Uru Live Goes Open Source

Cyan Worlds announced recently that it will release Myst Online: Uru Live game code to the open source community, after surviving several years of cancellations and transitions, and they are looking forward to the fans' efforts in keeping Uru live and evolving.

Tony Fryman, CEO of Cyan Worlds, posted the announcement on Uru's official website, noting that the open source release will be accomplished in stages and promised to follow up soon:

Open Source Uru Live

Shorah fans of Cyan,
As you may be aware, Cyan's situation has not improved on the "resources" front. We continue to work on small projects (including Myst for the iPhone/iPod Touch), and it looks like we will only be able to concentrate on projects that are fully funded for the foreseeable future.

However, all of us at Cyan and everybody that has ever worked on the creation and building of the dream called UruLive (a.k.a. Mudpie, Until Uru, MystOnline:UruLive and MORE) can not just let it die! (My definitions: "UruLive" is the original dream of the virtual world. And "MystOnline" is the current implementation of UruLive.)

So, Cyan has decided to give make MystOnline available to the fans by releasing the source code for the servers, client and tools for MystOnline as an open source project. We will also host a data server with the data for MystOnline. MORE is still possible but only with the help from fans.

This is a bit scary for Cyan because this is an area that we have never gone before, to let a product freely roam in the wild. But we've poured so much into UruLive, and it has touched so many, that we could not just let it whither and die. We still have hopes that someday we will be able to provide new content for UruLive and/or work on the next UruLive.

This is also a bit scary for the fans. We realize that this could turn UruLive into the "wild west" and lead to many fractured and diverse MystOnline servers. But it is our hope that with the help of dedicated core fans (if you are reading this, it probably means you) that a safe and secure MystOnline server set (many servers from around the world working together as one) can be created that will let people explore and live in UruLive.

We also are pretty sure that releasing MystOnline will result in some pleasant surprises for us. Our fans have always been so innovative, creative, and resourceful!

This release will probably be accomplished in stages, but we hope to get things ready for the first stage very quickly. More details to surely follow.

The news was received by the game's community with excitement and a new fan website will be launched to support the development community, as announced by JWPlatt:

Greetings,

Announcing OpenURU.org, a project site for the Uru community to promote Open Uru projects.

I'd like to say I was being prophetic, but the truth is, I was working on a proposal for Open Source Uru which I planned to develop with others who would join my efforts and submit it to Cyan in the Spring.

But now, with the news Cyan is actually open sourcing Uru, things have accelerated and I would like to offer the OpenURU.org domain for community use.

There is a forum now. Administration is not complete because I wasn't expecting an open house nearly so soon. But it's useable.

What I plan to offer the community in terms of resources:

Subdomains: Put up your own qualified project website on the domain.
Central forums: Everyone discusses their various projects here.
Dedicated project forums: Project leaders control their own forum and membership group.
Email: POP3 mailboxes for qualified project members.

There could be much more, but that's all I have developed so far.

Chogon (Mark DeForest, Cyan CTO) tells me "the source [will be] hosted at an open source repository, such as GoogleCode or LaunchPad. However, there will have to be a place for information about the game and where to go" and "it is not limited to those repositories."

The website still needs a home page. In the meantime, please use this link to reach the forums:

http://forums.OpenURU.org

Please feel free to register. After you are validated, you may join the Member group through your control panel to have access to post on the forum(s).

Stay tuned for updates to the landscape.
All the best to everyone,
JWPlatt

Stay tuned as we will continue covering Uru's transition into open source and all the exciting possibilities ahead! (NCsoft should take note of Cyan Worlds' brave move!)

Source: Myst Online Website & Amber Horizons