[MUD-Dev] code base inquiry

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2000, Bryce Harrington wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Feb 2000, Matthew Mihaly wrote:
> > Sure, I agree. Like I've been saying, I think doing a project like that
> > without a commercial element is unlikely to happen. The participants are
> > not going to be motivated enough.
> > 
> > --matt
> 
> Care to place a wager on that opinion?  ;-)
> 
> (I'd like to hear how you justify Linux or FreeCiv.)

Yes, actually, I would like to place a wager on that, of however much you
wish. I have no doubt that a group could produce a graphical mud, but one
on scale with UO or Everquest? I don't think so. As Raph pointed out,
there are 10-15 man _years_ of graphical work, for instance. Further,
getting 50,000 people online requires advertising. It requires an
organizational level  and focus of things like tech and customer support
that go way beyond what I believe volunteer projects are capable of
doing. I also don't see how a non-commercial project is going to pay for
people to man the phones, pay for bandwidth, and so on.

As for Linux, the parallel is not good. UO/EQ are going for the mass
market. Linux is not, at least not when you consider it without commercial
players like Red Hat. I've been using it since 1994, and at no time before
some of the later Red Hat releases would I have considered it useable by a
non-techie. Even now, there's no way I'd recommend it over Windows or
the Mac OS to non-techies. I've had a couple of non-techie friends
recently try to set up and use even Red Hat, and they just gave up in
frustration. And that's with a manual, customer support, etc. It's worth
nothing that without commercial interests, Linux has absolutely no
customer service to speak of without the commercial players.

--matt





_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev maillist  -  MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev