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Greetings,
I come with sad news. Two days ago the player behind Zizuph and Saya (from
now on called ZS) posted a note on our forums informing us that he intended
to publish the majority of the Genesis source code for everyone to see. Some
of you saw this post before I removed it, and for some of you this will come
as a big surprise, especially if you haven't been reading the flames section
on the forums lately.
Unfortunatley this came as no surprise to us in the admin, since he told us
several months ago that this is something he is considering doing. Unless,
of course, we did what he wanted (more about that below). Using blackmail
and threats to get what you want in Genesis is of course completely
unacceptable, and publishing all the code is of course a massive breach of
our rules as well. Therefore, ZS's known remaining characters (Lothmar and
Arianna) have been removed. All his accounts on our forums and Discord have
been removed, and he is banned from our Facebook group. ZS is from now on
unwelcome in our community in any shape or form. Should he try to rejoin
the game or any other part of our community he will immediately be removed
and banned again. This is a permanent ban.
Now, before you go looking for this code, I strongly urge you to continue
reading before you decide if you want the code or not. It will be somewhat
lengthy, but I feel it will be good for everyone to know what has actually
been going on the last year or so. I am also writing this for my own sake,
because I have kept this quiet in order to try to let the community heal
from all the drama and chaos that lead to ZS's original deletion. But, since
he chose to bring things out in the open some month ago, and now has taken
this extreme step, I feel it's time to not be quiet anymore and get this
off my chest. I really don't want to give him any attention, but this one
time I will at least tell you my side of the story, so you can decide for
yourselves if you want to use or share his stolen code.
THE COPYRIGHT DOCUMENT
----------------------
ZS will try to claim that he is releasing the code for the greater good. He
will claim that this is for the best, that he is doing it because the admin
said no when he asked us to make the game open source. This is true. He did
ask and we did say no. Of course, he will claim he knows better than us,
and that he is doing the game a big favor by releasing the code himself,
since we won't. He will also claim he has the right to do this because of
an old document named COPYRIGHT that he found in the /doc folder on the
Genesis server.
He will likely qoute this section:
"All code in Genesis may be freely copied and used by anyone gaining access
to it, with the exception that no code may for any reason be used for the
purpose of making a monetary profit. This means that while you are allowed to
run the mud, charging money from those who use it to cover the running costs,
you may not make a profit from it."
ZS will claim this paragraph gives him the right to publish any code
he wants wherever he wants because we once gave him access to it. Of course,
anyone with half a brain understands that whoever wrote this old document
he has dug up meant that wizards are free to copy each others code - within
Genesis. Not that you can take the entire source code and just start your
own MUD. ZS of course also understands this, and is well aware of the rules
against sharing code outside the wizard world, but he has decided to use
this little loophole in a text written by an admin member decades ago.
Also, since ZS has read this old document so throroughly to find this
loophole in order to justify his actions, he has no doubt read the very
FIRST paragraph in the very same document. It reads:
"The legal rules say that you can't sue someone just because your code pops
up somewhere else in the world. The ethical rules say that you are a bastard
if you take someone elses code without permission and put it up somewhere else.
They also say that if you behave like a bastard you can be thrown off
the game."
So, in short. ZS decided to act in an extremly unethical way, proved to be
the bastard the document described, and has therefore been thrown off the
game.
THREATS AND DEMANDS
-------------------
I should also let you know that ZS publishing of code is the result of
the admin not giving in to a number of demands. ZS contacted me about a year
after his deletion with a number of requests, that quickly turned into demands
and veiled threats. We have spoken on and off until a few months ago when
he shut down all communication because I refused to moderate a post on the
forums flame section that he didn't like. In short, his main demands were:
- Restore Saya.
- Delete the player who reported him for sexual harassment.
- Issue a public apology to him for all the harm Mirandus and I have
caused him.
- Change the rules so that the AoP is not allowed to look at screenshots
from PMs unless ALL parties have agreed to these screenshots being shared.
So, in short, players will no longer be able to prove any type of wrongdoings
to the AoP by taking screenshots.
- Introduce terms and conditions that players must agree to in order to play.
The first three are not even something I would ever consider doing. The fourth
one can at least be discussed, and ZS made the argument that we should
implement this rule to protect the privacy of our players. And sure, he has a
point, and I did take his suggestion seriously and discussed it with the other
admins and AoPs. In the end, we believe this kind of rule would not be a good
idea, since it would make it much harder for us to actually remove really
harmful people from our community. We also feel that we generally take player
privacy very seriously and do our outmost to refrain from looking at private
stuff unless we badly need to in order to look into very serious complaints,
usually regarding sexual harassment, or worse.
With ZS suggested rule in place, it would have been much harder to actually
remove ZS for example. ZS never mentioned having any issues with this rule
while he was a wizard/player in Genesis, and I strongly suspect that the
whole point of trying to force this rule change after his deletion is so that
he can then use the new rule to try to get his beloved Saya restored. If a
rule is implemented that means screenshots of PMs can't be used as proof,
he could then claim his deletion was wrong because we had no right to use
screenshots that proved his own wrongdoings. This if of course speculation
on my part, but his sudden interest in player privacy is suspcious to say
the least.
His last request I felt was a reasonable one, and it's something that may be
good to implement. A draft for terms of conditions is actually written, but
like many other suggestions, it got buried below other tasks in our massive
todo-list. ZS claimed in his forum post that my failure to come through on
my promise to implement terms and condition is a big part why he felt the need
to steal all our code and publish it. I find this argument completely absurd,
but he will clearly reach for the tiniest straws he can in order to justify
his theft of code. He made a suggestion, which I didn't implement quick enough
for him, and therefore he he feels that he must publish the entire Genesis
source code as revenge? That's like divorcing my wife because she said she
would do the dishes but didn't. Completely absurd logic. But nothing surprises
me when it comes to ZS anymore.
Anyway, ZS did not like that I was not interested in most of his requests,
and that it took too long to implement those terms and conditions he wanted.
He made it very clear to me that if I didn't do what he wanted he would
consider "going public" and release all dirt he has on me and others from
various PMs. He said he had stuff that would definitely hurt "my legacy" as
keeper. When we still would not budge regarding his demands, he started
talking about releasing the Genesis code. Anyone who has visited the flames
section of the forums know he has done what he promised regarding trying to
make me and Mirandus look like horrible people, and now he has clearly
decided to move on to the next threat - releasing code.
So, if you read his forums post before it was removed, and believed he was
actually releasing code "for the greater good", think again. This is nothing
but petty revenge. Against me. Against Mirandus. Against the players who
reported him for sexual harassment, and against the players who claimed he
was a cheater and tried to get him deleted.
REGARDING THE STOLEN CODE
-------------------------
Now, if you do find whatever code he is releasing somewhere... before you look
at it, download it, or decide to share the code/link with your friends, please
consider the following first:
- As noted in <help rules>, people who try to harm Genesis will most likely
find their characters removed from the game. Obviously sharing stolen
Genesis code is harming the game, so anyone sharing the stolen code, or
sharing the link to the stolen code will be removed from our community.
- Is ZS a person you truly want to support? For every download, for every page
view he gets, he will believe he still has support and followers. He will
think it's working. That he IS hurting us. This will likely fuel his desrire
to continue hurting us in more ways. How? Well, last time he threatened with
lawsuits aginst individual wizards. And this time around he has already
attempted (and failed) to get a player who reported him for sexual harassment
to lose their RL job. Several members of the admin have also considered
quitting because we are utterly exhausted in dealing with ZS constant crap
for years now. We haven't surrendered yet, but even if we don't, his constant
and relenetless attacks on Genesis and us personally is also keeping us from
actually spending time on -useful- Genesis tasks. ZS is hellbent on causing
maximum harm to Genesis and several our our wizards and players. The best way
you can help is by not caring about his stolen code. Let it rot in some dark
alley on the Internet with zero page views.
- Genesis is NOT an open source game. Anything ZS releases is stolen code
written by hundreds of volunteers who spent thousands of hours creating the
game you have probably spent thousands of hours enjoying. None of the
creators have agreed to their code being shared in public. The copyright
document he is qouting does not give him the right to do this. Legally? It's
unclear, none of us are legal experts, but we will of course investigate if
legal actions are possible. However, ethically, what he is doing is extremely
wrong, and it's also very much against the rules of Genesis.
- The entire design of the game revolves around it being mysterious. We have
our magic ID spells, the test dummy, and various clever ways people have
used to figure things out. We have guild libraries full of player-written
books where people have tested and experimented to figure out how things
work. It's a game where you can play for decades and still learn new things,
discover fun little easter eggs wizards have planted, and all sorts of stuff.
There are plenty of open source games, but they were -designed- to be open
source. Genesis is not. ZS will list a number of pros and cons with making
Genesis open source, and sure, there are potential benefits with making
parts of the game open source, especially when it comes to development.
But it would require a massive shift in how we do things, and without big
support from the admin and the other wizards, it's completely pointless to
release a bunch of stolen code against our will. All he achieves by doing
that is none of the positives and all of the negatives. If we ever decide
to become open source, it should be a decision by the admin with a massive
playerbase support. Not a decision by a single former wizard as revenge
for being deleted.
- The Genesis folders contain not only game code. They contains A LOT of other
things that should NOT be seen by everyone. There is player data, email
addresses, private boards, private mails, private wizard folders, various
logs with information that absolutey should NOT be made public. ZS claims
he will remove some of these things before releasing his code, however,
I seriously doubt he will go through hundreds of thousands of files in order
to clean out anything senstive. Even if that is actually his goal, there
is a big risk he will miss a lot. There will no doubt be stuff in his files
that no player or wizard would like published. Even if it's unintentional
it will still suck. Don't help him spread this.
- If nothing of the above has convinced you, and you've still decided that you
want to go looking for this code and use it, remember that it's over 2.5
years old already. Just like the code from the "Exodus theft" in the early
00s, this code will soon be irrelevant as well, and it's already hard to
trust. A lot has changed since he stole it, and Genesis will continue to
evolve. This code will not. So, is it really worth supporting ZS's war of
revenge to get your hands on it?
So, before you go looking for this code. Please think about what you're doing,
who you are supporting, and whether your Genesis experience truly will improve
if you have access to the code. I have had full access to the code for over a
decade, and like most wizards I look at as little as I need to do my job,
because I prefer to not ruin the game experience for myself.
Finally, I do want to issue a public apology to the players of Genesis. I made
a massive mistake when I allowed ZS to wiz again. I had this naive idea that
he was relatively young the last time, and a lot of time had passed, he had
matured, wounds from the past had healed, etc. I also believed I was good at
dealing with different people and that I would do better than the previous
admin in dealing with ZS. I was wrong. I didn't do any better than previous
admins at all, and letting ZS near our code, and especially giving him so much
access, turned out to be a HUGE mistake. I am really sorry, and I honestly
feel awful about all of it.
That said. Genesis will go on, we will not give up, and we will NOT let
ZS destroy this wonderful game. I know many of you doesn't always agree
with me and my vision for Genesis, but I know that you all truly love
Genesis, just like I do, and I am thankful for all the words of encouragement
people have been sending lately. Thank you for that.
Sincerly,
Cherek, Keeper of Genesis
