[MUD-Dev] Cash for Lawsuits

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Wed, 6 Dec 2000, Patrick Dughi wrote:

> Public statments by the DikuMUD staff over the years on many usenet
> forums make their concept of this topic rather clear.  Whether
> public explanations in the form of semi-offical addendums is legal
> enough to count... who's to say.

I don't think that the DikudMUD staff's statements are relevant if the
code was distributed with the original license. No one gets to
retroactively amend a license unless there is specific provision in
the license to do so. A license is a contract, and once the contract
is agreed to by both parties, the only way to change the contract is
for a court to invalidate all or part of it, or to change it in the
manner that the contract dictates. You can certainly change the
license for all new licensees, but you can't just later amend the
provisions of the license.

I think that the language of the license is relatively clear, but I
also do not think it prohibits making money off your mud. I think it
is clear enough to hit Medievia with, though I doubt that will ever
happen, as frankly no one cares enough (myself included), but I think
one could happily sell merchandise of whatever sort (not just physical
either. I'm not suggesting you're going to get rich selling t-shirts
and e-mail addresses, but I don't think the license prohibits mud
admins from making a few bucks doing that.

--matt
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