[Delerak]

In my opinion any mud that is in it for "profit" is no longer a mud. My definition of a mud is a text-based game that is free to play with no profit involved, that's the way it started and I think that's the way it should be. It does not take extensive amounts of money to run a mud, and even when you get up there in huge amounts of players like Aardwolf or Medieva or any of those Iron Realms games, it's still not that expensive to run.. that is unless you are in it for profit.

To gain profit you must spend money, which is why it costs money to run all those oh so wonderful pay-to-play muds out there that we all love. I can't even imagine paying to play a text-based game.. or giving any real life money at all for an item (which is nothing more then text and code) it sounds so wrong, I think someone should have to earn that item just like in a tabletop dungeons and dragons game. Did we ever charge people to play D&D with us? I never heard of the almighty DungeonMaster of the Iron Realm.. anyway that's my rant about Pay to Play muds, I think it's just wrong for the mud-world.

-D

[Delerak]

Double-posted... Bah.

[Shao_Long]

... yet none on this list include actual "playing the game"... Aside from becoming a god but that's not exactly "playing", not as a "regular" mortal, anyway.

So what you just said youself, is that one of the best items in your mud can only be obtained by either donating, paying someone who donated (which isn't really any different), or doing something completely unrelated to regular gameplay.

You said it yourself.

[Jaregarde]

Well...I'm pretty sure this argument has already been stated before, but I'll repeat it here.

Running a good MUD does cost a lot of money, because everyone who runs a MUD must pay the bills in real life. So, thus, MUD developers need jobs like everyone else, and having a job leaves less time for developing MUDs. The most obvious solution that presents itself is to find a way to make a living  from the MUD, so that the developer can spend all of his/her time on it, and yet still make a decent living. So, commercialism isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it essentially makes for better MUDs, since  the developers have more time on their hands to run the MUD, whereas hobbyists must spend a good deal of their time working at a different job. That said, however, I'm not a huge fan of Pay-for-Perks; I'd much rather see flat monthly rates instead. But, in my opinion its not really an ethical issue. Commercial MUDs need revenue to survive and how to do it is just an issue that they must grapple with.

-Jaregarde

[Keriwena]

If what you say is true, then logically the best muds would be written by kept women.

[AC1]

Medievia could easily end the controversy at any time.

Have a few reputable people review the current code and report on it, like the comparison of Medevia 4 that is already out there. I would recomend members of the original DIKU team because they are famiar with the code, they have credibility with the pro-license faction, they have never been accused of unethical behavior by either side, and they have some intrest is finding the truth. There could be a fairly simple non-disclosure agreement that the reviewers would not keep or publish copies of the code after the review.

Easy, and it could end the controversy forever. If someone reputable, especially members of the DIKU team, said "nope, this code is nothing like DIKU, it is completely original and we have no problem with it at all" there wouldn't be much point in anyone complaining ever again, would there?


Angela Christine

[Wik]

Suddenly? Some of us have been denouncing it since we started gaming. In my case, since about a year after the issue came to the forefront the first time. In others, it's been since the violation occurred.

[Stilton]

You do understand that random people off the street can't generally pursue claims for copyright violations over content they don't have any rights to, I hope?

Poke around the web and usenet.  This argument is older than some of Vryce's customers.

Stilton

[Traithe]

I'd love to see this as well, personally.

However, it's highly unlikely; put simply, at present time Medievia would derive no advantage whatsoever from a public audit of their code, as these infringement claims are doing nothing to hurt their bottom line, and they seem to care little enough about integrity or the moral high road.

If Synozeer and Icculus would do the right thing and require such an audit as a condition for their continued participation on their sites that might change. Obviously it would change as well if a lawsuit were filed, but I'm certainly not holding my breath there either, sadly enough.

Granted, it certainly isn't their responsibility to babysit and ensure the children play nicely by any stretch of the imagination, but this is a pretty egregious case; I really doubt it would set a particularly time-consuming precedent for them to take a more active role here.

But, maybe that's just me.

[KaVir]

You realise that by that definition, the original MUD wouldn't be a MUD?

Personally I wouldn't play a pay-to-play (or pay-for-perks) mud, but I have no problem with those who do, nor with muds that are run this way - that's their choice. All I have an issue with are muds that (1) make money by ripping off other people's work, and/or (2) try to mislead potential players with hidden costs.

[Shao_Long]

Even if their code would be 100% original now, they still did start from Diku code, and evolved from there. That doesn't mean anything?...

[Aztecia]

[KaVir]

Like wanting to look at the scene of an accident, I guess.

Think of a Diku/Merc with some snippets, lots of players and no credits, and that's basically what you can expect.

[Jazuela]

To Mikey, the latest "reviewer" of Medievia:

In your "review" you find it amusing that people would think that the game is based on Diku, and that you know the real truth...

Have you considered maybe climbing out of the cave and taking a look at the evidence? Such as - code information directly from Ozy, the head coder you insist would know that the game is NOT diku based... you can find it right here:



Where he converts DIKU structs to classes. And that wasn't 13 years ago for just a week. That was just under 5 years ago. The purpose of his struct task was to rename DIKU code so that it wouldn't look like DIKU code anymore. It was done intentionally, with the understanding of Ozy himself, that he was doing nothing more than masking DIKU code.

I just thought I'd point that out.

[Brody]

All this fuss about Medievia has been huge publicity for them. In this case, yeah, I think even bad publicity is good for them. Especially when it's noted that, despite all the old news being rehashed about their alleged violations and the "documented evidence" often cited and linked, the owners haven't been successfully sued nor have they been convicted as thieves. Yet many people seem comfortable slapping the "criminal" label on them.

That's the sort of thing that takes a good debate about misuse of intellectual property and turns it into little more than hair-pulling and histrionics.

It's like we all want to pretend to be lawyers - or villagers with torches and pitchforks. Or, hey, forget that: Let's be the judge, jury and executioner too.

Have Medievia's owners behaved questionably over the years? Sure seems like it. Are they criminals? No - they haven't been sued or convicted in civil or criminal court, respectively. So, until then, it's fine to rail about the unfairness of it all and continue sending hits to their site. But stop throwing the criminal label around, please, unless you're going to pony up cash so the developers of DIKU can successfully bring civil suit against Medievia - if they even ever intend to do so.

[Aeran]

You need to cool all this hate towards Medievia down. Try to picture yourself in their situation for a while. When I pondered on these issues some I realized that it might be a tragedy.

If I remember it correctly there were flames towards Aardwolf for accepting donations. It was this entire mess with people threatening that they "broke" the license. Still why did they accept donations? Because without them Aardwolf would cease to exist! It is really that simple. People can't afford the bandwidth cost they get when their MUD gets very popular.

I am going to make a lot of assumptions here to show that Medievia might not be that evil that you think. First remember that Aardwolf accepted donations after the Medievia issues. To be the first to accept "donations" made Medievia look really bad. In fact I believe this was the reason they removed the credits to start with. They couldn't accept donations as a Diku MUD - or they were made to believe that was the case. Assume Vryce had written 200.000 lines of code and consider how you would feel to trash that amount of work. You know you would have to if you couldnt afford to run the game. How certain posters acted at this time would make anyone go crazy. In my opinion Vryce had only one chose and that was to shutdown the MUD and leave the community when he understood he couldnt afford the bandwidth costs. To actually do that though isn't as easily done as said.

I always, sadly, recommend people to stay away from DIKU to avoid issues like these.

[KaVir]

What, ripping the credits out of someone else's work and claiming it as my own, then making a living from it? I'd rather not.

Yet I don't see Realms of Despair asking donations - despite having been around for over a decade and regularly peaking at over 500 players.

I trashed 173,410 lines of code when I dumped my Diku derivative, after working on it for five years, and I have to say it didn't bother me. The knowledge and experience I gained allowed me to create a far superior scratch-written mud, which (after three years work) is now up to 128,117 lines and growing every day.

I know other mud developers (such as Hephos?) have continued running their old muds in parallel with scratch-build developments, in each case using their prior experience to avoid the limitations and pitfalls of their first muds. Now that is something to be proud of.

So yes, people deal with this, and yes, they manage to do so without just ripping the credits from someone else's work and claiming it as 'scratch-written'. Developing a mud from scratch is certainly something to be proud of - but claiming credit for someone else's work on the basis that your lawyers have told you you can get away with it is not.

And as for arguing that people should be able to violate the licence because the mud costs money to run...well, a car costs money to run as well - do you think that makes it acceptable to steal petrol/gas?

[gth]

[Brody]

[Delerak]

I can safely call anyone a criminal, that's the beauty of the internet. And they can safely break the law. That's the beauty of the internet..

-D