Re: [piecepack] Thanks/thoughts

[Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@...>]

On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 12:31:49PM -0500, Karol wrote:
> During the contest I was thinking of a way to make piecepack into a
> puzzle something that could be like those little ones I played with
> as a child, I had some notes and planned to develop after the
> contest to see if it would even work - then Easy Slider slid across
> my email and I thought "How cool is that! the game I was thinking of
> made into a piecepack game and I didn't even have to do or say
> anything!" Ideas crop up in different people at the same time
> without the people interacting - I am VERY glad that Ron and Marty
> had the idea and ran with it.

Oho, Karol, so *that's* what you meant when you mentioned in email
that you knew someone else was already working on something similar!
:-) Oops.  I'm not sorry we wrote the game, but I am sorry we stepped
on your idea.  I am glad you were a good sport about it and were
scrupulously fair.  Thanks, Karol.

> This type of thing happens to me and others I know from time to
> time, we'll have a notion and put off research and development and
> then next thing we know someone has the product in stores!... I
> guess some folks could be mad at themselves, but I just think "how
> cool is that!" - and each time it happens I think "next time an idea
> strikes I need to develop it quickly!". [no one has stolen "my"
> ideas in any of these cases - just got there before me.] It's nice
> to have the profits [of sold merchandise] but it's also nice not to
> have the headaches involved with creation & marketing.

Yeah, this kind of thing happens to me a lot with software; someone
will often write a piece of software that I have been thinking about
writing for a while.  Fortunately, if it is free (open source)
software, although I won't be the "leader" of the project, I _can_
contribute my own ideas and my own code to it.  Since many piecepack
games are free (as in freedom) -- all of ours are under the GNU Free
Documentation License -- others can contribute their own ideas to
them.  I encourage anyone who has "fixes" or variants for any of our
games to contribute them.  Perhaps some of the ideas you (Karol) had
for your game can make their way into Easy Slider as variant rules.

Ron H-E

-- 
       Ron Hale-Evans ... rwhe@... & rwhe@...
	 Center for Ludic Synergy, Seattle Cosmic Game Night,
Kennexions Glass Bead Game & Positive Revolution FAQ: http://www.ludism.org/
Home page & Hexagram-8 I Ching Mailing List: http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/
Seattle-area computer training & more: http://www.powerkeyconsulting.com/