RE: [dq-rules] Having recently been flamed...

[Eric Labelle <eric@iosphere.net>]

Let's clear the fog...

NOTE:  A lot has been written about this lately, so this this message is 
general and not targeted at anyone, this is not a flame, it is just to 
clarify things.

TO THE MATTER OF GATHERING RULES :  Indeed, this is about 2 years ago when 
the DQ Open Source project was proposed and I was pushing this project 
quite a bit.
Back then we had a on-line meeting John Rauchert, John Corey and I about it 
and my first task was to comb the net for new DQ materiel.  It took 2 weeks 
of hard work and I got I guess something like 90% of the DQ materiel out 
there and GUESS WHAT!  Along the way I dutyfully recorded the credit for 
ALL of this materiel and still have it.  I worked about another month or so 
on the project and people volunteered to work on different sections of the 
project, but alas, I suppose real life go in the way for most and I felt 
the project was just too gigantic for just one person to pursue so I put a 
hold on it at the time, expecting to continue some time in the future.

TO THE MATTER OF CREDIT :  It is very important to respect people's wishes 
for credits and distribution for the materiel they produce.  It is called 
trust.  It is called recognition for sometimes very dedicated and long and 
harduous work that required lots of research, testing, layout, proofing, 
etc.  It is only fair to make a stong effort to properly list credits, if 
you don't known the credits, properly state so, ask around, research, etc. 
 If one does it any other way, it is called plagiarism, and THAT, is like a 
fist in the face for intellectual property.  One cannot use arguments as 
"its old stuff..." or "who's gonna sue...", it is a matter that the owner 
of the intellectual property is receiving a slap in the face.  Most 
gentleman and gentlewoman easily share their materiel when proper credit is 
done, otherwise, why would they have published the materiel in the first 
place.  When people don't shared it is usually for one of these two 
reasons: the trust factor(or I should say, lack of) and sometimes there is 
just some stuff that is very dear to one person and they would just PREFER 
not to share, not because they are "bad", it is just their preference. 
 Besides, if each party shares published/produced matieriel ( I personnally 
do that a lot, and contribution goes both ways ), then everybody comes out 
winners.


TO THE MATTER OF THE DQ COMMUNITY : The DQ Community consists mainly (I 
wrote "mainly" not "all") of working adults with families now, we learned 
to love DQ when we were teens, if we still were all teens, the community 
would be much stronger, but as I mentionned above, for a lot of us real 
life is geting in the way, we know a few of us even got kids in the past 
2-3 years, now all that take a toll on the time we can dedicate to DQ. 
Another big factor that is not helping is all those damned and addictive 
computer games...


By the way the DQ Players Association is now 199 members strong, who will 
be member 200 ???


DragonQuest forever! (I'm still waiting for suggestions for a slogan for 
the DQPA, hint, hint...)

Eric

Eric (Snafaru) Labelle
WebMaster in interim
DragonQuest Players Association
http://www.dragonquest.org/
eric@iosphere.net