|
Well, when I first heard about the accusations against Medievia, I believe I read that the main reason the DIKU authors weren't doing anything was money, so my plan was to raise the money to help them.
I quickly realized a number of things though:
1. Almost nobody (nobody? I can't remember) in the community cared enough to spend any money on it, telling me something about how much the community actually cares vs. how much a few people say it cares.
2. The DIKU authors really don't give a damn and they aren't suffering any harm.
3. The entire issue is much more complicated than the Medievia attackers would believe, and none of them appeared to have ever actually gotten an opinion from a credible IP expert on the issue. I went ahead and got one, albeit it a quick opinion rather than a full brief (which would be thousands of dollars, and isn't worth it to me to satisfy my curiosity.) I've also shown the license to our accountant (who placed in the top 10 people on the CPA exam, and has a law degree as well) and got similar feedback.
I'm not defending Medievia. I'm defending the legal process, in which someone's guilt is decided in a courtroom, not in an internet forum. Whether Medievia is guilty of license violations or not is of no personal import to me, but since some people are going to argue for conviction in the court of public opinion, I'm going to argue for letting a legal issue be resolved in the manner in which legal issues get resolved. It's a principle thing, but some members here are unwilling to ascribe any motive to defending Medievia but "unethicalness" or whatever. If you don't sing the anthem and salute the flag, you're a traitor, as it were. (Some of the same people also dislike that we advertise ourselves as free-to-play, but that's so off-topic that it probably shouldn't be discussesd here.)
--matt
|