I submitted an idea to Xayle/Wyrom/Sleken
So here is the idea

In gemstone IV the community is very supportive, and I know you don’t have the staff to work on the playershops code atm not to say you will not in the future. But the community itself would support this action and work on the code at sorcerforge or some other coding site where we can all work together to submit code and find an applicable solution that will pass QC

Goals
1. Release shops back to shop deed vendor
2. Collect rent
3. Make sure each shop is visited atleast once per 30 days by the owner
4. Provide a sourcing outlet for code programming


I know of several players who are professional programmers who if we submit the player shop code to a code base and add each as contributor, we would most likely find a solution.

Kind regards

Bill Whited
Player of Aethor Whiteaxe, Giantman Cleric
Player of Teclys Avellorian, Dark Elf Sorcerer
Writer of my own blog http://whiteaxescut.com

>If there are individuals with the appropriate skills that want to work on coding projects for Gemstone (such as player shops coding) then why don't they apply to become coding GMs?

Being a GM is a job with responsibilities, expectations, and supposedly very little compensation. One can contribute to an open-source project according to his/her own schedule.

Given that the IFEs use their own language, I don't think open-sourcing would work that well anyway. There'd be a huge documentation overhead to do, a big barrier to entry for contributors, and no test environment to use.

I don't blame Simu for not open-sourcing things, but "Just apply for another job!" isn't exactly a fix either.

>if town guru's keep up on their town player shops, there will be plenty of deeds that get sold at public auction

that sounds like a whole lot of additional work.