The only thing wrong with open-source licenses is that those people believed, back then, that "information wants to be free."

They were Internet Hippies, in other words, and failed to realize it. They also failed to realize that most communes...

Fail.

I agree with the sentiment that without DIKU, something else would have come along. That something might not have been free, especially to players. Hobbyist volunteers who run free games are a different breed than people who want to profit from their work. DIKU licensers were idealists. Sadly, the world just doesn't work that way.

If not for DIKU, I simply wouldn't be mudding. At the point in time that I was willing to venture out past my BBS's and Zork, no other codebase (to my thirteen year old mind) was even remotely worth my while.

Now granted, since then, I've branched out and learned to like a variety of MU* codebases. But I never would have gotten that opportunity if it wasn't for the DIKU creators because I would have found another genre to entertain me.

I'm currently studying at the University of Sunderland in the UK, and I just thought I'd post a little bit in reply to this point you brought up. Please bear in mind that it's been many years since I last read the DIKU license so I have no idea if they were aiming it at the general masses or the university they were at.

The course I'm doing at university is a teaching one, and as such we're required to produce a fair few packages used to aid in teaching I.T to secondary school children (aged 11-18). We were told by the university that ANY software produced because of/for our assignments, or using software that they provided, or done using hardware supplied by the university (cameras, computers, etc) meant that the software effectively belonged to the university. This, in part, has to do with the educational license the university has to adhere to in exchange for getting software at a discount and being able to give out free copies to its students. It would also mean that should I code a completely unique MUD on one of the universities computers, or on my own using software they provided me, it belongs to the university.

Of course, some of the older students and I were a little suprised and annoyed by this, but having talked to other students from around the country this appears to be standard in UK universities these days and has been for a considerable amount of time. Going on the premise that European universities are generally more similar to their UK counterparts than their American ones, it would be reasonable to assume that the DIKU team were also under such strictures as we find ourselves in now.

I'm certainly not saying that it was the case, but such situations do exist and have cropped up from time to time. It's one of the reasons I've been careful with what programs I've used to create things for my own use since I've been at the university.