[MUD-Dev] Cash for Lawsuits

[Richard.Woolcock at rsuk.rohde-schwarz.com]

Matthew Mihaly wrote:
> 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 agree that you cannot CHANGE the license, however I was under the
impression that certain aspects of a license could later be clarified.

For example we all know that the Diku license states (in part):

  "You may under no circumstances make profit on *ANY* part of DikuMud
   in any possible way".

So while some people might argue that as long as their income didn't
exceed their costs, they weren't making a profit, I could argue that
the license specifically prevents you from making profit in ANY
possible way.  Profit (according to the Merriam-Webster's Online
Dictionary) can be defined as:

1 : a valuable return : GAIN
2 : the excess of returns over expenditure in a transaction or series
    of transactions; especially : the excess of the selling price of
    goods over their cost
3 : net income usually for a given period of time
4 : the ratio of profit for a given year to the amount of capital
    invested or to the value of sales
5 : the compensation accruing to entrepreneurs for the assumption of
    risk in business enterprise as distinguished from wages or rent

Because the license quite clearly says you cannot make profit "in
any possible way" I would interpret that as meaning "any definition
of the word profit".  Definition (1) - "a valuable return" - should
prevent people from taking in any money at all.

If the courts came out in my favour, then surely that would set a
precident which all other Diku muds would then have to follow?

> 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.

I don't think the Diku team have ever objected to people selling
t-shirts, email addresses, or anything outside of the mud itself.  In
regard to Medievia, only time will tell.

--

KaVir.


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