[the_logos]

Originally Posted by Traithe,June 06 2005,08[img http://www.topmudsites.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wow.gif[/img]3]

Originally Posted by I think you'll concede that anyone who engages in plagiarism is engaging in an immoral act and is demonstrating a distinct lack of personal integrity - yes?

In my personal ethical system plagiarism is wrong. Of course, in my personal ethical system, what you were doing with SoI before your arrangement with them is also wrong. I don't claim my ethical system has any primacy over anyone else's or any more legitimacy than anyone else's though.  

Happily, the law tends to side with my personal view on intellectual property most of the time.

--matt

[Soleil]

Originally Posted by They submitted to an independent code audit,

Uhm, I'm not sure this is true.  I don't  remember Vryce offering up our code for inspection, ever.  The code that is out there and that is being used in all the comparisions is, by my knowledge, code that was obtained illegally.  I don't remember if it was someone who hacked in to get it or if one of our gods gave it away, but it was not given by Vryce to someone to audit.  It was so long ago now...

Originally Posted by The problem is that admitting that their MUD is a derivative of DIKU (especially in the face of blatant lies to the public previously on that front) weakens their already-tenuous stance on their license violation.

Did you read the link I posted?  Here it is again in case you need to re-read it: How Medievia Got Started  Specifically read where it says that Medievia did start out as DIKU, Merc 1.00 and further down where Vryce explains his stance on DIKU.  I'm sure that you won't be happy with what it says, but there it is.  As I stated earlier, any questions on what's written on that page should be directed to Vryce as it's his writing and his stance.

[xotl]

Originally Posted by (the_logos @ June 06 2005,01:42) Originally Posted by (eiz @ June 06 2005,01<!--emo&[img http://www.topmudsites.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wow.gif[/img])]Okay, I've got to admit: I've seen the Medievia IV source code personally. I know for a fact that it is derived from Merc 1.0. I realize that it hasn't been 'proven', and perhaps not demonstrated to your satisfaction, but as far as I'm concerned it's indisputable. I am not a lawyer - and thus I don't know the legal details - but I am certainly qualified enough to know a diku mud when I see one. Whether or not there is currently a legal issue (which I believe there is, but again I'm not going to pretend to be an authority), I think it's clear that there is an ethical one. Well, I mean, with all due respect, your saying that doesn't mean anything to me. I don't mean to imply that you're lying: Indeed, you seem like a reasonable person. On principle though, I find that kind of hearsay to be something I'm not willing to accept to condemn someone.

Matt, I can understand your principle of not blindly accepting hearsay, even firsthand experiences from seemingly reasonable people.

You should look at the source code firsthand.

My personal impressions from reading your posts is that you do not care if there is a copyright breach or not as it doesn't affect you. However, diku implementors are harmed by losing royalty income, and their community suffered stress. I do not think you would want this same thing happening to your ventures.

Personally, I support Medevia if they post credits and work out some kind of royalty payment. If anything, they should do it for the good of their business. Then again, perhaps I am wrong, it could be that bad publicity is publicity nonetheless.

Ethics is a luxury of non destructive conduct that people hold onto when they are strong. Justice comes in when ethics fails. Ethics seems to have failed here thus far. I don't see any board of justice set up in the mud community. I suspect it will be handled in the courts eventually if the money is worth it.

Xotl, 14 years experience in mudding communities, head admin and co-founder of Accursed Lands in operation for 9 years. Former victim of mudlib theft. Not big on bells and whistles and signatures and all kinds of fancy icons.

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by xotl,June 06 2005,16[img http://www.topmudsites.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wow.gif[/img]8]

Originally Posted by You should look at the source code firsthand.

Unless Vryce is willing to show it to me, I have no idea how I'd see the code that Medievia is currently running. Further, I have no idea if the license restrictions themselves even have any validity at this point. I'm not a lawyer and even if I was, I'm sure other lawyers would have differing opinions. That's what the court systems are for: Resolving those differences of opinion.

Originally Posted by However, diku implementors are harmed by losing royalty income

What? DIKU doesn't have royalty provisions, and if Medievia just put up the DIKU authors credits, nobody would really have any beef against them unless there's someone out there who has seen their financial statements and knows they're making a profit (and I don't believe any of their detractors can say they have.) The DIKU guys wouldn't get any royalties just because Medievia decided to put up the DIKU authors names.

Originally Posted by I do not think you would want this same thing happening to your ventures.

It wouldn't. Unlike the DIKU founders, I feel our work is worth enough to defend, aggressively. And unlike them, we could suffer real harm. People could lose their ability to pay for health insurance, mortgages, school for their kids, etc. Steal from us and I'd come after the thief in any way possible, legally or otherwise. In fact, I have previously shut down a commercial MUD for violating provisions of a license to use our old Vortex mud engine.

--matt

[Ilkidarios]

Originally Posted by (Ilkidarios @ June 06 2005,04:32) And on that note, let's allow this thread to die.

Or not.  Not is always good. I think Matt's right, Diku doesn't get any royalties. As long as you mention their name you don't have to pay them anything.

[Delerak]

Can you people derail some more?

[xotl]

Originally Posted by (the_logos @ June 06 2005,16:40) Originally Posted by However, diku implementors are harmed by losing royalty income What? DIKU doesn't have royalty provisions, and if Medievia just put up the DIKU authors credits, nobody would really have any beef against them unless there's someone out there who has seen their financial statements and knows they're making a profit (and I don't believe any of their detractors can say they have.) The DIKU guys wouldn't get any royalties just because Medievia decided to put up the DIKU authors names.

True. What they had was a usage contract and a contract can be renegotiated by both parties to provide for royalties.

I'm not damning anyone. In fact, I find the stipulation to never allow commercial gain off a DIKU derivative to be limiting and harmful.

And yep, I agree with you that if Medevia just put up the DIKU authors credits I think the majority of people would not have any beef against them.

I'm sure most of the DIKU folk poured their blood, sweat and tears into making the lib and only wanted some appreciation in return. Vryce no doubt put in innumerable hours of work as well, and likely most of the code is now original. But even if DIKU was only used as a test harness to recode the majority of the mud, that's still a very significant contribution.

If I had written DIKU back then, I would be proud if one of the most successful muds started with my codebase and was thanking me. All I saw on Medevia's startup page were negative points about how bad DIKU was. Well, it was the one they picked over others, so to them it was the best choice that existed back then to go forward from.

Xotl

[Yui Unifex]

Originally Posted by (the_logos @ foo) Documented fact on some random forum poster's websites?

Documented fact on some website that just so happens to have a signed statement from Vryce vouching for its authenticity.

Originally Posted by (the_logos @ bar) Is it so inconceivable that some forum posters might actually be wrong about something as complicated as intellectual property and licensing?

There is a fundamental difference between laws and ethics. I reckon the majority of those who have feelings on the subject (myself included) find moral fault with the actions of Medievia.

I have released a couple of codebases to the public domain. Is stripping out the credits and claiming them as your own legal? Yes. Is it ethical by most ethical standards? No.

Originally Posted by (the_logos @ foo) Since when is there expected to be no barrier between thought and mouth? I don't walk down the street screaming insults at people whose cars bear pro-Bush stickers, and the issues there are so serious as to make Medievia's alleged crimes absolutely, completely inconsequential.

The veracity of one crime does not diminish that of another. If you'd like to address specific insulting posters then feel free, but you're misunderstanding if you think I am defending the actions of either side. The flames were deleted at the same time Soleil was banned. Both sides have fault: One for breaking the general forum rules, the other for earning such an incredible level of disrespect in the community.

Originally Posted by (the_logos @ foo) Wouldn't the fair way to stop flames be to punish the people issuing the flames rather than punish the victim?

That would be a fair way to stop the flames, surely, but it would not stem the overall disrespect. This is an issue far larger than a mere flame war or two, and any punitive actions taken must keep this in mind.

[Traithe]

Originally Posted by (the_logos @ June 06 2005,14:11) In my personal ethical system plagiarism is wrong.

Sure - and a healthy dose of moral relativism is a good thing, as it's conducive to civilized discussion and peaceful resolution of conflicts in and between socities.

However, what plagiarism really breaks down to is two distinct acts: 1) theft (by depriving the creator of either the work or its concomitant benefits, and accruing them to yourself), and 2) misrepresentation (by intentionally presenting the work as yours when you know it isn't).

Assuming as a given the lack of any reliable moral objectivity, I still challenge you to find a single society or societal set of ethics (i.e. one not inherently opposed to society or the rule of law, such as anarchism) that does not treat these two sorts of acts as immoral ones.

Put another way, I really don't much care that 1% of the world's population or whatever is anarchist and doesn't treat these things as morally wrong. The only people I really care about are reasonable members of society, i.e. the overwhelming majority of the world's population, and in that case an equally overwhelming majority will assert that these two sorts of acts are ethical wrongdoings.

In fact, I suspect that if you ask Vryce and Soleil their stance on theft and misrepresentation, they'd assert in no uncertain terms that both acts are morally wrong. If Soleil's ambivalence and reluctance to answer my very simple and straightforward question earlier in this thread are any indication, I imagine that this sits very uneasily with them in light of their past (and continuing) acts.

[Sinuhe]

Traithe wrote:  June 06 2005,19:43    

Originally Posted by However, what plagiarism really breaks down to is two distinct acts: 1) theft (by depriving the creator of either the work or its concomitant benefits, and accruing them to yourself), and 2) misrepresentation (by intentionally presenting the work as yours when you know it isn't).

Well said, Traithe.

A large number of free muds are traditionally founded, partly or completely, on ‘fan fiction’. This has traditionally been accepted in the Mud community, whereas plagiarism, stealing of code and areas and removing of credits always have been shunned by the same community.

The difference should be obvious to anyone. ‘Fan fiction’ honours and reveres it roots. The reason the mud was started or the area created in the first place is that the creator was so taken with the book or movie that he wants to share his enthusiasm with a greater audience.

They use the original names and settings as a spin-off, and create new material inspired by it. They never try to hide the origin of their inspiration. On the contrary, they try very hard to advertise it, to get more supporters for their favourite author, and more readers for his or her books. The copyright holders are most likely aware of this fact, which could be one reason why they hardly ever respond to direct requests to use their material as theme for a mud. They don’t really mind the free advertising they get. But on the other hand they don’t want to sanction it officially, in case that would set an unwanted precedence, if they some time in the future wanted to allow some commercial game to be based on their work. (This is of course just a personal theory of mine, but a rather plausible one. Why else would they not say plain ‘NO, you are not allowed to do that, and if you do we will sue you for copyright infringement’ when asked directly by a Mud owner?)

A typical fan-fiction mud or area always gives credit to its roots, perhaps worded something like this:

‘This zone/area was inspired by the awesome Lord of the Rings Trilogy by Tolkien. If you are not yet familiar with these wonderful books, you should go and purchase them and read them now. Hopefully this game will inspire you to do so, and in this way give something back to the original that has inspired us to create this mud.’

A code stealer on the other hand does everything to hide the connections to the original that he stole. The first action is of course to remove the credits and copyrights statement, and replace them with his own name. The next task is to go through the code systematically, primarily to change as many of the openly displayed messages as possible, but also to remove all hidden references to the original code, in case someone got hold of their source code. This of course takes a lot of time and effort to do, at the expense of actually developing any new and original additional code. Since the code has so many lines, they sometimes slip up, and leave something incriminating in there by mistake. This is what happened with the amusing references to Tinymuds and its creators that KaVir and the other viewers found when going through the Medievia code.

But this was long ago. By now, over 10 years later, Vryce has had ample time to finish this work, and make sure that there are no lasting references to the code he stole. This is when he proudly announces that Medievia is now ‘totally rewritten’ and ‘100 % original’. Sure, he added a lot of new code too, but however much he adds that never changes the fact that the code still is and always will be a Diku derivative.

And here comes the ultimate insult. Not only does he remove the credits, he also insults the origin in the official history of Medievia, that Soleil so obligingly linked to. Here is how they show their reverence to the code they stole and based on:

‘Medievia is not a DIKU mud. We got our feet wet 12 years ago with a Merc beta release in 1991. That was 26,000 lines of programming, Medievia V is over 450,000 lines of programming. DIKU mud did not work when you used it as it was full of memory leaks, poor design and an architecture that would never scale up to what we needed. DIKU was basically ABER mud re-tooled. Merc then took DIKU code and re-tooled it again.’

... And then Vryce took Merc code and re-tooled it again ...

No wonder Soleil and Vryce will never get any respect on Mudlab, or for that matter from any decent mud developers.
It's like Tony Soprano buying a large house in an respectable neighbourhood and expecting to be regarded as an equal of his neighbours, who all know what his fortune was founded on.

[Soleil]

Originally Posted by If Soleil's ambivalence and reluctance to answer my very simple and straightforward question earlier in this thread are any indication, I imagine that this sits very uneasily with them in light of their past (and continuing) acts.

Nah, I didn't answer your question, as I explained earlier, because that would be Vryce's decision to make. Since I am not Vryce, I cannot answer for him. Despite the fact that he is my husband, we do not share the same mind, and sometimes not even the same opinions on things. Did you bother to email him to ask his opinion? Probably not.

In addition, I didn't answer because every single thing I (or anyone else for that matter) writes on this forum can and most likely will be used against me somewhere down the road. I don't want to state something now and come back to bite me in the butt later if something of this nature would come to light again.

[Jeena]

The most amusing thing about this is that the people who are so indignant about an alleged misconduct on the part of Medievia are not the people who are the supposed victims. Rather it is a random scattering of people who take every post with the word "Medievia" as flamebait no matter how intelligently written it is, or what it may have to contribute.
The bottom line is this. Until the issue is decided in a court of law (and according to the Diku team they don't care enough to cough up the money for that), any speculation here is just that, speculation.
I don't know about in other countries, but in the U.S. no forum can convict. No evidence posted on the Web out of context can be used as evidence in a proceeding.
Try to enjoy the boards people. Be civil and polite. Most people prefer to read posts that have intelligent dialog not nasty insult after insult after insult based on hearsay and snippets.
Everyone who posts here obviously has a lot to contribute to the community. The flames and those who are posting them are obvious to everyone no matter what side of the Medievia argument you come down on.  It's the same few people over and over again.

[KaVir]

Originally Posted by The most amusing thing about this is that the people who are so indignant about an alleged misconduct on the part of Medievia are not the people who are the supposed victims.

No, the only amusing thing (in a rather sad way) is the number people who are under the false belief that those who violate other people's mud licences don't affect them personally.

Ever tried dealing with people who remove the credits from their mud who, when cornered, give the excuse "If Medievia can do it, why can't I"? I have - many times.

Ever spoken to other mud developers who are working on really amazing projects, but they tell you they've no plans to ever release their work "because of muds like Medievia"? I have - many times.

Ever played a Diku3 derivative? Do you know why not?

[GuruPlayer]

Quote from Jeena:
"The bottom line is this. Until the issue is decided in a court of law (and according to the Diku team they don't care enough to cough up the money for that), any speculation here is just that, speculation. "

Do you even know who or what "Diku" is?  FYI: Diku refers to a university in Denmark & the Diku code that was developed by their students & was released to the public to use for free, the only stipulations were: 1. Give the Diku developers credit, & 2. Do not charge money to play the game (which includes pay for perks).  Now that university, who owns the rights, doesn't have the funds to pursue legal action in the US vs Medievia, which Medievia counts on, else they would probably lose if forced to show their code in court.  What did happen was the original Diku developers now refuse to release any future code versions due to the Medievia theft, which is what KaVir is referring to when he says "have you ever played a Diku3 derivative?"

By the way Jeena, try doing a little research before posting that there is no evidence...

[Valg]

Originally Posted by (Soleil @ June 06 2005,15:50) Originally Posted by They submitted to an independent code audit, Uhm, I'm not sure this is true.  I don't  remember Vryce offering up our code for inspection, ever.  The code that is out there and that is being used in all the comparisions is, by my knowledge, code that was obtained illegally.  I don't remember if it was someone who hacked in to get it or if one of our gods gave it away, but it was not given by Vryce to someone to audit.  It was so long ago now...

Well, it's Medievia IV code, as confirmed by signed statements by Michael A. Krause (Vryce):

http://www.arthmoor.com/med/fax1.jpg
http://www.arthmoor.com/med/fax2.jpg

Code comparisons prove that Medievia IV is a derivative work, created by starting with DIKU code and modifying it significantly.  (No one has claimed that Medievia V was written from scratch, or by any method other than being developed by modifying Medievia IV code.)  This makes it also a derivative work.  See the following link for the definition of a derivative work under US law:

http://law2.house.gov/uscode-....0%20%20

A number of code comparisons are available here, with statistics accompanying them:

http://www.arthmoor.com/med/

One I found particularly amusing was this comparison of a simple file:

http://www.arthmoor.com/med/limits.txt

Exactly the same, except Medievia took the time to rip out the author's names and put their own in.

How do you explain this, Soleil?