accept that fact.

There's a reason why I'm distinguishing from specifically the case and generally the case here. It is true that this specific case is of particular importance to me, but the general case is of even more importance - which you're attempting to bypass.

My last gig was working as a teacher, and I'm not going to let you not learn anything that easily.

How many times have you or a predecessor had some variant of this conversation, moderated or no, generally speaking?

With the outcome that you're not interested in what the community that you represent has to say, and are more-so interested in the feedback/narrative that you provide for yourself (disagreeing is different than not even being open to the possibility of any feedback).

Edit: It isn't surprising that a (sub)community with this culture so heavily ingrained wouldn't be open to open collaboration, getting along, allowing everyone to appreciate things the way they want to (when they themselves are allowed to exist out of the kindness of Wizards of the Coast), etc. Basically, learning from their predecessors. It's like the chimpanzee experiment with the water and the banana. People don't even realize the reasons behind the things that they culturally learn. They just reenact them. 
It is, however, deeply disappointing.

[kahuna]

Generally speaking people who put a lot of hard work into something like programming don't want their work stolen or released. It's a pretty common practice in the industry. Open source is cool, it just doesn't work for everything and proprietary mud codes are completely fine and can be better that way.

[Tranquil]

Call me selfish or old school but I too wouldn't make my years of effort open source. Trying to make this a 'staff sucks' thing is unnecessary.

[mansa]

I moved the moderated posts off this thread into the Moderation forum.

[Maziel]

I moved the moderated posts off this thread into the Moderation forum.

Okay, so take two.

Trying to make this a 'staff sucks' thing is unnecessary.

Everything has consistently been in the context of seeking productive, open conversation.

I'll let quotes speak for themselves in the sequence they're used rather than interpreting or summarizing anything. Make your own comparisons and draw your own conclusions.

If the past coders contributed their code to the game on a volunteer basis and did not expect to retain any rights in the code, it may be possible for the producer to make the code open source without their permission.

If the game closed, the code would not become open source.  The end.

How many times have you or a predecessor had some variant of this conversation, moderated or no, generally speaking?

With the outcome that you're not interested in what the community that you represent has to say, and are more-so interested in the feedback/narrative that you provide for yourself (disagreeing is different than not even being open to the possibility of any feedback).

Here are the very first exchanges I ever had with Delerak when I was a <20 for comparison:

I'm interested in obtaining the SwordQuest codebase, but it is no longer available on the website of the original author. I was wondering if you still had a copy lying around? I've been an Armageddon player for years, and I'm interested in setting up a small MUD for playing around with (probably will never be public). I have a lot of areas mapped out from Zalanthas, so I may even just copy over the room descriptions just for fun. Normally I'd ask the author of SwordQuest first, but I thought I'd check with you since it looks like you're the most recent person to use it. Will DarkSunKings ever be brought back online? If not, have you considered releasing the code for it? If you're looking for staff, I'd be willing to help if you're willing to give me a shot . Otherwise, I'd be grateful for any assistance you're willing to provide.

Hey man. I do have my old DS codebase. I think I may have the SwordQuest codebase as well I'll have to look around a bit to find it but if I do I will send it. I have no plans to reopen my old mud, just too busy with real life and I am running my own business now. I will think about releasing everything I have, I would love to see someone take it over and have it be successful. There were over 15,000 unique rooms built and lots of time put into it so there isn't much that needs to be done for it to open. I was a perfectionist and never got past Alpha because of it.

Give me some time to find the stuff and I'll let you know.

Hit me up on aim if you get time. My handle is Delerak.

I'm definitely all about open sourcing it if I release it. I think that is the best way to develop a game world is by letting the players influence it as much as possible. In the end though muds are driven by the staff (aka dungeon masters in my opinion).

We'll chat more about it for sure. I will see about putting all the data I have on my server and making a website for downloading each iteration of it.

[Kialae]

How about, instead, we all just keep the game going?

[Maziel]

How about, instead, we all just keep the game going?

Hey Kialae 

I am not advocating for shutting down Armageddon.

[jalden]

How about, instead, we all just keep the game going?

Open sourcing the game could actually help keep the game going. There is a devout community here, and a lot great documentation. Even if other flavors of Armageddon popped up, this would still the place where majority of the players play. Dated example: Ubuntu has a primary OS and whole bunch of different offshoots. One of these offshoots had changes that allowed Ubuntu to boot up faster. This improvement was implemented into the main operating system.

If Armageddon were open sourced and programmers were free to tinker with it, some of the changes that would arise would probably be garbage. But any changes that looked good could be easily incorporated into the main game. I think that because Armageddon cannot pay programmers, open sourcing really makes sense.

[DesertT]

How about, instead, we all just keep the game going?

Open sourcing the game could actually help keep the game going. There is a devout community here, and a lot great documentation. Even if other flavors of Armageddon popped up, this would still the place where majority of the players play. Dated example: Ubuntu has a primary OS and whole bunch of different offshoots. One of these offshoots had changes that allowed Ubuntu to boot up faster. This improvement was implemented into the main operating system.

If Armageddon were open sourced and programmers were free to tinker with it, some of the changes that would arise would probably be garbage. But any changes that looked good could be easily incorporated into the main game. I think that because Armageddon cannot pay programmers, open sourcing really makes sense.

Sorry Jalden, but I think this is a utopian view. 

Besides, it's already been plainly stated that it won't be happening, so I'm not even sure why this conversation is on-going.   

[jalden]

How about, instead, we all just keep the game going?

Open sourcing the game could actually help keep the game going. There is a devout community here, and a lot great documentation. Even if other flavors of Armageddon popped up, this would still the place where majority of the players play. Dated example: Ubuntu has a primary OS and whole bunch of different offshoots. One of these offshoots had changes that allowed Ubuntu to boot up faster. This improvement was implemented into the main operating system.

If Armageddon were open sourced and programmers were free to tinker with it, some of the changes that would arise would probably be garbage. But any changes that looked good could be easily incorporated into the main game. I think that because Armageddon cannot pay programmers, open sourcing really makes sense.

Sorry Jalden, but I think this is a utopian view. 

Besides, it's already been plainly stated that it won't be happening, so I'm not even sure why this conversation is on-going.   

I don't think open sourcing it would have much impact to be honest, but it could spur some innovation. It also seems doubtful to me that anyone involved in creating this completely free game in 1991 would care if it were open sourced. But out of respect, that is something that would need to be verified. But yeah, i agree that this is beating a dead horse.

[Delirium]

I doubt Naath or Morgenes would be against it, but if Halaster is, case closed, so there it is.

Frankly I wish Halaster had remained a coder and not been sucked into staffing duties since he was clearly happier just coding, and he would not have to deal with the request tool and player-staff drama that ultimately broke his will to remain, but the current (past?) structure rarely allowed for single-focus roles.

Something to think about when restructuring. Let single-focus roles be a thing.

Reduce request tool overwhelm. It turned into a way to police and red-tape and add paperwork when the original purpose was to add a means of archiving and streamlining staff-player communication.

Less control seems scary but it's healthier for the game. Focus on collaborating not policing.

Single warning then zero tolerance for verified/logged creepy or abusive behavior for ANYONE, player or staff.

If you make a healthy community people will join it. If you allow bad actors to remain out of fear of "but our playerbase is low we can't afford losses" you're dooming yourself to a slow death in a tarpit of yuck.

Your playerbase is low because you allowed cheating and abuse to remain and tried to cover it up.

God, why am I still making suggestions. I guess because I don't want obvious things being overlooked in all the noise. I can't NOT try to help or something. It's simple guys. It's not easy or pleasant but it's simple.

As someone said elsewhere:

Is it more important to justify feeling "right" or
Is it more important to do the right thing?

[Halaster]

I doubt Naath or Morgenes would be against it, but if Halaster is, case closed, so there it is.

There's tons of coders over the years that have touched it by this point, heh, at least 16 that I can think of off hand. 

[Maziel]

Contributions are a good point.

Players contribute too.

[Armaddict]

I'd say no for these, for various reasons but largely because I don't believe anyone who shits on people laboring to make improvements for decades should be able to take that work they've been shitting on.  You can disagree, that's fine, that's just my standpoint on it.  I'm sure there would be great contributors in an open source format, but maybe that should be looked at as a goal: a path to code contributions from those who want to do so.  But other than that, I see no reason to distribute code or allow it to be distributed, even in the case of the game closing down.

[jalden]

a path to code contributions from those who want to do so. 

That's essentially what open sourcing would be. It does open up the possibility of people creating alternate armageddon muds. But... that already happened. So there isn't much downside.

[Yam]

game aside, how about open sourcing the gdb. or rather letting it be read again, even in a read only format. there were shitloads of good threads that did not need to be removed.

im not sure how complete archived versions of the gdb are but c'mon. why did everything get hidden? or did someone delete it?

[jalden]

game aside, how about open sourcing the gdb. or rather letting it be read again, even in a read only format. there were shitloads of good threads that did not need to be removed.

im not sure how complete archived versions of the gdb are but c'mon. why did everything get hidden? or did someone delete it?

This!

[kakkarot]

This fucking mud is great, period. Fuck a closure, just punish creeps and lets play, people

[Synthesis]

This fucking mud is great, period. Fuck a closure, just punish creeps and lets play, people

based