Planeshift Conversion

[jorrit]

Originally posted by bitula
Jorrit,
Hmmm, but why not initiate a donation process, it doesnt hurt... In the worst scenario nobody will pay. The point is that with adequate donation you could make at least one person work full-time or \"some part-time - part-time\". I guess a donation link would not disillusion any gamer. Not my business, I\'m just surprised.

Well... If you really want to donate you can donate to the Crystal Space project. That money will be used for a new linux computer to improve support for CS on linux.

The link is Crystal Space Donation Area


For PlaneShift there is no way to donate at the moment but perhaps this is something that can be considered in the future.


Greetings,

[acraig]

As soon as money becomes involved things become \'difficult\'.  How do we determine where that money goes?  I think it would cause some tension among other team members.  That being said we could probably use donations for hardware or things like copies of AlienBrain.

I don\'t think paying us will make us work any harder on it.  Having PS as a full time job would remove some of the fun of working on it since would feel more \'under the gun\' to get things working.  It\'s bad enough as it is

[Seytra]

Originally posted by bitula
Yes, but it may backstab splitting donators into several fragments, which would not will have happened in a less open philosophy. The speed of developement depends primarily on donations which allocate extra time to the developers, who thus are less dependant on their primary source of income.

Donations, yes. Not monetary ones, though. The donations FOSS lives off are those of knowledge and time, most often in the form of code contributions.
AFAICS, it operates like this:
Someone writes some software and publishes it under some OSS license.
Others use it, some of them look at the source and add / improve things, then publish their modified version, and maybe send a patch to the original developer in case they are interestied.

The original programmer eventually gets notified of the changes (by either the patch or finding the modified version) and maybe adds it to the own version. Or from an entirely different project. Probably PS and Abiword can exchange parts of code or at least knowledge.

A less direct cycle is this:
Someone finds the OSS from the original programmer, which contains some things he doesn\'t know how to do, so he looks at the source and learns how to do it. Years later, they find another OSS project and remember when they learnt from the original one and decide to contribute something, ane be it only a few lines of code, or a helpful reply on their boards. Maybe they even decide to opensource something they have written.

As one can see, FOSS doesn\'t rely on money at all. Money might speed up things with some developers (whos \"primary\" source of income actually gives them the flexibility to shift time between it and their hobby coding), but this is not a general truth. Collaboration within a global community is a better description AFAICS.

[DivineLight]

Acraig is right. When the money comes in things go a bit different way. Team members will be curious about the money, where it goes, why it goes to him etc.
So it may create a bit of tension and that\'s not good. PS has a lovely team.

Jorrit is also right. Every one on the PS team is working max for PS in his/her free time so money??

donating some software to the devs is really a cool idea.

[AryHann]

Originally posted by DivineLight

Every new programmer thinks that he can make his own EQ. Sure i was also thinking that when i was new to game dev, i planned to make an RPG like Dungeon Seige, on my own with bare DX. I worked for 9 months and i haven\'t even completed the engine.

I\'ve seen 100s of projects rise and fall without even getting a single demo out. It\'s complete foolishness to make you\'r own games (unless you have 5-10 talented, devoted ppl on your hand) when there are many good projects available on internet where we can help.

Well, I think I can speak with big experience here
I am what Talad would call the 0.01% that starts a project and finish it.
Virtual Annel?v (http://www.reflex.lth.se/culture/disabilities <- soon will be updated )is finished.
Thanks to the help of some golden hearted person, I have been able to finish it. But I have mainly done the work myself.  (Yeah, I am the one that has \"stolen the code for making my own game ).
Ah, obviously nobody donate anything to me except these few people offering their help when asked. That was the donation I had and without it I wouldn\'t have gone anywhere

Maybe the donation could be done through sponsors, but well, I don\'t know how is the legal approach of AB on the matter.

I knew I could do it, and I did it. It took time and energy, but, well, I had a goal to achieve.
There is person and person, obviously, the majority of the projects rises and falls (it is enough to see some statistics on MUDs announcement of opening and death), but I would never kill the initiative of somebody.
He will be the one understanding if he can do it or not, if not he has anyway learnt something from it.

If I had to listen to the people that was thinking that I was completely crazy when I was starting up, I wouldn\'t be here where I am.

PS 3D started 5 years ago. And we are progressing very good. It maybe slow, but look at:
Development History
And see how much PS devs work on it.

I think Annah was pointing out that your post is kinda funny since even if you are not officially in the staff, you always consider yourself in the team : \"we\" :-D.

Talad: Don\'t build a new game! Join the crew at http://www.planeshift.it to build THE game

As said above, I really don\'t think that convert all the energy in PS is \"the solution\". Certainly, it depends from the skill of people. It will be nice to see variety in the things that are out on the internet, but I do understand that PS is a huge project that needs a lot of hands working on it.
If he is interested in contributing to PS he will do himself, don\'t doubt about that

Ary

[bitula]

--------
Ah, obviously nobody donate anything to me
---------

Lol, you don\'t have a donation link on you\'re site neigther. I\'m btw asking it because, Im writing a java rpg and would like to put out a donation link on my webside in a very preliminary alpha phase . You know, maybe if even one doesnt like the game, but still donates 5 dollars or so for example  to check out how paypal works, lol, it would be worth trying. Did anyone have real experience with these donation links? On the other hand maybe Acraig is right that donations can ruin the team spirit, I dont have such team experience. Btw I use to read the cvs history of ps, and I donot see any rapid advancement there. It seems though that not every work is logged there.

[AryHann]

@bitula:I suggest you to subscribe to the CVS ML, in order to get all the commits (even if more than often the mail delivery is slow ...)

Ary

[DivineLight]

Quote: Orignally posted by AryHan.
    PS 3D started 5 years ago. And we are progressing very good. It maybe slow, but look at:
    Development History
    And see how much PS devs work on it.



I think Annah was pointing out that your post is kinda funny since even if you are not officially in the staff, you always consider yourself in the team : \"we\" :-D.

Ary, look at the first line i said we are progressing very good. So ain\'t i a fan of PS, a member of PS community? and cannot i call all of us WE? and progress of PS in not all community\'s progress?, i am not saying it in means of \"I am the coolest guy and i am in the team\" LoL.

Now Look on the second line and see i said \"And see how much PS devs work on it.\" So did i said WE? no. Because i am no PS Dev (actually i am but not in the team yet) and that\'s why i sad how much they work on it not US.
So you added more fun to the whole story  .

Pretty Bad Ary, you took me way off the topic......

[AryHann]

Sorry, I forgot about the nature of the fans, since I am not myself ;P

By the way, that was a line of \"joke\", I think the rest was more relevant for the topic and sadly it has been ignored.

Ary