Ending the Nonsense

[diafero]

And in the same post, he says we should follow rule 7 "to the best of our ability" - wow, that's what I call a clear and sane guideline

So if they do that source thingy, who bets rule 7 will still be like it is now? "Where can I play Uru?" "Uhm, we can't tell you, not allowed to, go to GoW" "So, there's no official way to play it?" "Of course there is, we just must not talk about it here" "But I thought these were the official forums?" "Yeah..." Go figure.

[Aloys]

"Rule 7 : Gray Area" ™ © 2006-2010 Cyan Worlds Inc.

[Zander]

I've just re-read rule seven. It's completely straightforward and unequivocal. It will, of necessity, have to be modified again when some parts of Cyan's copyrighted material are released to open source, and I'm sure it will be, but right now there's no possibility of ambiguity. The rule doesn't bear on what you do outside the forums, just on what you discuss in them, and as I said the reasons for it are obvious and mere common sense.

if Cyan is at fault in any way, it's because they have not enforced it rigorously enough. Any grey areas that have arisen as a result of that lack of enforcement are all in our favour.

[Whilyam]

I've just re-read rule seven. It's completely straightforward and unequivocal. It will, of necessity, have to be modified again when some parts of Cyan's copyrighted material are released to open source, and I'm sure it will be, but right now there's no possibility of ambiguity. The rule doesn't bear on what you do outside the forums, just on what you discuss in them, and as I said the reasons for it are obvious and mere common sense.

if Cyan is at fault in any way, it's because they have not enforced it rigorously enough. Any grey areas that have arisen as a result of that lack of enforcement are all in our favour.

Digging up the thread to dispel this myth. Rule 7 is as follows:

"7. Piracy - No discussions or links to discussions of how to or the planning of pirating of copyrighted material. Or links to the actual pirated copyrighted material.
Hacking - No discussion of or links to or the presenting of exploits of any Cyan game. This includes tools used for the modifying of or distributing of copyrighted materials such as game executables, game data and game code.
Copyrighted material - No posting of copyrighted material. Links to copyrighted material should only be to the copyright holder of that material or a sanctioned holder. "

Somewhat straightforward if you don't know what Cyan has actually done. For one thing, most of the GoW projects (Drizzle, in particular) got licenses to do the work. For another, Cyan's moderators are linking to the "pirated" material by linking here. And third is the obvious: they're hoping to get people to make content for the game, but they don't allow what's being used to that.

[diafero]

For one thing, most of the GoW projects (Drizzle, in particular) got licenses to do the work.

Drizzle did not get licensed. The old UAM did, though. The Offline KI does not have any license. I don't know about PyPRP, libHSPlasma and so on, but I never heard of any form of permission. So, everything we go here is a "hack" according to these rules. People are even sent here when they ask how to *play* fan ages (though this forum is about writing ages, not visiting them), since this information is classified at the MOUL forums. So sending them here for these questions is actually part of the problem. This is important information for every Uru player interested in fan ages (which should be everyone, according to how Uru's future is planned), and the official forums are the most logical place to present it. It would also be the best way to acknowledge and honour the work we fans put into this.
As long as Cyan classifies this information on their own sites, they can't really claim to support fan ages. Just my 2 cents.

[Aloys]

You are preaching to choir here Diafero. Everybody is well aware of this, including Cyan. But as the 'Veralun debate' earlier this month showed, they can only invest so much time in the forums. So they do small things, baby steps, one at a time. And finally acknowledging that elephant in the room is a big thing. They will come to it, it's the next logical step, but it will still take some time. That probably won't happen until the first Age is integrated in MOULa. And even after that I wouldn't be surprised that off-line Ages still stay taboo...
Cyan want online Ages, not offline Ages. They might need them, because they are the first step before online Ages, but they don't want them.

[BAD]

We can't presume what Cyan wants and what they don't want. The problem here is Cyan is putting the cart before the horse. They need to define our relationship BEFORE they release open source material.

At this point they are releasing some of their code, but without any kind of agreement. This is the worst thing they could do.

[Aloys]

We can't presume what Cyan wants and what they don't want.

I'm talking from a business point of view. While Offline Uru in its various editions is still being sold, it most likey brings them marginal revenues at best, and there is no real point for them to tout offline custom Ages. Online Uru on the other hand is still worth pushing forward for its potential future value if those Ages turn out any good and help grow the community. But only as long as it doesn't require too much ressources to do so. Not that I agree with that, it's just a fact. Supporting offline custom Ages would be interesting from a community (and communication) standpoint, but their focus is just elsewhere these days. They put what focus they can on online Ages (or the OS project as a whole), and although it may not be ideal it's still better than nothing. At this point I think we should be happy about anything they can do/publish.
They cannot spend much time with the community anymore. They do show signs of life, Rawa and Chogon are kinda active on the forums, but Cyan has a whole isn't very involved these days. Cyan seems to be just a couple of individuals now, Uru is a side project at best, and as a result things may be a bit 'disorganised'.

At this point they are releasing some of their code, but without any kind of agreement. This is the worst thing they could do.

Probably, but again, I think it's better than nothing. If you had told me just two months ago that today they would have published the Max plugin, the Ki assets and code, and the avatar biped I would not have believed you. To me this has been a very nice surprise, and I think we can thank Chogon for that one. But for the most part regarding Uru we are on our own; and things like the lack of OS licenses shouldn't be surprising anymore.

[diafero]

As you said, you can't have online ages without offline ages. So them wanting online ages without allowing offline ages is like... like wanting to build a house without getting your hands dirty (now it'd be easier to express myself in my native language but I hope you get the point). It's like saying: "Yes, we want what you age builders can produce, but we don't want to see how you got there". The path that got us here was and is "dirty" (as in, hacks, reverse engineering, EULA violation, whatever), and covering and hiding this away is not a nice gesture (to be modest - one might also call it a slap into our faces).
I'm not really willing to "work together" (if you can even use that term) with Cyan under these conditions.

EDIT: I am quite happy, too, about the recent releases (though without any license, it's still quite far away from open source), so don't get me wrong about this. There are some right signs. But the overall attitude is not there yet - and usually I would expect that to happen first, as ground work, to build good cooperation upon.

[Aloys]

It's like saying: "Yes, we want what you age builders can produce, but we don't want to see how you got there".

Exactly. But the situation is tricky because, they have released their Max plugin and other things, and those are the 'official' tools. And because of this in a way they don't really need all that came from the community so far. But looking the other way is definitely not the right message to send. Because if it wasn't for all these community efforts which proved that we are whilling and able to go down that custom Ages path, we simply wouldn't have this open source project today. And more than many other online games Uru needs its established community to survive. And again they are well aware of that (I hope), it's just a matter of clumsy communication..
But IMO the main cause of all this is just that Uru is a small side project for them now.