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Shane · 04-28-2006, 10:30 PM

I guess I need to reiterate that I think pretty much the same things, as that is why I personally chose not to go down that road. I will ask you this though. What sort of favor is it that you do when in return for the use of your software, you demand that no one ever make any money out of it? That demand, in and of itself, changes it from a free gift to be thankful about and into a sort of trap. You can use this as a shortcut to have fun, but run the risk of having to redo a lot of work from scratch later on if you discover that your talents as a developer are such that you could make a living at it, or you can start cold trying to code a game despite the fact that you are not a trained programmer.

It's not a favor they did me. Lars did me all the favors anyhow, and I to this day prefer the LP muds. I have read somewhere though that the first mud you ever play will have lasting effects on what you envision as the perfect mud, and I confess this is true of me. I played Ancient Anguish for years. I love that old game. I can still go back today and visit ol' Meaty and get a grin out of it. Or the librarian. lol...

Anyhow, point being, it was not some sort of favor. Obviously they had a dream and the dream has turned into a nightmare. I honestly wish they would at this point come out publically and give all the people who ahve not broken their license the same opportunities as those they have given those who did by virtue of not choosing to try to enforce it. The endless arguing is a blot on the community.

Someone has commented somewhere as to why the GPL has not benefited the mud community much. AIME has been rusting in Sourceforge for years. I kind of wish more people would give Coffeemud a try. I really think in the hands of a decent builder it could rock the socks off a few muds out there charging money.

No argument here.

Apprently this is not true, though, as huge numbers of people disagree with this statement, which in turn explains how this thread got here. Understand, when you give something with strings attached, some people who don't mind the strings will be grateful. Others will resent it because you have led them to the brink of something and then told them not to take a sip. Fundamentally, what IS the point of "giving" something with the stipulation that no one ever use it to make money? What other "gift" do we do that with? What does someone who has spent countless hours learning this gift do when they realize they have come to a point where they must either repeat thousands of hours of their OWN work, or else go ahead and use some of your work so that they can make use of all the good things they did on their own? Consistently, the Diku faction minimalizes what others have done for "this community". How many thousands of lines of code does someone have to add before they too have contributed? How many tens of thousands?

For a person like that, the "gift" becomes a ball and chain and I for one can understand how one could easily be tempted to test the waters, and I will not demonize such a person. All I can do is confirm along with you that I think that was the weak, lazy way out. But given that the Diku team have not involved themselves in the ongoing evolution of the community, I have less and less sympathy for a wrong done to people who, frankly, do not appear to care one way or the other.

People are trying to discuss this aspect, and from what I have seen so far, you are not getting it. No offense, but the bottom line is as a work of writing, they have no right to dictate what people do with the compiled code. This is the difference between the Diku license and GPL. GPL offers things free to copy, and you can use them as you wish. You merely may not charge to further distribute. You can add and still use, but if you choose to distribute, you must make your own additions GPL as well. It is fashioned to operate on the half of the law that copyright has anything to do with. In order to dictate what people do with the compiled code, they need a patent. Since the copying happens BEFORE the compilation, people are never in violation until after the fact, and as long as they do not then try to sell the code itself, there is really nothing the license can do about it. Or at least, tat is, so far, my understanding.

I took this slightly out of order because I want to once more reiterate that I am not saying that Diku doesn't mean A LOT to the hobby in general. That is something that I do not intend to lose sight of. Still, Diku was written in the 80's, and it is the latter half of the 00's now. Things have moved forward, evolved, changed and grown, and I can't help but wish the Diku team would do that too, and either enter the fray actively or come out publicly with what it is exactly, if anything, they intend to do about Medievia or anyone else who has violated the spirit of what they intended. I think it is a real and tangible drag to the hobby when people come and play muds, get interested in making one themselves, basically taking the "Dungeon Master" roll of online rpg'ing, only to find that not only are they in for a lot of work, but if they are not carefull with how they fund the hobby, they might be in some sort of violation of the law, or at least of some sort of amorphous ethical consideration that frankly is a little foreign, or at least was to me, until you get into the subject in a good bit of detail.

Heck, I still am confused at how the fairly common practice of taking donations for a mud's operating expenses doesn't violate the license. And then, after all, one can then define "operating expenses" as so many different things, up to and including a coder/admin. One interpretation of the license would make it impossible to run a Diku on a rented server, because the server operatoirs are after all making money off the mud renting their space. So... rent a server, risk getting your mud shut down?

Are the concerns of people like myself beginning to make any sense at all to you yet? Can you see how I am not trying to disrespect Diku, so much as just wishing this particularly ugly chapter in the history of the mud'ing hobby could come to some sort of final resolution?

Another thing... copyright law is based on the idea that the copyrights are for the good of society, to help stimulate intellectual persuits, specifically giving those who want to make money off their work the ability to do so. If you want to give something away, why not just GIVE it? So the ethical outrage is really based on nothing at all that is easily based on the reality even of the law or why it was formulated in the first place.

It is, if nothing else, a very poorly constructed and thought out and worded piece of work, that license.

I am so very sympathetic to you and others who took this thing in the spirit I have to imagine it was intended, and formed the foundation of the hobby. I wonder how it might have been different if done another way. We will never know, I think, if it would have been better or worse had they simply released the code into the world and given it a peck on the cheek and told it to go forth and multiply, or what. I don't know. I just know this topic makes people angry and bitter and resentful and that is not a good thing.

04-28-2006, 10:30 PM	#16
Shane Member Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 159	I guess I need to reiterate that I think pretty much the same things, as that is why I personally chose not to go down that road. I will ask you this though. What sort of favor is it that you do when in return for the use of your software, you demand that no one ever make any money out of it? That demand, in and of itself, changes it from a free gift to be thankful about and into a sort of trap. You can use this as a shortcut to have fun, but run the risk of having to redo a lot of work from scratch later on if you discover that your talents as a developer are such that you could make a living at it, or you can start cold trying to code a game despite the fact that you are not a trained programmer. It's not a favor they did me. Lars did me all the favors anyhow, and I to this day prefer the LP muds. I have read somewhere though that the first mud you ever play will have lasting effects on what you envision as the perfect mud, and I confess this is true of me. I played Ancient Anguish for years. I love that old game. I can still go back today and visit ol' Meaty and get a grin out of it. Or the librarian. lol... Anyhow, point being, it was not some sort of favor. Obviously they had a dream and the dream has turned into a nightmare. I honestly wish they would at this point come out publically and give all the people who ahve not broken their license the same opportunities as those they have given those who did by virtue of not choosing to try to enforce it. The endless arguing is a blot on the community. Someone has commented somewhere as to why the GPL has not benefited the mud community much. AIME has been rusting in Sourceforge for years. I kind of wish more people would give Coffeemud a try. I really think in the hands of a decent builder it could rock the socks off a few muds out there charging money. No argument here. Apprently this is not true, though, as huge numbers of people disagree with this statement, which in turn explains how this thread got here. Understand, when you give something with strings attached, some people who don't mind the strings will be grateful. Others will resent it because you have led them to the brink of something and then told them not to take a sip. Fundamentally, what IS the point of "giving" something with the stipulation that no one ever use it to make money? What other "gift" do we do that with? What does someone who has spent countless hours learning this gift do when they realize they have come to a point where they must either repeat thousands of hours of their OWN work, or else go ahead and use some of your work so that they can make use of all the good things they did on their own? Consistently, the Diku faction minimalizes what others have done for "this community". How many thousands of lines of code does someone have to add before they too have contributed? How many tens of thousands? For a person like that, the "gift" becomes a ball and chain and I for one can understand how one could easily be tempted to test the waters, and I will not demonize such a person. All I can do is confirm along with you that I think that was the weak, lazy way out. But given that the Diku team have not involved themselves in the ongoing evolution of the community, I have less and less sympathy for a wrong done to people who, frankly, do not appear to care one way or the other. People are trying to discuss this aspect, and from what I have seen so far, you are not getting it. No offense, but the bottom line is as a work of writing, they have no right to dictate what people do with the compiled code. This is the difference between the Diku license and GPL. GPL offers things free to copy, and you can use them as you wish. You merely may not charge to further distribute. You can add and still use, but if you choose to distribute, you must make your own additions GPL as well. It is fashioned to operate on the half of the law that copyright has anything to do with. In order to dictate what people do with the compiled code, they need a patent. Since the copying happens BEFORE the compilation, people are never in violation until after the fact, and as long as they do not then try to sell the code itself, there is really nothing the license can do about it. Or at least, tat is, so far, my understanding. I took this slightly out of order because I want to once more reiterate that I am not saying that Diku doesn't mean A LOT to the hobby in general. That is something that I do not intend to lose sight of. Still, Diku was written in the 80's, and it is the latter half of the 00's now. Things have moved forward, evolved, changed and grown, and I can't help but wish the Diku team would do that too, and either enter the fray actively or come out publicly with what it is exactly, if anything, they intend to do about Medievia or anyone else who has violated the spirit of what they intended. I think it is a real and tangible drag to the hobby when people come and play muds, get interested in making one themselves, basically taking the "Dungeon Master" roll of online rpg'ing, only to find that not only are they in for a lot of work, but if they are not carefull with how they fund the hobby, they might be in some sort of violation of the law, or at least of some sort of amorphous ethical consideration that frankly is a little foreign, or at least was to me, until you get into the subject in a good bit of detail. Heck, I still am confused at how the fairly common practice of taking donations for a mud's operating expenses doesn't violate the license. And then, after all, one can then define "operating expenses" as so many different things, up to and including a coder/admin. One interpretation of the license would make it impossible to run a Diku on a rented server, because the server operatoirs are after all making money off the mud renting their space. So... rent a server, risk getting your mud shut down? Are the concerns of people like myself beginning to make any sense at all to you yet? Can you see how I am not trying to disrespect Diku, so much as just wishing this particularly ugly chapter in the history of the mud'ing hobby could come to some sort of final resolution? Another thing... copyright law is based on the idea that the copyrights are for the good of society, to help stimulate intellectual persuits, specifically giving those who want to make money off their work the ability to do so. If you want to give something away, why not just GIVE it? So the ethical outrage is really based on nothing at all that is easily based on the reality even of the law or why it was formulated in the first place. It is, if nothing else, a very poorly constructed and thought out and worded piece of work, that license. I am so very sympathetic to you and others who took this thing in the spirit I have to imagine it was intended, and formed the foundation of the hobby. I wonder how it might have been different if done another way. We will never know, I think, if it would have been better or worse had they simply released the code into the world and given it a peck on the cheek and told it to go forth and multiply, or what. I don't know. I just know this topic makes people angry and bitter and resentful and that is not a good thing.