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As this is the coders forum rather than the legal one, I'll use coding as the context. However I would first like to briefly clarify the legal point definition, as someone else has already commented on it. Once you've added sufficient material to make your mud a "new work", it automatically becomes a derivative - and you cannot "underive" a mud. It will always be a derivative, unless you delete it and start again from scratch.
From a coding point, however, I generally define the difference between a "mud" and a "codebase" in that the latter is publically available, and once you've made a codebase publically available you should give it a new name to avoid confusion with other codebases. That doesn't mean you can take out any previous credits, obviously, but it does help clarify to other people that it's not the same version as it was based upon.
However there is little point in releasing a codebase unless it adds something worthwhile. Releasing your new "R0X0Rmud", which is a stock Merc with colours added, is not really very constructive.
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