Future versions of The Major BBS will be free

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Duckula
Posts: 359
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:19 am

Future versions of The Major BBS will be free

Post by Duckula »

Hi All,

Recently I have received many questions about the cost of The Major BBS v10 and I wanted to clarify the situation.

I have repeatedly said that no price had been established as we have been focusing on development. Initially there was some thoughts of charging a small amount to cover the costs associated with running the infrastructure (website / forums, demo BBS, etc) however nothing was confirmed.

I can now confirm that all future versions of The Major BBS (including v10) will be free.

The main goal when I acquired the rights to MBBS / WG was to help preserve the history of the product and Galacticomm, not to profit from it.

Happy Holidays!
-- Duckula

// Site admin
// Galacticomm IP owner

BRod
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2020 5:56 am

Re: Future versions of The Major BBS will be free

Post by BRod »

Great news - thanks!

Ramius1701
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Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2020 8:07 pm

Re: Future versions of The Major BBS will be free

Post by Ramius1701 »

Awesome news, Looking forward to the release of an alpha or beta for us all to play with :)

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Duckula
Posts: 359
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:19 am

Re: Future versions of The Major BBS will be free

Post by Duckula »

There is still a lot of work to do but we are progressing!

One of my short term goals is to get things into a position whereby we can make it easy for other developers to help contribute, which in turn should help speed up development (hopefully) if we can get some additional people on board. At the moment there is only a few people and they do it on a voluntary basis in their spare time so it would be great to get them some help.

I am sure people will say, well just put it on GitHub and people will contribute however there are a few things to work out first, such as retaining the BBS registration number system and protecting existing thirdparty add-on module activation processes.

These are not things that can't be solved - it's just a matter of getting it right and having the time to dedicate to make the changes.
-- Duckula

// Site admin
// Galacticomm IP owner

BadOPCode
Posts: 32
Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2020 3:29 pm

Re: Future versions of The Major BBS will be free

Post by BadOPCode »

Duckula wrote:
> There is still a lot of work to do but we are progressing!
>
Can't wait!

> One of my short term goals is to get things into a position whereby we can
> make it easy for other developers to help contribute, which in turn should
> help speed up development (hopefully) if we can get some additional people
> on board. At the moment there is only a few people and they do it on a
> voluntary basis in their spare time so it would be great to get them some
> help.

This personally is one that I'm chomping at the bit to get into and looking forward to the most in Major BBS v10. I've been volunteering writing tech docs as that is about the most useful thing I can do at the moment. But you should put up some sort of donation system somewhere. There is just too much to be your own personal investment. Both time and money.

> I am sure people will say, well just put it on GitHub and people will
> contribute however there are a few things to work out first, such as
> retaining the BBS registration number system and protecting existing
> thirdparty add-on module activation processes.

A SDK being on GitHub would probably be more useful to the more people. While the code to the BBS itself could be still closed forever if needs be. If people are actively writing 3rd party for Major v10 you will get the most useful feedback and bug reports.

> These are not things that can't be solved - it's just a matter of getting
> it right and having the time to dedicate to make the changes.

With an SDK available you could take as long as you want to get it right while still being able to release Major v10 when it's done with no delays. Without having to tackle these EXTREMELY hard technical issues of how to be able to open source the core. Especially when the majority of people are just wanting to extend functionality and are not interested in altering the core. Like Java and it's JVM for example. More people write code in Java than people that want to mess with the JVM itself. It's just a thought. Be it, it's a thought spurred by my own wants. But I think it's still a fair thought.

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Duckula
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Re: Future versions of The Major BBS will be free

Post by Duckula »

There will definitely be an SDK and you are correct, this will likely be sufficient for the vast majority of people.

Full open sourcing will likely take some time and is at the lower end of the priority list. What we need now is an extensive SDK to allow people to help contribute to MBBS v10 and beyond.
-- Duckula

// Site admin
// Galacticomm IP owner

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