landscaping was here for next door. i was woken up by what i thought was a blimp landing on our house. i had a dream where i was telling someone how completely exhausted i feel all of the time. i don't remember what came out of that.
all of my computers claimed that today is a wednesday, but i wasn't so sure. PA's lack of a news update fueled my suspicions. but then i checked the comic, and sure enough, it's wednesday. i think this all started last night, when i thought it was monday.
i was looking through some papers from my care-free days at cmu, and came across a printed copy of an email i thought was lost forever.
a little history:
in sept. '97, aol terminated a free game they had available to subscribers called "metasquares". one of the guys in my dorm started working on a free version, so that he and his friends from aol could play. somehow, i got involved and started working with him on a java applet. this got back to metacreations, and they threatened to sue us, and other things.
we contacted the fsf, and actually had a phone conversation with eben moglen, general council to the fsf. the only thing i remember from that conversation was him wanting us to write some scripts that would encrypt the contents of our hard drives, or something.
i managed to obtain a pretty good understanding of the laws involved (copyright vs. trademark vs. patent), and knew that they had no legal claim to the rules for the game. i continued working on it over the summer of '98, and got this email in november. i think there was some mailing back-and-forth, with them eventually saying that they would not be taking any legal action. soon after that i lost interest in the whole endeavour.
Jacob, My name is Xxx Xxxx; I am the vice president of software development at MetaCreations Corp., and I designed the interface for MetaSquares. The others copied in the mail addresses here are Ian Gilman, the engineer who wrote the code; and Scott Kim, the brilliant and lovely guy who created the game. I also did much of the design for a product we created called KPT Bryce, which enables users to design and render 3D landscapes. A French company called Rayflect produced last year a plug-in product for another 3D application which claimed to duplicate many of Bryce's features within the host application's environment... this is a fast moving business, and I was not surprised that yet another group of people decided to compete in this field that we created, or at least put on the map. However, when I saw that they had imitated almost to a pixel our own design, I had an extreme reaction. That reaction was primarily one of sadness and disappointment. For every song, there are infinite possibilities for arrangement and presentation. For every image, there are infinite ways of creating and processing the very same image. For every feature in a piece of software, there are infinite choices for how to present that feature. And so I wonder, what kind of person would deny himself or herself the opportunity to find their own voice; devise a better solution; and experience the elation of realized creativity. I don't know the answer... the only thoughts that come to mind are cynical indeed. Any cynicism is something we battle every day... always looking for better solutions, more fun, more progress. Despite the "Corp." in our name, we are not a faceless business juggernaut.. we are a bunch of people doing stuff that we think is cool and worthwhile. Many of us have kids, medical needs, and yes even expensive hobbies... and we depend on our paychecks to do these things, to handle the things that life throws at us. All that notwithstanding, it costs money to research and develop new ideas. That money comes from people who support us by purchasing and using our software. It's a very basic economical model. The point I am making is that business itself is not empirically evil or wrong. It is simply one configuration of "how people pay their bills and send their kids to school." My assumption here is that you may believe software should be free, and maybe even that hacking credit cards is not theft because the number is still in the owner's possession after it has been acquired by the hacker, or other Mondo-2000 kinds of beliefs. Well you know what? Regardless of whatever legal loopholes may exist, you are stealing from us. You are stealing from me personally, from Scott Kim, from Ian Gilman, and many others. I wonder why? There is nothing wrong with free internet gaming, publicly available code, and so on, I even applaud such things. If that is the way YOU choose to design your life. And it is more than obvious that if games are your thing, there are practically infinite choices too for you to sift through, or you could even invent your own games, and make them available for free. I guess I wonder why, with that vast set of choices in front of you, you choose to take OUR work as your own, and proclaim it must be free. I don't know if you work for a living or not. Your e-mail address implies you are either a student or a teacher. But whatever you do, if I started doing the same thing on the sidelines and taking a piece out of your paycheck every week, you should be awfully miffed i would think. Whether you are a teacher or a student, you clearly do not appreciate the realities of living in this society, and have no consideration for those who do not have the time to conduct their own sociological experiments; in short, no consideration for the *actual* citizens of your own meta-community. Whether you are a teacher or a student, you perhaps do not realize that your salary or tuition does come from *somewhere*, that somewhere likely being the sweat of other citizens who perhaps work for a living. If you are a student, perhaps I can write it off to naivet∴ and hope you mature over time. If you are a teacher, I seriously fear for the well-being of your students. In any case, forgive my presumptiousness if I am way off base here. I think any reasonable person would understand how I feel. I am also a reasonable human, so if there is any plausible case to be made that I am totally misunderstanding your intent, I am wide open to that. Meanting, while I am not personally a litigious guy, I do hope we can find enough legal weight in our corner to make you really give this issue some serious though. You really out to go find some cool games that are already in the public domain or invent something much better than MetaSquares, and make a name for yourself that you and your children will be proud of. Sincerely, Xxx Xxxx Vice President, Software Development MetaCreations Corp.
his new endeavour, Co/Operating Systems, Inc., seems pretty "Mondo-2000" to me. maybe i should apply for a job there?
