Monday, January 12, 2009

OSMO, al

Once again the endemic (and mostly unsupported) Fear Of Power raises its ugly head.

We can't have cooperation, that would be Someone Would Be In Charge, and have Power Over Others! *gasp horrors*, We can't have a single hub, that would mean some sort of organization, some sort of established structure and framework! NOOO! We must all have absolute Individual Power! We must all be able to build our Ages and Shards the way we want, or else!

Heavens forbid that the community actually listen to Chogon and utilize "organization by guilds and other fan groups." Heavens forbid that the community actually try to come up with a roadmap and a plan, instead of waiting like hounds at the leash, to be released and run everywhich direction.

People reaction to suggestions is "If you don't like it, just don't install it." People are so gung ho to get their hands on code and fix it 'their way' we'll have 20 different versions of OSMO hanging around, all claiming to be the 'right way' to do it. This, they say is "what Open Source means". Eh.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually I think a lot of people desire cooperation, hubbage, what have you. However it should be stressed that such cooperation is not community-wide but only for that segment. All the will-be shards will have some form of leadership, cooperation, etc. But they will be separate enough so that they may do things their own way.

This is essential because I don't want the entire community to be run by one or two people. I don't want to have someone like DarK telling me what Uru is or isn't (even though I pretty much agree with his concerns). I see the Fear of Power as more of a Fear of Stigma. Fear of Hate. Because almost inevitably the "Someone in Charge" becomes the "Someone whose word is law" "Someone whose vision is the only 'right' vision".

And yes, having many versions (I would hope compatible, but that will depend on how polarizing people make the differences) of Uru is what it being Open Source means. It means experimenting with things. Some you will like, some you won't. Just like with MOUL.

Anonymous said...

from mszv,

Eleri, your post seems to imply that everyone with any technical expertise will run their own shard. Do you think that will happen? Looking at how our Uru community works, I think it will be like Whilyam said. People will come together in groups, but all the groups won't come together, if that makes sense. I think we'll have, oh, just guessing, maybe 5 - 10 main shards, not 100 - 500 shards. Groups of people will delegate decision making, but no one group or one person will decide everything.

If Cyan was still in charge, then they would have approval and control. That was the old way of doing fan content, before the company almost imploded. Once the Uru thing goes out, the control is gone. Cyan got to decide, now they don't. Well, they aren't releasing the "source" (don't know if that's right word) for their ages, just the object files. So, by my interpretation we can run different versions of their ages (with different configurations) but we can't change the content of the ages, officially. Aside from that, the control is gone.

I take it that's not to your liking. I don't want to be argumentative - I really am, genuinely, curious. You would have prefered it a different way? How would you have set it up? Is there a model for a fan run thing out there, something that works, that is more to your liking?

Perhaps you just want the fan community to be different from the way it is. I'd like some things about the fan community to change, but I'd rather have the fan community, as it is, than not have a fan community at all.

I like this scenario because I'm concerned that Cyan may not be around. I hope they will be around, but it's not clear to me that Cyan can survive, as a company. Under this arrangement, we'll still have Uru. I think that's good.

Interesting discussion.