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Old 09-21-2006, 07:30 PM   #9
shadowfyr
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 310
shadowfyr will become famous soon enough
Yeah. I personally am one of the people that has "ethical" issues about the use of "free" in this context, for the same reason I would like to beat software developer with a baseball bat when they include "free" anyplace on their web pages, for proprietary software. The problem is very similar with muds. In software you get:

Category 1 - Shareware
--a Time limited, all features stop working.
--b Time limited, some features stop working.
--c Most features don't work.
--d Some features don't work.
--e Nags you to register, but everything keeps working.

Category 2 - Freeware
--a Free, but you can't change how it works.
--b Free, but you need to bribe the developer to make it work.
--c Free, you can change it, but not claim it is official or sell it.

Category 3 - OSS
--a Source available, but limits on what you can do with it.
--b Source available, with no limits on what you can do with it.

And a number in between.

If anything, muds can get even more confusing, but imho, there is a fundimental and basic difference between category 1, 2 and 3 in software, just as there are fundimental differences in categories of muds. And ***reviews*** are basically useless, since they are dependent on the reviewer to describe what they "think" the category is (if they bother to even mention any of the details needed to make a judgement call) and almost as totally useless for finding one you want based on objective criteria as goggling "free mud".

Needless to say, the worst offenders have argued that such distinctions are either meaningless, too complicated or somehow useless to players. If you believe that, then I may have a bridge I can sell you...
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