Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post

Jazuela · 05-07-2005, 10:23 PM

It's kinda like this:

You open a new fast food restaurant. You used to be the burger flipper for McDonald's, and as such, had all the exact recipes for each piece of food made, including their secret special sauce.

You also went to their burger flipping school and now know the secrets to their successful marketing strategies.

So you open up your new restaurant, rename everything using the same recipes..add a pinch of salt to everything, and call it "unique." Then you use the McDonald's strategies, rewriting each sentence by adding a single extra comma, and call it trademarked information.

And nowhere..not anywhere at all - do you even mention that McDonalds was the source of your genius.

Legal or not, it's unethical, unpleasant, and causes all the OTHER fast food joints to hire only family members, who have to recite a vow of secrecy upon penalty of death if they get caught giving the secret info to outsiders. The entire fast food industry suffers as a result, because no one is sharing information, no one is networking to improve customer service, or marketing, or quality of food.

This is what Medievia has done to the mud community. Because of them, several people who've developed new code bases have refused to make them open source, as has been the custom in the past. There are many new code bases, some of which are innovative and can do wonders for the community, but because Medievia used DIKU without its developers permission, without giving the developers credit, and then profited off it - clearly against the license they agreed to abide by, no one wants to trust the public to their own code bases anymore.

With good reason too. The world beyond the mud community doesn't really understand about muds enough to handle a court situation. Not to mention that DIKU was developed in one part of the world and the violator is in another part of the world, so the logistics involved in a lawsuit are pretty much - unviable.

So Medievia gets to continue doing what they're doing, and the entire community gets to continue suffering as a result. Using "only" 10% of the code is like saying a 2-month-pregnant woman is only 2/9 pregnant. You can't "slightly" steal something. Either you stole it or you didn't. Medievia did. Period.

05-07-2005, 10:23 PM	#19
Jazuela Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: New England Posts: 849	It's kinda like this: You open a new fast food restaurant. You used to be the burger flipper for McDonald's, and as such, had all the exact recipes for each piece of food made, including their secret special sauce. You also went to their burger flipping school and now know the secrets to their successful marketing strategies. So you open up your new restaurant, rename everything using the same recipes..add a pinch of salt to everything, and call it "unique." Then you use the McDonald's strategies, rewriting each sentence by adding a single extra comma, and call it trademarked information. And nowhere..not anywhere at all - do you even mention that McDonalds was the source of your genius. Legal or not, it's unethical, unpleasant, and causes all the OTHER fast food joints to hire only family members, who have to recite a vow of secrecy upon penalty of death if they get caught giving the secret info to outsiders. The entire fast food industry suffers as a result, because no one is sharing information, no one is networking to improve customer service, or marketing, or quality of food. This is what Medievia has done to the mud community. Because of them, several people who've developed new code bases have refused to make them open source, as has been the custom in the past. There are many new code bases, some of which are innovative and can do wonders for the community, but because Medievia used DIKU without its developers permission, without giving the developers credit, and then profited off it - clearly against the license they agreed to abide by, no one wants to trust the public to their own code bases anymore. With good reason too. The world beyond the mud community doesn't really understand about muds enough to handle a court situation. Not to mention that DIKU was developed in one part of the world and the violator is in another part of the world, so the logistics involved in a lawsuit are pretty much - unviable. So Medievia gets to continue doing what they're doing, and the entire community gets to continue suffering as a result. Using "only" 10% of the code is like saying a 2-month-pregnant woman is only 2/9 pregnant. You can't "slightly" steal something. Either you stole it or you didn't. Medievia did. Period.