Misleading questions? Your quote from one of the diku authors is meaningless unless it can be corroborated and presented in a complete manner. Even then we'd probably see the questions were misleading, as the crucial term of the contract, "profit", was not mentioned in your quotes.

And those quotes are the basis for practically every posting against rewarding in-game donations. Just partial extracts of answers when we don't even know what the questions were.

I provided the full questions and answers, to a scenario that is very similar to that of Aardwolf. I cannot see how the quotes could have made the situation any clearer (and yes, the did include "profit") - but if you believe I made them up, you are of course free to contact the Diku team yourself and ask their opinion.

Are the full quotes still up somewhere?

Mainly suggesting you are mis-representing the quotes.  But anything's possible as the full exchange hasn't been posted that I have seen.  Granted I can't stand most of these ludicrous arguments and don't read everything...

I will start off by admitting this is my first post and that I am an Aardwolf player, so if you want to you can completely ignore me.

I have been following this thread for a while now and one thing has been troubling me.  Has the licence been changed to reflect the supposed intent of the Diku team?  Alternatively, does it now include the phrase "postings on the TopMudSites.com discussion database are legally binding" or words to that effect?

If not then all the discussion on here is pretty much meaningless, isn't it?

As someone who runs an LP Mud and does neither charge any money for anything nor accepts donations, I do not really have any interest in interpreting the DIKU license one way or another, but after reading through many of the related threads, though, I think you can summarize the whole thing pretty easily:

"Is it legal to accept donations in exchange for in-game benefits as long as you do not make any profit (revenues after subtracting costs)?" - Possible, since the DIKU license is extremely poorly worded in that matter.

"Is it RIGHT to accept donations as stated above?" - No, because Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt stated that it was not the DIKU-team's intention to allow that kind of thing; everyone who runs a DIKU-derivative profits from the work he and his friends invested many years ago and therefore should respect their opinion in that matter.

As we all know, legal does not automatically mean right and vice versa. Additionally, I'm not a lawyer, so I have no clue what would happen in a court. But that's the conclusion I have as someone unbiased when watching the whole discussion.

I am not. They are extremely clear, and I have spoken to the Diku team at considerable length about this issue. I have posted the quotes at least twice now, include once in direct response to your request to read them. If you're not going to read them here, where should I post them that you won't conveniently forget next time?

It mentions profit "in any possible way". Gross profit is a "possible way". This point has been covered again and again and again. Please at least have the good manners to read the thread before posting.

I appreciate the support of people both on/off Aardwolf here, but have read several statements giving the implication that someone is 'speaking on my behalf' when in fact they are not. For example, I don't recall ever describing our listing on TMS as an 'experiment'.

Nothing new is going to be said here -- if the Aardwolf folks really want to help, then do so by reading the whole thread and then staying out of it, or even better, help with testing of the new codebase as it is developed.

In the meantime, ownership of the license itself is not clear. DIKU university don't care enough to even acknowledge four emails sent over a period of several weeks questioning intellectual property of university projects. The DIKU coders have been claiming "violation" for close on 10 years now at Medievia and if KaVir's site is authentic, even have identical comments in source code to prove it, yet have made no claim on their works. Then there is the whole situation of this "clarification" of intentions -- intentions can have a tendency to change scope a little once you release a commercial product competing with your formerly free version.

If I had seen those intentions years ago, would I have let Aardwolf grow to the point it did? Probably not. I can't go back in time now though - only move forward with the new code. If the whole situation 'discourages' people from releasing code that is unfortunate, one would hope it would instead encourage them to write better licenses and make their intentions crystal clear from the start.

Nope. Although if Aardwolf is a "hobby" rather than a "business", it will also have to pay tax on all of its income. Also, after three years of yielding an income, a hobby is considered a business and you are required to report it as self-employment income. How long did you say Aardwolf had been selling in-game gear, again?

Not at all. Although Aardwolf is hardly the first mud to jump into first position so quickly, it was the first mud for quite a while that had managed to knock Achaea from that spot. You'll notice that most of us were cheering it on (even the owner of Achaea) until someone pointed out that it was violating the license. What we are "irritated" by is people who flaunt mud licenses, thus discouraging other mud developers for contributing back into the community.

I am not crying "Ban Aardwolf", I am simply pointing out that they are violating the Diku license. And FYI, Medievia was also banned for violating the license.

"Ownership of the license"? Surely you mean ownership of copyright? Diku is registered with the US Copyright office, so I'm not sure how much clearer ownership could be...

So um, does that mean I get to have sex with Kastagaar's brain? Pretty please? With sugar and a cherry on top? Oh wait - skip the cherry. I lost that to mudsex years ago <cough>

Quite obviously because the vast majority of MUDs nowadays are DIKUratives of one brand or another, while there are just a handful or two of other major code family MUDs left.

And on the specific matter of LP, this is additionally due to the fact that there are LP implementations which do allow commercial usage. Which has tremendously helped clear matters, as those who wish to make a profit have means and ways to do so without recoding a full MUD from scratch.

Finally, because the actually only instance of alleged license violation in the LP world I'm aware of (not that I have exhaustive knowledge, mind you) has supposedly been resolved between the copyright holder and the alleged violator, and no credible evidence to the contrary has ever surfaced - Something quite different from the DIKU situation where the copyright holders have, in the past, and on several occasions, spoken out clearly against certain types of violators.

The DIKUMud licence uses the compound verb "make profit"*, not the noun "profit".


*with adverbial construct, "in any possibly way", to reiterate.

Just a question to Kavir I think a lot of people are interested in.

Is Aardwolf going to get banned?

Reasons I ask is.....
1. Kavir claims he supports the intentions of copyright holders. In the past this has meant banning copyright violaters from the website. Has the amount of support changed over the years? Instead has Kavir decided to merely argue the DIKU maker's point and let copyright violators remain on the site?

2. If some violators are allowed to stay, shouldn't all violaters be allowed to stay?

After all, I could make a mud, join TMS, break the copyright, then once I get caught claim I'm making a new codebase from scratch (and/or stall for a few extra months and still be listed and still get money, with the possible end result of having a new codebase).

It has nothing to do with 'getting caught'. The new codebase was planned and in development long before Aardwolf was listed on TMS. Many people can confirm this (of course, they're all Aardwolf players, so you won't believe a word they say anyway right?).  The original project was actually started in 1999 in Java and shelved due to lack of time. It was revived earlier this year and after hitting a wall with Java performance (mostly related to bugs in the native ZLIB implementation and lack of performance of a 100% Java ZLIB), work began on moving to C.

Once again, there are daily backups showing code progression, CVS logs and full source code available for review by an independant third party under NDA.  Why is this necessary? Because people like you have apparently already decided ahead of time what the new code will and will not be.

Attack us for rewarding donations during a limited time period a couple of times a year if you believe that is wrong, but please don't attack us for something you speculate we might do in the future.

Thank you.

I'm a moderator for two of the discussion forums, not the board owner - you'd have to speak to Synozeer about that.

On one occasion - and that was a "big fish", which violated all aspects of the license. It also took a huge amount of work to gather all the evidence together so that I could present it to Synozeer.

Most are clear-cut cases, which can be cleared up quickly enough. Others, such as this one, take time and effort - something which I'd rather spend on my own mud.

I'm not entierly sure, but I don't think it is really up to kavir wether a site is banned from TMS or not...

I do not blame the TMS staff either to keep them listed currently. They get money from it, and as it has been said, aardwolf is not doing anything legally wrong, until the matter has been through a court of law...?

However, if the "mud community" and its members got together and actually asked sites like TMS to remove a listing like aardwolf, they probably will.

Now, instead of them being banned from the list right now, i would personally see a case and get some VALID information wether or not they are actually breaking a licence before any action is taken. And if they are not, you'll get a vote from me aardwolf!

Main Entry: 2profit
Date: 14th century
intransitive senses
1 : to be of service or advantage : AVAIL
2 : to derive benefit : GAIN
3 : to make a profit
transitive senses : to be of service to : BENEFIT

This is the verb form of profit. If you mean to say that this is the word the DikuTeam intended to use, then every single mud derived form their source code is in violation. If their mud is listed in TMS or any other site, they are profiting from such sites because they are GAINING new players. Gain = Profit.