The company that is currently managing the MMO Ryozom has decided to open up their source code and their art assets. Essentially this is 2 million lines of code of a fully functioning MMO that is "mostly" still alive. http://dev.ryzom.com/news/13 Just thought it'd be interesting if anyone else would want to take a deep dive into some form of a hell. Also seems like it'd be an interesting thing to this community.

Already a news story on it, actually. It's interesting. The GPL is an unfortunate choice, IMO, but it still could be useful to some.

whoops might as well remove this post then :D

How does that work legally, will people be able to support a Ryzom-based sevrer with a cash shop or subscriptions?

Yes and no, speaking from what I read, the source and assets include only a small "test" world*, so you cannot just set up shop and compete with Ryzom, however, if you build your own world, you could.

Suddenly the idea of implementing a UO-like skill system and game play comes to my mind.

I knew the Nevrax engine was GPL/LGPL since the start, so I wonder what's the difference now besides the asset addition.

*: The art assets are complete, but the geographical data and maps are not included.

Quote: The GPL is an unfortunate choice, IMO

The whole open sourcing idea is unfortunate, not because open source is bad as such (it isn't!), but because they've created a massive competition with that in a situation where you really don't want competition. This may very well be the final death blow to the game.
I'm saying that as one of the few veterans who still maintain subscriptions after 5 years of slow death (and multi-bankruptcies), because they actually enjoy chilling out in the evenings on that lovely game, no matter what.

Winchgate has not only released the server and client code and all tools under affi-GPL (and yes, a small demo world), but, which is much more severe, all art assets under the CC license, too. Which basically means anyone can use them for anything, including a directly competitive product.

I've seen enthusiast players create ring scenarios in a few days that rival some of the smaller real world "levels" in size and beat them in complexity and challenge. It is thus not unreasonable to assume that the same people might create a full world with the same tools, which will be bigger and better and outmanueuver the orginal.

One of the greatest problems in Ryzom has always been (up to present) the lack of content updates. Now, if someone decides to run his own free server (or even a subscription server, you're allowed to do that!) and adds another small region to the world every now and then (maybe once per month) -- do you really think people will still pay for the original?

What if a few of the "bigger" (bigger as in 10-30 players) guilds decide that they could as well rent a server instead of paying for subscriptions?

With a small community such as the one in Ryzom, every group of people leaving is desasterous. I'm very unhappy about that decision. :-(

Original post by samoth

Quote: Now, if someone decides to run his own free server (or even a subscription server, you're allowed to do that!) and adds another small region to the world every now and then (maybe once per month) -- do you really think people will still pay for the original?

I think this is actually the intention of Ryzom.

The art assets are CC-SA, which means that anyone who builds a level using the assets are required to share-alike. The official servers would become the "best of" from various private servers and since Ryzom has a lot better servers and persistent data, it could be worth paying for.

So if you use the Ryzom engine to build an original game, you have to publicly release ALL of the assets you create for your game? Ew. That would also mean you couldn't use any purchased assets in the game because you wouldn't have the rights to share them. That can't be right, can it?

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
So if you use the Ryzom engine to build an original game, you have to publicly release ALL of the assets you create for your game? Ew. That would also mean you couldn't use any purchased assets in the game because you wouldn't have the rights to share them. That can't be right, can it?

Probably not, unless you base your own art on existing GPL'ed art, which would subsequently infect your art with the GPL (being a derivative work). If you create all your art from scratch, or use non-GPL sources, there would be no requirement to share that. IANAL.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
So if you use the Ryzom engine to build an original game, you have to publicly release ALL of the assets you create for your game? Ew. That would also mean you couldn't use any purchased assets in the game because you wouldn't have the rights to share them. That can't be right, can it?

I don't think so, separate assets wouldn't be affected by the CC-SA from what i understand. (I can't see how one art asset would be considerd a derivative work of another art asset just because they're used in the same game), It should atleast in my opinion (IANAL) only apply if you modify or reuse their assets.

the AGPL however means that you need to make any improvements you make to the server available to those interacting with the server, even if you don't distribute the server.

Basically it looks like they are trying to get a bit of work done for free, releasing the code and some assets for free is unlikely to cause them any major problems while they'll be allowed to pick and choose from community developed improvements as they please.

The MMO businessmodel is primarily a service based one, as long as they can keep offering a better or different service than their competitors they might benefit from this move. (The amount of competition might go up slightly though, but lets face it, most users of this code will be hobbyists who aren't really a threat)

Quote: Original post by Yann L
Probably not, unless you base your own art on existing GPL'ed art, which would subsequently infect your art with the GPL (being a derivative work). If you create all your art from scratch, or use non-GPL sources, there would be no requirement to share that. IANAL.

There is no GPL'ed art for this project, the art is licensed under CC-BY-SA (Which is a completely unrelated license) the GPL doesn't apply to the data used by the software, even if the data is sold together with the software.

[Edited by - SimonForsman on May 7, 2010 11:12:50 AM]