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Spoke · 04-28-2006, 05:39 PM

I have followed this thread over the years and as many here have heard all kind of arguments pro and anti DIKU license. Since those who breach the license have not been sued and it appears to be that there is no interest whatsoever on doing so from part of the authors or the school that seems to own the code we cannot posibly come to a final answer to the question posed by the_logos.

That said, here are my thoughts on the subject. There are two different standards that are followed in here when discussing this or similar topics.

One is the legal one, most frequently quoted by people who are in business and seem to be required to operate in the "what does the law say about it?" sphere. The main argument I have heard here is that the license is flawed, it does not forbid what the authors seemingly wanted to forbid (or claimed they wanted to after they were told it was poorly spelled out), a court would "probably not" rule in favor of the DIKU team or license holder because of this fact.

It is my opinion that from a practical point of view this is true and will remain true until the license holder sues the first company or individual and wins.

The other standard is the so-called moral standard, and it consists on reading and understanding the license according to the spirit of what was being written, not dwelling too long on exact definitions of particular words the authors chose to word their license document. The main view here, as I perceive it, is that the license forbids any form of personal gain from the game, which basically means, if you make money out of the game that would buy your weekend party nights you are violating the license. Furthermore, some people interpret it to mean that you should not hold comercial exchange or trade (or whatever the appropriate term is) with the code and virtual objects created with the code. This later part is a bit more confusing, since it is a particular way to interpret
basically assuming that a virtual item or good is part of dikumud.

This is the most voiced standard, mostly by admins or developers for non-comercial MUDs who work or have worked with DIKU derivative code, and who fully feel they have followed the license according to this interpretation. I believe one reason why there are more people with this point of view than with the so-called legal one is that there are more people who run their MUDs non-comercially-spirited (money comming in is used for upkeep, bandwidth, machine, etc.) than people who run MUDs as a business.

I personally believe it is healthy to have comunity standards that are above the minimum legal standards, this means I agree that the spirit of the license should be followed up to the reasonable extent and that if someone wishes to be an active part of "this" comunity (ie. TMS forum members) it would be expected of them to adhere to this view or at least be reasonably close to adhering (notice the unfortune of having to "pick" words that can be interpreted in a zillion different ways, as "reasonably"). I think this is appropriate since, even if nobody has ever been found "guilty of DIKU license breaking" by a judge anywhere that I am aware of, the forum may police itself (through the site owner) to whatever standards the owner wishes to declare minimum.

To summarise, there are two standards, a so-called legal one and a so-called moral one. Each of these standards is practically applied on different grounds, a court of law or everyday internet trade for the first, within a comunity sharing the moral standard for the second. It is my opinion that both views are quite correct, within their own ground and that the problem occurs when one tries to apply a standard outside of its ground of validity. Even if one tried to increase the reach of one of the standards to include the others ground, people would still reject the outcome; people will not stop considering Medievia is using DIKU derivative work without aknowledging it even if they won in a civil court after being sued by the DIKU team or school; people will not stop their comercial practices if the site owner and every single suscriber here declares it immoral to breach the DIKU license's spirit, this will not happen until they get sued and forced to stop by a court of law.

04-28-2006, 05:39 PM	#6
Spoke Member Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 101	I have followed this thread over the years and as many here have heard all kind of arguments pro and anti DIKU license. Since those who breach the license have not been sued and it appears to be that there is no interest whatsoever on doing so from part of the authors or the school that seems to own the code we cannot posibly come to a final answer to the question posed by the_logos. That said, here are my thoughts on the subject. There are two different standards that are followed in here when discussing this or similar topics. One is the legal one, most frequently quoted by people who are in business and seem to be required to operate in the "what does the law say about it?" sphere. The main argument I have heard here is that the license is flawed, it does not forbid what the authors seemingly wanted to forbid (or claimed they wanted to after they were told it was poorly spelled out), a court would "probably not" rule in favor of the DIKU team or license holder because of this fact. It is my opinion that from a practical point of view this is true and will remain true until the license holder sues the first company or individual and wins. The other standard is the so-called moral standard, and it consists on reading and understanding the license according to the spirit of what was being written, not dwelling too long on exact definitions of particular words the authors chose to word their license document. The main view here, as I perceive it, is that the license forbids any form of personal gain from the game, which basically means, if you make money out of the game that would buy your weekend party nights you are violating the license. Furthermore, some people interpret it to mean that you should not hold comercial exchange or trade (or whatever the appropriate term is) with the code and virtual objects created with the code. This later part is a bit more confusing, since it is a particular way to interpret basically assuming that a virtual item or good is part of dikumud. This is the most voiced standard, mostly by admins or developers for non-comercial MUDs who work or have worked with DIKU derivative code, and who fully feel they have followed the license according to this interpretation. I believe one reason why there are more people with this point of view than with the so-called legal one is that there are more people who run their MUDs non-comercially-spirited (money comming in is used for upkeep, bandwidth, machine, etc.) than people who run MUDs as a business. I personally believe it is healthy to have comunity standards that are above the minimum legal standards, this means I agree that the spirit of the license should be followed up to the reasonable extent and that if someone wishes to be an active part of "this" comunity (ie. TMS forum members) it would be expected of them to adhere to this view or at least be reasonably close to adhering (notice the unfortune of having to "pick" words that can be interpreted in a zillion different ways, as "reasonably"). I think this is appropriate since, even if nobody has ever been found "guilty of DIKU license breaking" by a judge anywhere that I am aware of, the forum may police itself (through the site owner) to whatever standards the owner wishes to declare minimum. To summarise, there are two standards, a so-called legal one and a so-called moral one. Each of these standards is practically applied on different grounds, a court of law or everyday internet trade for the first, within a comunity sharing the moral standard for the second. It is my opinion that both views are quite correct, within their own ground and that the problem occurs when one tries to apply a standard outside of its ground of validity. Even if one tried to increase the reach of one of the standards to include the others ground, people would still reject the outcome; people will not stop considering Medievia is using DIKU derivative work without aknowledging it even if they won in a civil court after being sued by the DIKU team or school; people will not stop their comercial practices if the site owner and every single suscriber here declares it immoral to breach the DIKU license's spirit, this will not happen until they get sued and forced to stop by a court of law.