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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> The Arimaa Public License
        
(Message started by: omar on Apr 27^th, 2005, 6:08pm)

Title: The Arimaa Public License
Post by omar on Apr 27^th, 2005, 6:08pm

Today Im releasing the Arimaa public license:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/license/

As Arimaa becomes more popular, people may want to do stuff with it beyond just playing it. For example writting Arimaa related software, making actual Arimaa sets, etc. David already sells Arimaa software; Paul mentioned to me that he plans to make a wooden Arimaa set; Frank has done an Arimaa oil painting for me; and I will venture to guess that Karl will write a book about Arimaa someday :-)

I want to allow such activty to happen and not become an obstacle to the growth of Arimaa. However I would hate to see Arimaa become so popular that a big game company or web site decides to steal it. So the purpose of the Arimaa public license is to make Arimaa as much of a public domain game as possible while still protecting it's commercial use. I actually don't mind commercial use of Arimaa; it's just that I feel it should be controlled and mildly taxed in the form or licensing fees. I don't expect to get rich from it, but it would be nice if it could someday compensate the expense of running the Arimaa server and annual events; potentially allowing for larger prizes, and more tournaments and contests. I think that would benifit the overall Arimaa community.

I don't know of any other game that has taken such an approach. Most games are usually completely public domain (like chess, checkers, go, etc) or completely proprietary (like Monopoly, Octi, etc). This is going to be as much of a live experiment as Arimaa itsef :-)

So check it out and feel free to do other stuff with Arimaa.

Title: Re: The Arimaa Public License
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 29^th, 2005, 10:31am

Indeed, I think I might like to write a book on Arimaa. Maybe a Wikibook would be a logical way to extend what currently exists on Wikipedia. If I understand the spirit of your license, a Wikibook would not be subject to being taxed, right?

But what I really want to know is whether the release of the Arimaa Public License presages the release of the server code under a public license so that collective development can happen. Is a code release somewhere on the agenda?

Title: Re: The Arimaa Public License
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 29^th, 2005, 1:52pm

Oh, no, I don't mean Omar should let anyone besides himself twiddle with the server code. I mean that Omar should publish the code so anyone can submit changes which he could implement if he liked them. For example, Mr. Brain felt strongly that the plan window code should change in several ways, and I don't think Omar was opposed to those changes, but maybe didn't have time to make the changes himself. If the code were public, Mr. Brain could make the changes that he wants, and if Omar recognizes them as an improvement, he only has to approve it and install it, rather than writing it.

Title: Re: The Arimaa Public License
Post by omar on May 5^th, 2005, 2:31pm

Actually the server code is really not that well written and I would not want to build a solid server on that base. It is basically something that I put together quickly using Perl to get something up and running. It was not written to scale up and handle a lot of users. As it is the server would probably not be able to handle more than 30 or so simultanious interactive games. I could release it, but it would be like when Netscape released their browser code. The open source community looked at it and said "what a mess" :-) and had to start from scratch.

What I would really like to do is start a open source project on sourceforge to develop an Arimaa game server that is much more solid. Of course I will provide the current server code as an example, but Im sure we will decide not to build on it and rebuild it from scratch; or maybe base it on the FICS code.

The reason why I though the Arimaa public license needed to be done first is I didn't want there to be any confusion that a license for a product (or software) that incorporates Arimaa applied to the game itself. Now the game itself has a license that states this.

Title: Re: The Arimaa Public License
Post by omar on May 5^th, 2005, 2:59pm

on 04/29/05 at 10:31:42, Fritzlein wrote:

If I understand the spirit of your license, a Wikibook would not be subject to being taxed, right?

Right, since you wouldn't generate any revenue from it. Maybe it would be distributed under an open source type license. However the license would only apply to the book and not extend to the game itself. So if someone decided to take the Wikibook and publish a book from it that was actually sold then a commercial Arimaa license would still be needed.

Title: Re: The Arimaa Public License
Post by clojure on Sep 15^th, 2010, 3:13am

on 05/05/05 at 14:31:20, omar wrote:

What I would really like to do is start a open source project on sourceforge to develop an Arimaa game server that is much more solid. Of course I will provide the current server code as an example, but Im sure we will decide not to build on it and rebuild it from scratch; or maybe base it on the FICS code.

Has this plan ever been realized? If not, what kind of requirements would you set for the server code and do you have an architecture in mind?

How large a task would it be to completely write all the features? Is there a feature set that needs to be done? Is the current bot interface satisfying for everyone's needs? Is there a way to connect a bot through public API from a local machine? I mean people could share their computing resources for running bots.

(Sorry to bring so old a thread up).

Title: Re: The Arimaa Public License
Post by omar on Sep 16^th, 2010, 1:16am

on 09/15/10 at 03:13:01, clojure wrote:

Has this plan ever been realized?

No, never got around to starting this. Over the years the hardware got faster and kept my slow code going :-) I think the current server could handle about 100 simultaneous logins assuming no bots were running.

Quote:

If not, what kind of requirements would you set for the server code and do you have an architecture in mind?
How large a task would it be to completely write all the features? Is there a feature set that needs to be done?

I think the most pressing need is to have a stable interface for playing games without connection problems. Actually connection problems are unavoidable, but the client and server software have to be very robust to recognize such problems to quickly and transparently recover from them and keep the game going. I think that having persistent bi-directional communication between the the client and server is the way to go for this; using Ajax or Comet works but is not very robust and is delay prone. So a server like FICS with a JavaScript based client using a socket bridge for the persistent connect would be great for playing games, watching games, chatting and viewing the status of the gameroom. A web server is also needed for stuff like reviewing past games, player profiles, changing settings and other things which do not require instant updates from the server.

I have lots of experience and ideas now on how to make the server and client better. I would probably also redesign the database and start from scratch. However, the project is large enough that at my rate of programming it would take at least a full year to complete. Others could probably do it faster and a team of people could probably do it in a few months. If there is enough interest to do this as an open source project I would definitely be able to contribute some time to it, although I wouldn't have enough time to be able to lead it.

Quote:

Is the current bot interface satisfying for everyone's needs? Is there a way to connect a bot through public API from a local machine? I mean people could share their computing resources for running bots.

Most probably not. There is definitely room for improvement. Although it is possible to connect a bot to the gameroom from a local machine, it is not possible to start the bot unless the machine hosting the bot provides a public web interface.

Title: Re: The Arimaa Public License
Post by clojure on Sep 16^th, 2010, 9:42am

I hope you would wrote your ideas and plans to wiki when you have time and enthusiasm. This could not necessarily get people do anything but if it's the long term plan to rewrite everything, this could be an important step towards team work. People aren't necessarily even aware that they could help, or how. Surely just that it's project initiated by you could bring some attention and serious consideration.

Some experienced people could just point out obvious problems before encountering them. Well, I don't know the background of the users hanging in this forum but seems like many are making a bot, or a Google AI contestant :D, and had the potential to lend a hand.

Title: Re: The Arimaa Public License
Post by omar on Sep 18^th, 2010, 9:40am

Yes, we do have many very good programmers on this site and they have helped out quite a bit in the past with contributing code to make the server better.

I'll start documenting ideas on this project when I get a chance. Thanks for the suggestion.