[MUD-Dev] EULA Structure

[Bruce Mitchener]

Frank Crowell wrote:
> From: "Matt Mihaly" <the_logos at achaea.com>

>> That's not a valid analogy. He brought in his computer desk, etc
>> from elsewhere. He doesn't get to take the walls of his apartment
>> with him. In the case of a MUD, everything a player feels he or
>> she owns comes from landlord.

> And this is where some mud need to change.  In muds such as MOOs,
> MUX, and Cold there is no reason to have exclusive server
> ownership.

Well, in the current scheme of things, without transportability or
widely used distribution systems, you still have the need for
exclusive server ownership at a few levels.  At the administrative
level, someone is still ultimiately responsible for the usage of
bandwidth, memory, and disk space.

At the programming level, unless a system/mudlib/db/core is well
enough designed, there may well be invariants that are a core part
of the design and can't be easily changed for a subset of the world
without disrupting everyone else. That would/could force someone off
onto their own server.

So, in the first, the administrator owns the resources used to
provide and simulate the vworld.  This could justify the sense of
exclusive ownership.

In the second, the limits of what is possible (or easy to
accomplish) are defined by the server, other parts of the
environment, security policies, the world model/representation, and
so on.  This ought to drive people away from exclusive server
ownership if they want to really create something different or new.
But short of that, exclusiver server ownership may be needed to keep
things working, enforce security policies, mandate cooperation
between different groups of programming/building users who may both
want to make changes at the base level of things, and so on.

> I had another posting about my mud skipper (a type of cyberspace
> ship) project, but I think it got mangled in the mail system.  But
> the point of the mud skipper project was to have a portable
> character model in MOO.-- a "Dr Who" model.  So I would arrive at
> some MOO in my skipper, with my dog scruffy and a few things of my
> own. I would do some stuff and leave. The mechanics included enter
> shell maddog, update maddog, create ship, create scruffy, create
> objects, then update perma objects and delete temporary objects
> after a departure. The next enhancement would have included moving
> multiple people through cyberspace to some destination.

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=frankcDAz27t.9t2%40netcom.com
http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/1998Q2/msg00017.php
http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2001Q3/msg00606.php

Have you prototyped or designed anything for this?  What've you
found/learned in the process?

  - Bruce

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