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Loriel · 11-17-2002, 05:34 PM

I don't think you can ignore the possibility that you will be in breach of copyright.

You are deliberately setting out to produce something with a similar "look and feel", and your familiarity with ROM coding means that you will be reproducing parts of the code structure and style, even if the code isn't deliberately copied.

The two "ideal" solutions, which probably aren't possible in your circumstances, would be to use the "clean room" approach (ie put together a design spec, which could be as close to ROM as you like, and get the actual coding done by a non-ROM coder, preferably a non-mud coder) or to get a licence for VME and use that to cover the fact your mud could be a derivative of that.

In practical terms your question comes down to 2 things :
(a) "Will the diku authors sue for breach of copyright ?" (or merc, or ROM). Probably not, unless they are tempted by the huge financial success of the mud
(b) "Will other mud owners/coders/players regard it as a ROM ripoff?". More difficult to predict - probably players won't be interested, but many in the mud community can be sceptical about such matters, and short of publishing your code it's difficult to see how you can disprove it.

11-17-2002, 05:34 PM	#2
Loriel Member Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 49	I don't think you can ignore the possibility that you will be in breach of copyright. You are deliberately setting out to produce something with a similar "look and feel", and your familiarity with ROM coding means that you will be reproducing parts of the code structure and style, even if the code isn't deliberately copied. The two "ideal" solutions, which probably aren't possible in your circumstances, would be to use the "clean room" approach (ie put together a design spec, which could be as close to ROM as you like, and get the actual coding done by a non-ROM coder, preferably a non-mud coder) or to get a licence for VME and use that to cover the fact your mud could be a derivative of that. In practical terms your question comes down to 2 things : (a) "Will the diku authors sue for breach of copyright ?" (or merc, or ROM). Probably not, unless they are tempted by the huge financial success of the mud (b) "Will other mud owners/coders/players regard it as a ROM ripoff?". More difficult to predict - probably players won't be interested, but many in the mud community can be sceptical about such matters, and short of publishing your code it's difficult to see how you can disprove it.