ROPP Policy: Public and Private

In the Ragnarok Online Preservation Project, we have to make something abundantly clear: there is a public-domain history around the Ragnarok series of games which also deserves to be preserved just as much as the history of the game. There are segments of the community in Ragnarok who do not play on "private servers" as they are so-called, but there is just as much of a large community which does play on those servers.

The question of legality

In the early Ragnarok Community, there have been many debates which have been had about the legality of performing reverse engineering and therefore the morality or ethics of relating to such actions. There are certainly legal complexities relating to interception of packets and so on, and that is an argument that is rightly to be had. However, documenting the actions of people who did these things is not the same as repeating or condoning them. Individual authors on this wiki may of course, have different opinions about whether these actors committed any moral or ethical wrongs, nevertheless this community is here to preserve the history of human endeavour

Why do we care about private servers and reverse engineering?

One of the founders of this wiki, User:Halca, is slowly developing a book about reverse engineering and "private" communities, but the truth is that this actually is endeavour that we, as the public are engaging in. This may be illegal, it may be even immoral to some people, but in truth it is human endeavour and it's interesting. Why did so many people spend so much time, effort, and time away from their lives and families to make things which now sit here as a historical curio? For this reason, preserving this history, this endeavour, is important. It preserves a history to say -- these people, people like you and me did these things and sometimes they were stupid, naïve, brilliant, or just plain boring. But nevertheless the story behind it all is fascinating.

Just because a company creates something, does not mean that then what the public does with it is not important. It is.