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Of course - but supposing you were to have made the following public:
1) A fully disclosed line-by-line diff comparison of several thousands lines of code, which showed vast quantities of completely identical code,
2) A summary of the comparisons, including points of particular interest (such as your own name in the comments) and an overall originality percentage of each file,
3) A copy of a fax which I'd signed under penalty of perjury, confirming that the code you'd examined was indeed what I was using.
Now let's assume that the code itself has been made available for download for anyone wishing to confirm for themselves the accuracy of your comparisons, and that your findings have also been publically acknowledged by several other well-known mud developers.
We'll also assume that I don't even bother denying that my mud was based on your code, but instead simply respond that I've changed lots of it, and that my lawyers have said there's nothing you can do about it.
Are you still telling me, honestly, that you would expect other people to ignore the issue until it had been settled in the courts?
Yet the violation of licences is something that affects all mud developers (well, at least all those who release their own code, or base their work upon the code of others) - I've had to deal with the whole "Medievia do it, so why can't I?" crowd on a number of occasions when people have violated my licences.
Perhaps it's just another difference between the commercial and non-commercial muds. The latter can't generally afford to take legal action, so we stick up for each other by drawing attention to those who steal from other mud developers.
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