[Ryzom.org] Ryzom becomes Free Software

[Xavier Antoviaque]

Hi again,

The announcement has generated quite a lot of coverage (see
http://tinyurl.com/27zmf5b), and I've tried to answer all the emails
that have been sent. If you still haven't got anything from me, feel
free to drop another email, I probably just missed it!
(xavier at antoviaque.org).

Don't worry, I won't be spamming you with lots of emails - but some
questions were coming back quite frequently, so I thought the
clarifications would be useful for everyone.

> I might just take up playing the game again now you know ;-)
> But I'd even rather help out getting this dream come true. How Can I
> help?

The new project has put together a "Help Us" page here:
http://dev.ryzom.com/wiki/ryzom/HELP_US 
and a Developer FAQ:
http://dev.ryzom.com/wiki/ryzom/DevelopersFAQ 

Of course, a lot of it is targeted at people with developer skills, but
there are other things you can do to help:
      * Promote the project & announcement on the places you go to
      * Join their discussions here:
        http://dev.ryzom.com/wiki/ryzom/Contact_the_community 
      * Confirm and report bugs:
        http://dev.ryzom.com/projects/ryzom/issues 

> Congratulations to you to Xavier, it's a fantastic result for the free
> software community!

Thanks! However, I'm not really the person to thank for this. Although I
initiated the original Ryzom.org effort and helped with a few things for
the final free software release, this was primarily made possible
through the commitment of Winch Gate (especially Milko and Vianney
Lecroart), and a lot of people have helped on the way (they would be too
numerous to name them all here - Olivier Lejade, Valentin Lacambre, Loic
Dachary, Peter Brown, Justin Baugh... you know who you are, and many
thanks for what you did!).

> As the news of Ryzom going Open Source is surely quite exiting to you,
> who are quite involved in all these things, some of us are actually a 
> bit scared of what's to come now.
> Would you do me a favor and explain what going OS means, for axample
> for Add-Ons, Bots, Cheats and such. As this is not only my concern,
> but something that drives most of us old an new Ryzom fans.

I understand Free Software can sometimes sound like a scary concept when
we're not used to it. After all, when the source is out there, how can
we know what people will do with it?

Well, that would be the subject for a whole novel, but in a nutshell
Free Software doesn't equal anarchy. Changes to the official release
(the one you'll find on the Ryzom servers) is still controlled by the
same development team, whose job is to ensure that the game remains
consistent.

Also, for bots - well, when people want to create bots, they usually
succeed whether or not the game source code is available. It's a similar
issue to the debate on public scrutiny of bugs and security issues - the
advantage with free software is that it allows to find out flaws in the
code more quickly (the "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."
rule from Eric Raymond).

Which means that, even if some people try to exploit flaws in the code,
there is usually more people to fix the issues, leading to a more robust
codebase that benefits all.

I encourage you to discuss this further with the project developers:
http://dev.ryzom.com/projects/ryzom/boards/16 

I also encourage you to read about Open Source:
http://catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html 
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018587 
http://producingoss.com/en/producingoss.html 

Xavier.