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I couldn't agree more Hephos. I'm perpetually unsure what the objection is to people making money in a way that doesn't take anything away from you. Is it ego? I honestly have no idea. But what you write is dead on. Allowing more people to focus their energies on text by freeing them from worrying about day jobs would be a huge boon to the text community. And as you say, it's not like valhalla is making anyone any money. Releasing a codebase even with commercial restrictions is a cool thing to do, but it'd be a lot more helpful to the community if they were released without that kind of prohibition. What I would have done in their shoes is release it without commercial prohibition and just say that you owe a flat royalty percentage on any revenues earned in connection with the codebase (obviously with much more legalese involved). That way they still benefit and people are free to commercialize. (Although given that Medievia is still operating without any hassle from DIKU, it's pretty clear people can commercialize already, whether that violates the license or not.)
But, I don't actually know if it's possible for the license to be released. I dunno how that works. Is that a retroactive change of the contract terms? I suspect that could be gotten around if the DIKU team just released a signed statement stating that they will never take action against DIKU offenders, but I don't know. Definitely a question for the IP lawyers, not me.
--matt
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