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[last76]

Dear all, after having played Dwarf Fortress for some time my professional experiences in risk management must be ventilated.

I wonder if any precautions has been taken if any unfortunate events would happen to the developer of Dwarf Fortress?

It would be very unfortunate if the world would lose this piece of art if something happened to the developer which would make him unable to continue the work.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Yep, precautions have been taken already. Toady has stated that in the case of his unfortunate demise the source code will be released, on the condition that there was no foul play involved (so no murdering for the source code! ;P). Let me see if I can find a link as well, don't remember where/when exactly he said it.

[last76]

Good to hear. I assume Toady contacted a lawyer for these precautions?

[Manveru Taurënér]

Yeah, we've mentioned my untimely demise before, most recently because this town has lots of drunks and meth and some of the stupidest ass people that yell at you from vehicles as you might ever encounter (despite warnings from well-meaning people with misgivings about Texas, nothing ever happened down there, whereas up here in Silverdale I've been yelled at or had crap thrown at me or whatever no fewer than fifteen times while shopping, etc., even though I walked more down there), and the idea was to release everything.  I should amend that though -- if there are suspicions of foul play, and the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the death was related to getting the source released, then, well, no source then.  Yes, you will be punished for the wrongdoings of others, so pray for my safety!  No killing for the source!

This is what I could find, though I'm fairly sure it's been mentioned elsewhere as well. No idea on the specifics of how it's set up though.

[last76]

Thanks. Impressive to remember a post from 2008...

[Manveru Taurënér]

Thanks. Impressive to remember a post from 2008...

Hehe, the search engine is our friend! I did remember he had used the wording "foul play" though, which helped somewhat. And it wasn't thaaat long ago I read it, only been here a bit over 2 years ^^

[Brandon816]

He's also set up several forms of physical backups in different locations too, if I'm remembering that quote correctly.

[DVNO]

... And I heard he also wired plastic explosives to those physical backups which will go off if a single binary byte of data is tampered with without inputting a password that changes hourly to a cryptographic algorithm that Toady has committed down to his dreaming subconscious ...

((lets get a chain of ridiculously improbable precautions the man who thinks of everything has probably cooked up going for teh lolz ))

[catpaw]

Anyway, to my experiences in events like tis, the project at large is more likely to die. You cannot expect a coding community to start from zero to full should the event arise, such a thing needs years of caring to build up. Small fixes, chaotic add-ons, yes. But no more a dedicated project.

My opinion tough.

And I believe it might be a better idea to restart from scratch anyway, than continuing on a decade old code base which nevertheless how awesome the game as idea is, isn't the most efficient in execution in a number of areas, albeit looking into some stuff like the world creation code wouldn't be bad to be able to quickly boot up a clone project to a playable state.

I mean there are a sure a few of us who'd like to code a DF-like from scratch, but alas, all of them do not have the time to.

Anyway, DF has already inspired a whole generation of games, albeit none is similar enough to be considered a replacement candidate.

[GavJ]

so no murdering for the source code!

Presumably if you were willing to murder him for it, you'd also be willing to simply break into his house or whatever and steal it WITHOUT murdering anybody. 
Plus, even if you are a weird psychopath who sees the code as more valuable than a human life, you'd still have to realize that keeping him alive = more / better code in the future that you could steal again, etc. etc.

[MDFification]

If Toady were to die there would be no further development, as his entire playerbase would be killed, mummified and buried with him in a giant pyramid so that we may serve him in the afterlife.

[Dirst]

If Toady were to die there would be no further development, as his entire playerbase would be killed, mummified and buried with him in a giant pyramid so that we may serve him in the afterlife.

Yet another lesson why you really should read the End User License Agreement that comes with your software.

[Button]

Anyway, to my experiences in events like tis, the project at large is more likely to die. You cannot expect a coding community to start from zero to full should the event arise, such a thing needs years of caring to build up. Small fixes, chaotic add-ons, yes. But no more a dedicated project.

I respectfully disagree. Dwarf Fortress is legendary; it has a dedicated community including accomplished programmers; Toady has laid out arcs of future development; and the game seems to be popular particularly among the kind of folks who could pick up the baton. If anything, I would expect too many dedicated projects to grow up, fragmenting the community. But after ten years, those would settle into a handful of DF variants which would be in it for the long haul.

[Indricotherium]

If Toady were to die there would be no further development, as his entire playerbase would be killed, mummified and buried with him in a giant pyramid so that we may serve him in the afterlife.

Yet another lesson why you really should read the End User License Agreement that comes with your software.

Best response(s) ever.

[Tawa]

If Toady were to die there would be no further development, as his entire playerbase would be killed, mummified and buried with him in a giant pyramid so that we may serve him in the afterlife.

Yet another lesson why you really should read the End User License Agreement that comes with your software.

Sigged