RAWA has posted a statement from Rand.
Last week, I had a chance to talk with Rand about the status of the open source project.
We began working on a statement to explain the current status.
Rand Miller wrote:
Quote:
Patient Fans,
Sorry for the long delay in responding. Our only excuse is that we keep thinking something will change, and we'll have some news to offer. But since it's been so long and you've been so patient, we'll just fill you in on the state of MORE...
First off - our goals and objectives have not changed. The statement we made almost a year ago is still valid. We want to "open source" URU, and keep a centralized server/world. Here are the issues that have gummed up the works:
1) Lack of personnel/resources. As many of you know, Cyan had a rather tumultuous year - primarily from an issue with our testing services. We lost a major client and had to address some rather large accounts receivable issues that resulted from that. Short story is that money was short and our staff was affected in the form of layoffs. As a result we have had no extra cycles to spend on MORE. Which leads to the question - "What did you need to do for MORE?"...
2) URU was the most complex project Cyan ever attempted. Over the course of many years, URU has had many code variations from different employees involved, different objectives to satisfy and different partners to co-develop with. Releasing source code has turned out to be more complicated than we had originally anticipated. We have to go through MOUL with an even finer tooth comb - through source code that in some cases is almost ten years old - and either pull the parts that we cannot release or rewrite them. This is something we planned on doing with spare cycles, and even with the gracious help of former employees. But because of point number one - spare cycles are almost nonexistent.
Our excuse for silence was that we kept anticipating that we might grab a few spare cycles. But that hasn't happened. We're working on a few smaller projects, just keeping our head above water.
You'd be surprised how many options we've thought of over the last year that haven't worked out, but to get things rolling we're trying to get a server up and running as soon as possible. Please rest assured that we're still excited about the possibilities of MORE - creating an environment that allows our worlds to become your worlds, and to grow and live and have a life of their own.
Sorry again for the silence, and thanks for your continued support!
I am stealing this. LOL