[MUD-Dev] Re: My vision for DevMUD

[Darrin Hyrup]

At 07:16 AM 11/4/98 -0500, James Wilson wrote:
>On Wed, 04 Nov 1998, ApplePiMan at aol.com wrote:
>>PD assures availability and "free-ness" much more than LGPL or BSD. It 
>>removes all restrictions on usage, and in doing so *ensures* anyone, 
>
>sorry, you're missing the point here. PD makes it possible for a commercial
>entity to fork my code, by making some super modifications and not releasing
>them in source form. Then the free version of my code is killed by the
>commercial version. This is the central reason why people use Gnu-style
>licenses.

I think we're missing the point a bit here...  is the intent to create a
MUD or to advance the state of mud technology and provide a map for others
to follow to get there with us?  If its just to create a MUD, there are
plenty of tools out there one can use to do that, and compete with other
commercial services doing the same thing.  if its for education and
exploration, then it is expected (and intended?) that others will use our
code in their own future products.

In any case, the license/release arrangements for the core and basic
modules should not really be at issue here... anyone who uses this system
will probably have to use them in one form or another anyway.  Its the
supplementary modules which you should be more concerned with, and as an
author you could protect those in your own way, since they are not really
part of the server core itself, but are one of many plug-ins for it.

Someone who would be making a commercial version of our server is going to
have to create a customized environment (mudlib/module suite) to be
competitive, and if they chose to use your offerings of such components,
then they would be required to abide by your restrictions.

I think we are really only discussing the main core and low-level modules
in terms of license/copyright... 3rd party modules and add ons will be a
completely seperate issue, and that should be up to the implementor(s) to
decide.

So, by keeping the core PD, we open the game up to a much larger potential
audience... many of which are likely to contribute more back to the project
as a whole.

Best,

Darrin