First let me say "congratulations" on securing a job at NCSoft. It's always great to get paid for doing what you love to do in the first place and I hope your position there will be all you wish it to be.
Now, I do have a question. Quoting from your Blog:
What does this mean for jME? Is NCSoft going to take it over? No. NCsoft has no legal rights to jME. And therefore, users should notice no difference, except positive changes. Including such things as faster feature additions and bug fixes. This is because more man hours will be put into jME during the day. However, NCSoft does reserve the right to control what work is contributed back to jME. Basically, it
Ok, as you know, what exists can't be co-opted by NCsoft. So, anything that exists in CVS is safe from any corporate ownership. What I write at NCsoft is their code and they can do what they see fit. This includes game code, features that would be beneficial to jME and bug fixes to jME. However, they have assured me that they want to be a good open source citizen and contribute back to jME with the proper license headers. Talking with them, I see the following:
We work on a game, making use of jME. Finding a bug in jME we fix it to continue our work. While working on the game we come up with two new features. Feature 1 is revolutionary and will truely blow away the community. Feature 2 is a great feature but standard (from the books sort of stuff). I believe that they following would then happen.
After discussion:
The bug fix would be rolled into jME CVS.
Feature 1 would be debated and determined to be too great to make public (until the game is released).
Feature 2 would be debated and determined to be standard enough to be rolled into jME CVS.
Basically, you have very little to worry about as far as your code is concerned. What you have now is BSD license, and that won't (and can't change). Llama and Irrisor are still actively maintaining CVS and we have contributions from the community often. Josh and I will be working full time on a product that makes use of jME so you can rest assured that we will be making improvements/fixes to it. And I would expect most of those would be given back to the community.
Thanks for the clarification Mark. I've been through enough "you write it, we own it" situations to know that it can get a bit sticky. As long as your new employer has a good "open source" attitude, of course with the cavaets you mention, I'm sure it will be a win-win for everyone. Again thanks for taking the time.
@llama: thx for the link. I've actually been lurking around these forums for some time off and on, and didn't know about it.
