On Sat, 2007-04-14 at 11:10 +0100, Anton Oussik wrote: > On 14/04/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > 4) Any servers should be free and open, that is to say, not pay for > > use/play. > > I am not sure 4) is fair. If people have hardware and time they can > donate to run a server that is one thing, but if a CF derivative ever > becomes very popular and needs a farm to run on, it is likely a fee > would have to be introduced to cover hardware costs, and possibly even > hire full time admins/dms/mapmakers/artists. As long as the source > code is released under GPL and anyone is free to set up their own > server I would still consider that server "free and open", I see no > problems there. The subscribers would be paying for services that > accompany the game, not the game itself. When/if pay for play servers > are introduced they could send pay for play information to the > metaserver, thus avoiding confusion.
They could possibly have something like runescape (ew) where it can be played for free, but offers subscriptions that enable you to do more. Though I still see issues with this model. > Then again someone could also make a new tileset and their own maps, > and say "do not redistribute" whilst running them on their own server, > for which they could charge money. I am not sure there is anything GPL > can do about that. > > There is also a potential issue of someone creating a compatible > server/client from scratch not using any GPL code, and charging for > using it. Ultimately there is very little that can be done about that > as far as I can see, as any proprietary server/client could be made to > pretend to be one of the free ones. I think someone did something like this already, not sure about the name. _______________________________________________ crossfire mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
