<!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="./favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="./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><a href="#23jun06"><br><small style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">updated 23 June 2006</small></a><br><br></big></big> </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. Given that Dead Souls<br>was itself "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain">public domain</a>" software, it didn't seem<br>like it would be an issue. 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. The main issues break down into<br>three main categories:<br><br><a href="#1">The legal status of Dead Souls</a><br><br><a href="#2">The controversy over Cygwin GPL violation</a><br><a href="#3"><br>The question of MudOS distribution</a><br><br><br></font><font style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" size="+1"><a name="1"></a>The legal status of Dead Souls</font><br><font size="+1"><br> Dead Souls 1.1 was the final release of the<br>Dead Souls lib made by </font><font size="+1"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Reese">Descartes</a></font><font size="+1"> in the late 1990's. <br>DS 1.1 was placed into the public domain, meaning<br>that Descartes released all copyright to the lib,<br>making it freely distributable in any form by any<br>one in any way, including commercially.<br><br> This was in stark contrast to the strict<br>reservation of copyright for his other mudlib, Nightmare IV.<br>Nightmare IV remained under his copyright, and it<br>further had a highly restrictive license which<br>imposed limits to its use beyond that which is normally<br>enforced through copyright law.<br><br> Descartes vigorously defended his NM IV licensing<br>and copyright, and to this day old-timers in the LP<br>mud community look back on Descartes's withdrawal of the<br>NM IV lib from public distribution with some bemusement.<br>Whatever one thinks of his motives, it must be said that<br>Descartes was effective at squelching the unauthorized<br>distribution of the Nightmare IV lib.<br><br> This has left some people with the impression<br>that Dead Souls is somehow tainted by restrictive<br>licensing. For Dead Souls 1.1, this is not true. DS 1.1<br>can be used in any way one sees fit.<br><br> Dead Souls 1.2 and above, however, are not public<br>domain. They are GPL, meaning that whatever one finds<br>in Dead Souls 1.x to 2.x that is *not* found in DS 1.1 <br>does in fact retain copyright and its distribution is<br>subject to the requirements of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpl">GPL</a>. <br><br> Translated into layman's terms, this means that<br>the current versions of Dead Souls cannot be distributed<br>unless their source code is also distributed, they are<br>otherwise entirely free to be distributed whether<br>commercially or otherwise. The experienced LP coder at <br>this point will object: "Hey, that doesn't make sense! LPC<br>is an interpreted language, so distributing it is de facto<br>distribution of code!"<br><br> From a technical standpoint, it's pretty senseless<br>(with some exceptions) to GPL Dead Souls. The lib itself<br>runs in the form of plain text..there's no way to hide<br>the source even if you wanted to. In this sense, GPL'ing<br>DS is meaningless.<br><br> However, I wanted to distribute DS in Windows<br>binary format, which meant in this case using Cygwin. To<br>use Cygwin, I needed to comply with <a href="http://cygwin.com/license.html">their licensing</a> which<br>as GPL made it a prerequisite that Cygwin was to be distributed<br>porting other software only if that software complied with<br>GPL-style licensing. By making Dead Souls explicitly<br>GPL, I could comply with Cygwin licensing and distribute<br>the driver binary I created.<br><br> To clarify, whatever is in Dead Souls now that<br>was in Dead Souls 1.1 is still public domain software.<br>Whatever is in Dead Souls now that was not in Dead Souls<br>1.1 is copyrighted.<br><br><a name="23jun06"></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">UPDATE: 23 June 06</span><br><br> Dead Souls is not GPL. Due to the incessant nitpicking<br>of pedants who are overconcerned with software licensing, I<br>am revoking GPL. Dead Souls is copyrighted, and you can download<br>it and use it under no obligation to share anything. However,<br>I retain distribution rights. When I have nothing better to<br>think about I will decide on some "official" license to slap<br>on it, or come up with my own. <br> <br> But all I want to do is code the greatest LP lib ever,<br>and I am just through with thinking about licensing.<br><br> My guess is that some licensing Nazi will read this and <br>try to find a way to make my life difficult because I revoked<br>GPL. There is just no pleasing some people. Just leave me alone,<br>please. Can't you just leave me alone?<br><br><br><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"><a name="2"></a>The controversy over Cygwin GPL violation</span><br><br> In early 2006, one of the sites that provided <br>downloads of Dead Souls to the public abruptly pulled it<br>from distribution. Apparently <a href="http://www.mudmagic.com/boards/developer/1/1658/1658">someone had complained</a><br>to the site administrator that Dead Souls was in violation<br>of the GPL, and it was improper to host it.<br><br> This was a shock to me, because I thought I<br>had been scrupulous in my adherence to Cygwin policy.<br><br> To summarize, there was a Windows version of DS<br>which contained a pre-compiled Windows executable, to<br>permit the mud to run in Windows. This executable was <br>created in the Cygwin environment, and the<br>only way it would run on a Windows computer is if that<br>computer had some files called dll's, or "dynamic link<br>libraries" from the Cygwin environment. Since the point<br>was sharing the lib with people unwilling or unable to <br>compile for Windows, including the dll's along with the<br>executable seemed like the reasonable thing to do.<br><br> I examined Cygwin's policy on distributing their<br>dll's, and based on my interpretation, it seemed ok. It<br>turns out my interpretation of their licensing was incorrect.<br><br> What I thought they meant was that if you have<br>possibly modified their dll's, you cannot distribute them unless<br>you also distribute the source code.<br><br> What they actually meant was that whether or not<br>you had modified the dll's, you cannot distribute them unless<br>you also distribute the source code. <br> <br><span class="sb_messagebody"> I queried the Cygwin licensing discussion list and <br>searched their archives until I found an example like Dead Souls.<br>A software company used Cygwin dll's and distributed them<br>without source, but when told they were in violation of the<br>Cygwin license, they simply added the dll's source code to their<br>download page, and this satisfied the Cygwin licensing folks.<br><br> I changed the download pages for Dead Souls to <br>make available the source code for the Cygwin dll's I was<br>distributing, and the site administrator allowed the<br>Dead Souls downloads to continue.<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></span></font><font size="+1"><span class="sb_messagebody"><span style="font-weight: bold;">UPDATE: 05 June 2006</span><br> It turns out that despite the efforts outlined above,<br>distributing the Cygwin linked executable is still impermissible<br>according to Cygwin. The problem is that MudOS is not Open<br>Source, meaning linking with it is considered (by many, though<br>not all) a violation of the Cygwin's GPL.<br><br> Please see <a href="http://dead-souls.net/news.html#03jun06">the news page item</a> on this issue.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;">UPDATE: 06 June 2006</span><br><br> Dead Souls no longer uses Cygwin in any way. Questions<br>of GPL compliance with Cygwin linked libraries are now dead.<br>There is a new Windows version of Dead Souls available, and<br>it is a native Windows executable.<br> </span></font><br><font size="+1"><span class="sb_messagebody"><br></span></font><font size="+1"><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"><a name="3"></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>the meaning of "fair use," which is a notoriously slippery<br>concept in the already hard to grasp field of copyright law.<br>I'd like to make a disclaimer here that I am not a <br>lawyer, and am therefore most certainly not a copyright<br>lawyer, which is a field as full of necromancy as any<br>mud you're likely to play. What I state here are my<br>opinions based on my layman's understanding of the law.<br><br> Copyright in the U.S. is generally understood <br>to mean the set of exclusive rights an author holds over <br>her work, and these rights flow from the Constitution of <br>the United States which empowers Congress to legislate <br>in this area. Congress has done so. In order to promote <br>the arts and innovation, the U.S. has made it law that the <br>only person with the right to distribute a work (such as a <br>book, music, etc) is the author. She may negotiate with <br>others to permit them to distribute also, but absent this<br>positive action on her part, the distribution or<br>reproduction of her work or even a derivative of it<br>is flatly against the law, be it commercial<br>or otherwise.<br><br> Unless...<br><br> Here's where it gets tricky. It is illegal to<br>copy and distribute Bon Jovi's music, period....unless <br>you're making a mix CD for a friend. The principle at work<br>here is "fair use," which is an extremely ill-defined<br>standard by which actually it's ok sometimes to<br>do things that ordinarily constitute violations of<br>copyright.<br><br> Other known fair uses are quoting for journalistic<br>purposes, mimicking for parody or satire, copying for<br>personal backups, etc. <br><br> </font><font size="+1"><span class="sb_messagebody">The "known fair uses" are generally not enshrined<br>in statute law. They are known from precedent. When<br>a court rules that something is fair use, then we have<br>a general rule of thumb we can follow...until another<br>court rules otherwise. That's about as close to written<br>law as you're going to get on this: court decisions.<br><br> This means that in a case where things are not<br>spelled out for you in black and white, you have to<br>follow your best judgment and hope you don't get sued, <br>and if you do, hope you don't lose, and if you do, hope<br>you haven't caused actual harm to the complainant.<br><br> This is the situation with the distribution of<br>MudOS. I have asked 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'm likely<br>to get as to how the copyright holder feels about the<br>general distribution of MudOS. I hope he reads this and<br>goes on to give me explicit permission, but in the<br>absence of that, my good faith interpretation of his<br>statements leads me to the conclusion that he really<br>does not care and it's ok with him.<br><br> Which, in my layman's view, does not fall squarely <br>into "fair use" territory, but between that and a<br>tacit passive permission and the fact that no<br>action has been taken against web sites which feature<br>MudOS as a download, it is reasonable cause to interpret<br>the bundling of Dead Souls with MudOS as "not wrong."<br><br> This doesn't mean that Marius has somehow allowed<br>his copyright to lapse. Should he contact me to order<br>me to stop bundling MudOS with Dead Souls, I would be<br>obligated to do so.<br><br> For anyone in the Dead Souls community worried <br>about that, please note that this would not be a fatal<br>blow to the UNIX lib. It would just make downloading a <br>two step process, thus making it more difficult for<br>beginners. For Windows users, however, the effect *would*<br>be devastating, because most Windows users don't have<br>the skill or experience to compile their own driver<br>executable. Let's hope this doesn't come to pass.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br><a name="Marius"></a>Update, 09 June 2006</span><br><br> 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#3</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="../index.html">Dead Souls Homepage</a><br><br></big></pre> </body> </html>
