Nalates wrote:
Without an idea of what the license will say we have no idea what we can or can't do. Will shard owners/operators have to sign an agreement? To use the Cyan content I would think they would have to. I think that will limit the number of shards.
Will Cyan try to limit what fan content they can put on their shards? I don't think so. There might be some typical moral turpitude type clauses to prevent Cyan content and reputation being associated with lewd or violent content. But, I can't see them making restrictions beyond that. If Krill (I use him often because I love his dragon AV's in SL) has a shard and adds dragon AV's I doubt that would be a problem. Well... for Cyan. But who knows, they may try to restrict that.
Many have decided what they think Cyan will allow and are building what they would like to see in an Uru with fan content. Traveling through the fan ages we have now, I have yet to see something that people strongly object to. So, Cyan control is not something I anticipate or feel is needed. As best I can tell, Cyan seems to feel the same way and is headed toward allowing the fans to handle fan content. I only have every heard of them protecting their part of the story and their ages.
@Nalates:
Please read the official definition of "Open Source". (
http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd )
If Cyan is to give us an "Open Source" Uru, they will have to use a license that meets this definition. They may or may not release the content under an "open source" license, however if Uru is to be open source, at the very least, the engine would most likely have to be. To be clear this is the correct definition of Open Source. There is no other to be considered. There is, however, the definition of "Free Software" which one can find at
http://fsf.org/ . (Note, that "Free Software" does not refer to software without cost, that would be "freeware" instead.) It is entirely possible that Open Source software can indeed be charged for, so it does not preclude Cyan (or, infact, others) from charging for the software. This is certainly something Cyan is aware of, and has been aware of since before the announcement, considering, if I remember correctly, that in the past they have released an application as "Open Source". I believe the license, was actually the GNU GPL, from the Free Software Foundation. Of course, I could be misremembering, but in this case, if it is the one I'm thinking of, the application is hosted at a site we can't link to here, or really, even mention.