SEUL: Re: Settlers hosting?

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

> Hey!
> 
> I really appreciate your interest.  When I put the game on the net, I
> didn't expect any response, let alone the letters and kudos I've recieved. 
> I think I might take you up on that offer of hosting the game. The problem
> is I may not be working on it as a project for a while.  I'm in a
> transition (from no job to a job) so I may not do anything with Settlers
> for a while.  I do however plan on making a better interface (KDE probably)
> when I get a chance.

It's fine if you take a break on it for a while. I mean, you wrote it,
after all. :) How long a break do you think you might be taking, and how
complete/functional do you think the current package is? Also, did anybody
else mailing you express any interest in helping to maintain/update it? :)
 
> If you guys don't mind me not accessing the code, or making changes in a
> while, then sure let's set it up over there.
> A settlers.seul.org address would be hilarious.
> I dunno what the company that owns the rights to Setters of Catan (Die
> siedler von Catan is owned by Mayfair Games) would think though.

Yeah, this is the tricky point. I know that nobody is caring about freeciv
currently, even tho it's computer game 'competing' with computer game. In
your case, it's computer game competing with board game, so they ought to
be less likely to care. Still, you should consider changing 'Catan' to
your favorite imaginary continent besides those five letters. Another
change to ponder is to move the resources (sheep, grain, etc) into
something with different words but the same concept. Better yet, allow it
to be pluggable, so you can use your own names out of a config file loaded
at server runtime. But I'm getting ahead of myself. :) In any case, you
should be ok even if you leave all the copyright infringements intact. The
case that you're taking away their profits is difficult to make, for free
software with no commercial software counterpart.

Anyway..what account name (eg cary or cbrisebo) would you like on cran?
(This would be in addition to the settlers@seul.org account, which would
house the html, etc.)

Thanks,
--Roger

(I've cc'ed this to seul-pub in case people have comments on the name
issue. http://members.home.net/cbrisebo/ is the current address.)
 
> Cary.
> 
> ----------
> > From: Roger Dingledine <arma@seul.org>
> > To: cbrisebo@uvic.ca
> > Cc: seul@seul.org; dloss@seul.org
> > Subject: Settlers hosting?
> > Date: June 25, 1999 7:41 PM
> > 
> > I noticed your announcement on Freshmeat yesterday, of your Settlers of
> > Catan network game. I also noticed that it's living at a home.com
> address,
> > which may not be particularly stable or suitable for you.
> > 
> > I'm the leader of the Simple End-User Linux (SEUL) project -- we're
> trying
> > to help out groups and projects who are working to make Linux easier or
> > more fun to use from an end-user's (in this case home-user's)
> perspective.
> > 
> > Settlers has some really clean code (congratulations :)
> > Is there anything we can do to help you out, in terms of providing web
> > space, a subdomain under seul.org (for instance, settlers.seul.org), ftp
> > space, a cvs repository, mailing lists, etc? We have a number of machines
> > under the seul.org domain; most of them are housed at MIT currently, so
> > we have a very reliable network connection, and higher bandwidth than
> > most other sites out there.
> > You can read some more information about hosting at
> > http://www.seul.org/pub/hosting.html or more general information at
> > http://www.seul.org/
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > --Roger
>