[MUD-Dev] Cash for Lawsuits

[Patrick Dughi]

On Sat, 2 Dec 2000, Brian 'Psychochild' Green wrote:

> UCMM Administration wrote:
> > 
> > <<EdNote: What have the DIKU license holders said publicly about this if
> > anything?>>
> > 
> >         One of my IMC Network MUD owner's have brought up alot of ideas to
> > me about how to go apon a lawsuit against Medievia for breaking the
> > license.  I am aware that money is an issue, but what else is stopping it
> > from moving forward?
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Could someone fill in this poor commercial graphical MUD developer on
> the details of what's happening?  What's the nature of the violation?
> 
> I can make some assumptions from this post, but I would like more info.
> 

Not that I'm the best resource on this, but since there was some
discussion on the merits of Diku switching to a GPL license that I was
involved with, this subject was included.

In brief, Vryce is the owner/maintainer of Medevia.  Medevia is a
profit-making mud which is based at least partially on the Merc
codebase (if I understood correctly).  As you may know, Merc is a
derivitive of Diku.  The Diku license specifically prohibits the owner
(Vryce in this case) from accepting money for any reason specific to
the mud, including charity, server maintainence, and of course any
sort of subscription, pay-to-play, or pay-for-perks model.

In short, if any money comes from a player and ends up with the owner
for any reason, you are breaking the license (unless you send it
back).

<EdNote: You can find a copy of the DIKU license here (among many
other places): http://www.goodnet.com/~esnible/dikulic.htm I have
quoted it below.  The Merc license is either identical to this, or
only minorly different in important particulars>

--<cut>--
/* ************************************************************************ 
* Copyright (C) 1990, 1991 * 
* All Rights Reserved * 
************************************************************************* */ 

DikuMud License 


Program & Concept created by 

Sebastian Hammer 
Prss. Maries Alle 15, 1 
1908 Frb. C. 
DENMARK 
(email quinn at freja.diku.dk) 

Michael Seifert 
Nr. Soeg. 37C, 1, doer 3 
1370 Copenhagen K. 
DENMARK 
(email seifert at freja.diku.dk) 

Hans Henrik St{rfeldt 
Langs} 19 
3500 V{rl|se 
DENMARK 
(email bombman at freja.diku.dk) 

Tom Madsen 
R|de Mellemvej 94B, 64 
2300 Copenhagen S. 
DENMARK 
(email noop at freja.diku.dk) 

Katja Nyboe 
Kildeg}rdsvej 2 
2900 Hellerup 
31 62 82 84 
DENMARK 
(email katz at freja.diku.dk) 

This document contains the rules by which you can use, alter or
publish parts of DikuMud.  DikuMud has been created by the above five
listed persons in their spare time, at DIKU (Computer Science
Instutute at Copenhagen University). You are legally bound to follow
the rules described in this document.

Rules:

!! DikuMud is NOT Public Domain, shareware, careware or the like !!

You may under no circumstances make profit on *ANY* part of DikuMud in
any possible way. You may under no circumstances charge money for
distributing any part of dikumud - this includes the usual $5 charge
for "sending the disk" or "just for the disk" etc. By breaking these
rules you violate the agreement between us and the University, and
hence will be sued.

You may not remove any copyright notices from any of the documents or
sources given to you.

This license must *always* be included "as is" if you copy or give
away any part of DikuMud (which is to be done as described in this
document).

If you publish *any* part of dikumud, we as creators must appear in
the article, and the article must be clearly copyrighted subject to
this license. Before publishing you must first send us a message, by
snail-mail or e-mail, and inform us what, where and when you are
publishing (remember to include your address, name etc.)

If you wish to setup a version of DikuMud on any computer system, you
must send us a message , by snail-mail or e-mail, and inform us where
and when you are running the game.  (remember to include your address,
name etc.)

Any running version of DikuMud must include our names in the login
sequence.  Furthermore the "credits" command shall always cointain our
name, addresses, and a notice which states we have created DikuMud.

You are allowed to alter DikuMud, source and documentation as long as
you do not violate any of the above stated rules.

Regards,

The DikuMud Group

Note:

We hope you will enjoy DikuMud, and encourage you to send us any
reports on bugs (when you find 'it'). Remember that we are all using
our spare time to write and improve DikuMud, bugs, etc. - and changes
will take their time. We have so far put extremely many programming
hours into this project. If you make any major improvements on DikuMud
we would be happy to hear from you. As you will naturally honor the
above rules, you will receive new updates and improvements made to the
game.
--<cut>--

<EdNote: Solely for the sake of focus, a couple paragraphs removed 
here as Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt is a list member and is well able to
represent himself.>

As a side note, the discussion over GPL'ing Diku has slowed down; I
feel I should start a new thread on it though to bring everyone up to
speed and garner your ideas on it.  I'll do so momentarily.

					PjD

					

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev