[MarcusD]

We all know the story (or should know) about Linux and slackware. The gist is that everyone was using SLS Linux but it had a bunch of bugs. But it was open source and it was a revolution. But slackware improved SLS and got rid of lots of the bugs. That would be great, everything was open source so everyone was happy slackware improved SLS right? Wrong. Slackware made their changes closed source. This means that slackware took an open source project and killed it basically. They became a Microsoft.

Debian was pissed at what slackware did. They started debian as a truly open source Linux project. And now look at where things have gone. The community cornered and killed slackware because of their arrogant selfish schemes.

That's not to say that slackware is bad. Slackware is actually very good at what it does. But the Linux community was robust enough to undercut them for being selfish and not releasing the source.

Fast forward 10 years and EQEmu shows up. Open source revolution. P99 takes the database everyone is using at the time (probably) and fixes the 'bugs' (things being not classic, Sony introduced the bugs intentionally). And everyone was super happy right? EQemu is open source so the changes helped everyone right? Wrong. P99 made their changes closed source. This means P99 took an open source project and killed it basically. They became their own SOE.

Now the only part of the story that hasn't come true yet is that the robust EQEmu community undercuts and kills p99.

P99 is pretty good at what they do (except the fact they let high level zone disruptors run rampant probably because they are donators) But like Debian we have to muster up the huevos to say no its not ok they closed their source and we are going to do it better than you and take you out.

The way we do that, I believe, is to get the trilogy client working and make a new database hopefully from scratch to really be classic eq. This is my goal and I have a long way to go since I just barely got my first server up but it will happen eventually and since it is open source we can all contribute and never worry that once the P99 ship goes down everything we invested into helping them is lost forever.