Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2004 2:08 am

You can probably guess what this blog entry will be about....

Gee, I'm *soooo* happy that I get to spend the next several days converting the zuggsoft.com site over to Linux so that I can get it back up again.

Not that I wasn't far enough behind on eMobius already...

Not that the zMUD orders were already at their all-time lowest and I have bills I need to pay...

No, that wasn't enough. Someone decided it would be fun to hack into the zuggsoft.com server last night.

Yes, even after all of these years, there was still a hole in Windows NT. Even though all of the service packs that I'm aware of had been installed. Then again, it's very possible that Superb.net wasn't doing their job and wasn't keeping the server updated. I'll have to write another blog entry about my total disgust with Superb.net later.

And not only did the hacker think it was fun to break into the server. But then they had to totally screw it up so that the RPC service won't run anymore. It's not even listed in the Services list anymore. So nothing that uses RPC, which is anything to do with IIS (Web, FTP, etc) will work.

Yeah, I could pay Superb.net $180/hour to reinstall Windows NT. Do you know how many hours it takes to reinstall and to reinstall all of the patches for it? I don't have that kind of money right now.

So, I'm done with Microsoft. Even today I see the news that they have announced another 7 patches, including at least one for SP2, which was supposed to fix all of these problems once and for all.

The hacker was a fool too. He left tracks. Obviously some kid who thinks this stuff is funny. Well, we'll see how funny he thinks it is when the French government tracks him down.

At least with linux, if something gets corrupted I can always just download and install that module again. Not like with Windows NT where I need physical access to the CD drive to reinstall WinNT. This lets the web hosting companies hold you hostage, charging whatever they want since they have total control over your system.

So I've had to cancel my D&D gaming session for this month that was supposed to be tomorrow. And I've only got a couple of days to fix all of this before we go visit Chiara's father at the beginning of the week. Just what I wanted to spend my time doing.

If anyone has any *serious* ideas on how to make money writing Linux software, I'd love to hear them. I'd *really* like to totally get rid of Microsoft if I could find a way to stay in business. I'm just sick and tired of their crappy operating systems.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

About the only way I know how to make money writing Linux software is to write proprietary management systems for large retail chains... so they don't have to pay for the OS they save money, but they still pay for licenses of your software on top of the OS and then professional services to maintain those systems... but it's not really the fun market that you'd want to be developing for I wouldn't think... heh.

Comfort, at least the forums etc were already cross platform so you could make the leap.

Hope the cops catch the guy.

Newbie Joined: 07 Nov 2004 Posts: 1

You CAN make money on Linux software. So long as your software is up to snuff, and hopefully far better than any free counterpart. A port of ZMUD would BLOW THE COMPETITION AWAY as far as *nix mud clients go, I know, I've tried them all, I still run ZMud in Cedera. I couldn't get 7.04 to work though, so I'm using the older free version, which is still leaps and bounds ahead of others for *nix.

I'm sure it would be a heap of work, but you'll find linux users are far more likely to PAY for software. At least in my experience.

Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 11:22 pm

Actually, I'm afraid I don't believe that. I haven't seen any smaller commercial projects on Linux suceed yet. Not even the Borland Kylix project suceeded. There isn't any copy protection on linux. So, there is no way to license software or prevent reg codes from just being posted on the net for people to use for free. This was a problem on Windows in the past and is a huge problem on linux.

Sorry, but the linux mentality is for free software. Just look at sites like SlashDot. Anytime someone posts something about a commercial product it gets flamed for not being free or open source. Many linux users are programmers, and they tend to feel like they can just write their own software or hack something to use it for free. The percentage that would pay for software and not hack it is much smaller than it is for windows.

I have yet to see any actual business analysis of porting zMUD to Linux that makes any sense. You've got to sell enough to pay for the hours that it takes to do the port and there just isn't any reasonable arguments to make that equation work out. Six months of work to port, for example, is worth about $60,000. At $30 a copy, that's 2,000 copies of zMUD that needs to be sold on linux in the following year or so, which is almost the rate at which zMUD sells on Windows. And since the number of people using linux is less than the number of people using linux, and the percentage of people paying for software is smaller on linux than windows, it just make no business sense at all I'm afraid.

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2004 5:31 pm

Roughly, although usually you only count 20-22 days a month. And that's actually very low for a consulting rate. Most consultants that create custom software for larger companies can easily make $100 an hour. I had a job offer over 8 years ago in New Mexico to do Lotus Notes consulting at $100/hr where they were charging the customer $150/hr for overhead costs.

But what I've discovered is that as you get older and make more money, everything else seems to cost more. For example, when you've got a monthly mortgage payment of $2500 a month and then food, utilities, gas, etc and then when you have to pay $1000 per month for health insurance in this country when you are self employed, you find that money starts disappearing *very* quickly.

The above rate basically sustains us, so I actually need to make more than that if I'm going to put anything into savings for old age.

Anyway, hate to break your bubble...it's not as much as it seems. I bought my last laptop 4 years ago when zMUD was selling more, and bought my last desktop system about 2-1/2 years ago. And at the current zMUD sales rate, I won't be replacing the laptop or any other computers any time soon.

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

I had a suspicion it sounded too good to be true Smile

. I hope Zuggsoft products will get more popular and would really like to see MUDs get a bit more popular as well. A lot of those graphical games are basicully over hyped Mr. Green

.

Some people today barely know what DOS is. MUDs are probably more forgotten than less popular. Like the Neverending Story where people forgot about fantasy Crying or Very sad

.

Newbie Joined: 07 Nov 2004 Posts: 4 Location: usa

Well i can tell you some of my ideas to ruin microsofts quazi monoplistic hold of pc standars.

1. Build a propertary encrypted lunix module that all zuggsoft products need to run. This way the module is free to get but you have to pay for application software. Im thinking of like a kernal or sorce code that can plugin to lunix.

2. Develop a media codex simmilar to directx or quicktime, that will work on windows, mac, and lunix. Sell it to game manufacturers, they will profit from hitting a larger market.

3. Provide other software manufacturers a cheap alterinative to developing lunix ports. Specificly software games, and small bussness applications. If you can pull off (1.), you can sell that too as a clincher to security of their software.

4. I dont know what you like to do, i preferr to think the most exciting thing in programming is developing games.. I would suggest if you can get the group and time set asside to do a long term investment, to develop Massive Multiplayer Online Rollplaying Game of some genear. From what i understand, the cost is huge but the pay off is great too from monthly subscriptions. IE Everquest, Everquest 2, ashrons call, Anarchy, Dark ages of Camlot, Final fantasy XI, Star wars, etc etc.. They all have over 250k acounts. Well maybe not EQ2 it just launched recently.

5. If 3D dynamic graphics arnt your thing, Since you put so much time in to Zmud why not create the worlds largest MUD, and offer Zmud as a nice alternative with Mud specific features to your game. Ive hurd of people droping hundreds of dollars on Threshold to gain a player char house, more bank space, etc etc. By selling a Game and Zmud secondary i think you would attract more paying customers on lunix and windows.

Of all the things i pay for, online gamming is at the top, along with hardware to push the latest games, I mean i spend 400+ dollars just on a graphic card, nevermind the other hardware, so if you can beat out directX and quicktime as the media accelerator .dll's and such you could stand to make lots of money.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

You also forgot that Mr Tax Man takes a fair chunk of the $60k as well, and possibly elicense too?

1. People who run Linux and MUD usually do so because it's open source and free, they hate the concept of closed source and wouldn't pay for something they didn't get the source code for, nor pay for something in general :P

2. SDL does this already, and I was under the impression it wasn't selling very well? Then again maybe it cant be sold because of licenses, I didn't pay too much attention to it since I'm in the habit of making my own OS-abstraction layers to ensure cross platform compatibility just by default (when I want something to run cross platform).

3. This sounds a bit like the WineX project?

4. That's everyone's dream, if I won the lottery today I'd start writing a MMO tomorrow, but that's the only way you're going to be able to write a MMO... you need a massive team of developers, artists, 3d animators, stroryboarders, etc... even if I won the lottery I don't know if I'd be able to afford to pay everyone heh.

5. Unless Zugg employs me and every other MUD dev as part of that project, I think there'd be a lot of screaming from the people who promote Zmud on their MUDs... ;) But that being said, it might not hurt for MUDs to have a 'final stand' in the sea of MMO's coming out.

(6). Nobody is going to beat out DirectX and Quicktime.... and if they did, it would be OpenGL and XviD ;)

Face it... the MUD market is dying and that's why zApp/eMobius is being developed... at least there's still a market for those :)

However, there might be a better chance of getting zApp and eMobius ported to Linux given that he has the source for all those 3rd party components, so (in theory) could port it more simply. Some data stores (like ADO) might not be able to be supported, but I imagine that you could support things like MySQL. But it comes back to #1... people running Linux aren't going to purchase proprietary software.

Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2004 10:03 pm

One of the tricks is finding a project that is just the right size. I have no desire to be in charge of a large company. It takes a large company with a lot of resources to create a successful MMORPG for example. Even a large MUD takes a group of people. I want to keep Zugg Software as a small family business. Once you start hiring employees, life gets very complicated and now suddenly you need to make a *lot* more money.

My strengths are Windows/Delphi programming and user-interface design. I don't have the knowledge that I'd need to make a secure module for linux.

But I'm not looking for anything else right now. My plan is to go ahead with zApp and eMobius. If I get can good enough sales from that, then I won't have the need to make so much on smaller projects, and maybe at that time I can start doing some projects for fun on linux or Mac. But that won't be for a couple of years.

Newbie Joined: 09 Nov 2004 Posts: 1

I was just peeking around your site. Sounds like you were hit by one of the many variants of the 'blaster' or similar type viruses. It's a patchable vulnerability in Windows. If you were attacked externally that means your internet provider isn't blocking the necessary ports on your firewall (80/443 are not vulnerable...though that may not be a service they give you I guess). I would wager though whoever actually sent it to you has no idea that they did, since it spreads quite rapidly on its own. It is quite easily fixable however without a reinstall. If you are paying for hosting though I think they owe you some money.

Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2004 5:46 am

No, it definitely wasn't the blaster. I've seen that one before and this wasn't anything like it. In this case it looks more like someone just did a brute-force login to the Administrator account via some sort of password tester. And it definitely was not easily fixable. It required a full reinstall of Windows NT. The server has already been shipped from the old hosting company and should show up here at home any day now. The hosting agreement with Superb.net has been terminated.

Newbie Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 9 Location: USA

Most Linux users are willing to use a lesser (yet comparable for their needs) application as opposed to paying for "the best" one. There are exceptions, of course, but I don't know if there are 2,000 exceptions a year. I, for example, would buy zMUD. Just like I buy the full version of Limewire (because I think it's useful and I want to support them, not because I need to small increase in features), I donate to the Gaim project, I buy the full retail versions of my favorite distribution, etc. I also looked around on Google and saw some programs that seemed to provide cross-platform licensing and copy protection, but I didn't delve too deeply into it.

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