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'Myst Online' to be released fully open-source
It becomes the first major game to be open-sourced. Will a developer community follow?
Cyan Worlds has decided to release all of the Myst Online: Uru Live assets to the public as open source, including the client and server architecture.
Cyan will also hold one Myst Online server shard open for players to have a centralized world, while others can now freely put up their own Myst Online servers.
This will be an interesting experiment to see whether a development community forms around this massively multiplayer online game. Unlike many open-source projects that solve developer problems (and therefore have a direct audience), a game casts a broader net to a nondeveloper community.
I also wonder about the operational aspects of a online game--like how many people actually know how to build and maintain the servers?
Uru Live itself has seen some tough times, having been dropped by Ubisoft and GameTap until Cyan got the IP back. Now, Cyan is throwing it over the fence to see if an open-source approach makes sense.
I'm not aware of any other efforts such as this--let's hope for the best.
Via Massively
