|
Well, I agree with you. Commercial vs. Non-commercial would be helpful. It does however create an additional problem, in that it confuses the, "You must pay", and, "You can pay for extras", as essentially identical. They are not. My point in suggesting a poll was to resolve the goofy argument about just what "free" meant and who was making a valid claim about what people thought it meant.
I do generally agree though. "Free" by itself is a useless category, as anyone that has tried to find a mud client through Google can attest to when using that term, and getting zMud's "Free Trial". The meaning of the word is so distorted by shareware people offering trial version that its worthless. But it doesn't mean defintions don't exist that specify "how" free something is. For instance, is Mushclient "free" or "commercial"? Obviously the later, but that implies you can't use it without paying, when in reality you can use it indefinitely, with some minor irritation when it first loads. So its not "non-free" to *use*. It is an important distinction. One that "free" as its used for muds on here can't and doesn't make. Eliminating it doesn't fix the problem, it just shifts the burden to people like me, that already dislike the idea of having to guess what "free" really means in context of a mud. I think we generally agree on that, just not in what a useful solution is.
|