[MUD-Dev] GPL (was:Libs for 3D Client/Servers)

[Travis Casey]

On Thursday July 05, 2001 09:24, Joackim Birgersson wrote:
> Travis Casey < efindel at earthlink.net > wrote:

>>> I think it would have potential, especially if it was not GPL'd
>>> (some other version of the copy-left scheme, that allowed the
>>> operators to collect money and even make a profit would be
>>> fine).

>> The GPL does not prevent either of these things -- if it did, Red
>> Hat and other for-profit Linux companies would not be able to
>> exist.  You may be thinking of the Diku license, which didn't
>> allow running a for-profit mud without permission from the
>> copyright holders.

> You forget the little fact that Redhat sells other peoples work,
> they do very little inhouse themselfs. They have thousands of open
> source programmers that basically works for them (kind of) for
> free. They have a few inhouse that they pay and a couple of
> external projects that they sponsor but for the most part it's a
> matter of free labour.

Umm... no, I wasn't forgetting that.  I didn't say that it's
necessarily economically viable -- only that the GPL does not
prevent one from collecting money or making a profit.  As I said, if
the GPL *did* prevent those things, then Red Hat could not exist.

>> In fact, the GPL only requires you to release source code you
>> create if you distribute the resulting binaries in some way --
>> if, for example, you took a GPLed server, altered it, and ran it
>> as your server, you would not have to distribute your
>> alterations, as long as you didn't give away binaries of your
>> server.

> That you must release the source code is not the big problem. That
> you must let everyone copy and redistribuate it however they want
> to (including not paying you for doing so) is.

I already posted some ideas for (partially) getting around that
problem.  For example, one method is to make your client GPL, but
not your server.  Thus, people are free to copy the client, but
anyone wanting to set up a competing server would have to write
their own.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_     Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-' 
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) 

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