[MUD-Dev] Mud hosting services

[Dundee]

On Thu, 18 Nov 1999 09:36:35 -0500 Thu, 18 Nov 1999 11:00:01 CST, "AR
Schleicher" <ars at iag.net> wrote:

> IANAL, but if someone was to run a commercial UO server,=20

Well, I'm not speaking of running a commercial server, I'm speaking of
mudhosting services leasing cpu/bandwidth/drivespace for non-commercial
servers.

The exact same concern (running a commercial mud when the lisense =
agreement
says you cannot), as far as I know, applies to most of the mud software =
out
there - you aren't allowed to run commercial servers using that software
either... and yet the mud hosting services *do* host those muds.

> I'd think OSI could
> go to a court and show that creating an emulator without having the UO
> service (and therefore agreeing to this part of the ToS) is virtually
> impossible,=20

It would have been impossible for the first one (UOX), but all the rest =
that
came after UOX (opensource that it is), wouldn't have had much difficulty=
 at
all.

Worst case, OSI tells the person running the server to stop it.  Best =
case,
they follow the precedent set with UOAssist (also developed in direct
violation of the ToS - for profit, no less - but now "approved for use =
with
UO").

'Course, the most likely case is that OSI will continue to ignore server
emulators (so long as they are non-commercial), until UO is so old that =
no
one cares any more.

> along with fairly good client code.  If there was anything like this =
outside
> of UO, I think it would be quite popular.  Is there any group working
> towards such a goal or something similar?

I think WorldForge (formerly "Altima")  =
http://www.rhrk.uni-kl.de/~szymanek/
is the only one that seems to be active any more.

It shouldn't be too very long before commercial game companies take the =
hint,
though.  I imagine they'll hit retail long before WorldForge is ready for
primetime.

--=20
http://dundee.uong.com/



_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev maillist  -  MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev