[Shane]

Oh, well, that wound its way through my head more in relation to in the final weighing of all the circumstances what the final decision would be. One school of thought might have the world design itself as a derivative work of the code, such that moving the whole world to another codebase wouldn't even be allowed. I suspect that it WOULD be allowed.

[Shane]

Oh, well, that wound its way through my head more in relation to in the final weighing of all the circumstances what the final decision would be.  One school of thought might have the world design itself as a derivative work of the code, such that moving the whole world to another codebase wouldn't even be allowed.  I suspect that it WOULD be allowed.

P.S. this is getting seriously annoying.  Anytime one of my posts is supposed to begin a new page, it doesn't show up, so I repost it and get two.

Watch...

Voila.  Now my original post is right above.  I even went so far as to go back to the home page and hit the thread from there, then refresh.  

Bizarre.

PPS Also, series quotes get messed up. The tags in my edit appear correct, but you see that some of the quoted text now appears as regular text in the post itself.

[the_logos]

Making a living or bringing in substantial revenue doesn't equal turning a profit. Profit = revenue minus costs. Salaries are one of those costs. A fortune 500 company could have 20,000 employees and fail to turn a profit. Medievia is owned by a company, and that company has certain costs, such as server costs, bandwidth, and salaries. If they simply adjust their salaries, they can easily ensure there is no profit. A salary is a cost that is no different from paying for a server.

So, without seeing their financial statements, there is no way to know whether they are turning a profit.

--matt

[the_logos]

Oh, I agree that they're not displaying the DIKU or Merc credits. That's only relevant if you assume that the licenses are applicable to them though, and that's never been settled in court either.

--matt

[DonathinFrye]

It is relevant to the majority of DIKU-derived MUDs that do credit the authors and not attempt to make a profit off of the MUD. It does not need to be settled in court for the community here to say that it is wrong to do what they are doing. This has been repeated over and over again, by myself and others.

While it might be a difficult battle to fight in court(though certainly not impossible, considering how the judicial system works in this country), it is more clear cut within our community. Yes, there are those who side on both sides - however, the majority here has established an obvious social norm.

If you want to lobby against that, do so - skirting around the legal issues is all theoretical, and does not change the societal status quo. You'd need to show us philosophical insight into why it should not be considered "wrong" to do what License Breakers are doing.

[DonathinFrye]

Aardwolf invited Hans(of the DIKU team) in to inspect their code to give the stamp of approval. Hans inspected the code and said that he was satisfied that there was no longer any DIKU in the codebase.

Medievia once claimed that they had done the same thing, but KaVir exposed that they were lying and showed the DIKU that was still evident in their code. They then eventually claimed that they had rewritten the code from scratch again; however, this time they did not offer to let anyone, including the DIKU team, to inspect the code. If they allowed Hans to inspect the code, as Aardwolf had, and Hans found that they were telling the truth - then Medievia would have reckonciled its ethical issues with many here in the community(myself included), I'm sure.

However, Medievia has a history of lying about the DIKU License and secrecy; that is their choice. They understand that it will make them be a target of open ethical judgement. Aardwolf took the route of working alongside the DIKU team for approval, and this is why I have never heard anyone attack Aardwolf on this issue, besides Matt.

[Shane]

If the code has been redone, then the credits don't matter, I think is the point.

I do wonder though if Matt's argument is that he feels there is absolutely no ethical problem with Medievia ever, or just that there is no hard evidence of it going on right now. I've said it before, just the history of the place makes it hard not to think bad thoughts about their overall professionalism.

Until participating in this thread, my overall impression was to be annoyed at the Diku crowd for carrying on about this all over the place, and I still feel it gets brought up at odd and unpredictable times, and in some cases with a tone that is offputting. Still, I think my new tactic is just to point out all the good, free to use and easily licensed software that has existed and that continues to come out such as DGD or Coffeemud or this new MUDMAKER site.

My main concern is that people not be put off of world building entirely by some sort of fear that making a mud puts them in some sort of legal jeapardy, or that they feel they have no options to go professional should their work turn out to be marketable. There are presently a lot of options, so my old outlook is somewhat changed.

[DonathinFrye]

I do think that this particular outlook is positive and worthwhile. There are DIKU alternatives to text-mmorpg creation that would allow for you to legally "go professional", assuredly. I take nothing away from those, especially as some them can be used quite well. I just uphold the standards that if someone creates a codebase for public use, and in turn allows for hundreds and hundreds of MUDs to be created, their wishes should be considered.

In the case of Medievia and lack of evidence; socially(not judicially), the burden of proof that they are not lying again and should be trusted to have finally honored the DIKU license is upon them. If they wanted to be looked at in a better way within the community, they would invite Hans or the like in to inspect their code in the same manner that Aardwolf has.

[Valg]

Not that I believe for a second that Medievia isn't a derivative, but one has to wonder what they gain from not acknowledging the contributions of the creators.  Medievia V is clearly based on Medievia IV, which was shown to be a DIKU derivative.  (Not even Team Vryce has claimed that they did a clean-room implementation.  They only claim that Medievia V has a lot more code and therefore the DIKU contribution is not important, oblivious to all legal definitions of a derivative work.)

It doesn't hurt to say "And thanks to... ... for providing a free tool which eventually grew into Medievia V.", include them in the credits as the DIKU license stipulates, and otherwise act like decent human beings, rather than bite the hand that feeds (*) them in an arrogant false "history".

(*): I almost wrote "fed", but Medievia wouldn't be where it is now without the foundation it used.

[the_logos]

Donathin wrote:
I've never attacked Aardwolf. I've pointed out that it is a DIKU and it charges money for things in game. Both of those are indisputable. You may draw whatever conclusions you like from that, but it's only an attack to someone who believes there's something wrong with being a DIKU and charging for in-game items. I do not.

--matt

[Shane]

I'm thinking the "DIKU community", if I may be allowed to coin a phrase, is satisfied with them because they opened their code for inspection, thus demonstrating good faith.

[the_logos]

[the_logos]

But these same "DIKU community" people continually state that one of the reasons they are unhappy with Medievia is because Medievia charges money for things and is a DIKU, thus violating, in their minds, the profit clause. Aardwolf does exactly the same thing. It's just more evidence, to me, that many of the attacks on Medievia are about personal dislike of Vyrce rather than principle.

So we're clear, Aardwolf has -not- completed its clean-room transition and is still a DIKU selling in-game stuff.

--matt

[Shane]

[the_logos]

[DonathinFrye]

The fact that this issue is constantly brought up again and again by many, many different of people is evidence of what the MUD Community thinks. The fact that other DIKU derived MUDs credit the DIKU team in their log-in is evidence of what the social norm on this issue is. I, as anyone else, speak of my opinion formed from my knowledge on the community and sociology.

It does not take a brain-surgeon to construe what is the accepted social norm when dealing with the DIKU License. You can twist whatever words you want to make me look like I am not credible, Matt, but your efforts are transparent. Whatever backwards arguments you might make, this forum is not a court of law - I don't need DNA and statistical evidence to prove what is socially proven overwhelmingly. If I were to document every DIKU MUD, show you their log-in sequence, then investigate to make sure that they did not charge players for their services, you would simply move on to some other word-twisting argument in an attempt to do whatever it is, exactly, you are trying to do.

[Shane]

[DonathinFrye]

Aardwolf has satisfied the DIKU team's inspection that they are clean of DIKU code, and thus, their co-operation and evidence seems to have satisfied the community. Again, do not assume I speak for everyone in the community. Common sense and social rules allows you to draw your own conclusions - if you want to argue things that aren't true in an attempt to attack my credibility, that is your choice.

I am fair, Matt. I do not know Vryce, beyond that he is demonized within the community for his open defiance of the DIKU License. I do not personally demonize him, or Medievia. I do personally disagree with Medievia's decision making.

As far as my own personal opinion on Aardwolf goes - that is not something that needs to be part of this thread. I do not agree with any free-to-play game charging money for in-game perks, on a gameplay level. However, each admin chooses their personal business model; the point of this post is the DIKU License, and as far as it goes with Aardwolf, Aardwolf seems to have satisfied Hans of the DIKU team. That's enough for me.

It should be noted that if Medievia did the same thing, I would think nothing less of them, ethically, than I do Aardwolf. I'm sure I'm not alone there.

[DonathinFrye]

I do not disagree with this. I do not fall in with the "pack mentality" when deciding my ethics. I have described my reasons for my defense of the DIKU License; other reasonings may be the same or different.

On other issues within the MUDing community, I am oftentimes considered progressive and boat-rocking. I have my own personal set of ideas, ethics, and opinions; in the case of the DIKU License, I happen to agree with the majority.

Now let's get some self-moderation and move away from the flame-direction the moderator has been leading this conversation in the past few posts. The topic is the license, not myself, and not Matt.

My mentioning of Matt before was only meant to use an example to show that when you lobby for an idea that offends a strongly defended social norm(such as the DIKU License), you should assume that you put your own ethical cards out on the line. I have lobbied for unpopular political/social ideas with U.S. Government officials and have actively protested social norms; there is a rule when you do this - the rule is that you accept that your own ethics and morality is laid open for judgement when you do this.

It is no different in internet society.

[KaVir]

Yet they themselves admit that all they've done is change the code over time - and according to the link I pointed out earlier, "There is no reason to believe that this would not be a copyright infringement, particularly if the reimplementer had access to the source code of the original program, even if none of the original source code remains".

The difference is that Aardwolf is creating a second mud completely from scratch - totally independent of the existing mud. Once again, the link I listed states "Although there is no case law on this point, it would seem that the only way to break the chain of infringing works is by some extraordinary act, such as a clean room implementation". What Aardwolf is doing isn't truly "clean room" (because some of the developers of the new mud also worked on the old mud) but it's a much cleaner break than just modifying the existing code until you feel it's no longer recognisable.