[MUD-Dev] Diku & GPL

[Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt]

On Thu, 7 Dec 2000 Richard.Woolcock at rsuk.rohde-schwarz.com wrote:
> Jon Lambert <tychomud at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >
> > A critical point:
> >
> >   While a product can be relicensed, current users of that product
> >   perforce have the *right* to choose which license (older or newer)
> >   they care to operate under.  If not, the product vendor would be
> >   in the position of retroactively rewriting the contract between
> >   themselves and their users without their users having any say in
> >   the matter.
> >
> > While I'm sure some vendors would (briefly) love such a situation,
> > the potential for abuse is enourmous, which is why contract law
> > doesn't work that way.
> 
> I was under the impression that the mud administrators were the "users",
> not the players.  This is the same problem that means a GPL'd Diku
> wouldn't have to display the copyright notices to the players, only
> to the "user/s" - the people running the mud.

This is a bit unclear under GPL, but i think GNU confirmed that it did
only apply to the people running the program, and that GPL did not
concern itself with the online users. I propose to use 'online users'
to talk about the 'players' (in this dicussion), while the 'user' is
the person/persons running the server.

I also recall that GNU was adressing this issue to write it in a new
version/type of GPL that concerned itself with the networked software
(client/server) that is in particular interrest to us (running and
distributing MUD's).

Hans Henrik Stærfeldt   |    bombman at diku.dk    | work:  hhs at cbs.dtu.dk      |
Address:                |___  +45 40383492    __|__       +45 45252425     __|
DTU, Kemitorvet,        | Scientific programmer at Center for Biological     |
bygn 208, CBS.          |  Sequence Analysis, Technical University of Denmark|

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