[silvarilon]

Yes! I want videos!
That way when ranting you can really see the spittle flying. Or alternately, we can see the boring drone of a tax-accountant-like explanation of minutiae of code violations. It'll be fun either way.

And if the rant is fun enough, it might go viral and bring more players to our games

[dentin]

If this is added the new copyright disclaimer for NiMUD, it's definitely a step in the right direction. Something that seems to be particularly unclear to you (Locke) is the legal definition of 'derived work'; it's not necessarily what you think it should be.

The most direct way to demonstrate this is with the following: if you start with Diku code, then piece by piece modify it to replace 100% of the original, it is still a derived work of the original Diku code. It is considered a derived work from a legal standpoint, with legal consequences, that will hold up in a court of law, for which you can be prosecuted, even though not a line of the original Diku remains.

If you don't believe this, look up 'clean room implementation' and the scandals associated with it over the past three decades. Computer companies have often gone to extreme measures (like having strongly isolated observation, spec, and programming teams) to avoid being sued under the derived work clauses.

You may not like it, and you may even think this is a 'bad law', however what you think is not relevant in a court of law, and does not change the fact that 7% is more than sufficient to force NiMUD into the 'derived work' category.

[Newworlds]

For those of you that didn't notice. Locke got banned yesterday morning and can't respond to any of these posts. Just FYI.

[Milawe]

How do you know these things, NWs? I didn't notice even after you told me!

[Samson]

Oh, I noticed, my comment wasn't anything more than noting he was early this year. Nothing he needed to respond to

[Sombalance]

His status is under his name to the left of each of his posts.

[Milawe]

Ahh, thanks! I never thought to look over there.

[Newworlds]

Super powers

[Lanthum]

Careful what you wish for ...


Sorry, but I had to!

[Newworlds]

Bahahahaha. The funniest part about this is that I thought this was a guy until she says her gender. ROFL.

That was great. Here's a clip of an X NWA player from Europe who got upset when our server went down and they couldn't connect:

[Lanthum]

That was funny! Tho I can't help but think it was an act for the camera. Still very funny tho!

I knew a person that acted like that while driving ...

[Kylotan]

Wow, are we still arguing about the DIKU license in 2010? No wonder the MUD world is so stagnant.

NiMUD was clearly a DIKU derivative and it's worrying to think that someone who was capable of programming a decade ago is capable of self-delusion 10 years on. It's a shame because I seem to remember that the changes in NiMUD were interesting and good and there's no need to side-step the licence for people to recognise that. Of course, all those same code changes could have been applied to a completely fresh code base written from scratch in a few weeks these days, so it is bizarre that Locke is so attached to them.

[Darren Brimhall]

Being a total novice, I have these questions to ask;
what is DikuMUD?
what's the licening for it?
and how easy is it to program with?

Darren Brimhall

[Kylotan]

Diku MUD is a mud codebase from which many other codebases were derived - .

The license for it is included in the download, but it essentially requires that you maintain the original credits, make 'no profit', and altered copies must be distributed under the same terms. In practice these first two clauses, despite being simple enough that 99% of people can follow them easily, have generally been flaunted by a small minority, leading to debates that still rage 20 years after Diku was released.

Diku is fairly easy to program with, although if you really want to work with a Diku I would recommend one of the successors which have many bug fixes and new features. Perhaps someone else can give you a firmer recommendation.

Personally I would prefer to program a MUD from scratch in a different language these days - Moores Law means that we have almost 10,000x more CPU power these days compared to when DikuMud was released, so there's no need to code glorified telnet servers in C any more. But that's an issue for the Coding subforum.

[rudeboyrave]

KaVir is a gentleman and a scholar .

[Newworlds]

Coming from Rude Boy Rave, that's saying something!

FYI, RBR, this thread is old and silly.

[scandum]

KaVir has an obsessive compulsive personality disorder, where as Locke is borderline schizophrenic. It's not easy being the only sane person around.

[Darren Brimhall]

Well, at least there's somebody still around that is.

Darren Brimhall

[prof1515]

Borderline? Institutions are filled with people who don't have as good a claim as Locke does.

[Kaz]

YMMV, but this is the most entertaining thread ever to have graced these forums. Thanks for the necro.