Diku II (aka VME), created in 1995. Genesis (aka Cold), created in 1993. DGD (an LPC driver), created in 1993 (although the LPmud legacy that it was developed from dates back to 1989). There are plenty of others, but those are the only three I can think of off the top of my head that predate Rapture.
I'm not doubting that Rapture is a good mud engine, but it's certain not the only one with a proven track record of commercial use.
As The_Logos has pointed out, Rapture is just an engine. Therefore, regardless of development tools, it will still require a large amount of time and effort in order to produce a decent game.
His situation was very different. And I didn't claim "it'll never work", what I said was that I believe there is not the market to recover that sort of expenditure within any sort of realistic timeframe. And that's an opinion I stick by, although obviously people like malaclypse are free to form their own opinions (it's their money, after all). I think Fharron has nicely summed up what pretty much amounts to my own opinion on the matter regarding the usage of the license.
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