[MUD-Dev] Where\'s The Line Drawn

[KaVir at dial.pipex.com]

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Original message: http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2001Q1/msg01086.php

On Tue, 27 Feb 2001 00:53:39 -0800 (PST)
Kyndig <kyndig at clds.net> wrote:
 
> Where does one draw the line for movements in the gaming community? 
> By movements I refer to organisations or group of people which have
> taken up a 'cause' in the gaming community.

As you and I discussed previously on The Mud Connector, each person
must individually decide where they draw the line.

[snip]

> It is quite a good thing that this subject has come up at an early
> stage of my website development; as it allowed me to view what
> guidlines, restrictions, and stance myself and those that work with
> me will take on issues such as this. ( When first this topic arose,
> I did not take the NEUTRAL stance which I hold now, and for those on
> the list which know what I refer to, apologies, yet we (the staff
> and myself) had not discussed how we would handle this and similiar
> situations. I had posted 1 biased view to a public website, making a
> statement for the game..rather than no statement at all. ) Yet the
> fact remains that I (and my website ) Will not be taking part of
> legal copyright infringements or Licensing regulations for third
> party promoting on our site.

As you point out, the biggest problem was the post you made which
defended the mud and attacked those who were drawing attention to the
license violations.  Even worse, your post was a response to my own,
in which I had policely and informatively described the history behind
the mud in question and the damaging affect it (and others like it)
were having on the mudding community in general (I would be happy to
repeat the post if others feel it might be appropriate).

Because of this you inadvertently stepped into a discussion where
there was no neutral ground, and - as a representative of kyndig.org,
which had also awarded the mud in question "mud of the month" -
dragged your mud site with you.

This sort of issue is always going to raise a lot of tempers, because
there are those of us who feel that the license violators are
destroying our hobby - but at the same time, the players of those muds
tend to feel that *their* hobby, their mud, is also being attacked.

As I've said previously, we all have to draw the line somewhere, but
if you truely wish to remain neutral it is *vital* that you don't make
public statements either for OR against specific muds.  The "mud of
the month" thing doesn't help matters, but as long as it's purely
player-voted you can't be accused of taking sides.

The reason I requested our mutual banners removed was because - as one
of the more active pro-license people - it reduced my credibility to
have my site associated with yours (something which was pointed out to
me rather publically, a fact which I could hardly ignore).  I did not
(nor will I) request my source code removed from your site, because
that has nothing to do with this situation.

[snip]

> Does any believe that the maintainers of a Source code would contact
> me and ask me to remove a game that is being listed because said
> game is in violation of their Licensing agreement? I doubt it, they
> would instead contact the game on the matter and pursue it by other
> routes.

Actually that has indeed happened in the past.  A mud coder had given
several snippets to the "The GodWars Project" (a mud website dedicated
to GodWars muds) which were made available for download.  Several
people proceeded to use the snippets, but chose not to give the
original author credit for his work, thus the author requested his
snippets be removed from the site.  He decided that if people weren't
going to follow his simple license, then he wasn't going to let them
use his code (as well as withdrawing his existing snippets, he also
stopped releasing any others).  I've spoken to a number of mud
developers who have decided not to release their code to the public
because of the various license violators.

[snip rest]

KaVir.

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