[MUD-Dev] Re: Moral license (Re: [MUD-Dev] Re: My vision for DevMUD)

[ApplePiMan at aol.com]

At 11/4/98 8:12 AM Ola Fosheim Gr~stad (olag at ifi.uio.no) altered the 
fabric of reality by uttering:

>An alternative would be to stuff in a semi-legal license agreement,
>basically stating that it is free for any use, but you have to register all
>derived works, what it is used for, and your contributions on some website
>or with the maintainer or something.  Then you have an additional non-legal
>moral license saying that developers are encouraged and expected to
>contribute according to their ability.   The register should be open to
>anybody wanting to look and should contain actual contributions.  That way
>you would have a reward/pressure mechanism as well as a communitybuilding
>mechanism.  It would look bad for MegaBucksCorp if they didn't contribute
>anything, and TeenageJoe would be paid in perceived fame and glory...

It seems to me that would be a severe pain in the rumpus to administer 
for very limited (if any) gains. I think this would probably end up 
*encouraging* the looking at the source and re-engineering you refer to. 
And unless or until players started a mass exodus over it, MegaBucksCorp 
wouldn't *care* if it looked bad in the eyes of the developers visiting 
your Web page.

Another issue I've meant to address a couple of times but haven't is that 
we need to consider administration of the license if it's *not* PD. 
Unless we have the means and intention of actually taking MegaBucksCorp 
to the courts for not abiding by the terms of the license, it's just 
plain silly to impose a license in the first place. Such a legal battle 
can be a very expensive proposition for a group such as ours, especially 
if the license breaker has very deep pockets. Which of us is going to pay 
the legal expenses out of his or her own funds? I know my own pockets 
would certainly not sustain such a hit. =)

Unless we very visibly have a fund set up for such contingencies, 
MegaBucksCorp, if it's looking to rip us off, will most likely see we 
don't have the means of enforcing the license and go ahead and do as they 
please anyway.

-Rick.


---------------------------------------------------------
Rick Buck, President and CEO  <mailto:rlb at big-i.com>
Beyond Infinity Games, Inc.
See you in The Metaverse! <http://www.big-i.com>