[DGD] Software Licenses

[Noah Lee Gibbs]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Kris Van Hees wrote:
> open source licenses (including the GPL) do not "make"
> people contribute new features back to the community per-se.

  No.  But if you redistribute the app they do.  If you give out the
binary, you must also give out the source.  That's what's up with my point
about the binary below -- if you don't give out the binary then the open
source license is irrelevant.  If you redistribute source or redistribute
nothing, either is fine with any OSS license.
  That's fine except that running MUDs don't distribute anything, it all
just runs on the server, so the spirit (but not the letter) of the OSS
license is defeated.  The MUD admin gets to use and modify the MUDLib on a
running, public MUD but doesn't have to contribute any new features in
return for the use of the open source base.

> But I do not believe I have seen open source licenses that explicitly state
> you have to contribute a derivative even if you have no plans to release that
> derivative at all.

  Nope.  So private, quiet, non-public MUD development shouldn't require
you to release source.  Thus the criterion that any user of the MUD be
able to get the MUDLib source.  If it's just you developing for your own
use, only use need to have source.  If you put the MUD up for public play,
you need to let any player get the source.

> With mudlibs and even drivers it might be more common that changes are
> made for a particular MUD without them being contributed to the
> community, since the MUDs that seem to survive the longest seem to be
> the ones that do not run on a standard, unmodified mudlib.

  Of course.  So if you use a standard OSS license, those folks use your
work but never have to contribute anything back.  A (very) few choose to
do so, but most simply never contribute anything back to
publically-available source even if they build on something like CircleMUD
or Diku.

-- 
angelbob at monkeyspeak.com
See my page of DGD documentation at
"http://www.angelbob.com/projects/DGD_Page.html"
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