[DGD] Commercial question

[Jesse Garrison]

Interesting topic. I'm certainly not a lawyer so my interpretation is
meaningless, but the way I understand the DGD license it's pretty
simple:

Receiving any form of income as a result of using the DGD program is
breaking the non-commercial license. Period.

The way I understand it, this isn't just limited to charging players
to play the game. Note the last line of the first paragraph: Use of
the source and executables made therefrom to promote or support a
commercial venture is included in this restriction.

I would take that line to mean that obvious work arounds to the
no-donations rule such as selling t-shirts or other merchandise with
your MUD's name on it to help cover server costs is also illegal
without a commercial license.

Of course the first bit about, "any form of income...regardless of
profit." would seem to also forbid selling anything related to your
MUD even at cost. So that also means loosing advertising in that
regard. Not that many MUDs use that, but I've played on some that do.

The real question I suppose is what constitutes "use of...[DGD]...to
promote...a commercial venture." Technically, anyone who visits your
MUD's website is there because they want to "use" the MUD so would
that prohbit, for example, banner advertisements? (if someone was
REALLY desperate to keep their game open)

Or what if someone who wrote a popular MUD went on to write some
commercial software and people purchased that software because they
enjoyed the MUD?

Similarly, what if a MUD world was extremely popular and the
Implementor wanted to do some sort of spinoff product. Ebooks, pencil
& paper RPG, whatever. The MUD world is intellectual property, but the
existence of the MUD would be promoting those products.

I'm not sure that those last two would really be prosecuteable, but
I'm just a little curious about the technicalities.

Also there are plenty of games out there that survive on player
donations that have never solicited players, never had a donate
button, never posted lists of donors, and never offered any in game
perks for donating. I've played on several of them. While that's still
illegal under most of the MUD licenses at least it's less blatant than
a huge donation button on every page.

I think most of the big MUDs these days are semi-commercial ventures
whether they claim to be or not. Then again if one spends thousands of
hours writing code for something, I suppose a person would be
justified in claiming that they deserve some compensation.

Which is why DGD has the non-commerical/commercial licensing in the
first place.

My 2 cents,

Jesse Garrison