<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html><head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="content-type"><title>Intellectual property and Dead Souls</title> <link rel="icon" href="http://dead-souls.net/articles/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://dead-souls.net/articles/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"></head><body> <pre style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><big><big><big style="font-weight: bold;">Intellectual Property and Dead Souls<br><br></big></big>Updated 27 December 2006 <br><br></big><font size="+1">When I began work on Dead Souls, I hadn't<br>thought that I'd have much to worry about, in terms<br>of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property">intellectual property</a>, or IP. Little did I know!<br><br> There have been some areas of concern for<br>folks in this regard, and this article is intended <br>to clarify my actions and intent when it comes to<br>Dead Souls and IP. <br><br>First, let's establish some basics:<br><br><a href="#basics">Basic concepts of copyright in the US </a></font><a href="#basics"><font size="+1">as relevant to MUDs</font></a><font size="+1"><br><br>The main DS IP issues break down into<br>four main categories:<br><br><a href="#status">The legal status of Dead Souls</a><br><br><a href="#cygwin">The controversy over Cygwin GPL violation</a><br><a href="#mudmagic"><br>The controversy over Mudmagic and GPL revocation</a><br><a href="#mudos"><br>The question of MudOS distribution</a><br><br><br><a name="basics"></a><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Basic concepts of copyright in the US as relevant to MUDs<br></span><br><a href="#copyright">What copyright is.</a><br><a href="#generation">When copyright obtains.</a><br><a href="#limitations">Some limitations established.</a><br><a href="#consideration">The meaning of consideration.</a><br><a href="#licensing">The meaning of licensing.</a><br><a href="#revocation">The nature of revocation.</a><br><a href="#contracts">Contracts and revocation.</a><br><a href="#pd">Public domain.</a><br><a href="#disclaimer">Disclaimer.</a><br><a href="#discussion">Discussion.</a><br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="copyright"></a>1)</span> Copyright is a feature of US law explicitly outlined in the body<br>of the US Constitution. It is intended to protect a person's right <br>to their own creative works in order to provide incentive for <br>people to enrich society through their creative efforts.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="generation"></a>2)</span> The moment you write something original, it obtains copyright. It<br>is not necessary to "register" it. When you place it into tangible<br>form, you have copyright. For example, this web page is copyrighted<br>by me, even if you don't see my name on it, or a date, or that<br>(c) symbol. If you have a document you didn't write, you must<br>assume it is copyrighted and treat it as such, until you know <br>for sure that it is otherwise.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="limitations"></a>3)</span> When you have copyright on something, it means that nobody can<br>distribute it, or a work derived from it, without your express permission.<br>It doesn't matter whether they make money or not. The commercial<br>use isn't the issue. The copying is the issue. That's why it's<br>"copyright" not "commerceright".<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="consideration"></a>4)</span> "Consideration" is a legal term which roughly means an exchange<br>of value. If you give me money (or promise to do so) to use my lawnmower, <br>that is consideration and really, it isn't "borrowing", because<br>we've entered into a "contract" involving the use of the lawnmower.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="licensing"></a>5)</span> "Licensing" is a legal term for allowing people to use your work.<br>There are many kinds of licensing. If consideration is provided to<br>secure the licensing, this can constitute a contract. The difference<br>between "license" and "contract" is important. Note they are<br>not mutually exclusive.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="revocation"></a>6)</span> With the exception of something called "estoppel", a copyright<br>holder can revoke a license at any time, <span style="font-style: italic;">if that license is not</span><br style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">contractual</span>. If you <span style="text-decoration: underline;">borrow</span> my lawnmower, I can demand to have it<br>back any time I want. <br><br>Yes, this means that GPL can be revoked. <br><br>Please re-read that. It is correct.<br><br>If you write a program called LeetFooProg, and GPL it, and put it<br>on SourceForge, you can then go back the next day and tell everyone<br>who downloaded that program for free that you're revoking GPL and they<br>can't use it any more. <br><br>This is a concept that is very, very upsetting to some people,<br>because it means that a lot of the software they use (in many<br>cases, all of the software they use) can go away in a puff of smoke,<br>if the copyright holder goes crazy and decides to revoke license.<br><br>In theory, Linus Torvalds could wake up tomorrow, insist that<br>the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#Copyright.2C_licensing.2C_and_the_Linux_trademark">Linux kernel license</a> is now null, and a lot of people would have <br>to then go use some other operating system.<br><br>In the context of a mud, that means that if someone builds some<br>stuff on your mud for free, then decides to revoke your license to have<br>it in your mud, you are legally obligated to remove it.<br><br>However upsetting this concept is, that's just how it works. <br><br>Some people find this 100% intolerable, because it means that they<br>have to deal with the fact that people over whom they think<br>they are "boss" actually have authority over features of their mud.<br>If you are among those people, don't flame me because you wish<br>things were different. Change your ways or change your mud so that<br>you are no longer exposed.<br><br>For others, it's just unacceptable that the creator of their<br>codebase could, on a whim, show up and tell them they have to use <br>some other codebase. If you run Diku, and any one of the Diku<br>copyright holders showed up and told you to stop using his material,<br>you need to do so. Period. For some mud owners, that's a pretty<br>scary thought.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="contracts"></a>7)</span> If the license is contractual, it may not be possible for the<br>copyright holder to revoke it. If we enter into a bargain for you to<br>use my lawnmower for a single week for $10, I cannot then insist on<br>getting my lawnmower back before the term of the contract expires.<br>A new contract could be required for that, depending on controlling<br>legal custom. Similarly, if I pay you to use LeetFooProg, it may<br>be (depending on the wording of the contract and the applicable<br>jurisdiction) that you cannot revoke my right to use it.<br><br>This is a bit squishier. Your municipality may, for example,<br>have an overriding Lawnmower Act that supercedes any authority<br>outlined in a contract within its jurisdiction. Similarly, you<br>may be a US citizen party to a contract with a foreign national<br>whose locality invalidates your licensing expectations.<br><br>In general, though, the exchange of consideration tends to give<br>the user somewhat more protection from arbitrary license<br>revocation (but read that EULA!).<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="pd"></a>8)</span> A circumstance that obviates the need for license worries<br>is the use of material which is public domain. Public domain<br>material does not have a copyright holder, and is therefore<br>free from copyright-based limitations on its use.<br><br>Public domain material is also non-copyrightable. Nobody gets<br>a second bite at that apple. Once it's free, it's free. If <br>you add some chapters to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cratylus_%28dialogue%29">Cratylus</a>, and make some aesthetic<br>alterations to the original text (redactions perhaps), then <br>you hold copyright to the additions, but not to the original<br>text itself. That original still belongs to everyone.<br><br>Of course, this assumes you're altering the original ancient <br>Greek text or using Jowett, since an English-language version <br>of it could be a copyrighted translation. Never assume your <br>source material is PD, ph.D.'s.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="disclaimer"></a>9)</span> Things are much, much more complex than it might seem<br>from the above information. Intellectual property law is<br>a somewhat involved subject. The preceding points are an<br>introduction to my understanding of how it works relevant to<br>people interested in running a mud. Before you make decisions<br>related to copyright, be sure to consult a lawyer with<br>expertise specific to the legal aspects of the nature of<br>that decision.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="discussion"></a>10)</span> You may register disagreement with the preceding points<br>at the <a href="http://lpmuds.net/forum/index.php?board=17.0">lpmuds.net discussion forum for it</a>. Please note that<br>impoliteness is not appreciated and flames are moved to a<br>flame section.<br><br><br></font><font style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" size="+1"><a name="status"></a>The legal status of Dead Souls</font><br><font size="+1"><br>The original, not-touched-by-me version is 1.1pre, and it is public domain.<br><br>There is a cleaned up version of 1.1pre, which is called 1.1. It is public domain.<br><br>There is a modernized, updated version called 2.1.1. It is <span style="font-weight: bold;">NOT</span> public domain.<br><br>A new public domain version has been released, composed of most of what<br>is in 2.1.1. It is <a href="http://dead-souls.net/ds-II-faq.html">Dead Souls II</a>.<br><br>For complete details on all the versions, see <a href="http://dead-souls.net/versions.html">this page</a>.<br><br><br><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"><a name="cygwin"></a>The controversy over Cygwin GPL violation</span><br><br> In early 2006, I released a version of Dead Souls<br>packaged with a Windows-compatible executable. This let<br>people run Dead Souls on their Windows computer.<br><br> For this to work, it needed some special files<br>called "dll's" to enable the executable to run on computers<br>which did not have Cygwin software. These Cygwin dll's <br>are provided by Cygwin under GPL. I included these dll's<br>in the Dead Souls release.<br><br> What I did not understand at the time is that<br>distributing the dll's without access to their source code<br>was not permitted by GPL.<br><br> I provided access to the source code as required,<br>and the controversy subsided for a while.<br><br> Then there was a new ruckus because the Windows<br>compatible executable had been compiled using non-GPL<br>source, but linked with GPL libraries, which in the view <br>of some people is not permitted by GPL.<br><br><span class="sb_messagebody"> So then with the great help of a Dead Souls<br>stalwart named Saquivor, I ditched Cygwin entirely and used<br>MinGW to create a Win32 native executable that can be <br>run on windows without the taint of GPL.<br><br> That's it. That's the whole story. Some folks have<br>chosen to inflate this event into allegations of Dead Souls<br>containing "stolen" code, which is as baffling to me as it<br>is untrue.<br><br><br><a name="mudmagic"></a><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">The controversy over Kyndig and GPL revocation</span><br><br>In early 2006 there was a big hullabaloo over the<br>actions of a person known as Kyndig. He banned some<br>people from his site, which caused a lot of displeasure.<br><br>Much of Kyndig's unsavory behavior and his policies<br>were discussed. After examining the<br>available information, I determined that I did not<br>want to be associated with Kyndig. I decided to pull <br>Dead Souls from his repository, and I then revoked his privilege<br>to host it, for good measure.<br><br>This evoked a howl of protest from someone named Tyche,<br>who spent some effort in excoriating my action as unacceptable.<br><br>The ensuing flames unfortunately obscured the issue. For<br>some time I assumed Tyche simply had a problem with me personally,<br>due to the fact that he had been the one rudely hounding me<br>about copyright stuff before (he'd been the prime mover of<br>the Cygwin controversy and went so far as getting DS removed<br>from MudMagic back then) and due to the rather unhinged<br>and disproportionate bombast of his assaults.<br><br>Turns out the bigmouth had a point, though.<br><br>When I revoked Kyndig's right to host Dead Souls, I had<br>assumed I couldn't really do that. Like many people even today,<br>I thought that once a set of bits is GPL'ed, it's<br>beyond the reach of the whims of the author. However,<br>as my understanding of copyright law gained in sophistication,<br>I saw that my action wasn't just an empty gesture of<br>repudiation. It was an act with actual legal ramifications,<br>potentially invalidating the licensing on all GPL'ed distributions<br>of Dead Souls.<br><br>Upon arriving at this understanding, I reversed my policy<br>on Kyndig's privilege to host Dead Souls (not that I expect<br>him to avail himself of it!). It is no longer a question of<br>my interest in who does or does not host the files, but<br>rather a question of whoever wants to host them being<br>subject to the packaged license and applicable laws.<br><br>Unfortunately, the preceding flames had already degenerated<br>into ad hominem stuff, and it provided occasion for people<br>who disagreed with me on *anything* to then raise the<br>specter (purely <a href="http://www.jargondb.org/glossary/fud">FUD</a>) of me running around revoking licenses.<br><br>Entirely unfounded, from my perspective, but how could<br>a potential Dead Souls adopter know for sure? The harm was<br>already done.<br><br>I think that the FUD is now effectively mitigated by<br>the release of <a href="http://dead-souls.net/ds-II-faq.html">Dead Souls II</a>, a public domain version <br>which is entirely immune from my theoretical revocations. <br>The fact is that it would be entirely against my interests<br>to go about doing what Tyche and KaVir have implied<br>or suggested I might, but if you can't stand even the<br>slightest chance that I might wake up, lose my marbles,<br>and start a revocation jihad, then you can just use<br>Dead Souls II and sleep sound as a baby, knowing your<br>mud is entirely free of my caprice.<br><br></span></font><font size="+1"><span class="sb_messagebody"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span></font><font size="+1"><span class="sb_messagebody"><br></span></font><font size="+1"><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"><a name="mudos"></a>The question of MudOS distribution</span><br><br> The question of <a href="http://www.mudos.org/">MudOS</a> distribution hinges partly on<br>tradition. It's been a generally accepted custom to include<br>driver source code with lib distributions, and this is<br>because sometimes getting a vanilla driver to run one's<br>lib is not easy, and the idea of a distribution is to<br>help others get going somewhat conveniently. Including<br>the lib-customized source for the driver is a logical<br>and widely approved-of policy.<br><br> However, it's good to get permission anyway,<br>when possible.</font><font size="+1"><span class="sb_messagebody"> I emailed Marius, the current maintainer, for<br>his permission to bundle MudOS with Dead Souls. I got<br>no reply, but I came upon this: <a href="http://mudos.org/MudOS-1.0.txt">Marius tells someone off</a><br><br> In that document you can see that Marius would<br>have been happy to let someone not only copy MudOS, but<br>actually take it over completely and lead it forward...<br>if only they had emailed him first. The key part of this<br>document is where he states,<br><br>"<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">That's all it would have taken to get my blessing, either </span><br style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">implicitly as a result of my silence (which is most likely </span><br style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">what you would have gotten), or explicitly by my saying so </span><br style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">in response.</span>"<br><br> This is about as clear a signal as I was likely<br>to get as to how the copyright holder felt about the<br>general distribution (indeed, maintainership) of MudOS. <br><br> Then, thanks to the sharp looking out of Skout, I<br>was able to find Marius and we had the following conversation.<br>The only editing done here was excluding the noisy "Joe enters the room."<br>type messages, and formatting for clarity:<br><br><span style="font-style: italic;">You tell Verbal: howdy. i'm the maintainer of dead souls, and i'm told you</span><br style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">maintain mudos. i'd like to ask for your explicit blessing in what I'm doing:</span><br style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">http://dead-souls.net/articles/copyright.html#mudos </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">(this url edited on 27DEC2006 -ed.)</span><br><br><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">Verbal tells you: Yep, that's me. I am also Marius of mudos.org</span><br style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">Verbal tells you: I got your email, but unfortunately my response bounced.</span><br style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">Verbal tells you: I'm fine with you distributing the MudOS driver bundled with Dead Souls.</span><br style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">Verbal tells you: I would ask that you contribute any patches you've applied to the mudos-patches mailing list, though.</span><br style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);"><br><span style="font-style: italic;">You tell Verbal: sure thing. sorry i had to idle, visiting a friend in the hospital</span><br style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">You tell Verbal: i'll submit the diffs for sure...i'd just thought the list was dead</span><br style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">You tell Verbal: if you don't mind, i'll use a transcript of our conversation</span><br style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">on my webpage, so anyone in doubt can have their mind set at ease.</span><br><br style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 51, 0); font-weight: bold;">Verbal tells you: no problem. all of the lists are still alive, though there's</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 51, 0); font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 51, 0); font-weight: bold;">not much traffic.</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 51, 0); font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 51, 0); font-weight: bold;">Verbal tells you: go ahead and use the transcript. that's cool.</span><br><br> To the best of my ability to tell, it really is the<br>man himself I was talking to. Anyway, I hope it was, because<br>if it wasn't and he reads this, he might get awful pissed!<br></span> </font><big> <br><a href="http://dead-souls.net/index.html">Dead Souls Homepage</a><br><br></big></pre> </body></html>
