Supporting Trevor

[picks-at-flies]

I thought this would be a good opportunity to remind you all that Trevor provides not only his programming but his server and maintenance time for free.  If everyone who used Lackey gave him $5 I figure that might part of the cost of his new computer.  If everyone who used Lackey more than the $50 game they bought last month gave half of that to Trevor, we might cover all of it and some of his other costs, maybe even a clean T-shirt*.

Just saying.




* I have no personal knowledge on this subject, for which I am grateful.

[greasontim]

I'll donate when i can but right now i can't

[briggs]

Ultimately, I'm afraid that free programs seldom get the kind of donations they should get. But there are other ways to generate revenue, advertising on the website and forums, selling t-shirts on cafepress etc

[Just Mick]

Unfortunately asking for donations (really the best way to go) is generally incompatible with most revenue generation schemes. Take for example online advertising. Google is most popular, but Google will not let you run its ads if you are asking for donations in any form. I've been thru this personally, and for many other reasons (if you've ever partnered with Google) I don't recommend anything Google to anyone...

It will seem like your Google ads are just dandy until the first time Google is obligated to cut you a check. Your site will be audited and if any request for donations or support are discovered your account will be denied access to all Google services, even the site indexing will shut down on you. I have been making some leaps and bounds attempting to replace Google's Custom Search service with my own YaCy servers over the last year or two. You're really left high and dry once Google blacklists you.

Not trying to make an anti-Google screed here, but I have a feeling any kind of company that provides a service like Googles will probably have similar such restrictions or may change their policies at one point so to screw you and your website.

The reason donations are not permitted is because Google thinks if your community is tight nit enough to donate their money to your enterprise they will also click your ads (without regard for the ads) in order to help raise your ad revenues. Of course the ads even being visible should be worth something but they're not. If you put disclaimers up saying do'nt click the ads unless you're truly interested in their content, Google will go double apeshit saying that's a tongue in cheek incitement to click ads.

In other words communities are very naive about this sort of thing and probably big companies like Google take advantage of this in order to soak up free advertisements that never pay out for the client (but do for Google)

I sent an email to The Long Now Foundation to see if anyone is interested in creating a foundation for funneling donations to communities producing uncommodifiable products and services which don't even qualify as non-profits but are producing a lot of the best stuff out there anyway. I got an email back that sounded sincerely interested and an assurance my well worded letter would be passed around. It's a real problem anyway.

I would donate time and what money I could if LackeyCCG was a little more expressly free/open-source. It's hard for me to tell which direction it's heading in at this point. I couldn't really convince very many people to use it to play Magic on first try. They seemed to be content with a program called Magic Workstation, I can't remember. If it was free I could at least say, hey Lackey is free/open-source.

[briggs]

Google isn't the only advertising system.

[Just Mick]

Google isn't the only advertising system.

Yes, I made that explicitly clear (in my prior post) but the point was and is to be careful when wading into that sort of thing.

Google nonetheless dwarfs the alternatives (especially in the public mind) many times over.

[HoodieDM]

Something you have to also watch out for, is the licensing of some of these games.  Yes, some of them "aren't being published" anymore, while others come and go, and there's few that actually stay around.  Unfortunately there's a lot of companies that still own the rights to these inactive games and of course the games that are still being released currently.  However, these companies can then come at you with lawsuits and copyright infringments if you have their copyrighted material without permission and you're making money off of it.  Even a donation can be considered a profit in some circumstances (esp with the internet and a lot of loopholes still unclear in court systems) and not to say that they would shutdown the Lackey system, but they might make some game properties illegal to use with the system or even make Trevor start charging money to use the system and take their cut from there.  Just think Napster and what happened there.

~HoodieDM

[Just Mick]

^In my experience there is nothing at all wrong with "what Trevor is doing" and donations or whatever is cool. Where the Copyright people would come down is the plugin providers. Which might have to go underground more or less. But what LackeyCCG is is totally legit.

Of course I'm not a lawyer and courts are not expressly known for being just or necessarily making sense -- commonsense wise however the service Lackey provides is completely in the clear.

[briggs]

Legal page.
Because of the openness of the Lackey system, pretty much any game can be played on it. It was never designed for a specific game in mind, therefore, is completely legal to "sell" the program.

Plugins are different from the actual game engine itself.

[HoodieDM]

Legal page.
Because of the openness of the Lackey system, pretty much any game can be played on it. It was never designed for a specific game in mind, therefore, is completely legal to "sell" the program.

Plugins are different from the actual game engine itself.

While you are right, still have to watch out.  Again Napster itself was a free program and wasn't designed for any specific music or band and they shut that down.  Now its a legit company, but you have to pay.  That is all.  Love the system anyways =))

[picks-at-flies]

I can't tell if there has been a misunderstanding or not.  My post was not a 'request for donations' or any attempt to give Trevor a proper revenue stream.  It was only the post of a fan who acknowledge the effort he puts in.  Somehow donating for webcomics seems more accepted than donating for free online games and server time.

(On that subject, the few people who make a living from webcomics have multiple revenue streams;  it doesn't mean that donations aren't a part of it.)

[loincloth]

At this point, I would prefer to see Lackey released as open source software. I'd put money on Lackey's community having more than a few programmers like myself. I'm probably not well versed in the languages Lackey is currently written in(my background is mostly web), but at this point I'd be more inclined to try to contribute that way than through blind faith donations.

[gamecat]

One idea for Lackey I've had is an iOS port (i.e. to iPhone--or, more practically, iPad.)  Is this at all within the realm of possibility? I think an iPad CCG virtual tabletop would be awesome, and I'd prefer Lackey gets there first.

Open source would also be an acceptable direction for Lackey--I'd hope the people behind it would do that before abandoning it.

I've only found it recently and am very excited at the prospect of playing with distant friends.

[Trevor]

One idea for Lackey I've had is an iOS port (i.e. to iPhone--or, more practically, iPad.)  Is this at all within the realm of possibility? I think an iPad CCG virtual tabletop would be awesome, and I'd prefer Lackey gets there first.

Open source would also be an acceptable direction for Lackey--I'd hope the people behind it would do that before abandoning it.

I've only found it recently and am very excited at the prospect of playing with distant friends.

An iOS port is not feasible do to how the networking, file storage, and other technical issues. But more to the point, the iOS is based on a touch screen interface which doesn't let itself to card games. The card games you will find in a iOS version are very simple where much can be automated, like solitaire. Moving and turning cards, and many cards out at once, is just too complicated for the medium. It would be too clumsy.

[Trevor]

Thank you for the support, everyone. I am very hurting for cash and I assure you every dollar donated is both very much appreciated, and a nice motivator for me to continue working on it.

Please donate whatever you can.