[DGD] Commercial question

[Noah Gibbs]

--- Stephen Schmidt <schmidsj at union.edu> wrote:
> I agree that only Dworkin can officially answer this, but while
> we're giving unofficial answers, accepting donations to keep a
> mud running was a fairly widespread practice under LP and, as
> far as I know, was not deemed to violate the LP license.

  This is a widespread practice among DikuMUDs as well, and it *was* deemed to
violate the Diku license.  As with not putting the Diku folks' names on the
login info, this is one of those "yes, it's illegal, but it's more trouble to
sue than it's worth" deals.  I would expect that the same is true in the LP
world.  Getting small MUD operators to understand that YES, WHAT YOU ARE DOING
IS ILLEGAL EVEN IF IT'S TOO MUCH TROUBLE TO PUT YOU IN JAIL FOR IT is a
remarkably difficult proposition.  One more reason that all my stuff is public
domain.  I don't need the headache.

  This is also, incidentally, one reason you haven't heard much further from
the Diku team.  It was made entirely obvious that the people using their code
had no respect for their work or their copyright, and would get away with
whatever they could up to the point of legal penalties.  At least one of the
Diku founders has mentioned complete disrespect for his license (*cough*
Medevia *cough*) as why he hasn't written pretty much anything further for use
by MUD communities.

  So in counterpoint, yay for Dworkin for being a bit of a hardass about this. 
With this community you really have to.




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