Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post - Some direct questions for Synozeer and Medievia

Valg · 06-06-2005, 11:51 AM

Very nice post, Traithe.

In my field, you'd be fired immediately for putting your name on someone else's work.

I think the plagiarism is indisputable- Medievia clearly violates the letter and spirit of how derivative works are classified, and a number of smoking guns are available detailing how easy it is to tell they are a derivative. They go to the "But we changed stuff!" well.... but every DIKU derivative changed stuff, and they're still derivatives.

The fact that Medievia not only omits mention of the DIKU authors in their credits, but actively slanders their work (see the page linked above) and ignores the mountain of evidence to the contrary (*) is especially appalling. They submitted to an independent code audit, and got exposed for what they are. The bare minimum they could do would be to own up to this, restore the DIKU authors to proper authorship, and admit the MUD was built on a core that was handed to them.

Now, if they could do that harmlessly, I'd bet they would. The problem is that admitting that their MUD is a derivative of DIKU (especially in the face of blatant lies to the public previously on that front) weakens their already-tenuous stance on their license violation.

(*): Things like "Comments signed by the Merc authors still in the code." are pretty damning. How else would those show up in original code with Medievia authors?

is a good resource on that.

06-06-2005, 11:51 AM	#90
Valg Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Home MUD: Carrion Fields Posts: 643	Very nice post, Traithe. In my field, you'd be fired immediately for putting your name on someone else's work. I think the plagiarism is indisputable- Medievia clearly violates the letter and spirit of how derivative works are classified, and a number of smoking guns are available detailing how easy it is to tell they are a derivative. They go to the "But we changed stuff!" well.... but every DIKU derivative changed stuff, and they're still derivatives. The fact that Medievia not only omits mention of the DIKU authors in their credits, but actively slanders their work (see the page linked above) and ignores the mountain of evidence to the contrary () is especially appalling. They submitted to an independent code audit, and got exposed for what they are. The bare minimum they could do would be to own up to this, restore the DIKU authors to proper authorship, and admit the MUD was built on a core that was handed to them. Now, if they could do that harmlessly, I'd bet they would. The problem is that admitting that their MUD is a derivative of DIKU (especially in the face of blatant lies to the public previously on that front) weakens their already-tenuous stance on their license violation. (): Things like "Comments signed by the Merc authors still in the code." are pretty damning. How else would those show up in original code with Medievia authors? is a good resource on that.