[DGD] Commercial question

[Shentino]

I really hope you are allowed to accept donations to defray costs.
And I would like the license fee to be nominal (as in no greater than
10.00 USD or so).

I don't know about the rest of the budding mudding community, but from
my point of view, even a $100 fee isn't chicken feed.  I make the poor
folks look rich. :P

As I said before, I'd like to just open up a mud to the public, accept
willing donations and say to hell with the financial mumbo jumbo.  I
don't really give a hoot about profits.  If Dworkin (or Skotos?) were
to make that happen I'd be very happy.  Compliance audits I can live
with.  I'd even go so far as to refuse donations if I either have
enough money to run it without them or if people are being too
generous.

Maybe I'm gullible, but I'm not terribly worried about people getting
profit "under the table", so to speak.  Philosophical issues aside,
that's not just illegal, it's a crime.  To be specific, it can count
as larceny (stealing), tax evasion, and criminal copyright
infringement, all three of which have either state or federal law
enforcement on the lookout.  I can't speak for all mudders, but I
don't want to join anyone behind bars.

On 5/11/06, Gary Preston <muphicks at mups.co.uk> wrote:
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> Shentino wrote:
> > Is this allowed without a commercial license:
> >
> > 1.  Setting up a public mud.
> > 2.  Accepting donations to keep it running.
> >
> > These donations would not be in any way mandatory and would confer no
> > benefit apart from keeping the mud running.
>
> I'm a little late on replying to this thread, but I thought I'd throw
> my opinion in anyway.
>
> I'd love to see some form of "indie" license for DGD. By that I mean a
> license somewhere between the two extremes, free for non-commercial
> use and 100k for commercial use.
>
> As an example, the GarageGames engine TGE has an indie license for
> $100 dollars with which you can make commercial games, however if your
> income from said game exceeds a certain threshold, you must upgrade to
> the commercial license. OR, if your company or any company providing
> backing for the game has a turn over greater than X amount you need a
> commercial license.
>
> This is great in several ways, mainly it gives the small indie devs a
> way to create games at a low cost. However, it also protects GG's
> interests in that larger companies can't get away with using the Indie
> license instead of the full commercial license.
>
> So going back to DGD, I'd like to see an "indie" version of the DGD
> license that allows commercial use but with certain restrictions on
> income.
>
> Lets say for a small fee of $X dollars you can license DGD for an
> Indie mud, but you're limited to earning under $2k per annum. Once you
> exceed that figure you must pay a royalty of X%. (Or the royalty could
> simply apply from the off, but it would be nice to only have it kick
> in after a lower threshold to account for hosting costs).
>
> The royalty would only apply up to a certain threshold, beyond which
> you must purchase a full commercial/annual license.
>
> DGD is great for having a non-commercial license at all, at least its
> usable for free muds, but it would be nice to have that little extra
> flexibility.
>
> Of course whether its worth instituting such a license would depend on
> how much hassle is involved in checking whether people have exceeded
> income thresholds etc.
>
>
> Gary
>
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