It may shock some people to know that, once upon a time, I would sit with some friends and play D&D - the Forgotten Realms settings, for those in the know. It was relatively cheap entertainment - lots of caffeine, snacks, some dice, character sheets and your imagination were all that were needed once you had an agreeable group together. Sure, you had to buy the books from TSR, Inc. Of course, there are some denizens of the RPG community that support the stereotype of D&D players - and then there are also the born-again-but-don't-believe-in-reincarnation-Christians who believe D&D is devil worship and that the armor class of their beliefs is infinite. Still, I know a lot of people who have enjoyed D&D to a great extent and some who even continue to.

The beauty of that era was that with guidebooks, the Monster's Compendium and some photocopied character sheets, the rules and books were guidelines and were general rules to be applied within a setting that any dungeon master wished. A great dungeon master (DM) made a game interesting and enthralling, but all the die rolling a DM could make the game stutter. Sitting on the carpeted floor of an apartment in the 1980s with enough caffeine in me to kill a small dragon (pick a color), I saw that a DM could use some software to keep from having to roll a die all the time to guide the game. Back in 1987/1988, I wrote TSR, Inc. about the idea - back when one paid for postage. I never got a response, and soon after that I stopped playing D&D altogether, but I continued reading the Forgotten Realms books. What a rich setting the chosen few had to unleash their imaginations!

Wizards of the Coast took over the franchise back in 1997, and they have tried to do good things on computers. To some extent, they have done well. They have put out some good games and some really bad ones - but in a niche where there is no competition, they decided to become the content creators and the framework maintainers. This takes away a major part of the game - the user created content. Sure, they have had stabs at user created content through their games, where people could develop quests and so on, but the reality of it is that that aspect of their products seemed more of an afterthought than a feature - perhaps even handicapped purposefully to assure people paid for the content. Over the years, since its release, I've played through Neverwinter Nights 2 in almost every possible permutation - but once you play a game, it loses the surprise and context. It becomes less about the story and more about, "well, I need to say xyz here to get <insert something> here so that I can beat the ending" - blech. Yawn. Puke.

In case you missed what I'm saying: It sucks and it sucks vast quantities of orifices and appendages found in the hairy nether regions of land mammals. Yes, I went out of my way to be nice.

Then came the MMORPG. I tried MMORPGs back in the days of Asheron's Call and Everquest. The concept was pretty good, though it had one major flaw: you're implicitly competing with people who, apparently, do not hold jobs and who have the maturity level of teenage boys - perhaps because they are teenage boys or suffer a peculiar form of arrested development that has them screaming at their mother for more cheesy poofs. In fact, the word 'fucktard' was created to describe these players that infest MMORPGs. If there's anything that the Internet should have taught MMORPG designers, it's that some people enjoy screwing things up for others in games. I see no reason why a mature adult, or someone aspiring to maturity, would work a full day and deal with all the morons.

Some things shouldn't be played with large numbers of people. Very few people have the time to build the uber-high level characters that everyone aspires to. No one plays to be the 10th level swordsman in a world where 70th level morons will come by, whack you over the head and sell your equipment for some potions. And so they made some environments were PK (Player Killing/Killer) were not possible - but people, particularly the person whose maturity never graduated elementary school, will always find a way to thrive by annoyance.

That's why the desktop games are so potentially entertaining. You can completely avoid annoying people, perhaps playing by yourself or playing with a few people across a network. For some reason, though, Wizards of the Coast hasn't taken that all too seriously and their stranglehold keeps others from doing it. In my eyes, they are completely killing what could have been a thriving industry - and the way that they could have gone about doing that was by simply building great tools for people to tell their own stories. Sure, 'Mask of the Betrayer' and other NWN2 addons were pretty well done, but they were railroaded and the tools for the quest creation were not at the same level.

Instead, they try to be everything to everyone and failing quite well at it.

As I've been trying to plot a course over the last year, there have been constant reassessments about direction. Attempts at stability have failed, for better or worse, and the way forward remains unclear. There's always potential over the horizon, be it a job interview here or the promise of writing gigs in the future. As my social networks continue expanding and proving more potentially fruitful than ever, there remains the issue of the lack of fruit. Meanwhile, time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. Connections aren't the issue, commitment is - and therefore connections are the issue. All of this came into focus as I just completed reading Seth Godin's, 'We Are All Weird'. The shift to weird as opposed to mass markets is one that inherits directly, whether Seth read it or not, Pierre Levy's 'Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace' as related to the prediction of molecularization.

Seth's book put it all into a bit more of a focused context. The problem of picking a business direction, at least in my experience, is often skewed by the need to assure that there is a market - and clearly, the larger the market the less risk involved - something Seth didn't get into. In fact, Seth didn't really touch on the risks involved at all - simply putting out there that there are changes in the way markets work. While Seth writes that the mass market is dead, I look at the statistics for Fox and wonder how dead mass media actually is. It's clear that mass media is no longer dominant in some areas. It's also clear that the subgroups of weird that Seth writes about are not just markets but demographics - and demographics translates to politics (he alludes to that with the Tea Party as a reference) as well as democracy. To be clear, I wrote politics and democracy as separate things because they are separate things. I'm not that interested in politics but do believe that democracy might be a good idea if we could ever get past politics.

On a more personal note, the dilemma of KnowProSE LLC vs employment remains unchanged. The jobs I appy for I obviously want; I drove 444 miles last week for one job interview - something a person would not do if they did not want a position. Still, that's up in the air and no decision has been made yet. On the flip side, right after I got back from the interview I helped edit/write something for pay. Paying work always takes precedence.

As far as direction, it's not something that I'm alone in. Mike DeWolfe pointed me at his 'Purpose Party' entry as an example. Liz Strauss, in conversation, leaned me toward the path of making roads instead of filling potholes -  and somewhere else made the point that past successes tend to point to a direction. On the surface, that is problematic for myself since my successes are diverse - but in thought the past successes share commonalities - particularly at seeing things other people don't see because of their Somebody Else's Problem field or because their education and experience blind them to solutions. The trouble with the latter is that the education and experience blinds them to solutions presented.

But back to successes. Failures, too, have commonalities. When I think of failures in business, I look mostly at my father and his generation. The one Uncle I had who I considered successful had his own failings, but he accomplished his goals - something I explained to his youngest son last year when we were having the mandatory 'gripe about the previous generation' meeting, held every day that we had to deal with some of the artifacts left behind. The successes met, though, were things that typically transcended money. My father, for instance, was successful in repairing just about anything electromechanical and if he had walked the Earth another 10 years, that likely would have included computers. One Uncle who had a printery did make some poor decisions but in the end he assured that all 4 of his children had a good launch into life. The youngest Uncle did his best to assure that his son, who more differed from than differing, could move ahead somehow. The Uncle who was given the most was the least successful; he sacrificed himself out of love for his parents and now is a bedridden man - a well of sorrows for the things he did not get to do that he so wanted to.

Success, you see, is more than money. Success is a warm and full feeling that you get. Money doesn't give you that - but it sure makes the potential for it more possible. Financially, my parents were not successful. The people I know who have financial wealth and are successful are quite rare; most are simply wealthy but lack success aside from inheritance. The trouble, of course, is that you have to be successful at something that pays the bills and allows for future success. In this economy (or lack thereof), that can be a real challenge. Further, I've seen people finding financial success where they had little business doing so - they capitalize on something, hire a few people who happen to be really good at what they do and fear those people.

And now back to weird. As someone plotting a course on a map where no one has circumnavigated, there's the usual worry of falling off the edge of the map. This can be seen as pessimism when it creates paralysis and fear of success; it can be seen as optimism when there's an adventuring spirit. It's the balance that has to be struck and that balance has to be weird. Weird is about niches. Weird is about finding the voids and filling them - not like potholes but like building a road to a destination people want to go to.

It's time to re-awaken the weirding way.

Clearly I have an opinion - an opinion that has remain unchanged over a decade. I'm going to explain it here so that when people ask me why I dislike 'permissive' open source licenses - the core reason being that code can be incorporated in later proprietary software. Here are a few plausible scenarios with these licenses that I find, at the least, distasteful.

• An individual or entity ('corporations are people' inclusive, though they're not) can take a project under one of these licenses, make some relatively cosmetic changes and proprietarily license the end product. They then market the product well and sell it to people who probably don't even know about the original open source project. That this hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't, just like the engines in the shuttle not exploding beforehand did not keep the engines from exploding that memorable time. This means that the well intentioned efforts of the developers are lost and they have placed themselves in a position where they gain no recompense for their efforts because of the very license they chose.
• The same as the previous, with the exception that the software development was done for a government and funded by tax payers. The government may later pay licensing for the same code under a proprietary license because of superior marketing, thus forcing the taxpayer to pay twice (or more) for the same code.

Granted, these things may seem extreme - but that they didn't happen yet doesn't mean that they won't. I, for one, don't feel that I should voluntarily expend effort on an open source project if someone can take the work and close the source. That seems self defeating to me, and of course some people think it's a brilliant idea because they somehow believe that one day they might be the large company that can use the software in such a manner. My time and energy is worth something; I don't see why someone else should be able to profit from anything I do without a need to compensate me for my efforts.

I've worked on proprietary code to pay the bills - I likely will in the future because my bill collectors won't accept code in payment - but that, at least, is 'honest' - it's clear who the code belongs to and I get paid for my efforts. With GPL compatible licensing, I can contribute and know that the code will be used in the spirit it was worked on, and that should my code be truly worthwhile, people will know me by my contributions. The MIT License, and those like it, allow that to be circumvented. 

The only plausible use I see for the MIT LIcense are for co-ops between software companies, where software companies work together to form a common base that they can all profit from. Since it's unlikely that they would all market the same product, it seems more likely that it would be  that the software they work on would be used to provide a service. For example, if publishing companies rubbed a few brain cells together (I've been waiting years to see it happen), they could actually fork an open source CMS and create something that they could all use and share the costs of maintaining without needing to release the source to anyone else. Of course, that would require companies that view each other as competitors to work together, and that may require the present generation of business leaders to retire or die.

So that's it. I don't have a problem if you're happy with the MIT Licensing. It has worked well for some projects, there is no denying it - but I find the risks, particularly the scenarios above, too much of a risk.

The White House has responded to the online petitions regarding SOPA with 'Combating Online Piracy while Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet' - something that someone must have worked on for at least a few hours. But there are a few problems.

First, and foremost, the Whitehouse using 'piracy' as a metaphor for people using unlicensed works is more than a bit disturbing. After all, our government sends Navy SEALs after pirates. I suppose that would mean that to combat online piracy they would use online Navy SEALs. The fact that the misuse of the 'piracy' metaphor has extended to the White House in responses to the SOPA bill demonstrates the lobbyist lean. Using unlicensed works is something completely different; piracy involves the sacking of a ship where the theft of something robs someone else of its use. Sure, using unlicensed works is wrong, but the methodology of licensing is at best debatable. Lawrence Lessig wrote lots of things related to copyright licensing that the U.S. Government should probably take the time to read instead of dismiss. I won't get into the Patent issues because they, too, are a complete mess because of misplaced metaphors.

Sort of like Money being Free Speech. Money, which is a concept used for barter, is seen as free speech - but can one steal free speech? Do we see the theft of money as a violation of the Freedom of Speech? Is that really where we are? Maybe the problem with the world right now is that some people have so much more freedom of speech than others, and that artificial constructs (corporations) are seen as people. When, then, do we declare a corporation legally dead? Or do we instead do organ transplants on them when they abused their organs before - something that typically causes most people to be unable to receive such a transplant?

Apparently our present level of bureaucracy in government allows only limited use of metaphors - the language truncated by 'free speech' of lobbyists.

But beyond piracy, there's an assertion in the White House response to the petition that I particularly needs some transparency:

...Let us be clear—online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, and threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation's most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs..

I've already discussed the flawed metaphor of 'piracy'. Now we get to the vague 'harm' and 'hurt' - can anyone show the actual amount of 'harm' and 'hurt' that is being done by use of unlicensed works aside from the amount of 'free speech' the lobbyists are throwing at the government? We're talking, of course, about the same companies who happily sue children.

The White House requests input (but doesn't have an avenue for it despite running Drupal which has the ability right out of the box):

...So, rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself: Where do we go from here? Don’t limit your opinion to what’s the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what’s right. Already, many of members of Congress are asking for public input around the issue. We are paying close attention to those opportunities, as well as to public input to the Administration. The organizer of this petition and a random sample of the signers will be invited to a conference call to discuss this issue further with Administration officials and soon after that, we will host an online event to get more input and answer your questions. Details on that will follow in the coming days...

Here's my response: First, yes, there is a problem. However, the level of the problem has not been reasonably quantified. The financial crisis of 2008 was not caused by idiots using unlicensed works and in the grand scheme of things, this issue of 'piracy' seems like an issue of convenience to push when the government is being looked to for the creation of conditions for more jobs in a country that effectively gives liver transplants to alcoholics. The freedom of speech of the few non-human humans has skewed the issue to such an extreme that the SOPA act was written in such a way that it obviously breaks freedoms that aren't defended by the same few non-human humans because they don't accumulate free speech (profit) from those freedoms.

There is no viable solution at the present level of thinking within government. The underlying issues need to be properly addressed for anything truly worthwhile to come of all of this. Then triage, because when it comes to solutions that should infringe upon freedoms, I imagine 'online piracy' is not the big issue. Those people occupying Wall Street didn't seem all that concerned about online piracy, but then I suppose that the government thinks that they have a lower level of freedom of speech and thus aren't worth listening to.

If lobbyists are lunatics and government the asylum, guess who is running the asylum? People say they don't want big government, which I agree with, but I'd prefer government over corporations running things. That seems to be the core issue. Fix that and everything will probably fall into line.

Image at Top Right courtesy Lance Robotson through a Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0) license. Click image to view the original on Flickr.