All's quite on the Western Front

[wurzel]

Originally Posted by Farling

What about remembering which bits of information (snippets?) are protected by a particular individually marked piece of IP and therefore can't be edited or shared with other realms owned by other people without owning either that data already or some other sort of license mechanism that allows sharing of some data?

How about creating a mass of new database IDs which will be unique for the new realm?

How about implementing their sharing approach, which is to share the realm within the cloud database so that changes to the original realm can easily be mapped across into the realm containing the share, without having to do another manual export and merge?

Even using your method, a second merge would cause conflicts between the contents of your "dump" file and the contents already in the realm, so we need to remember the original database ID as well as the final database ID. Then if the realm containing shared data is merged into a third realm, then you would have to store three database IDs for each piece of information (and extend that endlessly based on further realms, to storing an unspecified number of changes).

What if the original realm was shared into two other separate realms, and then you want to merge one of those separate realms into the other realm that already has parts of the original realm?

I somehow see that as more than 2 weeks of implementation; never even mind the number of tests which would need to be written to ensure that it will work under all conditions.

(Please note: I've been in the software industry for 28 years, and have been producing software estimates for future product evolutions for most of that time alongside actually implementing a lot of those estimates.)

The way you estimate this seems to me a bit too complex. I don't think you need to carry around so many database IDs.
Just imagine that without a routine as mentioned, you do the migration manually. That may be with a simple cut&paste, or in the worst case retyping. You just migrate the content, no IDs at all. The routine simply makes this manual process more comfortable. *)

You are right, I don't take intellectual property into account. That is because I don't use content I didn't develop myself, and I don't intend to do it in the future. The DRM is for me out of focus. I just want to re-use my content in other realms, like many people here want to do.

You can of course avoid the IP problem by setting a no-copy database lock flag in realms containing IP content. I know that all realms are in one single database. If it proves to be too complex to lock only certain realms just lock the whole database. That way you help the people here with self-developed content.

At least until there is a sophisticated solution, maybe four or five years from now.

*) yes, when I still created program code myself, in the time when FORTRAN and Assembler were the languages of choice, I was known as "the master of quick & dirty solutions" but these solutions always worked well until something "real" came along.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by wurzel

You are right, I don't take intellectual property into account. That is because I don't use content I didn't develop myself, and I don't intend to do it in the future. The DRM is for me out of focus. I just want to re-use my content in other realms, like many people here want to do.

Without some sort of record of the origin of the data, you won't be able to perform a smooth re-merge later when you've updated both realms.

[Acenoid]

As posted sometime earlier already:
Imho if a Realm is free from 3rd Party stuff == nothing 3rd party copyrighted bought , merged , inserted it should be considered MY data (as the terms & conditions from RW say btw - which I like - seemingly they intend to respect that it's "our" data). And then I should have the full scope of features available to import / export / cut / paste.

Maybe watermark it a little, maybe show a disclaimer like they do on the movies, maybe even have a new option to convert your realm into a "no copyrighted material realm" which means that I am not allowed to insert such data in my realm. But somehow it should be possible to do what we would like with our own entered content. What use is "our" data, if it's not really ours (yet).

Another idea...
A setting upon realm creation that sets it up for copyright "limited" mode and no-copyrighted-stuff-allowed "full access" mode. Such full-access realms could only be merged with other realms in such status. Of course a "limited" copyright allowed realm is locked in this state....

I really want to make full use of the data stored in RW. And Iam sure LWD will find a good way. Hopefully in the foreseeable future ...

[AEIOU]

Rob and friends have, without a doubt, established a well-researched plan and are currently programming the best approach to sharing data. We can armchair program till the cows come home with what we think might be the perfect implementations, but the bottom line is that no matter what they do, it takes time. In this case, it apparently takes a LOT of time.

Intellectually, I understand this and agree with Rob's approach. But emotionally, I am so frustrated I could scream.

[Viking2054]

I'm sure Rob and the rest of the LWD staff working on RW also get frustrated. Remember, they don't have to satisfy just us, the user but also satisfy those IP holders and more importantly their lawyers. Some of the slowdown I'm sure belongs with the IP holders that are looking over LWD's shoulders every once in a while to see if the security can minimize any abuse of Intellectual Property.

[rob]

Originally Posted by kbs666

I hit some sort of performance limit on my laptop. RW has slowed to a crawl on it when I open the realm I actually have active players in. So it is hard to really keep expanding the realm until I solve the issue or get a new laptop.

This sounds like something you should open a support ticket about. We need to learn more about your realm so we can figure out what might be causing the slowdown.

[rob]

Originally Posted by AEIOU

Removing my comment. I'm cranky after three years. And it's been a long week. I'll wait until I have something constructive to contribute.

Thank you for your discretion!

[rob]

Originally Posted by Farling

P.S. Apologies to Rob for providing an incomplete analysis of your "merge" requirements, but I wrote the above in under 5 minutes. I didn't perform a full requirements breakdown, therefore there will be many missing requirements.

You identified a lot of the things we have to worry about. There's a long list of additional things as well, but your analysis definitely sheds some light on the various details we have to take into account, so it hopefully gives others a chance to understand that this isn't nearly as easy as users often think it is. So thank you for that!

[rob]

Originally Posted by Viking2054

I'm sure Rob and the rest of the LWD staff working on RW also get frustrated.

That's one heck of an understatement! And the reasons for the frustration extend into many other areas beyond the ones you've cited above. But we're staying on course.

[rob]

Originally Posted by AEIOU

More frequent updates would certainly create more activity on the forums and keep interest up. But it's also more time consuming to test and package incrementally. It's a trade-off.

If a lack of updates is the reason behind the lower activity, then things are definitely about to change in a very big way.

Based on having software tools for tabletop games for the last 18 years (scary, isn't it?), it's actual the time of year more than anything else. Things always die down come springtime. It's a combination of the warmer weather, school years ending (both for younger users and the kids of older users), and a variety of other facets. But it's consistent every year. So please don't read anything into the slower forum activity.