Last Chance to Help Free Ryzom

An anonymous reader writes "With the consistent influx of MMORPG's in the last few years it was obvious that many would fall by the wayside, one of those to fall is Ryzom, as you might be aware it is now going to be up for sale, and in an enterprising move for open source there is an initiative to buy Ryzom and put it under the GPL, much like Blender was in the past. However, time is short, apparently "Pledges must be made within the next few days, since the deadline for the final bid is expected sometime before Wednesday, December 19th". Already there is over 150,000 Euros donated and the FSF has donated 60,000!! If you (like me) can see the benefit of having a fully developed MMORPG that is completely open source just donate a little, quickly!"

Re:Suckitude?

[Enoxice]

The point isn't that "everyone's the equivalent of a dev team member." The point is that there is reusable code in development that anyone can take and make their own MMORPG with (using their own server). And perhaps, if the developers want, the community can contribute code.

Re:whos going to host it?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to their site last time it was linked on slashdot, there will still be a monthly fee to use the central servers. You can run your own server, but it wouldn't be the one that most people used (Unless you were awesome).

Re:Suckitude?

[james_orr]

Sure, you could do that. But that monster would only be on your own server, so you and your friends can kill that monster as much as you like.

Re:Surely

[Odin_Tiger]

The point isn't to get the game itself running. The point is a F/OSS MMORPG engine. Getting the graphics and network code available in a way that people can use and learn from it...lower the coding time / expense barrier to entry in the industry a tad.

The plan is too keep the servers running

[Per Abrahamsen]

The 200k Euro will be initial funding for a new company to develop, run and maintain the game. Not just to free the software and arts (the software is actually already free). They will start with the current user base.

The French bankruptcy law is different from American, a judge is deciding for which plan for the company is going to win, and he will take into consideration such issues as keeping French jobs. Not just paying the debt.

Most of the player base is French, and seems to be large enough to keep the game going. The company went bankrupt due to some bad business decisions.