by Johnny Joy » Mon May 02, 2016 17:46
An open letter to Tenplus1, and Sinji, but mostly Tenplus1.
I'm writing this to be honest with you Tenplus1, as I would hope you would be with me.
Nothing in this letter is meant to be offensive. I am just seeking to understand. I
would also like to present a point of view about you and Xanadu, that maybe you might
not have thought of. I am not asking you to take any action, or do anything, but I
hope you read on.
Thanks again for running the Xanadu server. I know I have said that many times in-game, but
it also needs to be said here as well. Not enough people say it, or recognize what it is
to run a well kept server like Xanadu for so long. It takes hard work, dedication, attention
to detail, and a strong desire to provide entertainment for others, for free. "Thanks" is the
only form of payment a person gets for running a server, and it hardly seems enough.
Of course, as the server is open to the public, there are a large number of trouble makers,
complainers, trolls, spammers, hackers, and other no good people. I think Xanadu has seen
them all. However Xanadu is immune to those kinds of attack. Your dedication has been returned
by those who do appreciate what your work. Your dedication has been return 10,000 fold by
a loyal following of users who do at least as much to keep things running as the admins.
This loyalty is an effort to repay what they see as a person offering something wonderful
to strangers, an act of kindness.
There is no greater way to win a person's loyalty and friendship the way you did. Sure, not
every person who logs in will recognize and appreciate your time and effort, but the ones
that are worth it will, and they do. I think that every positive and constructive player
makes up for 10,000 of the bad ones. Everyone enjoyed the additions from more flowers,
colored blocks, the lucky block game, etc. Every step was a step forward. Only people who
were around long enough witnessed that and could appreciate all of the changes.
We all worked as hard as we could to keep up the server as best we could. We broke up
fights, calmed people down, reported errors, reported problems, cleaned up messy builds,
helped new players, prevented bullying, created new areas for people to enjoy, created
public resources like rail ways & public gardens, kept the mood positive, and so much more.
I recall one night when each time a person teleported to spawn they would appear higher and
higher. I survived my fall, barely, and had to fight off 2 players that camped out at spawn
to collect items from people who would fall. I left a message on the forums, and tried to
alert Skrote to see if he had permission to build at spawn. He was not responding to chat,
so I hunted him down to get his attention. He built a platform to catch people at spawn
above spawn. Even so, some people missed the platform. I guarded spawn from the folks
looking to take people's things. We did this for most of the night. And, that is just
a single example. There are many more.
Players want to give back, and we do. We see the world as a collective effort. You supply
the paint, and we will paint. Shinji has had some hard times. He has had some explosive
arguments will a petulant 11 year old or some other kid. He has often threatened to
shut down the server because he was so unhappy with how people were using it. He even
shut down the server to show some kid that he could, much to the dismay of the other
19 players. That is what made me think that we needed to keep watch on things to insure
that the person hosting the server did not feel is was being wasted. We made the best
environment we could, and it showed.
Xanadu was a place a kid could play Minetest and feel safe. The admins are not all full
time, but there was always a responsible player on nearly 24 hours a day. As dedicated
free software user, I choose to introduce my kids to Minetest rather than Minecraft. At
first I have looked into the various servers, but only one stood out at the time. The
rules were basic, but to the point. The people were fun, and the setup was great. My
family was not the only family playing on Xanadu. Xanadu was also host to a large number
of home schooled kids from around the world. All were welcomed and accepted by the players,
who always had time to spare to help them with something.
We also helped each other. We would gather supplies for each other's projects and
never felt any serious competition or rivalry. We were all working on the same goal and
saw each other's needs as we saw our own. If I had supplies I could not use right away
I would always donate what I had to any of Ice, bonny, and Phi's amazing projects, or
whatever amazing things Skrote, Xanthin, Louie, or anyone else, was working on. And,
I was not alone in doing so.
This is all a reflection of how generous you and Shinji have been. Just with how free
software works, where you release code into the wild because you can, often amazing
things will happen. You can't control it, or make some spontaneous events happen, but
once or twice in a lifetime they will surprise you. Like with Xanadu and the amazing
users producing what they did with tools you created.
The world of Xanadu was created by a collective effort of tens of thousands of people
from all over the world. Much in the way Linux or Minetest was created. Many invested
a great deal of time and work, and took pride in what they did. You should take pride
in having such an important role. There were people who nothing living in the third
world who's only possessions are what they had in their characters chests as their play
things. Their most significant creations were what they made there in Xanadu. And, while
some cannot consistently have access to the internet or a computer, they will always
return to the place that takes them far from their problems, a familiar getaway.
Be proud Tenplus1. Be very proud. You have made a good many friend, loyal friends, who
think very highly of you. I do not think it is said often enough, and it should be. But,
it's known.
I know I've been away for a couple of months. I injured my right arm at the start of
the year, and it was not getting better. I had to stop using my computer. I planned on
checking in from time to time, but the Minetest repository I had gotten my client from
was not compatible with Xanadu. I asked my daughter to check in to see that none of our
stuff had been greifed, using her computer, but by that time she was getting password
incorrect errors. Someone, it seems, had taken over her account name(Violet).
I waited and looked forward to working with the supplies I that had taken more than 18
months to gather, to complete some interesting projects. I had taken Shinji's challenge
and accepted only few gifts from him or you. Often I would gladly accept them, but
not use them, and give almost all away to help others with their projects, or noobs
just starting out. Shinji wanted people to treat the server as a survival server and
earn what they had. I did, and so did others. Not many on this forum who played Xanadu
have actually played Xanadu that way. It's far faster and easier to get supplies
handed to you, but then it's not the same game. I spent endless hours of harvesting
clay from under water, countless hours killing mese monsters for their wing, collected
chests of red/green/cyan shrooms, created autocrafters, harvested tons of corn, mined for
ores, chopped down endless redwoods to make bags, created a food-4-noobs shop to get
more supplies, created a sky road nearly 1500 blocks long, that was about to become
a sky city. I must have had well over 200+ chests of supplies built up.
I'm not going to ask you about keeping the original Xanadu running. You and Shinji are
in full control. Right or wrong, it's your choice and you have been clear. You just don't
want to give up control of Xanadu for any reason. When I first asked, it seemed simple.
You might not have had the resources, but I did, and I thought I could help. You told
me that that some textures could not be copied, or that you didn't want to give out
the lua code, and even that there might be some corruption in the database. All of these
do not matter, and they never seemed truthful to me. We can easily make textures that
are similar, replace lua code, and fix databases. So, those are clearly not the real
reason.
There really are some weirdly troubling aspects of this whole thing. I am all
for the idea of moving on. But, this is not about moving on. You move on when your dog dies,
but not when someone just has your dog locked up down the street alive and well. I
would just like to know why. I would like to know why all our work must be kept from
us. So far there has been no reason given. In that vacuum it is hard to not imagine this
as some sort of sadistic move to show us how powerless we are compared to you. Like
opening a free-for-all art studio and gallery, only to lock the doors one day and keep
years of people's art from them.
All of this doesn't seem to be you, Ten. You, who runs are server out of the goodness of
your heart, contributes to open source software for use by anyone in the world, and
who genuinely seems like a really great person.
Without honest answers, we are left to speculate as to why you are keeping us from all
our hard work. Maybe you don't want to give up control. It could be that you have an
intense fear of a lack of control and if you can't control it, nobody can. Maybe you see
the minetest servers as if they were in competition, rather than in cooperation, and you
don't want the new Xanadu's popularity to slip. Or, maybe you enjoy all the great
builders who make the server great, and fear they might divide their time between
servers lessening the popularity of the new Xanadu again. Or, it could even be that you
just don't want other to benefit from your work. Only you know.
Again, none of that makes sense for a person who gives so much for free.
Ideally, one day you will be okay with either running the original Xanadu somewhere,
or allowing mystik and myself to host it working with you, or have someone else host
it. Ideally, I would like to get back to the project that I was working on with my
friends, great strangers, and my daughter, who is currently heart broken(not only
are her builds being kept from her, but someone has taken her login). I know you wont
change your mind, and Shinji doesn't seem like he changes. So, I expect nothng to come of
this, but maybe one day something else will change your mind. If I can help in any way,
no matter how small, I will do everything I can.
I'm still your friend Tenplus1, even after this. It's the event that is disappointing
and depressing, but not you. You are confusing at the moment.
But, that is not something I dwell on. My focus would be to fix the problem. That is
how one actually is able to truly move forward.
Take care, old friend. Keep being great.
-- jjb
