I'll get it started by replying to something Emil wrote in another thread. He wrote:
Well, here's the thing. To me, it seems that your absolutist "I am right and anyone who disagrees is immoral and unethical" is fundamentally flawed insofar as your ethics are your own, and not universal, and your (and my, and everybody else's involved in the debate that I'm aware of) understanding of intellectual property, and thus the DIKU license generally and how it interacts with existing case law, is minimal. Nobody participating in this debate is an intellectual property expert, at all. IP law is incredibly complex, and when we've needed to use experts in it.

I've been advised, by an expert, that the DIKU license is so seriously flawed it won't hold up, but of course, one can find experts to put forth nearly any opinion. That's why we have the civil court system: Because there can be -legitimate- disagreement about issues like this. Both sides can legitimately and ethically believe they are correct. A judge then decides who will is correct under the eyes of the law, and, pending appeals of course, that's that.

All I'm saying is that this is a very complicated issue, and to ignore all that we don't know about IP law is to really over-simplify.

I guess I'd have to ask how you know that. I don't see how you can know that everyone who uses DIKU has sent the creators an email or snail mail.

--matt

So, as for the so-called moral/ethical issue around the DIKU license, some claim that following it (which tends to mean following their personal interpretation of it rather than someone else's) is a moral imperative.

I'd suggest that it's pretty hard to claim some sort of universal moral or ethical obligation to follow IP laws generally. Now, I personally am as stringent as anyone you've ever met when it comes to IP law. I don't illegally download music, I don't pirate software, etc. Not doing those things is part of my moral system.

But who am I to tell some Chinese peasant that it is immoral for him to xerox a book and sell it? Intellectual property as currently instantiated in the West is a very modern, Western-centric notion, and I guess I fail to see why the West's take on IP is somehow morally superior to much of the East, where IP has no moral, ethical, or practical legal force. There's an extreme difference there, but the same logic is applicable to this discussion. Who are you to tell someone that your view of the morality regarding something as specific as 'derivative works' is the right one? The whole idea of derivative works really has no bearing or history outside of legal systems to begin with. Certainly, no religion or major school of ethical thought has, as a tenet, anything regarding use of derivative works that I'm aware of.

And you know, those who fall back to the ethical or moral argument when they feel that the legal argument may be shaky are engaging in a bit of fuzzy thinking, I feel. What's the basis for an ethical or moral judgement on intellectual property if not the law? I'm not really aware of any major school of ethical thought which recognizes the lack of intellectual property protection as being somehow 'wrong' or unethical. IP law exists for a practical purpose, not a moral or ethical one.

--matt

This shouldn't even be up for discussion. We all well know what the DIKU authors meant with their license. It has been stated time and time again by them. The fact that someone says it may be legally flawed, to most of us, is irrelevant.

Again, this is proven by the majority of DIKU mud owners honoring this "legally" flawed document. Call us idealists, call us idiots. I could care a less... Its simply the right thing to do.

I feel sorry for those of you who think otherwise.

Enjoy,
Splork

One sociological basis for an ethical or moral judgement within a given society is whether or not a said action is considered socially acceptable. This is a basic concept of sociology.

Example; In Ancient Greek society, it was socially acceptable for a Master of a Given Craft to follow certain social guidelines. Firstly, he must be Male(obviously to suggest this in modern American society would be considered unethical by many and not socially acceptable). Also, he must have undergone an apprenticeship before being considered a Master. This means that he must have moved in with a Craft Master, and that part of his apprenticeship meant that he was often forced to have a homosexual relationship with his Master. In modern American society, this also would be considered unethical(and actually, illegal).

---

So the ethics of this issue could be re-stated this way; it would appear that the vast majority of vocal members of the online MUD social society have made the decision(whether actually backed up in court or not) that it is, indeed, not socially acceptable(within our community) to use even an altered DIKU codebase(like Medievia's, for example) as a method of capital gain. In this sense, the ethics of this topic seem to be related to sociology.

Arguing that it should not be considered unethical merely means that you are trying to change the social norm; the same would be true, in America, if I were to argue that sexual equality in the workplace should not be the rule-of-thumb. However, I would find social resistance to this suggestion, as is the case in the MUDing community any-time someone such as Matt tries to insinuate(or even outright state) that Medievia and such MUDs have not acted unethically.

I have followed this thread over the years and as many here have heard all kind of arguments pro and anti DIKU license. Since those who breach the license have not been sued and it appears to be that there is no interest whatsoever on doing so from part of the authors or the school that seems to own the code we cannot posibly come to a final answer to the question posed by the_logos.

That said, here are my thoughts on the subject. There are two different standards that are followed in here when discussing this or similar topics.

One is the legal one, most frequently quoted by people who are in business and seem to be required to operate in the "what does the law say about it?" sphere. The main argument I have heard here is that the license is flawed, it does not forbid what the authors seemingly wanted to forbid (or claimed they wanted to after they were told it was poorly spelled out), a court would "probably not" rule in favor of the DIKU team or license holder because of this fact.

It is my opinion that from a practical point of view this is true and will remain true until the license holder sues the first company or individual and wins.

The other standard is the so-called moral standard, and it consists on reading and understanding the license according to the spirit of what was being written, not dwelling too long on exact definitions of particular words the authors chose to word their license document. The main view here, as I perceive it, is that the license forbids any form of personal gain from the game, which basically means, if you make money out of the game that would buy your weekend party nights you are violating the license. Furthermore, some people interpret it to mean that you should not hold comercial exchange or trade (or whatever the appropriate term is) with the code and virtual objects created with the code. This later part is a bit more confusing, since it is a particular way to interpret
basically assuming that a virtual item or good is part of dikumud.

This is the most voiced standard, mostly by admins or developers for non-comercial MUDs who work or have worked with DIKU derivative code, and who fully feel they have followed the license according to this interpretation. I believe one reason why there are more people with this point of view than with the so-called legal one is that there are more people who run their MUDs non-comercially-spirited (money comming in is used for upkeep, bandwidth, machine, etc.) than people who run MUDs as a business.

I personally believe it is healthy to have comunity standards that are above the minimum legal standards, this means I agree that the spirit of the license should be followed up to the reasonable extent and that if someone wishes to be an active part of "this" comunity (ie. TMS forum members) it would be expected of them to adhere to this view or at least be reasonably close to adhering (notice the unfortune of having to "pick" words that can be interpreted in a zillion different ways, as "reasonably"). I think this is appropriate since, even if nobody has ever been found "guilty of DIKU license breaking" by a judge anywhere that I am aware of, the forum may police itself (through the site owner) to whatever standards the owner wishes to declare minimum.

To summarise, there are two standards, a so-called legal one and a so-called moral one. Each of these standards is practically applied on different grounds, a court of law or everyday internet trade for the first, within a comunity sharing the moral standard for the second. It is my opinion that both views are quite correct, within their own ground and that the problem occurs when one tries to apply a standard outside of its ground of validity. Even if one tried to increase the reach of one of the standards to include the others ground, people would still reject the outcome; people will not stop considering Medievia is using DIKU derivative work without aknowledging it even if they won in a civil court after being sued by the DIKU team or school; people will not stop their comercial practices if the site owner and every single suscriber here declares it immoral to breach the DIKU license's spirit, this will not happen until they get sued and forced to stop by a court of law.

I have a question for those of you with more time to do google searches or with more factual knowledge of cases like this:

Is there any precedent of a weak or seemingly flawed license being upheld in court based on the intent of the author rather than the actual exact wording?

If yes, could you please provide us with some links where we could review the case? (if it is a public record)


Other thing I wanted to ask,

Is the case of banning certain interpretation of the DIKU license within this comunity that much different from a specific organized religion forbidding specific sexual practices that are otherwise socially accepted?

(In my opinion the two cases are very similar, and this is what makes me think that IF the forum owner decided to enforce certain particular interpretation as condition for membership, he would be in his right to do so)

Edited to fix a typo

I'm fairly new to this discussion, I'd just like to know why Medivia do not wish to credit the Diku authors?

Is it because they claim their work is not of Diku origin?

If so, has it been proven that their claim is wrong?

Sorry, just trying to catch up with what everyone's talking about. I'm sure these questions have been answered somewhere else.

It is also the interpretation given by the Diku team, which is probably the main reason why it is the most voiced.

See here (court case at the end of my quote):

"A software licence is not necessarily a contract. It can be, but that requires a couple of preconditions to be satisfied. One of those preconditions is the existence of consideration on both sides. Consideration is a legal concept that simply means a quid-pro-quo, or something of value given by each party in exchange for what the other party provides. In the case of open source software, there usually isn't anything provided by the licensee of the software (that is, the person who uses it) back to the licensor (usually, the person who wrote it). As a consequence of this lack of consideration there is no contract between the licensee and licensor."

"Because the licensee hasn't given any consideration in exchange for the software, the licence can be revoked by the licensor at any time simply by giving notice to the licensee."

(Wood v Leadbitter (1845) 13 M & W 838)

Back in 1995 they started selling in-game equipment. When it was pointed out to them that this violated the Diku licence, they stripped out the credits, renamed themselves as "Medievia IV", and claimed that they'd rewritten the mud from scratch and that the Diku licence therefore no longer applied to them.

Yes, . They've responded by renaming themselves as "Medievia V" and claiming that they've rewritten the mud from scratch (again).

Regarding the whole "The Diku licence won't hold up in court" thing, this link provides some interesting points:



It's in regard to the GPL, but the situation is very much the same, as both the GPL and diku licence are licences and not contracts.

The following is quoted from Eben Moglen, the Free Software Foundation's attorney:

"The GPL, however, is a true copyright license: a unilateral permission, in which no obligations are reciprocally required by the licensor. Copyright holders of computer programs are given, by the Copyright Act, exclusive right to copy, modify and redistribute their programs. The GPL, reduced to its essence, says: 'You may copy, modify and redistribute this software, whether modified or unmodified, freely. But if you redistribute it, in modified or unmodified form, your permission extends only to distribution under the terms of this license. If you violate the terms of this license, all permission is withdrawn.'"

"Because the GPL does not require any promises in return from licensees, it does not need contract enforcement in order to work. A GPL licensor doesn't say in the event of trouble "But, judge, the licensee promised me he wouldn't do what he's doing now." The licensor plaintiff says 'Judge, the defendant is redistributing my copyrighted work without permission.' The defendant can then either agree that he has no permission, in which case he loses, or assert that his permission is the GPL, in which case he must show that he is obeying its terms. A defendant cannot simultaneously assert that the GPL is valid permission for his distribution and also assert that it is not a valid copyright license, which is why defendants do not 'challenge' the GPL."

In summary: The Diku licence is the only thing giving permission to use DikuMUD. If the Diku licence were proven invalid, then you wouldn't have permission to use DikuMUD, and the mud would therefore be a copyright infingement. You can't use the usual contract law defences, because the lack of consideration means that the Diku licence is not a contract.

The DIKU team, whether or not they have been extremely active in the community in the past few years, have provided a source codebase that has allowed for the creation of hundreds of online games. Some of the best online text rpgs were created using their work, which they charge nothing for(unlike engines like Rapture, that charge thousands and thousands to use). Their only request, in providing a free game-making codebase, is that MUDs do not use their work in order to turn a profit of their own.

The DIKU team has given a great resource to this community, and has helped this community arguably more than any other single, small team. They have allowed thousands and thousands of players free fun.

The community, as a whole, has therefor embraced their wishes and vehemetly defended the DIKU license. It is for these reasons that it is deemed socially unacceptable or unethical, within our text-rpg community, to do what games like Medievia has done.

It is simple. DIKU is a gift - they ask for next-to-nothing in return for its use. Those of us who appreciate this gift become very defensive when it is abused; hence why any suggestion that the DIKU license is unimportant is strongly resisted here.

---

Beyond that, KaVir summed up my sentiments to the law-based arguments against the license; the DIKU license is the only thing that gives permission for its use. If the license is invalid, so is every MUD that uses it.

Since you have probably reviewed this subject much more than I will ever do, how would , found in the original link you posted, apply if DIKU changed the wording of the license? (which they attempted to do later on when they realiced their original license was badly worded)

I guess I need to reiterate that I think pretty much the same things, as that is why I personally chose not to go down that road. I will ask you this though. What sort of favor is it that you do when in return for the use of your software, you demand that no one ever make any money out of it? That demand, in and of itself, changes it from a free gift to be thankful about and into a sort of trap. You can use this as a shortcut to have fun, but run the risk of having to redo a lot of work from scratch later on if you discover that your talents as a developer are such that you could make a living at it, or you can start cold trying to code a game despite the fact that you are not a trained programmer.

It's not a favor they did me. Lars did me all the favors anyhow, and I to this day prefer the LP muds. I have read somewhere though that the first mud you ever play will have lasting effects on what you envision as the perfect mud, and I confess this is true of me. I played Ancient Anguish for years. I love that old game. I can still go back today and visit ol' Meaty and get a grin out of it. Or the librarian. lol...

Anyhow, point being, it was not some sort of favor. Obviously they had a dream and the dream has turned into a nightmare. I honestly wish they would at this point come out publically and give all the people who ahve not broken their license the same opportunities as those they have given those who did by virtue of not choosing to try to enforce it. The endless arguing is a blot on the community.

Someone has commented somewhere as to why the GPL has not benefited the mud community much. AIME has been rusting in Sourceforge for years. I kind of wish more people would give Coffeemud a try. I really think in the hands of a decent builder it could rock the socks off a few muds out there charging money.

No argument here.

Apprently this is not true, though, as huge numbers of people disagree with this statement, which in turn explains how this thread got here. Understand, when you give something with strings attached, some people who don't mind the strings will be grateful. Others will resent it because you have led them to the brink of something and then told them not to take a sip. Fundamentally, what IS the point of "giving" something with the stipulation that no one ever use it to make money? What other "gift" do we do that with? What does someone who has spent countless hours learning this gift do when they realize they have come to a point where they must either repeat thousands of hours of their OWN work, or else go ahead and use some of your work so that they can make use of all the good things they did on their own? Consistently, the Diku faction minimalizes what others have done for "this community". How many thousands of lines of code does someone have to add before they too have contributed? How many tens of thousands?

For a person like that, the "gift" becomes a ball and chain and I for one can understand how one could easily be tempted to test the waters, and I will not demonize such a person. All I can do is confirm along with you that I think that was the weak, lazy way out. But given that the Diku team have not involved themselves in the ongoing evolution of the community, I have less and less sympathy for a wrong done to people who, frankly, do not appear to care one way or the other.

People are trying to discuss this aspect, and from what I have seen so far, you are not getting it. No offense, but the bottom line is as a work of writing, they have no right to dictate what people do with the compiled code. This is the difference between the Diku license and GPL. GPL offers things free to copy, and you can use them as you wish. You merely may not charge to further distribute. You can add and still use, but if you choose to distribute, you must make your own additions GPL as well. It is fashioned to operate on the half of the law that copyright has anything to do with. In order to dictate what people do with the compiled code, they need a patent. Since the copying happens BEFORE the compilation, people are never in violation until after the fact, and as long as they do not then try to sell the code itself, there is really nothing the license can do about it. Or at least, tat is, so far, my understanding.

I took this slightly out of order because I want to once more reiterate that I am not saying that Diku doesn't mean A LOT to the hobby in general. That is something that I do not intend to lose sight of. Still, Diku was written in the 80's, and it is the latter half of the 00's now. Things have moved forward, evolved, changed and grown, and I can't help but wish the Diku team would do that too, and either enter the fray actively or come out publicly with what it is exactly, if anything, they intend to do about Medievia or anyone else who has violated the spirit of what they intended. I think it is a real and tangible drag to the hobby when people come and play muds, get interested in making one themselves, basically taking the "Dungeon Master" roll of online rpg'ing, only to find that not only are they in for a lot of work, but if they are not carefull with how they fund the hobby, they might be in some sort of violation of the law, or at least of some sort of amorphous ethical consideration that frankly is a little foreign, or at least was to me, until you get into the subject in a good bit of detail.

Heck, I still am confused at how the fairly common practice of taking donations for a mud's operating expenses doesn't violate the license. And then, after all, one can then define "operating expenses" as so many different things, up to and including a coder/admin. One interpretation of the license would make it impossible to run a Diku on a rented server, because the server operatoirs are after all making money off the mud renting their space. So... rent a server, risk getting your mud shut down?

Are the concerns of people like myself beginning to make any sense at all to you yet? Can you see how I am not trying to disrespect Diku, so much as just wishing this particularly ugly chapter in the history of the mud'ing hobby could come to some sort of final resolution?

Another thing... copyright law is based on the idea that the copyrights are for the good of society, to help stimulate intellectual persuits, specifically giving those who want to make money off their work the ability to do so. If you want to give something away, why not just GIVE it? So the ethical outrage is really based on nothing at all that is easily based on the reality even of the law or why it was formulated in the first place.

It is, if nothing else, a very poorly constructed and thought out and worded piece of work, that license.

I am so very sympathetic to you and others who took this thing in the spirit I have to imagine it was intended, and formed the foundation of the hobby. I wonder how it might have been different if done another way. We will never know, I think, if it would have been better or worse had they simply released the code into the world and given it a peck on the cheek and told it to go forth and multiply, or what. I don't know. I just know this topic makes people angry and bitter and resentful and that is not a good thing.

Two things.

What huge number in relation to this thread being started? Matt started this thread and the very, very vast majority of MUDers who comment on this topic(and even in this specific thread) support that the wishes of the DIKU team be honored, despite Matt's own personal point-of-view and agenda; in our community, the vast majority has spoken on this subject time and time again, which is the reason why breaking the DIKU license is considered unethical and socially unacceptable.

Secondly, and finally, DIKU is a gift - it is a free gift given to people who enjoy this RPG hobby as something other than a method of capital gain. If you enjoy the online text RPG hobby as a method of capital gain, you are simply asked by the team not to use their work for that capital gain. It is their wish, and really(beyond giving credit where credit is due), their only requirement for using their work. We are, as a community, lucky to have DIKU - if people seem to take a very strong stance on what the MUD-Community has deemed a social norm(respecting the DIKU license), it is because it is the least we can do in return for the use of the code.

In summary, though it's been said time and time again; the community here, largely, expects that MUD-designers will not use DIKU codebase a) to make capital profit, and b) without crediting the DIKU team. If you do not abide by these social guidelines, it is very possible for you be under ethical scrutiny from the community. Infact, as with all social ethics, it should be expected; trying to change this, fundamentally, is no different than me lobbying in America against equal rights for women in the workplace - no matter what my reasoning or point of view is, I am likely to be met with strong social resistance.

It's sociology, and human-kind has survived this way for many thousands of years.

On another note, in regards to arguing and arguments themselves...

Arguments are made to either defend the status-quo(in relation to a specific idea), or attempt to change it. As long as that is the focus of a given argument, it can only be positive, and never a "blot on the community". Blots happen when conversation breaks down and away from the argument itself.

Historically, the break down of communication of ideas can be the cause of anything ranging from personal insults to religious wars and ethnic genocide. Once again, it is sociology.

My stance is the same as that page you read. However, I was not around in the beginning (I came aboard in 1996), so I cannot comment from first-hand experience about anything that happened before then. I am also not a coder, so I have never really seen the code other than what Vryce may be working on in his office. I'm no code expert, nor do I want to be.

That won't happen until the time (if ever) a judge orders it to be done. Vryce does not really care that much about this argument to give the code out for audit, nor does he want to share the code with anyone outside of Medievia. Even our coders have to get notarized agreements to work on the code. As I know that an audit may lead to an end to this argument, I also know that Vryce won't do it. So, no need to discuss that further.

While that's certainly Medievia's choice, equally, you shouldn't be too surprised that people who've seen the last audit of the Med code and nothing since are going to (with some justification) assume there's still dirtiness there.

Because the legal aspects of this are pretty much irrelevant, imagine the MUD community as a frontier town with no police or search warrants. The old audit and everything that goes with it are the equivalent of everyone else in the town seeing a missing child enter your house and not come back out. No one in anarchy frontier town can force you to open your house and show them that the kid still isn't there, but until you do, it makes perfect sense for people to assume that she is.

I suspect that you don't care if the MUD community likes you, and that's your choice, but neither should you feel the victim when they attack you over things that are within your control.

You're missing the point. The Diku licence is not a contract. If the Diku team decide to take legal action against you, they will do so for copyright infringement. You can then hold up the Diku licence and say "But this gives me permission!". The Diku licence is your defence against lawsuits, not the other way around.

There's many more, me included, that disagree with the statement, and this even though we're not running DIKU's or even making money from our MUDs. And I don't have any "agenda" as far as Medievia or commercial MUDs are concerned.

In the case of Medievia, the DIKU driver is constantly being put in the spotlight, and all the other work that Medievia has done, is constantly ignored. I'm pretty sure that with the DIKU driver alone, Medievia wouldn't be able to get, nor keep, any paying customers. The reason people chose to play there, is because of all the content and auxiliary systems they themselves have added to the DIKU platform. If they were running yet-another-DIKU-clone with minimal customization, then I would agree that it's a blatant ripoff of the DIKU teams work, but that is not the case.

I find it strange (and also utterly restrictive) that 5% of the sourcecode (26k lines versus over 500k lines), most (if not all) of which has been recoded since, would still affect the use of the whole codebase. I do not think this is what "derivative work" refers to, and I'll reiterate again, that several lawyers have been asked for their opinion (I consulted one who specializes in international IPR litigation) and their professional opinion has been that the DIKU license would not apply in the case of Medievia. (It would apply were I to sell copies of it, and likely if I were to make profit by running a stock DIKU).

Well you could probably carry on running the mud, as long as you didn't make it open to the public, make any more changes to it, recompile it, make any backups, move it to a different server, give anyone else a copy, or anything else which is protected by copyright law. For all intents and purposes the mud would be dead, but you could carry on running a private version on your home computer.

In addition to the license issue and other ethical issues, there is an even more clear-cut case of plagiarism with Medievia. They are a DIKU derviative, per US law (Copyright Act, at 17 U.S.C. §101):

A "derivative work'' is a work based upon one or more pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a "derivative work''.

In short, it doesn't matter what Medievia has done to modify the DIKU code. A movie based on Hamlet is a derivative work, even if I'm responsible for all the filming, sound, advertising, and I rewrote all the dialogue to conform to 21st-century grammar.

A derivative work, by itself, does not constitute plagiarism. It is the fact that Medievia steadfastly refuses to credit the original authors for the work they are using to make a living.

I'm afraid you're mistaken.



COPYRIGHT PROTECTION IN A DERIVATIVE WORK

The copyright in a derivative work covers only the additions, changes, or other new material appearing for the first time in the work. It does not extend to any preexisting material and does not imply a copyright in that material.


Also of interest:

Many people have reimplemented computer programs by rewriting them to replace the source code with code of their own writing. 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.

When the first segment of code is rewritten, the new code will be an infringing work if it is substantially similar to the original code, or may be an infringing derivative work if it is a reimplementation in a different programming language. That reimplemented first segment is combined with the remaining parts of the original program to form an intermediate version. Subsequent modifications produce another work. So when you have completed the piecewise reimplementation, you have a set of works, each of whose creation infringes the exclusive rights of the owner of the copyright of the original program.

As an analogy, consider the translation of a novel to a different language, something that would clearly be a derivative work. It makes little difference that none of the original words remain, or that the translation was done a little at a time. The resulting translation is still an infringing derivative work.

Even if you completely replace the program with new code, nonliteral elements also protected by the original program’s copyright are likely to remain and infringe – elements like the overall program structure or architecture and data structures that are not dictated by external or efficiency considerations. 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.

I am afraid, KaVir, that you are the one that is mistakened. You keep quoting articles that do not directly deal with the enforcability of this license (and altering the source you are quoting - sometimes from US legislation, sometimes from Australian laws - as you see fit to back your claims). As a matter of fact, you weren't even quoting a section of the law, only a discussion around it.

Enter harsh reality - the implementation of laws is done on a case by case basis in a court of law, by a judge and through professional lawyers. That's how they make their money. It is not done by geeks on the Internet. If IPR and copyright laws really would be as simple and straightforward as just linking in a document, then there would not be any IPR lawsuits to begin with. But in reality, lots of other factors, including the extent of the infringement, limiting and aggravating factors, the wording of any license agreements etc *IS* taken into consideration.

No, I am not.  I have provided several quotes from different locations, along with the appropriate links, while the best you can come up with is some fictional "lawyer" who gives advice which goes against copyright law.  If you're going to continue responding, at least have the good manners to provide sources instead of just making them up.

The piecewise implementation (well, especially the Clean Room approach) deal with how to cover your back against copyright litigation. It is not stated, that failing to do so, automatically makes you guilty of copyright infringement.

In the case of piecewise reimplementation, one very relevant issue is how significantly the code has changed. If all that remains from the original code is the function name (to assure compatibility) but the whole internal working of the function itself has changed, then I do not see how the author would not own the copyright for the change. Naturally this does not apply to minor modifications (change a few variable names etc).

The author himself states why the piecewise reimplementation is problematic:
Hence, if you rewrite the code and do not utilize the existing program structure, architecture and/or data structures, but rather rebuild the whole function (or module), then it shouldn't matter if a Clean room approach has been used or not (although a Clean room approach makes it easier to prove that the author did not rely on the existing source).

The only thing fictional, is your idea of being somekind of expert in the IPR area.

Just to recap:
I have discussed the DIKU license with a lawyer.
Medievia has discussed the DIKU license with a lawyer.
Matt has discussed the DIKU license with a lawyer.

You have:
Quoted links that do not deal with the enforcability of the DIKU license, and refuse to accept that IPR litigation consists of much more than quoting a few sources on the Internet or even a clause from the law. IPR litigation is always decided on a case-by-case basis, based on evidence presented, mitigating factors and financial harm caused. In addition, you want to claim that all of us are just liars. Good game, snap out of your dreamworld.

Which is exactly what would happen if the Diku team took the case to court.

Yet, to quote the article, "There is no reason to believe that this would not be a copyright infringement".

No, it's not - did you even read what I posted? "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"

> I have discussed the DIKU license with a lawyer.

You claim many things. You claim to have no interest in Diku or Medievia. Yet you also claim to have hired a lawyer for legal advice on both. And the advice you claim to have received is directly opposed to the wording of the law. It seems pretty obvious that you're lying, I just can't work out why. Is it to try and look clever? Or perhaps you have some related interest in the licence of the LP driver you're using?

I quoted the US Copyright law directly, above. (Medievia operates within the US.) I also consulted the patent attorney assigned to me at my (US) day job a while ago, and they immediately recommended a documented clean-room implementation for creating a variant of any existing software. Anything else is a derivative work.

Speaking only for myself, I don't care about the law in this case. It's a question of ethics, not legality, since it's already pretty well established that the DIKU team is never going to sue.

Whether charges are pressed or not, stealing is still wrong. The better commercial games are above it and provide their players with a wholly original vision and implementation.

I'll stand on the outside of the "law" side of the argument, as I have no particularly new insight or speciality on internet software law.

However, I'll recap some points I have made:
The large vocal majority of the MUD community have, over the past few years, shunned Medievia and called it unethical. Certainly the MUD has survived(and made some money) despite this - however, the social barriers set forth in various online text-mmorpg communities have created obstacles and (at the very, very least) social awareness of something our community has deemed as unethical.

You are more than allowed to defend their socially unacceptable activities within our community - just as I could vocally lobby for the abolishment of womens' rights within the American workforce. However, both of us(in our given communities) would meet strong social resistance. Welcome to basic laws of sociology, a subject in which I am considered informed to speak on.

Grouping yourself together with Matt and Medievia(arguably the two most accessable symbols of questionable ethics within the MUD-Community), also brings your own opinion and value-set into the line of ethical fire. Your own agenda or angle are fuzzy, but not particularly important to understand in order to further this conversation.

It is important to understand that scrutiny and judgement is a natural social reaction to actions that take place outside of what our given community has decided is ethical action.

If litigation was as simple as you imply, IPR trials would be done as 30 minute drive-in litigation, instead of the lengthy processes they are today.

If DIKU would sue Medievia in the US, which has a legal system based on case law, from my layman perspective, here is roughly what would follow:
1. DIKU claims that Medievia is violating the copyright license by making profit of the DIKU teams work, and by not providing credit. To which Medivia counterclaims that:
  a) the DIKU license is too restrictive, and therefore can not be legally enforced,
  b) the DIKU licenses claims about non-profitability were based on the university's demand, to which Medivia is not a party,
  c) that Medievia is making profit based on their own proprietary work, not that of DIKU. Further, Medievia would likely claim that their code is significantly and materially different from DIKU, and that therefore it can not be considered a derivative work.

I hope we can all somewhat agree that this is the most likely path, should it ever reach a trial?

What happens after this? For claims a) and b), the court would probably hear expert testimony from both sides. For c) the court would hear witness testimony from Medievia about their development model and the amount of work they have put in to the development. It is also likely that for c) the judge would order a code review to find significant overlaps between the DIKU codebase and Medievia.

Once all this has been done, the court would have somekind of idea to which direction the case is leaning. Then enters the case law. In the US, litigation is based on more than just the law. As part of any trial, lawyers and the judge references previous cases in the same field. If there are no such cases, then in order to pass verdict, the court takes into account not only the law, the intent of the law, but also its impact on society. For example, a court would not be likely to impose a sentence that severely limits commercial interests in that area, unless it can be shown that the commercial interests are causing direct damage to the other party.

For some legal cases that a court might see as precedents, please refer to Valens posts on the mudmagic boards from 2004, especially , and . Overall, Valens makes a pretty realistic argument from a litigation point of view - I think we, as programmers, need to remind ourselves that litigation is less black-and-white and less absolute than what we are used to.

I haven't claimed that I have hired a lawyer. I have said that I have spoken with one that specializes in IPR. There's a big difference between hiring one, and discussing out of general curiosity about the issue. Outside of general curiosity (and the feeling that this yearlong battle of personalities is silly), I do not have an interest in DIKU (I don't like the engine myself) or Medievia (never played it, I likely never will).

You claim many things too. But you, on the other hand, do have a direct interest in this case. You have publicly stated that Medievia has been part of a crime, that they have participated in theft. Were this case ever found in the favor of Medievia, they would have a quite strong case of libel against you.

I'm not lying (and I think it's a childish personal attack to claim that I am, something which has no place in a public debate), I am only reiterating my understanding of matters as explained to me by someone who should understand these things alot better than I personally do. Does it mean that I can't be wrong? Ofcourse not, the only one who seems to assert absolute authority on IPR matters (despite having no qualifications for doing so), is you. The legal system is complex, and as I've stated above, litigation takes into account many other factors than just the written law. Which is why you'll find that even legal specialists have split opinions on many IPR cases.

This case has nothing to do with LP drivers. I'm purely participating in this conversation out of personal curiosity. I'm especially curious about the "clean room" debate. Why? Because it has a big implication on software development in general, and if a "clean room" piecemal implementation would be required to avoid automatic copyright infringement, then how does that relate to open source? There's thousands of open source projects available - if a commercial venture were to write their own webserver that emulates the apache interface to PHP, would they automatically be infringing on the Apache copyrights unless they can prove the development was done in a clear room environment? I would certainly hope not, usually the burden of proof in legal cases has been on the plaintiff.

Another example of the "Clean room" problem. In the recent SCO versus (insert basically anybody), SCO claimed that parts of Linux (SMP, JFS, LVM etc) was based on SCO's copyrighted code. Linus Torvalds and OSI called for SCO to disclose which parts of Linux infringed on SCO's IPR so that those could be rewritten. As the sourcecode of these functions is openly available, it would (under your broad definition of derivative work) mean that Linux would be irrepairably tainted for practical purposes, if SCOs claim would hold up.


Legal arguments aside, I think it's unethical to strip out the credits from DIKU, even if one claims to have rewritten the whole thing. A few lines of "We thank XYZ for their work" is certainly not a big demand. My ethical position on the other issue, that of making profit from Medievia, is a bit more complex. Looking at a totally ethical perspective, the best solution would have been had Medievia and the DIKU team found some common ground and maybe even agreed on somekind of revenue sharing. Failing that, as I don't have access to Medievia's current sourcecode, I will have to give Vryce & co the benefit of a doubt that they have indeed rewritten the whole underlying driver as they claim to have, and that it's therefore not my thing to throw stones and sticks at them. I also argue, that Medivia and co make their profit from running Medivia (as in all the custom work they have done), not from running DIKU.

If this position somehow groups me with Matt and Medievia (I didn't know they were in the same group even), and means that my opinion and value-set come into the line of ethical fire (is this somekind of lame threat?), then so be it. To me, it only says that you are unable to deal with the fact that these issues are complex and that just because people disagree, doesn't make either party unethical.

In the case of (a), Medievia would almost certainly be ruled against. If the license is found to be totally invalid then it's going to revert to their basic fair use rights, and fair use doesn't come close to letting you use substantial portions of someone else's copyrighted work for material gain.

Even if the license is 'too restrictive', the fact that Medievia have paid nothing for it works against them (ie. DIKU owes them no reciprocal consideration in this regard) and the existence of other successful MUD systems further works against them (in that they can't claim that their inability to accept the flawed DIKU license is a significant barrier to them entering the market).

Remember, a license is a limited exception to a copyright holder's exclusive rights. The only way you typically get more rights than the license gives you is if statute somehow reserves those rights for you (eg. backups for personal use, quotations for review or parody purposes, etc). You don't suddenly gain all rights just because there is a problem with the license.

In the case of (b), this is irrelevant. Any license may have implied 3rd parties who have a bearing on the wording and intent of the license. The fact that the 3rd party is mentioned in the license is a distraction but it doesn't change the enforceability of the previous sentences. At no point does it claim to try and enter you into a contract with that 3rd party. It's purely informational.

And in the case of ©, the definition of derivative work is really quite well defined by now. If it can be shown that they've not rewritten the code from scratch in isolation from DIKU - simply rewriting around the old code until it's all replaced is not enough - then they lose on this count as well.

Of course, these things are heard case by case, but to win this they would really need the case to be heard by a pretty inept or corrupt judge.

To all those citing the law to say Medievia has done something wrong: If the US passed laws tomorrow making what you believe Medievia did/is doing legal, would you change your opinion and say they're doing nothing wrong? If not, why bother bringing up the law anyway?

You misunderstand - I make no threats, I merely explain the rules of sociology, which your arguments do not take into account. Ethics are defined by a specific society's norms, and our text-mmorpg society has vastly decided(and vehemetly defends their stance on this) that making profit on a DIKU derived game, or otherwise breaking the license of the DIKU team is not socially acceptable, or ethical.

Law does not equal ethics - otherwise, Chaos would reign supreme. The checks and balances for this statement are that society can define its own ethics, without the need of execution of law.

Well, everything aside (I refuse to set foot in that legal jungle), I think the attitude is what's turning me off to claims against Medievia.

I don't know if it's just the way text looks when you make an insult, but when I first got wind of this Medievia thing I felt like I was walking into a room full of people calling a woman 'slut' to her face.

I guess I'm just a layman, but it just seems like they've put an awful lot of work into it to call them thieves. Medievia, the game and concept, is something they did themselves. The Diku driver was just the motor the kept it running. And now, they say, they've constructed it to the point where even that's been replaced by something of their own design.

I'd understand better if using Diku meant that they'd just attached a price tag to a free, pre-assembled mud with content out-of-the-box, but the driver's just a tool to achieve an end with, not the end in itself. If I use a hammer and chisel to make a statue, do I owe someone for their use? Should I have to figure out a new way every time, and make sure the next does it, too?

Especially, in this case, for a mud driver, of all things. I sincerely doubt anyone's become a millionaire in muds, even the feared and notorious Matt. I still have a hard time believing that a commercial mud would break even, to be honest.

(On a side note, I don't know if any of our pay-mud administrators would care to volunteer information about their own lifestyles/financial situation, but it might ease people's minds. I'm curious myself. PM me to be interviewed for Lifestyles of the Blind and Sleepless.)

The only real bone I'd have to pick with Medievia, if I in fact thought it was my business to, would be in whatever credit they may owe these DIKU boys from Medievia's earlier history. Aside from that, though, to me the rest is just business and legal junk.

I strongly doubt that.

For libel, it's not enough to prove that someone wrote falsehoods -- you also need to prove that they knew it.

So you'd need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Kavir knew Medievia wasn't guilty of theft but was alleging it anyway.

Since there's an ass-ton of documentation that Kavir believes what he's alleging, it would be difficult to prove that he doesn't.

To take your analogy, it's like if a friend of yours loaned you his hammer and chisel for free to make a statue with, because you didn't have your own. And maybe he's like, "Hey, buddy, I'm happy to lend you my hammer and chisel, but if you make a great statue, tell people I helped you out, okay?"

I mean, if you don't want to, you could buy your own hammer and chisel. Maybe you think your buddy is a little weird that he wants you to tell people that you borrowed his hammer and chisel. You've got that choice. But it's kind of a jerky thing to do to instead take what he loaned you out of the kindness of his heart and then disrespect his wishes.

I think that's part of why people get so up in arms about it -- they feel like the DIKU team isn't asking for a lot for what they provided, and that it's a real slap in the face to not give them their tiny bit of due.

Edit: Damn my accidental double-posting.

To me the 'legal' discussion is pretty irrelevant, since none of you are qualified lawyers, and in any case Americal lawyers seem able to twist almost anything in any direction they like.

However, from an ethical and moral point of view what Medievia did was shady, to say the least. Not only did they strip the credits out because they were making money from the code against the intent of the Diku licence. They also insulted the original coders in that 'History' link that Soleil provided.

Whether the wording of the licence is flawed or not, there is certainly no doubt about what the INTENT of it is. Ignoring that intent is unethical, and there is a pretty large concensus among the Mud ownerss about this. The fact that some who think differently are very vocal about it does not make them a majority.

For what they did, Medievia will always be shunned by decent mudowners. And since Vryce lied once, who'd trust his word again?

Laws do not equal ethics, Amen to that. Then why are you questioning my ethics, claim that "my value-set comes under fire" (or even worse, try to claim that I am ethically grouped with some people that I don't even know) for participating in a discussion about the legal aspect of the license? Is my ethics so horribly bad for pointing out that there are lawyers (as consulted by me, Medievia and also by Matt, among others) that feel that Medievia would be likely to prevail in this case? We're merely stating what has been told to us. I am sure there are lawyers who feel differently too. IPR litigation is horribly complex - it's not just a matter of quoting a section of law - it is even more about interpreting it. There's a nice article about this at. It's interesting to note that in the Lotus v. Borland copyright litigation, even the US Supreme court was divided (4-4) on the issue. It's naive to claim there is only one absolute legal truth in these matters.

Also, a newsflash - there is no uniform, heterogeneous "text-mmorpg society" that "has vastly decided" anything. Only a small fraction of the admins of the "text-mmorpg society" even frequent these forums (and honestly, I see why), and even less players. This thread alone is a fine example, that even in this small group of people who do frequent the forum, there are numerous different positions on the matter. There are some people who have made up their mind in one direction, there are others who have made up their mind in another. And the overwhelming majority is somewhere in the middle, with little interest in this fight or who just haven't decided.

As for my agenda, I don't have one (I'm sure this would be easier for you to categorize and minimize me, if I was an evil capitalist person who is cashing in on his own MUD, but alas - the only profit I get from MUDs is personal enjoyment). But based on the zealous conviction with which you and KaVir have pushed forward on this topic, it seems obvious that you guys have one, and you can't tolerate any dissent. I have to wonder, if a US court would eventually rule in favor of Medievia, would your world shatter? Or would you be able to embrace their ruling and accept Medievia as a full, and equally respectable, member of the "text-mmorpg society"?

A quick question... How long is the copyright good for?

(It is to my understanding that copyright lasts X amount of years...unless you somehow anaged to get it renewed)

Since it wasn't copyrighted in the USA, the 70 years or til you're dead thing wouldn't apply anyway. And none of those lawyers' interpretations apply either since they were applying American law to their opinion, as far as I know. Just sayin...

Having read all of KaVir's links, and also the one supplied by Soliel... well, if Medivia have indeed claimed in the past (even if it was ten years ago) that their coding was 100% original and it was proved otherwise, I suppose no one can deny KaVir, or anyone elses, suspicions that it might still be the case. Certainly, Vryce's apparent refusal to let anyone (even an independant party), go over the code with nothing less short of a court order may very well imply that he has something to hide.

But it may equally just be that Vryce does not want his code going out in the open and possibly being plagiarised or copied in some form or other. Or perhaps he simply feels that no matter what he does, his work will always be interpreted as having DIKU origins.

Whatever the case, it seems rather apparent that Medievia is rather unconcerned about public opinion. Or at least, the opinion of it's detractors. For a mud that has come under such heavy fire, they still are doing rather well. It would seem that they're doing something right.

As for the DIKU creators, they too seem to have either given up on this case, or simply never cared too much about it in the first place.

Perhaps it is rather noble, to fight the just fight, and argue the moral cause. Personally, I never saw much point in fighting for people who aren't interested in fighting for themselves.

-Iblis.

It's one thing for them to pretend their work never had anything to do with DIKU, it's another to slap DIKU in the face for the gift they were provided. Especially given that a partial fix (restoring the credits, thus solving their plagiarism problem) is completely free and could be done in 5 minutes.

For a parallel, look at Vryce's conversation with Synozeer after they got caught cheating on the voting list here. Synozeer provides a free service, Vryce abuses it until caught, then claims the service was stupid and worthless anyway.

No - yet again - the Diku licence is not a contract. The Diku team's case would be that Medievia is infringing their copyright. To which Medievia has only two possible responses:

1. They admit that they are indeed infringing the Diku copyright, or:

2. They hold up the Diku licence, and try to claim that it gives them permission to use the code in the way they've used it.

The question then becomes, does the Diku licence allow Medievia to use the Diku code in the way they've used it? The answer, quite clearly, is no - even ignoring the controversial "profit" part, there's no getting around the fact that Medievia has stripped out the credits and copyright notices.