[AndyT]

There is a crazy idea that just doesn't leave my mind.
Maybe there are some Web 2.0 guys here? Would be great - I have a question.
Is there an eqivalent to Open Source licenses and to Creative Commons for intellectual property?
A little background: I think it would be a decent idea to build a world in a web community.
Just like the StarWars universe ... but anybody can make suggestions and add ideas and content.
And anybody can stage projects in that world - commercial or not.

People would contribute ideas and works. They should be able to decide in what way others may use their ideas and images/videos/3d models ... whatever.
Creative Commons should be the perfect solution for the content.
What about the intellectual property? I doubt that Creative Commons covers that.

Oh and while we are at it ... what do you guys think of the idea in general?

[gLitterbug]

Personally I'm not the type for something like that. I'm not fond of decentralized design and creation like that. Would hate to have someone add spices to my cooking that turn it into poo-stew.
I am pretty sure that there are people who like the idea and can come up with a lot of positive points, but not me.

[Sumaleth]

Sounds kinda like Second Life.

I don't mind it as an idea. I think we'll see some interesting things come out of collaborative development in the coming decade.
_________________
Art Links Archive -- Artists and Tutorials

[Mikko K]

There's one word in there that bugs me, and it's "anybody".

Game mods, fan videos etc. are a great example that "anybodies" produce mostly crap, and you need to shovel a lot of it to find the few gems in the pile.

I think it's a great idea that wouldn't work in the real world, much like communism was.

[Sumaleth]

Well, it already works in the real world. For example, PCs are based on this ideology, as is television, and you could even say towns/cities are built on the same thinkings.

Filtering out the unwanted bulk is always the challenge with this approach though.
_________________
Art Links Archive -- Artists and Tutorials

[Tzan]

This project:

http://phpbb.acclaim.com/topsecret/index.php

Has a small dev team and "anyone" can become a member of the forum community that is directing its progress. Community members will eventually be making art assets and content.

---------------------

So AndyT funny you should mention this. I was working on a way to make something like this work a few weeks ago.

I would use the SGS Sun Game Server tech to have massive scalability on the servers. Have a core dev team, that creates world building tools. There would be tiers of involvment for people.

Free, just observing, can visit any world and look around
Creators, they pay a small amount and can use the tools to make what they want.
Players, they pay more and have full use of the content.

You cant run MMO servers for free.

With successful worlds the creators get a share of the money.

So these hundreds of indie MMO devs that drop like flies would have all the hard stuff done for them. All they have to do is make the content, which isnt really hard, just very time consuming, which is hard enough.

Then you wrap up the whole thing with a universe fiction that ties all the worlds together.

[AndyT]

Could have bet the main concern would be that people would be supposed to give ideas away for free.
Interesting to hear only different concerns.

Judging from replies on other forums it seems as if a license for publishing ideas is not needed ... why is that?
Because ideas are worth a dime a dozen? Fair enough I guess ...

Guess second life is pretty close. But it is just like earth ... kinda boring IMO.
However projects like that mostly let the community create content for existing projects.
Guess the approach is not as open as I have in mind ... though I have not tried second life yet.
I thought about offering a frame that allows for pretty much anything to take place.
People could then flesh out several subverses and substories.
There could be rule books, styleguides, timelines ...

What I had in mind is letting people come up with concepts, ideas and stories (in a Wiki for example) that can be applied to games, comics, movies ... novels ... dunno ... anything.

Dealing with bad ideas and content ... guess that could be handled by the platform policy or the community.
There could be two different platforms
- one for the creative crowd that wants to build the world
- and one for the consumers
The officially featured ideas could be added to the consumer platform while bad concepts would never make it there ...
Concepts could be rated up or down. Bad concepts would then simply disappear unnoticed or be deleted.
Or the entries could be flagged as approved/disapproved by a quality assurance group.
There could be tutorials about what qualities make a good contribution ... and so on.

Guess the vision behind it is offering a nice playground with a high nag factor but without the restrictions that usually come with tackling fan-fiction.