New plan proposal

The many consultations and analysis that Xavier and I have done the last days allowed us to have a clearer view of the situation, and to know in which conditions the project "ryzom.org" could succeed.

The main knowledge we have got was the fact that acting alone, as a non-profit organization, is not realistic; if we wish to attain the enssential goals for which we gathered, we will need more money than we could get in the short delays we have, and be able to have them ready immediately; for that, we have to team up with other investors.

That's the first point, which is at the origin of all the following: we are forced into it by the judiciary system requires. A non profit organization, in the current state, isn't credible enough to be considered as an autonomous partner.

That being said, we have elaborated a plan which is a legal assembly between a company, especially created to take over the server production, and a non profit organization, garanteeing that the community is functioning according to the terms of our Social Contract. This company, paying only a few employees, would make sure the works made by the community are integrated on the commercial shards, that it would run under a Free Software license (the non-commercial shards would of course remain not only possible, but encouraged).

This new structure would be a Société par actions simplifiée (S.A.S.), with three associates : the non profit organization, the Mekensleep company (whos president is Olivier Lejade, a Ryzom pioneer) and Valentin Lacambre, a reknowned personnality of the French Free Software world. Together, we can put on the table a much more important amount of money, slit in three part, each associate owning one third.

In this configuration, if we want it to work, we would have to get the necessary money to create the company, once the non profit organisation has been legally created (the exact amounts of money will be disclosed later on, to avoid giving an unfair advantage to competitors).

This way is not without precedent: in France, a magazine has gone through the liquidation process, a few days ago, together with investors. The project was accepted by the judge. It could be the same for us.

The Social Contract

Making sure the Social Contract would be respected was our priority, and we have been careful, during the making of the plan, to make sure this was the case.

The warranty that this contract would be respected is in the major role the organization is meant to have in the inner workings of the project. As associates owning a third of the votes, we will be in the company, and immediately informed of its decisions, to which we would take an active part. and immediately informed of the company decisions, to which we would participate as shareholders. The opening of the code, especially, and the self-governance of the community, will be respected in the non-profit organization.

A tight roadmap

The roadmap is extremely fast paced, and will contain the following steps:

- Sunday, December 3rd: we will have to tell wether or not we validate the plan to the two other potential associates; this will be decided by the current vote, with a deadline set to Sunday at 6pm Paris time (Xavier will tell whether or not we accept it on Sunday vening)
- Monday, December 4th: if we say we are ok, Valentin Lacambre, who wrote the status and main financial guy, will give the plan to the Tribunal de Commerce de Paris, to let the judges read it along with other potential offers;
- Tuesday, December 5th : the judge will give its decision, eventually giving an extra delay to let every party improve its proposal.

We know there should be at least two important competitors, without counting the numerous information requests (which is a good thing, the Ryzom.org campaign seems to have attracted a lot of attention).

And if it works ?

If our plan is accepted, we will have to quickly complete the legal stuff (registering the statutes, choosing the people in charge, etc.), and take the necessary steps in order to keep the servers online. The fact that we would keep the servers online is one of the reasons why we need a commercial company here : it is necessary to keep renting the servers at Jolt, which is a quite important cost, to avoid stopping the service. This situation would last 3 months, which is the necessary time for Valentin Lacambre (a web hosting specialist) to setup a cheaper internal solution. The customer service part of the Jolt contract would not be kept.

State your opinion !

We have attached a poll to this thread, to let you tell us if this plan is ok with you. The deadline is Sunday, 6pm GMT.

Afterwards, we will let anyone who wish so to take back its promise, if he doesn't like the new plan. Transparency and honesty are our main concerns in this. We do not have anything to hide, and the decision has to be taken by all of us.

-- Laurent Duval (Thanys)

As long as the code is under the GPL, we can have all the corporate tie-ins we want. I'm for it.

So I'm addressing the Trio behind this effort, how would it be different this time? Will you accept help, will you improve - and most importantly, will you listen?

Maybe I am a bit impatient, but could somebody update us with the current situation?

Bah! Let them have it then I'd say ;(

If they think they can make a profit out of something where the whole group of originating creators and developers has been kicked out of the company and all that's left is a static, half finished, and maintenance intensive product with a just a fairly modest costumer asset - fine!

The last idiot on the planet has not been born yet I'm sure, and I for one will be happy watching yet another great product face a slow but certain death by the disciples of greed (and stupidity).

Nah, that way Ryzom would be finished. If we can't help save Ryzom, at least we can help force the price up a notch, so that Ryzom would not be given away to just any dang fool from the street.

First of all, about the license choice. With the GPL you will also be enabling competitors to use the ryzom base code without contributing back the server components. This might be something good, or not, I am not sure. But before we make a decision, we can consider other options, like the affero license.

(http://www.affero.org/oagpl.html).

It is based on the GPL, except that people who modify the code and offer network based services of that code, are obliged to contribute their code too. This doesn't keep competitors from using the code, which is good, but does make them have to contribute the server code back to the community. In this case, this might be meaningful, but only for the code (not for artwork).

hi everybody :)
hey aprak, how is it going? i have done as you said and tried to post some clarification posts on the ryzom forums even before i got to this one :)

http://www.ryzom.com/forum/showpost.php?p=374152&postcount=156
http://www.ryzom.com/forum/showpost.php?p=374207&postcount=352

...

Anyhow, it's eventually up to the community and the intended Copywright holder (Makensleep et al) to decide these things (please correct me someone if I'm wrong).

I am YOUR prospective customer. I am prepared to PAY YOU for a service.

Ryzonel competencies must be limited to game exploitation. Development should be leading by ryzom.org only.

GPL is copyleft :P

(I hope I'm not mistaken here) it will bring the project to the open source world ... This mean nothing like copyright ...

This mean nothing like copyright ...

Wikipadia :
The GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the free software definition and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved, even when the work is changed or added to.

going closed source

- It is being the copyright holder of the code.
- You cannot own code (if GPL'd).

It's a bit tricky, it's true ^^ I maintain that GPL is copyleft ^^ if really not then please, someone should modify wikipedia ;)

going closed source
I'm not sure you can go closed source once it has been released GPL. This would be to easy to violate the right of the licence owner as you said. The change can only be comptible with GPL.

I maintain that GPL is copyleft ^^

I'm not sure you can go closed source once it has been released GPL. This would be to easy to violate the right of the licence owner as you said. The change can only be comptible with GPL.

Ok then if I got it right this time :

- GPL can be either copyrighted or copylefted ...
- if it's copyleft, it's public Domain ...
- Copyright allow a contributor to have is name in the licensing terms (to protect his work)
- Licence's owner always have the choice to change the licence (of course previous version will remain as they were)

So let's say you've got 100 contributors ... and they keep their rights (they do not transfer them to the association for instance). If the association want to change the licence, the 100 contributors must be ok with it ? and if not, their contribution still remain in the previous licence ?

Huh :?: it seems a bit odd to me ... SO I assume the main question is what will the first licence be ? GPL with copyleft ?

So let's say you've got 100 contributors ... and they keep their rights (they do not transfer them to the association for instance). If the association want to change the licence, the 100 contributors must be ok with it ? and if not, their contribution still remain in the previous licence ?

Huh :?: it seems a bit odd to me ... SO I assume the main question is what will the first licence be ? GPL with copyleft ?

In this case, if there were multiple people that held a copyright on a significant chunk (say someone creates a new model, textures, etc...), only that person can change the license on that specific part. If it's a 'bug fix', or a one or two line addition, it's not seen as a large enough part of the whole work (under US law anyway) and so would fall under the original 'license'. (Please if I'm wrong on this, correct me!!)

Still a bit confused. For me at this point ... GPL ist a licence and implies copyleft (ie freedom to share, to work on the code and to distribute it without to have to ask anybody any permission). BUT there is always a licence's owner even if it's copyleft.

But I think you might confuse something too ... copyleft doesn't mean your name will be erase.

I also afraid that the Makensleep skill is too close from Ryzom, so some disposal must be take to prevent money of Rysom.org association to slowly leaks to Makensleep hands. In clear words it would be bad if ryzom.org or Ryzonel pay Makensleep for development. I would prevent that sponsoring ryzom.org become the same as sponsoring Makensleep.

This is only a prevention plan because in no way I can say that there is intention to do wrong things. But some time people change, some temptation may become irresistible. Even if we know Olivier Lejade as Makensleep leader, I hope not, but this may change.

Ryzonel competencies must be limited to game exploitation. Development should be leading by ryzom.org only.

"There is some sentiment in the Free Ryzom community for transferring the copyrights to the non-profit group, but it seems that this decision has not yet been made."

Ah, interesting. And a reasonable thing to do given the pledge, and the fact that the community is dynamic. I would guess a poll would be a sensible thing to do as well, if time comes.

Big question :

does somebody know when the final decision will be reported ?

I wouldn't recommend giving away the copyright ownership. There may be several reasons, like license control. If the ryzom community wishes at a later point for any specific reason to change the license (for example choose another free software license), we do not have the right to do so.

I would rather have the copyright ownership in hands of a ryzom non-profit organization. The second reason I don't like the idea is that if people contribute code, their contributions will also be GPL (or whatever), but that doesn't mean they loose ownership of the copyright, and in my opinion it is bad policy to ask people for copyright ownership.

If the ryzom community wishes at a later point for any specific reason to change the license (for example choose another free software license), we do not have the right to do so.

The second reason I don't like the idea is that if people contribute code, their contributions will also be GPL (or whatever), but that doesn't mean they loose ownership of the copyright, and in my opinion it is bad policy to ask people for copyright ownership.