After doing my reading, I’m thinking of going the route taken by MySQL – i.e., open-source under the GPL, but the potential for closed-source and commercial options available with a separate license.

Realistically, I highly doubt people would come to license the software for commercial use, but I do want to protect the product, intellectual property, and my sweat equity (I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time, money, and energy on it over 8+ years). My interest is in sharing it (and getting help from others), not letting others profit off it. (Hence I am avoiding licenses such . . .

→ Read More: Looking for advice on open source licenses]]> I’ve been developing (and operating) CSFBL, my multiplayer, web-based baseball game, for over eight years. After mulling for quite some time as to the future of the game, I’m seriously considering the transition of the game to an open source project. That being said, finding the right open source license is important.

After doing my reading, I’m thinking of going the route taken by MySQL – i.e., open-source under the GPL, but the potential for closed-source and commercial options available with a separate license.

Realistically, I highly doubt people would come to license the software for commercial use, but I do want to protect the product, intellectual property, and my sweat equity (I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time, money, and energy on it over 8+ years). My interest is in sharing it (and getting help from others), not letting others profit off it. (Hence I am avoiding licenses such as BSD).

Does anyone have suggestions, thoughts, or words of advice on this matter?

This page is to notify all Baseball Mogul Online users that we will be discontinuing the service as of December 1, 2008. Why? There are three main reasons: #1 -The system is not profitable to operate for us. Even when it was at its peak of usership, it did not bring in enough money to support further growth and improvements. #2 – We no longer have the staff needed to operate the system. #3 – The machines and bandwidth that the system runs on were designed for a much larger load than we currently use. To economize, we will be switching services and bandwidth, and the new equipment will not support Mogul Online.

Sincerely, Dee and Clay Dreslough Sports Mogul Inc.

Well how about that. I’m as sorry as anyone to see a solid game go away, but there’s good news to all Baseball Mogul Online fans — there’s an alternative that is not going away, and . . .

→ Read More: Baseball Mogul Online is shutting down — but CSFBL isn’t, so why not check it out?]]> I just stumbled upon this announcement from the Baseball Mogul Online forums:

This page is to notify all Baseball Mogul Online users that we will be discontinuing the service as of December 1, 2008.

Why?
There are three main reasons:
#1 -The system is not profitable to operate for us. Even when it was at its peak of usership, it did not bring in enough money to support further growth and improvements.
#2 – We no longer have the staff needed to operate the system.
#3 – The machines and bandwidth that the system runs on were designed for a much larger load than we currently use. To economize, we will be switching services and bandwidth, and the new equipment will not support Mogul Online.

Sincerely,
Dee and Clay Dreslough
Sports Mogul Inc.

Well how about that. I’m as sorry as anyone to see a solid game go away, but there’s good news to all Baseball Mogul Online fans — there’s an alternative that is not going away, and it’s 100% free: CSFBL!

CSFBL, the Computer Simulated Fantasy Baseball League, the grand-daddy of all multiplayer baseball management simulations, is still going strong. In fact, we’re probably stronger today than we’ve ever been.

Even better, there is no reason to fear that CSFBL will go the path of Baseball Mogul Online. Why?

1. Profitability doesn’t matter. The game is funded out of my pocket and with the help of generous donations from our members. We don’t have to make a profit to keep running. (In fact, we’ve almost never made a profit, but the game has kept running — for over eight years — despite that fact.)
2. Our staff is volunteer, so they’re easy to replace. Everyone who helps out with CSFBL does it of their own free will, because they love the game and the adventure in helping watch it grow. Much like open source software projects succeed despite any paid staff, CSFBL has succeeded and will continue to succeed under the same model.
3. We’ve got horsepower to run the game. About six months ago we upgraded to a new server. With all the kinks worked out, we’re now running faster and more reliably than we have in years. Even better, we’re about to migrate our forums to vBulletin as we move to improve our community features. On top of all that, if we generate revenue above our expenses, my intent is to continue to expand our infrastructure to keep up with growth and demand.

Don’t get me wrong, CSFBL has had its share of growing pains — but what you get, for the price you pay, is simply incredible. Aside from a feature-rich game (running on a baseball simulation engine that has been battle-tested for over eight years) and a rich community, there’s also one thing that is rare in any online service, much less a free one: The guy who runs it is honest, up-front, and always involved.

Why not check us out? http://www.csfbl.com

Fast forward to 2008. CSFBL was crumbling under its own weight — and popularity. A game that was originally designed to handle a few hundred users now had thousands. More users meant more teams; more teams meant more games simulated; more games simulated meant more server utilization… The 3+ year old server, once handling the every-three-hour simulation in an hour and a half, took four or more hours to get it done. People were frustrated; I was frustrated. Something had to change.

A little over a month ago, I rented a new dedicated server from SoftLayer. After installing, testing, and re-testing, CSFBL worked its way over . . .

→ Read More: CSFBL find a new home]]> Nearly four years ago, on September 16, 2004, CSFBL – the Computer Simulated Fantasy Baseball League (the greatest web-based multiplayer baseball simulation ever made, in my opinion, despite the long name) was migrated to what was (at the time) a hot new server. Performance was spectacular, and things stayed rather well… for a while…

Fast forward to 2008. CSFBL was crumbling under its own weight — and popularity. A game that was originally designed to handle a few hundred users now had thousands. More users meant more teams; more teams meant more games simulated; more games simulated meant more server utilization… The 3+ year old server, once handling the every-three-hour simulation in an hour and a half, took four or more hours to get it done. People were frustrated; I was frustrated. Something had to change.

A little over a month ago, I rented a new dedicated server from SoftLayer. After installing, testing, and re-testing, CSFBL worked its way over to its new home last night. So far things are zipping along quite nicely, and we’ll see how performance really is at noon today when we run the first sim on the new hardware. I don’t expect miracles (the game still needs major architectural changes), but I do expect notable improvements to performance and reliability.

A quick plug follows…

Backing up, copying, and restoring 150GB worth of SQL data wouldn’t have been as easy without SQLsafe, a SQL backup/compression product by Idera. What’s most incredible is that I am using the free version, SQLsafe Freeware Edition, which does the job perfectly at a price I can really afford.

Normally using free software like this in commercial environments is a no-no — so I spoke with a sales rep at Idera to make sure I wasn’t violating any licensing. Incredibly, I wasn’t. Needless to say, I highly recommend SQLsafe, and will certainly consider using other Idera products in the future (even the ones that aren’t free).

Anyway, let’s all welcome CSFBL to its new home — which also happens to be the home for AOChub, another web site I recently launched, but more on that in another blog post…