[MUD-Dev] Libs for 3D Client/Servers

[Vincent Archer]

According to Adam Martin:

> There certainly are still ways to make money, but then there
> always are; its just that the more you make free, the smaller the
> amount of money you can make in comparison. In your example of the
> linux vendors, they have incomes that are pocket money compared to
> what you would expect to make from selling an OS.
 
> This is a problem when you need to show a certain revenue (e.g. to
> balance a irreducible expenditure on e.g. network bandwidth and
> server maintainence), or when you are starting small and need to
> grow revenue quickly in order to stay solvent.

Note that the current MMOG revenue model is also the one that is
most amenable to a GPL software.

In the UO/EQ/AC/AO/etc... world, the sale of the software itself
(which is what would shrink or disappear, should it be a GPL client)
isn't the main revenue source. The subscription is. Once you deduce
the cost of the box, the distribution system overhead and margins,
and the free month offered, you quickly see that the box sale brings
near zero profit to the vendor.

Well, except for AO, who offers the software for download at the
exact recommended price of the boxed version, but that's different -
they do not want to be seen being in direct competition with the
retail system.

Having the software free under the GPL doesn't preclude a
subscription to a service (access to the server) to be able to use
it. Consider the closest approximation of the CPL-ed game out here:
UO. There's "emulators" (3rd party servers) available out there. You
can easily get a copy of the client even if you've never played.

UO still does fine; players still pay EA plenty of money to live on
the original Brittania...

--
	Vincent Archer			Email:	archer at frmug.org

All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
							(Woody Allen)
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