KaVir raised a very interesting question in the other DIKU thread:

Probably the two main responses to this question would be:

1) The Mudding Community would be better off if DIKU had never been. DIKU created the stock explosion, and is largely responsible for the fact that the majority of MUDs are of very low quality and are very poorly run. DIKU made it too easy to get a MUD running, and thus too many people were running them that had no business doing so. As a result, a potential new MUDder had a high likelihood of landing on one of these crap/stock MUDs the first few times they tried out MUDding, and would simply quit before finding a good one. DIKU also created a culture of people who thought they could run muds by cobbking together snippets and zones coded by other people. This created an overall "industry" dominated by unoriginal, uninspired games.

2) The Mudding community may not have even existed without DIKU. DIKU let thousands of MUDs get created that would never have been made otherwise. From this horde of muds, a few very good ones rose to the top and served as glimmering examples to other designers. DIKUs accessibility allowed the community to grow and flourish. From the humble beginnings of DIKU, all sorts of other mud engines evolved - including Everquest. DIKU played a very large role in creating the "MMO" market, and fostering its explosive growth. If DIKU had never been, we might still be waiting for the modern MUD and/or MMO to evolve.

I think those are the two major schools of thought on the issue. What are your thoughts and on which side do you come down?

My opinions on the matter is that without this explosion of "crap" stock games, and the ease to get a mud up and running the mud market would have been very limited and even more niche than it is today. DIKU has definately been a help to get people into the text-based gaming.

HOWEVER! Their non-profit license has also LIMITED the whole market. It has greatly reduced the amount of money that could have been flooding into the games, improving them, making their staff fulltimers, allowing better advertising and getting more people coming to the text-based games.

Nothing wrong with the codebase itself (i've even used it and have had a lot of fun and learning with it) but their license serves NO PURPOSE whatsoever and has only been bad for the community. It should have been under license where people could make profit from it. It would have been a blast for the text-based gaming.

Edit: And for people saying the license purpose is to somehow give profit to the diku crew. That is pure bull**** imo. I don't see any muds using their commercial engine. And whatever profit they made from that must be extremely small. If they wanted profit from it, it could have been handled so that you could BUY rights to make profit from the original codebase. That would seriously had given them a nice income.

Then people say it is a licsense between the university and the diku group where they were forced to use a non-profit clause on the codebase. Bull**** imo. I've never heard of any students making their own software (100% original) in classes, that couldn't use it as they want themselves. I would seriously like to hear that from their examinator or read their university policy regarding student's OWN software before i believe it.

It could also be argued that the licence has helped encourage mud developers to break away from the Diku architecture after a certain point, and build their own codebases from scratch. I can think of several mud developers who have done this, and I suspect their end results will be much more interesting than if they'd just carried on building new features around the limitations of the old architecture.

You should probably specify that you think the one clause dealing with profit is objectionable. I don't see how you could argue with stuff like "If you use our work, credit us thusly." I'm not sure what the DIKU team does for a living these days, but I'm confident that the credit they get from such a license makes their resume shine a little brighter.

Back to the broader point, I think you could argue that if DIKU didn't kick open the door when they did, text MUDs might not have taken off as a genre. As is, they're a niche market, and if they hadn't attracted so many innovators so rapidly, the genre might have missed its "window" and not gotten a foothold before the explosion of multiplayer graphical arcade-style games like Doom. I'm sure they would have still existed, but the MUD community would be a shadow of its current presence.

I think commercial interest is secondary to the innovation angle-- the community needed a working prototype before any buyers would have come along. It took a lot of sandbox work to show everyone what works and what doesn't, and there's no guarantee that a small number of commercial efforts would have outperformed the mass of noncommercial ones. It's also questionable that commercial entities would be interested in MUDs at all if it wasn't for the DIKU-aided explosion in overall MUD populations.

It could also be argued that the "no profit" clause may have helped keep the door open. Diku derivatives probably make up the bulk of todays muds, but very few of those muds are based on the original Diku - most are based on later generations such as Circle, Smaug, ROM, etc. If those muds had been able to profit from their code, I can't help but wonder how many of them would have sold licences, rather than giving the code out for free.

Valg wrote:
Well, that's largely only potentially true of commercial text MUDs post AOL going flat-rate circa 1997. Commercial text MUDs like Gemstone, Dragonrealms, Legends of Terris, etc would still have existed, and of course, a host of other commercial text MUDs that predate DIKU, like MUD, Avalon, Shades, etc would have been more or less unaffected by DIKU never existing.

-matt

I think I would probably lean more towards the second of the statements, that's what came to mind first. It wasn't the genesis of the whole thing, but it certainly facilitated the expansion. It allowed more people to get interested in running muds, because they could then say "well I have this great idea for how I'd like to do such a thing, let's see if it's possible" and similarly you had more options for players. The ease of setup is a big part of what allowed this to happen, and made it more than just a small corner of the internet (let's be honest, it still is...but it's a slightly larger small corner).

The problem expressed in the other statement is intimately tied in with this ease of startup though. More people were able to just get something going because they could, or because they didn't like how things were run where they were before, etc. That doesn't always lead to a quality experience. I know the first mud I played at had an owner who left and didn't turn over the keys to anyone, so it was hosted...but nobody had the power to make any changes whatsoever, fix bugs, add new content, or anything else. Kind of a problem. You got a lot of that in the backlash. Stock is good in that it gives you a base to work from, but...well yeah it is tough to make a really quality game using only stock. There's nothing to distinguish you from anywhere else. Initially a lot of people didn't really take that next step to add in their own original content...which created stagnation.

Without diku, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the same basic thing would have happened....it just would have taken more time. Someone probably would have cooked up a basic engine that people could use to run their games, and that would have been passed around--perhaps with a more or less restrictive license, who knows.

I'm pretty sure the mudding world would have been roughly
as well off, if not slightly better off.

Some of these posts seem to betray unawareness that
there are many different types of popular muds...not
just Diku derivatives. Take a look at:



LPMuds and Diku were both born roughly around the same
time, the early 90's. If Diku had never been born, people would
just have used LP more. Or something like it would have
been developed. Nature abhors a vacuum.

It may *seem* like the mud world belonged to Diku
and that it kicked open the doors of popularized
mudding, if Diku is all you knew. The LP world was
just as busy with its own flowering.

If you are unfamiliar with LP, let me assure you there are
many LPmuds out there, and people really do play them.
The classic example is Discworld, which (last I knew) averages
some 40 to 80 players at any given time. Sure, it used to
be nearer to 200, but muds in general have seen this
decline, not just Discworld, and not just LP. And don't make
me trot out Genesis. WTF knows how many players they
average.

To recap, I think there *might* have been fewer muds out
there sans Diku, but overall, it's not clear to me this
would have ben a bad thing.

As to LP being harder to set up and use than Diku, that's
hogwash. Maybe some crappy libs out there are tough,
but the old standards: Lima, Skylib, Dead Souls; are a breeze.

Without Diku, you'd just see a bunch of lame ass
Dragonball muds running Lima, instead of a bunch of lame
ass Dragonball muds running Diku.

-Crat

I am begining to believe that a lot of the discussion here that orbits around Diku simply ignores other multi-user hobby software. MOO's and Mush's and all the rest do not seem to get a lot of airtime here, and yet I have been told repeatedly that MOO code at least would be quite ammenable for game designing. TinyMux seems to be a good choice as well. Not only that, but the support for learning how to code Tinymux is as large as any out there, as far as I can see.

I think a lot too much is made of Diku. It and LP both benefit a great deal, whether people like to confess it or not, from their conceptual similarities to D&D in their most common implementations, in my opinion. Had either or both not come into being, people would have used one of the other various tools that have become available to more or less model D&D. The hobby itself would look very much like it does now, I think.

See

The similarity to D&D is certainly part of it, however I would say that the biggest reason for the popularity of Diku derived muds is how easy it is to get a finished game up and running. The original Diku came with a ready made world with spells, combat system, monsters to kill, treasure to collect etc. The same can be said of most LP mudlibs.

People who complain about the non commercial licensing of Diku and LP often overlook that there are many more codebases that allow commercial use just fine. Tiny, mux, mush, MOO, coldc and coolmud for example are all established codebases which allow commercial use, yet they require considerably more effort to get a game ready to play. I would say that is likely why they are far less popular.

One wonders though why LP in particular had a mudlib but no one seems interested in making a similar setup on these others.

Poking around MOO and MUX, there are foundational little code snippets here and there for charcters, character types and the like, but no one that I know of has gone on to build and make available a playable game.

If there is a playable world on MOO or MUX or any of these others, that would be the kind of thing I would love to see info on in the thread on Code and Codebases.

I think you are right. I think a big reason that DIKU dominates so many discussions on TMS, TMC, and elsewhere is a result of it being so incredibly easy to set up and expand with snippets and downloadable zones.

Even someone with virtually no skill with computers or game design can get a DIKU up and running pretty easily, and fill it with snippets and zones. This results in a ton of people who pay $5 for some mud hosting, rush to forums like TMS to put simultaneous posts in the Advertising for Players/Advertising for Coders forums, and then declare themself a "game developer."

Then, since they can't actually spend their time working on their game (since they don't know how to), they just occupy their time posting on MUD community forums. Also, since they have no success themself, they pile on every crusade against successful or commercial muds, because then they get to feel like its ok that their game stinks, since its not their fault. The successful and commercial games are all dirty cheaters in one way or another. The fact that their Crap Stock MUD has no players is because these successful games are cheating to steal players that should rightfully be theirs! This includes high rankings that the successful muds don't deserve. There needs to be a way for even the crappy stock muds to get listed on the front page!

They get stroked by the other "admins" like themselves, and they get to feel like they are part of the big "We" fighting against the ugly "Them."

The net result of this is a totally stagnant community where few people with skill or talent are interested in participating. The ancillary result of this is that general MUD issues and topics get dominated by DIKU stuff.

The funny thing is, it didn't used to be this way. Back in the day, the .diku usenet newsgroup didn't really get more traffic than many of the other rec.games.mud.* groups. But as time has gone on, even with little or no development of DIKU and its progeny, the incredible ease in setup/expansion-via-snippet has made its influence GROW (in a weird, sick way).

Unfortunately, this also makes it harder for newer, more viable MUD engines to get noticed. Many of the ones you've already mentioned here and in other threads really deserve more attention than they get. Sadly, its really hard for them to flourish amongst the horribly overgrown bed of weeds (DIKU Stock Muds).

Diku is quite good for beginners, as it's very quick and easy to get something up and running. It's also flexible enough that a skilled programmer can do a lot with it, and (being primarily hardcoded) provides a good platform for those with prior programming knowledge.

On the other hand, serious (and truly professional) mud developers create their muds completely from scratch, or purchase licences from other people who have done so.

This leaves LPmud in a sort of "middle ground", for those who want something more flexible than Diku (and don't mind a bit of extra work to get there), but lack the time and/or skill to create their game completely from scratch. It's particularly good for those who don't have very strong programming skills, as the development environment is usually very robust, and already supports a lot of things which - in a Diku or scratch-written mud - would have to be implemented manually.

I think you're pretty much right on in that analysis KaVir. It elucidates my point, that the ease with with DIKU can be set up (and expanded with downloadable snippets and zones) contributes to an artificial exaggeration of its importance and positive impact on MUDding as a whole.

I definitely think DIKU is important and has had some positive influence in certain areas.

But I think it is also true that it has had huge negative impacts as well - in the ways that have already been discussed.

But more importantly, I think if DIKU has never existed, the effect on the MUD community would probably be very limited, or perhaps somewhat positive. If it had not existed, the other engines, codebases, and options would have filled the void, and may even have resulted in less horrible stock muds and less wanna-be admins polluting MUD communities and forums like this one.

I'm not sure I agree.

Granted, I have no numbers of any kind to back this up, but my theory of the moment is this:

1) Mudding is a hobby largely spread by word-of-mouth.
2) People starting half-assed lame stock DIKUs got friends of theirs into it, probably people who wouldn't otherwise have been exposed to MUDs.
3) Some percentage of those people were later exposed to Avalon et. al. and thought "Wow, this is way better than my buddy's MUD. I'll play this instead."

I think the hobby has been grown to some degree due to the existance and relative ease-of-use of DIKU, and that it's probably that non-DIKU-related MUDs have still seen some benefit from it.

I think that's a good point, especially when you consider that well-developed games (of any codebase) aren't going to lose players to half-assed stock MUDs (of any codebase). It's a one-way street.

If 5,000 stock DIKU MUDs appeared tomorrow, each with 10 players, I'd view that as a plus for us.

The only thing wrong with open-source licenses is that those people believed, back then, that "information wants to be free."

They were Internet Hippies, in other words, and failed to realize it. They also failed to realize that most communes...

Fail.

I agree with the sentiment that without DIKU, something else would have come along. That something might not have been free, especially to players. Hobbyist volunteers who run free games are a different breed than people who want to profit from their work. DIKU licensers were idealists. Sadly, the world just doesn't work that way.

If not for DIKU, I simply wouldn't be mudding. At the point in time that I was willing to venture out past my BBS's and Zork, no other codebase (to my thirteen year old mind) was even remotely worth my while.

Now granted, since then, I've branched out and learned to like a variety of MU* codebases. But I never would have gotten that opportunity if it wasn't for the DIKU creators because I would have found another genre to entertain me.

I'm currently studying at the University of Sunderland in the UK, and I just thought I'd post a little bit in reply to this point you brought up. Please bear in mind that it's been many years since I last read the DIKU license so I have no idea if they were aiming it at the general masses or the university they were at.

The course I'm doing at university is a teaching one, and as such we're required to produce a fair few packages used to aid in teaching I.T to secondary school children (aged 11-18). We were told by the university that ANY software produced because of/for our assignments, or using software that they provided, or done using hardware supplied by the university (cameras, computers, etc) meant that the software effectively belonged to the university. This, in part, has to do with the educational license the university has to adhere to in exchange for getting software at a discount and being able to give out free copies to its students. It would also mean that should I code a completely unique MUD on one of the universities computers, or on my own using software they provided me, it belongs to the university.

Of course, some of the older students and I were a little suprised and annoyed by this, but having talked to other students from around the country this appears to be standard in UK universities these days and has been for a considerable amount of time. Going on the premise that European universities are generally more similar to their UK counterparts than their American ones, it would be reasonable to assume that the DIKU team were also under such strictures as we find ourselves in now.

I'm certainly not saying that it was the case, but such situations do exist and have cropped up from time to time. It's one of the reasons I've been careful with what programs I've used to create things for my own use since I've been at the university.