Well, I asked Hoikas nicely to delete my account...

[Tsar Hoikas]

[andylegate]

Love the pic. I think I saw one of those in the wood here at home the other day!

Let's see, I'm an ex-Maintainer, I make Ages, write tutorials, who is a registered forum user at here, GoMa, DPWR. I guess it's all about one's perception (both your own, and how others see you) on where or with whom you feel you belong.

[Jamey]

As for myself, I'm Independent. I love to make ages, but I don't like the idea of being affiliated to a specific group, because I do a lot of different things. I go where I feel welcome or needed.

[Chacal]

We are slowly veering off-topic, which in this particular case is probably a good thing.

On this matter you all know my opinions from the start. I have always been fiercely opposed to the Writer community being organized into a formal Guild, with a hierarchy of GuildMasters, rules, and all associated useless trinkets. You may remember there was quite a row when outside influences tried to force us into that kind of organization, in order to satisfy some hypothetic requirement from Cyan.

This community is composed of writers and hackers, creative individuals who cannot be easily constrained in a formal organization. On the other hand, such individuals are naturally welcoming of new members, tolerant of mistakes and willing to offer help and share knowledge.

The added value of the community is that it provides unique motivations and opportunities for its members. Examples of this are the development contests organized by some members, which fostered creativity and motivated extra effort from the participants. Without this, it is possible that wonderful Ages would not exist today.

From that point of view our present community, with hackers who make tools, writers who use them and help others, and a forum to tie them all together, is ideal and striving.

So that is the purpose of the Guild of Writers. It provides the ingredients for writers to make Ages, but it does not make Ages. It provides the ingredients for members to run shards, but it does not run a shard.

I suspect this is what Dustin means. Anyway this is what I believe. I hope I don't get a trolling picture for it. It seems flaming and accusations of trolling are getting more frequent on our forums nowadays. A result of our creative nature, I hope. Or maybe we have started decaying into the MOUL forums.

I wish I could say I was a Writer myself, but real life keeps getting in the way. Whatever I am, I still feel like a member of this community.

[J'Kla]

Common Zander Take some time away, think about stuff, If ya wanna come back, go for it, if not stop by some day and say hello.
their is always room for a Herertic In Uru Live

I wanted to be the Heritic

[ddb174]

Yes, that is what I meant. Put in a calm and thoughtful way, thank you :)

[N. Sigismund]

Taking something that does not belong to you is stealing.

No it isn't, taking something that doesn't belong to you with no intention of returning it to the loss of the owner is stealing. If you intend to return it, you are borrowing without permission. If the owner does not lose anything, at worst you are harming the owner's ability to use their own product to make a profit - copyright infringement.

I'm actually surprised this was Zander's core philosophy, as I assumed that the philosophy expressed here was used by the people that argued WITH Zander as a straw man. Certainly eye opening.

Sorry, knee jerk reaction to one of the most idiotic laws (IP) that has ever graced the planet. Theft requires loss of property.

In any case, I'm just a Myst III player who sort of got lost.

[Goofy]

All I have to say to this is unless someone files charges or sends a cease and desist order then people can continue to do what every. As long as cyan does not have a problem the why should anyone else.

[J'Kla]

The accedemic world has long understood that the only right you have over IP is citation (not humpback or orca) that as long as you don't try and claim someones idea as yours and you let people know where they can find the original you should be ok.

The music industry have ranted for years about copyright theft but have no issue with cover versions.

[Mogwaii]

I don't get a lot of music publishing companies. They're all gay.