Why Is Free MUD Development Lagging?

Posted by simoniker on Sunday February 22, 2004 @11:56AM from the texting-and-hexing dept.

Thanks to Skotos for its editorial discussing why free, open-source MUD development is failing to advance swiftly. The author notes "The best [text-based MUD] efforts have been almost entirely closed-source... Free MUDs, by contrast, just haven't advanced very fast." He points to several possible factors, suggesting that "MUD information is indexed poorly, and many projects don't maintain a web site with even a basic description of what they're doing", and continues: "Another reason is licensing. The Diku license is poorly understood and shoddily enforced... LPMUDs aren't much better", before concluding: "There is no existing license that does for MUD servers what the GPL does for applications. That grudging spread of features has never happened for MUD servers the way it has for GPL-licensed applications and libraries."

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Personal Opionon of MUD games by jnguy · 2004-02-22 15:40 · Score: 0, Redundant

I personally don't like MUD, rpgs or anything that takes too long. However, is it really hard to see why MUD games aren't doing that well. Sure, to some people they are really addictive, but there is no longer a reason to go text based. Most PDAs can do things far beyond your MUD game. A good star wars MUD that I played for a while is www.dforces.com. If you look around, there are quite a few MUD games out there.