Why I took my RTC files offline

[Sophia]

I will try to be as concise and diplomatic as possible:

Essentially, I have removed my RTC files as an expression of my cumulative frustration with the direction George has gone with RTC development, especially his policies regarding the release of source code. I have felt somewhat ignored, especially regarding forum posts that have gotten no answer at all that I feel needed some sort of answer.

I still am amenable to resolving things diplomatically, of course, but I've decided that rather than cause further trouble to simply withdraw my support for the program.

If anyone has any questions, I'll answer them, but I don't wish to create a public spectacle or turn this forum into a flamefest.

[George Gilbert]

Essentially, I have removed my RTC files as an expression of my cumulative frustration with the direction George has gone with RTC development, especially his policies regarding the release of source code. I have felt somewhat ignored, especially regarding forum posts that have gotten no answer at all that I feel needed some sort of answer.

Obviously it's dissapointing that you have decided to retract the work you have done to help the "DM community", but ultimately that is your decision.

As you know, you have contributed alot over the past few years and your input will be missed by both myself and all the other people here who have used the tools and guides you have written as well as been helped by the posts you have made.

I find it a shame that you feel that the fact that RTC isn't open source means that you no longer want to contribute but again, that is your decision. Also, I assure you that I personally have not been deliberatly ignoring you; as has been pointed out before, there is a real life out there and I don't spend all my time doing DM things.

I'm sure I speak for everyone here when I say that I hope that you reconsider your decision, but if you are certain that your future lies elsewhere then we all wish you the best in whatever you decide to do next.

[Sophia]

As you know, you have contributed alot over the past few years and your input will be missed by both myself and all the other people here who have used the tools and guides you have written as well as been helped by the posts you have made.

I find it a shame that you feel that the fact that RTC isn't open source means that you no longer want to contribute but again, that is your decision.

Please stop saying "open source." As I've mentioned before, open source would be great and wonderful, but I fully understand that there are various complications with a broad public release, and I'm not talking about totally "open source." Software development is often a meritocracy and I fully appreciate the sentiment of not wanting to share your hard work with every random person off the street. I am speaking only for myself, though a few others who have also contributed a lot may also be curious too. What's wrong with "closed source but a slightly larger audience?"

That said, taking "open source" as you use the term to mean any additional people at all having access to the code, the two statements above are at the core of my frustration. I read something along the lines of,"You have done a lot, and I and a lot of other people appreciate it, but I'm still not sharing the source code with you." That, to me, is nothing but a callous slap in the face. I fully acknowledge that your code is yours to do with as you please, and if you don't want to share it with anyone at all, even someone who has helped you out so much in the past, that's fine-- but that doesn't mean I won't take it as an affront, because I (in my opinion, extremely justifably) will, or that I'll continue to want to be involved with RTC, because I won't.

Also, I assure you that I personally have not been deliberatly ignoring you; as has been pointed out before, there is a real life out there and I don't spend all my time doing DM things.

Ages ago, I brought up the concept of open source on the forum. You stated some concerns about commercial code, I followed up with some possible solutions, but you then let the thread drop. During the busy 0.35-38 development cycle, when huge changes were being made, and we were mailing back and forth just about daily, there were a couple of times I offered to help with various aspects of coding. You promptly replied to every other point I made in my mails, except for those offers.

More recently, I sent an email some four weeks ago. In your reply, you claimed this was the first time you'd considered the "open source" issue. What about that old forum post? The same thing happened, too-- you reply once, I follow up with some clarifications of misconceptions and problems, and then the conversation seems to have dropped again, at least for the last three weeks or so.

There are a couple of posts languishing in the suggestions forum about things you felt you had to be convinced they were worth it-- in both cases, I think I made a fairly solid argument, and in one, I even offered to help again. Meanwhile, you fix a bunch of bugs and release 0.44, but still no reply. Finally, some of my suggestions in the past were moved to the archive with absolutely no reply from you whatsoever.

I fully understand that you might be busy, have a life, or just plain have better things to do. Looking at this rather suspicious pattern, though, my opinion is that my feeling ignored is also justified, especially when it seems to be much more pointed and confined to certain topics.

I'm sure I speak for everyone here when I say that I hope that you reconsider your decision, but if you are certain that your future lies elsewhere then we all wish you the best in whatever you decide to do next.

I'd also like to reassure everyone that I'm not giving up on the "DM Community" as whole, merely expressing discontentment with one particular aspect of it.

[linflas]

Sorry for interfering in this long and blooding thread but... here's what i retain.

George doesn't want to share his work with anybody, even with people he can trust.

That is childish.

Sophia, as a consequence, removes her help files, even if she doesn't want to be involved anymore in RTC dev. This penalize all people here who want to make custom dungeons.

That is selfish.

This short, familiar, froggy style was sponsored by :
Herron in Australia, Tylenol in Brazil, Canada, South Korea and the U.S., Paralen in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Panadol in Central America, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the UK, Portugal, The Netherlands and Singapore, Perdolan in Belgium, Doliprane, Dafalgan, and Efferalgan in France, Tachipirina and Efferalgan in Italy, Crocin in India, Gelocatil in Spain, Benuron in Portugal, Alvedon in Sweden, Panodil and Pinex in Denmark and Iceland, Acamol in Israel, Pinex and Paracet in Norway, Depon in Greece, Lekadol and Daleron in Slovenia, and Adol in Oman.

[George Gilbert]

Sorry for interfering in this long and blooding thread but... here's what i retain.

George doesn't want to share his work with anybody, even with people he can trust.

That is childish.

Hmmm - not entirely sure where you're coming from on that one. The vast majority of games (or any other computer programs, or any other products at all come to think of it) in the world don't release their internal make-up to anyone. Unless your branding the majority of the worlds attitude to what it produces as childish that is; in which case, it's hard to disagree

I think that it's great that there is such a community spirit about DM and am flattered that people feel such a strong attachment to things that I have done that they feel ownership of it and want to contribute more.

Nobody however should attribute to malice what can easily be explained by a lack of time. DM for me is fun, it is a hobby - it is not my full time job. As such, I tend to address the issues that provide the most benefit to the most people with the least effort first; those that are more complex tend to get left. It's certainly nothing personal or in any way intended to be disrespectful; it's just the way time pans out.

As it happens, the last 2 months have been extremely busy for me. I've probably spent less than two or three hours grand total in that time doing anything DM related. The fixes in V0.44 have been nearly all one liners that took a minute or two each to fix and because of the lack of time, I havn't given much thought to all the suggestions etc which would require more work.

Sophia, you made some excellent points in your various posts / emails and (as I said in my replies) I am seriously considering the various suggestions you have made. You must appreciate though that with real life in the way, I don't get the opportunity to do everything immediately.

[Gambit37]

Linflas, are you making a points about George and Sophia or the pharmaceutical industry?

I believe I understand what you're saying, though I don't agree that it's childish to want to retain control of personal projects. It's just the nature of the creative beast. We could take that discussion to the Nth degree and throw in all the arguments about copyright and patent laws and it wouldn't get us anywhere: the bottom line is that creative people should have the ultimate say over how their creations are used.

I don't know the ins and outs of Sophia's complaint or the history of how she has contributed to the project, but it certainly seems a shame to penalize others.

We've all contributed a huge amount to the project over the years -- I'm just grateful RTC exists at all and would rather everyone could simply accept that not everything we think, suggest or do for George will necessarily match his view or intent for the project.

[linflas]

*takes two Efferalgan pills*

I can't write kilometers of english words like you without saying idiocies. That's hard to give opinion in a language that is not your own.
Well, Gambit's right *again* . But our contributions to RTC are only suggestions/ideas that George is free to pick or reject, and a few external tools/editors. Sophia thought about doing *more* and that's a shame she can't make it come true...

[Paul Stevens]

I sympathize with Sophia but cannot find fault
with George's decision. Each is free to do with
his/her work as he/she pleases. There are emotions
at work on both sides and they may change
over time. We can hope.

[Trantor]

This is sad for the DM community as a whole. The way I understand it, the main problem is not that George wants to maintain the sole control over the RTC source code, but rather his lack of explanations, reasons or simply statements about it. It seems that Sophia feels mainly ignored rather than rejected on that subject, and I know I would be very frustrated were I feeling that way. Judging from the questions about WHACK, the DM community cares about her contributions to RTC a great deal.

Maybe you, George, could ask yourself a question: Do you want to keep complete control over RTC, which would be perfectly understandable as it is your baby? Or would you give it the chance to evolve into something bigger than it is now, but give up the sole control? Maybe a clear answer to this question would help in this situation. (I hope this paragraph doesn't come along as sarcastic, malicious or anything, as it isn't meant to be - but as Linflas already said, it isn't easy to talk about such a deep subject in a non-native language.)

All in all, I hope the two of you can find an agreement that will benefit you and the DM community the most.

[Lunever]

George: Well, I understand that you don't want to share your code with anybody you don't trust personally. On the other hand, Sophia has contributed so much to RTC that she should be considered to be trustworthy by any of us long-standing regulars. I trust that your repeatedly mentioning of not having replied to Sophia's requests due to a lack of time is not a cheap excuse - but especially if its not just an excuse it might be worthwhile to let Sophia do a couple of things that you do not have the time for but Sophia would love to do.

Sophia: While I fullly understand that you are frustrated by George replying to some parts of your emails while repeatedly ignoring other parts of the very same emails (I had a couple of pretty similar email conversations with George too a while ago, although I haven't contributed as much to RTC as you have of course), I think that opening a public "George I'm very very unhappy with the current situation" thread would have been more likely to do any good than a public "I withdraw completely from all my work for RTC except you change your mind" thread.

In my experience emails and forums postings can escalate much easier than any personal argument, for you can write things, but you can't unwrite them. But before you send them you can rework them until they resemble rather the work of a sword than that of a feather. it would be good if anybody involved would try to reconsider the situation from a rather neutral perspective for a moment - So Sophia, please, don't abandon RTC, and George, please consider investing a little faith and trust in Sophia.

[George Gilbert]

I think that people are getting the wrong end of the stick here. As Lunever rightly points out, text isn't a good way of communicating as it's considerably harder to convey emotion - especially if it's being done in a foreign language!

As I mentioned above, I don't live on these forums / email and it isn't my job to answer every single question and do the bidding of every request. I'm involved in DM because I enjoy it. When I get time, I do the things that benefit the most people first (mostly bug fixes) and look at other things (suggestions etc) later, if there's still any time. I've been very ill for most of the year and have only just started back at work and on top of that I also have a newborn kid to look after - there *really* hasn't been much time to do anything DM-wise recently. I don't know how many different ways I can say this until people understand that this is what the deal is; it's nothing to do with lack of trust / secretivity or anything sinister / malicious against any one person!

I wrote DMute because of the challenge of trying to decrypt the DM file format for the first time, and RTC as an exercise in learning how to program games. All of that is well known (I've said it on several occasions, and it's even one of the opening lines in the RTC introduction). They have always been my personal projects, although equally I have tried to incorporate as many peoples suggestions as possible and write the programs for other people to use and enjoy. I get alot of pleasure out of that, and it seems that many other people do to - great.

Until now, there has never been any indication of any unhappiness with that position (although the above postings imply that Sophia has felt this way for a long time), and suddenly I have been threatened with Sophia leaving unless I release the source code to her by effectively holding her contributions to ransom. It appears that other people feel this way too and have also strongly suggested above that I should do so just to preserve the peace.

Let's be perfectly clear here - I do this for fun, because I enjoy it - I will not be threatened or blackmailed into doing anything by anyone.

As I said above, some good points have been made, and when I get some time to sort through them, I will do so.

[Gambit37]

You shouldn't feel the need to explain yourself yet again George, but thank you for doing so. Honestly, I find the situation quite strange and am surprised at where this discusison has gone. I'm just happy RTC exists at all. Nuff said.

[TheMormegil]

It would be a terrible shame if you give up on RTC Sophia.
You have made the best RTC dungeons imho and invaluable
contributions to the editing forums.
Even if you do no further work with RTC I hope you reconsider
your decision to remove your existing files. I think it only penalises
the blameless, lessens the point of your work (because fewer people
will have access to it) and you have made your point already.

I sincerely hope you and george can reconcile your differences.
It is not clear to me that you need the source code to contribute in
the way you want (e.g. the bitmap export function you have offered
to program which seems to have been the fuse for your action).
Out of interest, have/would you release the source for your dungeons?

If this is the end for you, so long, and thanks for all the fish.

TheMormegil

P.S. How did you get here?! That dragon had 1000000HP!

[Sophia]

George, I really do understand that you're very busy, and so I've tried to give you the benefit of the doubt at every opportunity, and apologized for those times that I haven't. However, a few things really don't quite reconcile with simply not having the time-- replying to most points in an email whilst pointedly ignoring one, for example. You also have to realize, I feel like this has been going on for a very long time. I don't know how you can say that now is the first time you've heard that I'm unhappy with the current situation, when this all really started some four weeks ago with our initial round of emails.

Anyway, I don't believe your motives are overtly malicious; this is a difficult issue, having caused something of a firestorm around here, so not wanting to face it head-on would be a fairly natural reaction. I simply feel as though you have not been entirely forthright, and used your lack of time as something of a blanket excuse. It's especially troubling to me because some of the posts that were most ignored were the ones that would do the most to help this problem of a lack of time-- my offers of assistance.

One more thing I'd like to make clear is that I'm not trying to threaten, blackmail, coerce, or anything of the sort. Nothing here is worth any kind of long-term ill will. I believe quite strongly that George's material is his to do with as he pleases-- as is mine to do with as I please. My intent in pulling my material was not a ransom demand, nor was it out of any kind of malice or desire to punish the community as a whole. My intent was and is not malicious, either.

It is exactly because I believe George's material is his to do with as he pleases that I pulled mine, in fact. I didn't want to rant, rave, and roar endlessly, and turn this into a protracted flame war. Lunever, while I understand and somewhat agree with your belief that a thread simply expressing my grievances would've done more good, I honestly didn't want to seem like I was just idly complaining or trying to stir up trouble. I had no idea how others might feel about this, which is why I tried to resolve it quietly through email first.

My intention was not to offer any kind of trade or make any kind of demand: merely to extricate myself from a project that I could no longer feel good about supporting. Even keeping the files online though not updated would be supporting it in some capacity, and I felt that if I was going to be done with it, I had to be completely done, over, and finished with it-- not some halfway point.

Any further discussion, I would hope, would be an attempt to come to an amenable conclusion and heal any bruised feelings, not arrange some kind of "tit-for-tat" tradeoff.

P.S. Mormegil, you clearly do NOT suffer from a shortage of free time-- yikes! And, yes, if/when I put my files back online, I'd be happy to send the .txt of any of my dungeons to anyone who's completed one-- or at least made a good go of it. I'd love to share my technique, but no cheating!

[MitchB1990]

I wish there would be a simple resolution to this problem, This is the first time I've seen a debate like this on these forums. Maybe George could add a feature which can add your own scripts? Too bad I am too naive for programming to understand how hard it would be to produce something like that.

[arturus]

Why do you want the source code; is it just to go in your own direction?
I don't know the history of everything behind this issue but infighting in any form is not good particularly when it's being aired in public. It reminds me of bad business practice.
As far as I can gather, RTC is evolving into something great. There's a hell of a lot of support from many people and long may it continue.

[rob3034]

Blimey!

Ive been away from the forums for 2 or 3 weeks, and its a real shame to see a thread like this here.
i only hope you can resolve it , and not make us all turn into arch enemies, and cause RTC to fade into the background

[Gambit37]

I've been trying to get my head around all this and a few things still puzzle me:

During the busy 0.35-38 development cycle, when huge changes were being made, and we were mailing back and forth just about daily, there were a couple of times I offered to help with various aspects of coding. You promptly replied to every other point I made in my mails, except for those offers.

If GG *had* replied to your offers but had said "thanks, but no thanks" would your decision to remove your files have remained the same?

merely to extricate myself from a project that I could no longer feel good about supporting

Why can't you continue to support the project Sophia? Because you feel slighted you were ignored on certain issues? Or because GG didn't do what you wanted? Or you don't agree with his methods? Or something else? Being angry at being ignored -- while I can understand that would be frustrating -- doesn't seem to be enough of a reason to completely ditch a project you've contributed so much to. Surely you can put your personal feelings aside and see the bigger picture?

If anyone has any questions, I'll answer them, but I don't wish to create a public spectacle or turn this forum into a flamefest.

I think it's safe to say this would become a bit messy... but I'm pleased to see that everyone has discussed it intelligently and without personal insults and that is something that we can be very proud of on this forum: the quality of our membership is superb, even if we do disagree from time to time.

Anyway, I can see the story from both sides and as I said before, we should be grateful for all of GGs efforts on RTC. And we should also abe equally grateful of Sophia's support for same. Let's try and remain positive about the future of the best DM clone out there and big ups to both GG and Sophia for all their efforts.

[Parallax]

I know I'm only a newcomer here and I'm probably talking out of place, but I believe that RTC would benefit immensely from Sophia's involvement in its coding, especially since GG is, of his own admission, very busy.

After all, we're not talking about taking over RTC developement but, put into context, about offers to code parts of the RTC editor (and possibly RTC itself) that GG had either no time or no motivation to do.

A situation in which A could use some help and B is eager to help A hardly seems a problem, but then again, it's not about logic. Ultimately it's about control.

I think GG is very lucky. Not every developer gets the opportunity to turn away enthusiastic, trustworthy and competent contributors.

[danielcg]

I think George Gilbert don't have enough time to do all people's suggestions and Sophia's requests.

I am still waiting for George Gilbert to implement "easier" difficulty setting. He is not implemented my suggestion in Version 0.44 but I don't complain because I have noticed lots of suggestions placed by all people are not yet implemented. Anyway, I can easily workaround by implement "boost skill level" via floor trigger inside my secret floor but it is not "true" experience gain(s). I prefer to get experience gain faster OVER time or fighting, not through triggering mechanism.

As soon as George Gilbert have some time, he will implement most suggestions into next version of RTC...

[Sophia]

Thanks for your input, Gambit, you've asked some good questions.

The first question on my mind is: "Why can't I contribute?" Had George given me a straightforward "no" on the topic of contributing, he'd probably have answered this, but as it stands, I have no answer, so I can only wonder-- and feel a bit ignored and slighted in the meantime. Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to say no to this question. It's his project, and I can understand completely if he'd want sole, full control of the project's development. Using other people's code can be tricky to merge, and then you have all sorts of headaches about who really owns what.

The second question, though, is, "Why can't I have a look at the source code for my own curiosity?" This is something of a more open-ended version of the first question-- probably with the proviso that I wouldn't release variant versions without permission, and that any patches I coded up could be rejected offhand. I don't see quite as many good reasons to say no to the second question, especially when one throws out the issue of "open source" and assumes that the code would only be sent to regular, trusted contributors around here. If the assumption is that I'd rip off the code, release variant versions without permission, or do something else dastardly-- I think it's sort of obvious how I'd find this very insulting.

The fact that a couple of times George has brought up the issue of "commercial code" and I have reiterated my promise to not do anything evil, but also suggested some ways to excise any non-distributable elements from the code, and nothing ever came of it, makes that whole line of reasoning feel more like an excuse than anything else-- and adding to my feelings of being slighted.

Finally, there's simple possessiveness. "It's mine, you can't have it." If this is George's reason-- and honestly, it's seeming rather like it-- then, fine, it's his right, but to be honest, I really don't feel like sharing my work with a project built on such foundations. My response is thus-- "It's MINE, and YOU can't have it."

Now, as has been rightly observed, it's true that a great deal of commercial software doesn't release its source code either, but that's to protect commercial interests-- of which RTC is not one-- or to protect the code from being stolen by unscrupulous sorts-- a situation I covered above. Thus, I don't feel the analogy applies in this case at all.

I'm not trying to cajole, coerce, or otherwise force anything out of anyone. I fully agree and appreciate that George has the right to do whatever he wants, and he's not obligated to explain anything to anyone. However, not being obligated doesn't mean occasionally explaining oneself won't be more harmonious-- I'm one of those sorts of people who, when she doesn't know what to think, thinks the worst. There are quite a few cases up there that could be taken as an affront, and I guess I took them all. So, I started to feel not so good at all about my contribution, and pulled the plug.

In short, my offense is much more about not getting a straight answer.

[Lunever]

Sophia: While it is perfectly understandable that you do not want to be ignored further und thus do not wish to continue your involvement with RTC, please do not remove all the stuff you already have created from the web, for this is aiming only at all those players around here who love your dungeons and have nothing to do with the quarrel we're talking about here.

[George Gilbert]

In all of this, what I still don’t understand is “what has changed?”

As I have stated on many occasions (not least, a few posts above), RTC has always been my way of learning how to write a game and I do it because I enjoy it. Part of that enjoyment is from seeing other people use it and them getting enjoyment out of it. This has always been the case, and I sincerely hope that it will always remain that way.

RTC is already one of the most open games I know of - and I’m sure that this is in no small way part of the reason for RTCs popularity. I made a very deliberate design decision right from the start to have an open dungeon text file, graphic and sound formats to enable other people to contribute and exercise their own creativeness whether that be through writing their own dungeons through to editors, guides or other tools. In addition I have implemented literally hundreds of suggestions that have been made by other people and there are regular discussions about what people like and don’t like and this feedback goes directly into the game. That too has always been the case and I hope that it will always remain that way.

There are many types of suggestion made by all the different people that use RTC.

- Some are “obviously” good ideas, would benefit lots of people and are either easy or interesting to do and they generally get done first. The last of those points (“interesting”) is an important factor - as already stated, I do this because I enjoy it (both directly from writing it, and indirectly from others using it) and hope to learn from doing it. RTC is not my job; I am not obligated to immediately do everything that anyone else says.

- Some, although very few, are “obviously” bad ideas either involving a huge amount of work for little benefit, or would fundamentally break the gameplay or DM-ness of the game. These generally fall to the bottom the list of priorities of things to do.

- Some, and the most interesting class of suggestion, are those that fall mid-way between the above. Often these are the ones that require a lot of work but would gain a lot benefit as a result and these depend on having the time and technical knowledge to do. As I gain experience (standing under a door wielding a keyboard for hours at a time?) and the demands of real life change, some of these get done, and some will get done later. Classic examples of this are alpha channels for graphics, PNG and MP3 support, which took me years to get around to doing.

The point is that I read and carefully consider everything - just because it hasn’t been discussed for a while doesn’t mean that it won’t ever get done. Again, this has always been the case.

-----

From my point of view, RTC has been going for about 6 years now and there have never been any complaints about it. Suddenly however about a month ago Sophia threatens to leave unless she gets the source code and then a few days ago carries out that threat.

Sophia, you must understand that regardless of your intentions, by stating that you will withdraw your contributions unless I give you the source code it *is* a threat, even blackmail, and I will not play that game.

As an aside, I also really don’t understand why you would want to withdraw your editing tools and guide. From my point of view, RTC is fun, it’s a game, and a large part of the enjoyment I get from RTC is from seeing other people use it - perhaps your motivation for doing things is different though.

Anyway, ultimately what you do is your decision; either you accept that I am not deliberately ignoring you or you don't. Obviously however I, and many other people, will be sad to see you go if that is what you choose. There is no “quarrel” from my point of view - I hold nothing against you or anyone else. I am just a guy who enjoys what he does and enjoys the fact that other people do too.

[Paul Stevens]

don’t understand why you would want to withdraw

George won't share with me, therefore I won't
share with you.

I enjoy writing this program, therefore I won't
let you see what I have written.

Neither of these seems to be a reasonable
argument. But, for what it is worth, I understand
them. Age, perhaps, has taught me that
feelings don't require logical arguments.
I have a few such feelings myself. No smiley.

[Sophia]

Suddenly however about a month ago Sophia threatens to leave unless she gets the source code and then a few days ago carries out that threat.

Sophia, you must understand that regardless of your intentions, by stating that you will withdraw your contributions unless I give you the source code it *is* a threat, even blackmail, and I will not play that game.

It's not a threat. It's certainly not blackmail. First of all, it's past tense. I've already withdrawn my contributions-- in response to something, not to try to provoke something. Paul S. is right, it's an emotional issue. It's entirely about how certain actions and reactions make me feel.

Here's the concise summary as I see it: I simply wanted to look at the code for my own curiosity, and to help out a bit, if that was wanted. If not, a polite "no thanks" would've done wonders. As it stands, I got ignored, I got excuses, and I got fed up. I agree fully that your time is yours to do with as you please, but if responding to what I felt was a reasonable question, especially based on all I'd contributed, isn't worth your time-- well, then, I feel like contributing more just isn't worth mine. Like I said before, I had two "Why?" questions. I feel they were reasonble. I feel I've been asking them long enough that if any answers were forthcoming, I would've gotten them. Even in all this, you still haven't really answered, despite writing so much. So, I gave up. Again, past tense.

You can take that as a threat, or blackmail, or whatever, but it's simply me being hurt that I'm obviously not valued as much as I thought I was, so I'm bowing out rather than continuing to pester you. You're absolutely right about the fact that it's s a game and it's supposed to be fun. And this mess, well, it was honestly getting to me. I decided it wasn't worth it-- it is definitely NOT-- and to just not involve myself in it any more. I don't even want the source code any more. I want this mess to end.

[Paul Stevens]

I enjoy writing this program, therefore I won't
let you see what I have written.

George has privately asked that I correct this.
That I mis-quoted him.

All I can say is that it was not intended as a quote
any more than my take on Sophia's side of
the question. I did not put quote marks around them.
It was only intended to be my understanding of the
discussion. Moreover, I said I understood their
attitudes and was not condemning anyone.

Sophia's question seemed to center
around obtaining the code.....for whatever purpose.
George's answers centered around the fact that
he is not being paid to do this that he only does
it for fun. In my mind, I associated that answer
with that question.

If I misrepresented George's views, it was only
because I mis-understood his views. But even now,
after re-reading all of this, I cannot find any other
answer to what seems to me to be that basic question.
So I can retract what I said but am unable to
correct it. Consider this a formal retraction of
both of my statements characterizing the arguments
of the two primary participants in this discussion.

I neither contribute to RTC nor benefit from Sophia's
work and therefore do not belong here at all.....so I
apologize for having said anything and especially for
any inaccuracies in my understanding.

and ....

That is my backside you see - riding off into the sunset.

[beowuuf]

Ok, locked the thread as I think the discussion has run it's course, and I hope everyone will respect the feelings and wishes of everyone involved and we can get back on with the fun of making stuff, talking about stuff and doing stuff.