[DGD] Commercial question

[Shentino]

My two cents:

If the donations are optional, and no strings are attached to them,
then IMHO no license can stop you from receiving this money, as it
would be a freewill offering on the part of the players, or, as I
prefer to call them, miscellaneous citizens that coincidentally are
also playing your mud, because total strangers who liked the mud, but
didn't play it, would also inevitably donate just cause they think the
mud is cool (although in my case it would likely be out of pity :P).

Besides, if you accept anonymous donations it's kinda hard to tell
who's who, and a donee may or may not be a player. :P  And in any
case, keeping the mud up on donations (or lack thereof) would be
entirely optional on my part from the donee's point of view, since
they have no warranty on how the funds are going to be used.

However, owing to the confusion this has generated, I'm not going to
start up a donation acceptimg mud until I get more clarification,
preferably from Dworkin's revised copyright and NOT a lawyer in a
court case or a consulting job.

I sincerely hope that Dworkin's revised copyright will shed some light
on this.  If his lawyers are half as good as Dworkin is at coding,
winding up in court over this would be a fearful thing indeed.  :P

Especially since I haven't GOT the big bucks to run a public mud out
of my own pocket (i.e. without donations), and with the 100K/year
licensing fee for commercial use, I'd have a very hard time getting
enough capital to even START a pay for play biz like Skotos without
starting a corporation and making an IPO, let ALONE keep it running. 
I'm just a small fry in college.

Speaking of which, I humbly ask Dworkin to make it possible for a
small hobbyist to run a decent mud on donations.  1.2K a year is quite
a bit cheaper than 100K/year, but still a bit pricy for even MY type,
the kind who go to college on federal grants and live on welfare. 
Cheap is a relative term, and what may be chump change to one person
can be a fortune to another. ;)