View Single Post
Old 06-24-2009, 10:41 PM   #7
locke
Banned
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Home MUD: nimud.divineright.org 5333
Posts: 195
locke is an unknown quantity at this point
Re: NiMUD 5 Re-released Under AL/GPL

Sure. The Diku license deals with DikuMUD. NiMUD is not DikuMUD. I've chosen this license because it is similar in that:

So, it will protect the credits and is basically free. It also stipulates that artists who use the software will be able to sell their areas. This was the justification for the sale of ROP's Emlen -- that they were charging for the 'game' as an artistic expression which included many, many area files. This makes sense since areas are not part of the source code and it really is the work of other people. Regarding sale of areas: it doesn't mean that they have to, or that anyone has the right to charge for someone else's area. Since the stock NiMUD areas are released under CCA-3 BY-SA, you can't license them in a derivative under a different license than CCA-3 BY-SA.

Also, the issue with duplication -- well, we live in a time when duplication is not really an issue. We all have the net now (who speak English). At the time of the writing of the Diku license, there was no gaurantee that people didn't use floppy disks. Also, Diku is pointing out "unreasonable fees" like $5 which was a hefty profit back in 1989 -- I've needed to copy things for clients and I've charged them like $2 sometimes to pay a reasonable fee for the duplication effort. I don't have a problem with you doing that if you are selling a copy of NiMUD on disc, since that is a reasonable fee and does not provide any substantial profit for NiMUD itself. That doesn't mean you can sell copies at $5 because that sort of fee scale would be unreasonable. I highly doubt anyone will take advantage of this clause, anyway.

Side note: What's it like being dead?

Last edited by locke : 06-25-2009 at 12:08 AM.
locke is offline