[Valg]

KaVir and others have done a magnificent job of laying out the evidence precisely because they recognize that ad hominem attacks and hearsay aren't convincing.

Calling Medievia "stolen goods" is not an ad hominem attack on Soleil.  People are not saying "Medievia is stolen goods because Soleil's skull is full of tepid, moldy pudding."  People are saying "Medievia is stolen goods because an independent look at the code confirmed what any experienced MERC user could intuitively figure out by logging on to their game-- they're a MERC derivative that doesn't acknowledge the source they are exploiting for their own financial gain."  

If Soleil then shows up and uses the non-defense of "We've worked on the MERC code a lot, so it's OK to break the license and not credit the authors!", it's both relevant and responsible to point out that she is either ignorant of the legal definition of a derivative, or else willfully trying to derail the discussion by invoking irrelevant claims.  Carrion Fields has been modifying our codebase for just about as long as Medievia has, but you don't see us ****ing on its authors by stripping their names out.

I want the facts straight on this issue.  That doesn't make me "on the warpath" or otherwise irrational.  It'd be nice if certain posters here could recognize the difference.

[Sinuhe]

the_Logos  Posted: Feb. 27 2006,15:32    

As long as Soleil persists in flaunting stolen goods on the boards, other posters will persist in pointing out that the goods is stolen.

You can of course stop this by 'moderating', i.e. removing all posts that you don't like.
But if you do, you are entering a very slippery slope.

Suppressing free speech is never a good idea, especially on a discussion board.

[prof1515]

I'm all for some moderating if by that you mean removing any posts by Medievia and any of its representatives. They're banned from the voting and ought to be banned from the forums. They're dishonest, unethical, and immoral. The TMS community, to say nothing of the MUD community itself, is better off without them around. So, moderate and simply remove any postings by them.

My thoughts on the subject.

Jason, who is normally opposed to any form of censorship but we really don't need people like those that run Medievia around here so I'll make an exception this time.

[Drealoth]

the_logos is right. He's not trying to support Medievia, but instead trying to get have some quality control on these boards. The points have been made. Medevia was mentioned and the proper information was pointed out and that should be the end of the issue. Everyone knows that Medevia is a Merc MUD. Soleil knows that it's a Merc derrivative. If she says that she knows that, I imagine she'd lose her job, so clearly she is protecting herself here, and I wouldn't expect any less.

Everyone knows the truth at this point, so there's really no point in dragging this topic out for pages and pages. And as they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity, so let's all shut up now...

[The_Disciple]

Here's a point of discussion that might be more relevant to the topic at hand and less controversial...

It's interesting to me that two muds can start with Merc (or whatever) and go such wildly different directions.

You look at a game like Medievia, which has thrown a lot of development time at things like dragon hunting and fighting sea serpents with 50 people on a boat, but has the most boring class/character setup I've ever seen on a MUD.

You look at a game like Carrion Fields which has very detailed/interesting classes and characters, but notably does not have features like hosing down sea serpents with 50 people on a boat.

I'm not saying one is right or wrong.* It's just interesting to me that two different MUD staffs/creators could look at the Merc base and think: THIS is where I need to spend my development time/effort, and come up with such different answers.



*Well, pretending to not be a derivitive work when you are is wrong, of course, but therein lies beating a dead horse.