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Old 03-29-2006, 08:41 AM   #21
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Angry

Personally I can't wait for the day when the holders of the DIKU liscence takes it to court... but oh wait, that won't actually stop the bitching will it? No since MudX is hosted in country Y, the US court's decision isn't valid. Now only god know's how many licenses are not valid in our days (but if we're talking Europe, we're talking about alot of commercial licenses not being valid).

1. Give credits
2. Do whatever the hell you want (if the holders ever decide to take legal action: be sure you have your server&company in a "free" country).
3. Go buy yourself an icecream and some flowers for your girl.
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Old 03-29-2006, 09:35 AM   #22
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I vote for some nifty jewelry instead! Can I do that?
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Old 03-29-2006, 12:43 PM   #23
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There may be some legal stuff that one could argue, and whether things would stand up in court or not. I'm no lawyer. But it seems to me that their intent was clear; give them credit, and don't make money off their work.

Regardless of whether this will hold up in court or not, it seems like it should be up to our community to enforce it, namely by not supporting MUDs that break it. Aardwolf posted that they "agreed to disagree" with the DIKU people. Sounds like he's basically flaunting the fact that DIKU can't/won't spend the money to enforce it.

It's like saying "Hey, thanks for creating this stuff long ago. You don't agree with how we're using it? Well, thankfully you're toothless, so why don't we just ignore that part and move on."

In my opinion, that should make people who enjoy mudding fairly mad. I'll suffice this by saying I have no knowledge of this sitation beyond the posts in this thread, so I'm just offering my opinion from that.
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Old 03-29-2006, 01:56 PM   #24
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Exclamation

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Old 03-29-2006, 02:13 PM   #25
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That citation speaks about open source software. If DIKU were open source, this whole issue would be moot, because people could charge whatever they wanted for access to their DIKU mud.
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Old 03-29-2006, 02:15 PM   #26
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It does not sound to me like that is their attitude at all. It sounds like they have tried to make the best out of the situation, while also trying to maintain the finacial viability of their enterprise.

One of the worst things that ever happened to the MUD community was the fact that it had its exploison BEFORE the open source movement. If MUDs came along now, instead of ~20 years ago, all of these mud engines would be open source and probably hosted somewhere like sourceforge.

The restrictive licenses put on so many MUD engines, drivers, source code, etc. has been nothing but a burden for the MUD community, as it provided a disincentive for a lot of commercial operations that could have really helped MUDding become more than a niche hobby.
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Old 03-29-2006, 03:31 PM   #27
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It sounds to me more like the DIKU creators realize they are not actually being harmed in any material way. One doesn't sue to redress trivial harms typically.

--matt
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Old 03-29-2006, 04:02 PM   #28
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The article concerns open source software, but the part I quoted regards contract law and copyright law, and is just as valid for Diku as it is for open source software.
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Old 03-29-2006, 04:59 PM   #29
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I think it's a combination of three factors:

1. The DIKU creators realize they aren't being financially harmed (as you said).
2. The DIKU creators realize that their "license" would have a slim chance to hold up in most courts.
3. The DIKU creators realize that if a court would rule against the "license", it would open up the door for countless of other DIKUs to introduce revenue models. At the moment, they can just hope that the ambiguity will scare off most such attempts.
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Old 03-29-2006, 05:51 PM   #30
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Debatable - people who make money from Diku muds are unlikely to pay for the commercial DikuII licence, are they? And even if that weren't the case, they could still claim .

However as I've already pointed out, the Diku licence is not a contract. All it does is give you permission to do things which would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law.

No, it wouldn't - it would simply take away everyone's right to copy, modify, distribute, derived from and display works based upon DikuMUD. The licence is the only thing giving those rights, so if you removed it you would also remove those rights.
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Old 03-29-2006, 06:15 PM   #31
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Not only are you assuming some universal contract law (which does not exist), but I think we may have misunderstood each other.

If a court decides that the DIKU license does indeed only apply to making profit by direct distribution or resale of the DIKU engine, it does not necessarily invalidate the rest of the license, including the provisions of setting up a DikuMud and altering the DikuMud sourcecode.

So one plausible scenario is that a court would find that the resale of the Diku Engine is against the license, whereas charging for content running on it isn't. The rest of the license wouldn't be void. Other provisions which weaken the case of upholding the license, is where the MUD operator is claimed to be violating agreements which he/she is not part of (between the DIKU team and the University) and which implies legal action.
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Old 03-29-2006, 06:31 PM   #32
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No, I think you're missing the point - contract law doesn't apply. The Diku licence is not a contract.

Also note that (cited from the link I gave earlier) "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".
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Old 03-29-2006, 06:44 PM   #33
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Old 03-29-2006, 07:03 PM   #34
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Well the link I provided was also written by a , and he was pretty clear on the fact that "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).

That you can't restrict their right to run the software or delete their copy, because those aren't rights under copyright law?

True. However you could prevent them making backups (copy), recompiling (copy/derivative), releasing it (distribution), allowing anyone to play (perform/display), etc. Without those rights they might as well not have the mud.

Regarding the "reasonable" software conditions thing, see further down:

Are these conditions enforceable? Although an authoritative answer cannot be given until the GPL is tested in court, all indications are that these are exactly the kind of conditions that can be successfully attached to a non-contractual software licence, since they only affect the distribution and modification of the software, which are within the right of the copyright owner to control.

Well, copyright also gives the right . And you're going to need those rights if you want anyone to play your mud.
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Old 03-30-2006, 12:32 AM   #35
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Last I checked, neither Australia nor the US were part of the EU, and the person who wrote the article is looking at it from an Australian perspective, backing it up with legal cases from the US. There is no international standard according to which contract or copyright disputes is solidly enforced in every country.

That's questionable. First of all, the document you linked also lists some mitigating factors. Of particular interest is the Estoppel, which would likely apply to situations where the licensor (Diku) attempts to modify or revoke the license from a single licensee (MUD).

Second, I am not convinced that using the engine to run a MUD would legally constitute a display of the MUD engine (though I guess a DikuMUD might be an exception, given how much of the actual game logic is embedded in the driver), anymore than  running your own java application is displaying the Java platform or running anything on a Linux server constitutes diplaying the Linux platform. Largely, it would be a question of what do the users see -- is it the standard DikuMUD interface, or content created by the MUD?

If this truly were an issue, I doubt any company (with enough lawyers) would be developing anything commercial on non-commercial platforms (like java applications) -- to me as a layman, the article you are linking to, is a bit on the dramatic side to provide a punch at Australia's national Linux conference.

Again, you are quoting a US law (Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright act), where I was refering to the situation in the EU. But even if you go with the US laws, those rights are not absolute (as an example, section 107 describes the "fair use" if copyrighted works). As I stated above, it is questionable if running a MUD would constitute "performing the work (driver) publicly". What you are displaying is the content running on it (that is what the player sees, right?), which is usually copyrighted by the MUD owner and the MUD developers.
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Old 03-30-2006, 02:07 AM   #36
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NHL wrote:
I've been told the same thing by IP specialists here in the US.

There's a bit of a difference there. A layman reading general legal principles is far different from receiving directed advice on a specific situation from an expert in that area of law. When you want quality legal advice you don't, with all due respect, just google up general legal principles on the web. You hire someone qualified to provide you with an expert opinion on your specific issue, because chances are, as a layman, you (the generic you) are missing many things that someone with expertise will not.

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Old 03-30-2006, 03:00 AM   #37
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There "may be scope" - if the licencee could prove they'd been mislead into "relying on the continuance of the existing terms". The Diku team could clarify the wording of the licence, but if that failed to hold up, they could simply revoke it for everyone.

If you removed all of the stock areas, stock messages, help files, etc, so that nothing stock (or derived) was displayed to the users, then perhaps that would work (assuming the Diku-derived code wasn't considered part of the public "performance"). However you'd have to change the messages before the licence was revoked - otherwise you'd lose the right to recompile with the new messages (it's been argued before about whether compiling creates a copy or a derivative work, but both are rights protected by copyright law, so in this case the point is moot). The mud would also be an evolutionary dead-end, as you'd no longer be allowed to change it, or even make backups.

The copyright law is very similar, as the US and EU both follow the Berne Convention.

Yeah, great. You could quote small sections of the Diku code "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research". It was a good way for me to post sections of the Medievia source code in order to prove it was Diku derived. It won't simply let you use the codebase for anything you wish!

We're talking about Diku here, not LP. LP breaks the mud down into a separate driver and mudlib - but in a Diku, they are both the same thing (the entire game is hardcoded). And yes, the mud developers (not necessarily the owner) would own the copyright to their changes, but the mud itself would be a derivative work.
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Old 03-30-2006, 04:45 AM   #38
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Old 03-30-2006, 05:07 AM   #39
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However "The United States has copyright relations with most countries throughout the world, and as a result of these agreements, we honor each other's citizens' copyrights." ()

It doesn't cover every country, but the points mentioned here are going to apply to the vast majority of muds currently in operation. Aardwolf and Medievia are both located in the US, for example - and DikuMUD is registered with the US Copyright Office.

Oh I've heard plenty of people claim they've spoken to lawyers, on all sides of the debate, and the only thing they really have in common is that they all back up what that person wants to hear. The Medievia 'lawyers', for example, supposedly claim that Medievia no longer has to follow any part of the licence. Other lawyers apparently claim that only the 'profit' clause is unenforcable. Other lawyers claim that Diku team have good grounds for legal action should they wish to take it.

The EverQuest situation indicates two important points to me, however: (1) The Diku team are prepared to take action if they feel the situation is worthwhile, and (2) the licence holds sufficient strength that it cannot be simply ignored (like Medievia does) - otherwise the EverQuest people wouldn't have responded the way they did.
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Old 03-30-2006, 05:54 AM   #40
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There are nonetheless big differences in the copyright legislation of different countries. For example, in Finland it is considered "fair use" to make copies of musical works (not software) for your own personal use (for example, someone lends you an original cd, from which you are then legally allowed to make a copy for personal use), something which to my understanding the US copyright laws do not recognize.

I have no reason to believe that any of the lawyers I have spoken to, would sweettalk me about their view of the DIKU license, given that neither I nor they have any financial interest in it (nor am I paying them to prepare legal statements on the matter). Thus far we've presented claims from lawyers who think the DIKU license is unenforcable (which seems to be a common claim from both my side, IR and Medievia) -- I would love to hear which lawyers have actually claimed that specifically the DIKU team has a good ground for legal action. Maybe you can provide some reference on that (and not a link to documentation about copyrights in general)?
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