[DGD] Commercial question

[Alex Swavely]

As an aside, you don't have to use your server *only* for purposes of
your MUD.  Back in the early nineties, when MUDs were being run on 66mhz
486s with 16mb of ram (and they cost >$2000 to purchase), it was barely
enough.  But nowadays, you can buy a cheap server running a >3ghz
processor with >512mb of ram for $99 (post-rebate, but a real example).

So, do what I do - make yourself a completely separate venture, one that
supports something else in order to make your machine self-supporting
(in my case, it supports a "car club" website, among others).

*Then*, put your mud "in the shadow" of the machine, using the extra,
otherwise wasted, resources.  (I can, and have, run a profitable(!)
venture -- entirely web-based -- on a pentium-150 with 64mb ram, and had
plenty of "wasted resources".)

Shentino wrote:
> To answer felix:
> 
> The donations weren't intended as access fees or prerequisites of any
> sort to use my mud.  I considered them *gifts* intended to keep the
> server running, and so long as those donations were OPTIONAL (meaning
> a freeloader didn't have to pay if he didn't want to), that it didn't
> qualify as income and thus wouldn't be covered by the commercial
> restriction.  Which is why I also emphasised that the only benefit of
> donating was that I wouldn't go bankrupt trying to keep it going, and
> you wouldn't get any in game benefit from the donation so I didn't
> think that the donations would be associated with the running of the
> DGD program, merely associated with the maintenance and costs of the
> server it's running on.
> 
> I was under the impression that income is only used when speaking of
> net receipts over expenditures when you have a PROFIT MOTIVE, which
> isn't my case.  I was only hoping to be allowed to accept donations to
> cover server costs, and if you're running a mud, finding a cheap host
> to do that for you so you can minimize out of pocket expenses is a
> hard thing to do.
> 
> Wow, I'm surprised at how many people got involved in this simple
> question.  I must have stirred up a royal hornet's nest with that one
> :P.
> 
> __________________________________________
> http://mail.dworkin.nl/mailman/listinfo/dgd