It's probably a good thing that it's only dragged up as a hypothetical. If it was being discussed because we found a violator every 3 months then there'd be pretty much no integrity left in the hobby and it would be a sad state of affairs. Of course the main reason this keeps coming up is because it's not as clear cut as KaVir and those who share his strict interpretation make it out to be. If it was there'd be no reason for people to keep triggering this by asking the question or by offering to pay their coders and/or builders.

It seems that there have been easy enough "loopholes" presented in both cases of paying builders (you pay them for the textfile, they put it in the MUD for free) and paying coders (they write code independent of the codebase and you patch it in) that it seems really a pointless debate at this point, because since it isn't so clear cut, go those routes and you're fine.

Or as the other person keeps saying, consult a lawyer and decide for yourself if its ethical.

I adhere to the strict interpretation of the license for a few reasons:
1) It's how I believe the Diku people truly intended the license to read
2) I think it's the right thing to do
3) It wouldn't be worth the hassle of being pounced on by many members of the community otherwise

Your reasons for adherence are moral issues though. That wasn't really the focus of the discussion, because everyone has a different idea of what's right.

From a legal standpoint:

#1 is debatable since they worded the license poorly.
#2 is entirely a moral issue and the court would likely not consider it, though the jury may.
#3 is also irrelevant in the legal sense. That all depends on how thick your skin is, how resistant to trolls you are, and ultimately if you care about what most of them think. In the end, what they think of you won't matter in court, unless you somehow manage to get one as a juror :P

In effect, Samson, isn't what you are asking about morals anyway? The Diku people are definitely going to come along and sue you for being paid to code on a game engine they developed.

/sarcasm

Seriously, though, isn't this a little pointless? You -know- you are not going to be sued by them.

- Zenn

If it's a moral issue, why is it never asked that way?

When's the last time someone posted this topic somewhere in the form of "Is it morally ok to pay my coders and builders who work on and with DikuMUD?"

Never? Extremely rarely? I thought so. It would be really pointless to try and argue the morality because you'd get arm chair priests instead of arm chair lawyers.

Yes, except the "arm-chair priests" are the ones who stir up the crapstorm to ostracize people from the community for doing something that might or might not be illegal…

This i tend to agree with. The moral police do a great job of demonizing and isolating anyone who does not follow their own beliefs in regards to the spirit of the license. Which is why a debate about morals or ethics on this topic would just become a flame fest. Some hold the Diku team up as gods who cannot be touched, where others like myself think they are a bunch of idiots for never fixing the problems in their license. As the saying goes "Catch me one time same on you, catch me two times shame on me." In the end some people get the treatment they deserve.

Yeah, that's why I stated my beliefs on the legal aspect of it first. There are enough ways to get around what even the strictest of arm-chair lawyers feel about the license, so if you are only concerned about the legality of it, go that route. The legality of it is probably the least of my concerns, personally, which is why I stated my personal reasons for following it.



I think calling them idiots is a rather harsh conclusion.

If they were idiots, I don't think they could have created Diku in the first place.

It seems much more likely to me they simply quit caring.

Indeed. Which begs the question as to why everybody else seems to care so much. :wink:

People that generate original content tend to care about intellectual property more then people that misuse, steal or otherwise use without proper permission such content.

Take music as an example. Many people think that stealing songs (illegal downloads) are fine. Many musicians feel differently. They feel they have spent their life in pursuit of art and that the fruit of their labors is being stolen. To some of them it does not matter if you are stealing their song, but that you are stealing anyone's songs. They see it as a wrong on the other musician, and the content that was produced.

Yes, but that was not the point. I was remarking that people are making a lot of hay about issues in the abstract without even having a concrete case to talk about. So let's please stop wasting forum space on repetitive and endless discussions until there is actually a reason to do so, e.g. we have actually encountered somebody who is actually violating the license.

Incidentally, if the other person in question truly does not care, then other people should not really be caring either. If the author doesn't care what people do with their work, why should anybody else? Isn't that the whole point of the author deciding what people can/can't do based on what s/he cares about? (There is a hole in this argument, but whatever: the point is that people are generating a whole lot of hot air for basically no reason at all…)

It was stated "It seems much more likely to me they simply quit caring.", to which you replied "Indeed. Which begs the question as to why everybody else seems to care so much."

I expressed my opinion, and that "was the point" of that part of the discussion.

I will leave it to the moderators to decide what "wasting forum space" is. I was posting an opinion on an ongoing discussion directly dealing with the posts previous to my own.

As I do not use DIKU-derived code I have no dog in this hunt, other then a belief that the letter and intent of a coder's license should be followed. It was, after all, their content that they generated and then allowed people to use. If people feel they were "idiots" or that the license is vague and hard to understand, or that people that also generate original content are being harsh by pointing out possible license violations then the viloators can choose other code to work with instead of violating the spirit of the license. Pretty simple.


The belief in the protection of IP is a very valid reason to speak out.

I still think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. You implied before and now again that I am advocating that people can do whatever the heck they want to do because the DIKU authors don't care enough to pursue. That is not what I am saying. I am saying that this is really a silly discussion that somehow seems to come up over and over again despite the fact that we have no concrete case to talk about. The fact that the authors don't care anymore only really compounds the problem, making it essentially "abandonware".

I mean, we could argue this yet again, talking about whether or not the fact that they don't care means this is abandonware. But we've been over this so many times already. Why do we have to do this yet again?

I think I should take my own medicine and stop repeating myself on this issue, so …

I'm with David.

Unless a case actually went to court, any legal arguments and speculations, even by our "lawyer friends", means shit.

Likewise, until all of the DIKU creators come forward and publicly announce (in very clear terms, since some of us like to nit-pick) where they stand on the issue, anything thoughts we conjure up on the subject again, mean shit.

From what I understand, there are two basic schools of thought. First is the Law, which is ambiguous in this case and has no relevant case to back up the legal fine print. The other is what the original DIKU team would think or say, despite what the fine print says. Again, we don't know what their positions were (clearly) now or then.

Roughly 20 years later, the argument is moot. It just is. Any obedience to the license is, at the moment, for all intents and purposes, purely out of respect.

Flame on, ladies and gentlemen.

I pretty much agree with Asylumius on this point :p

I still think that we should, as a community, discourage people from breaking the license, educate those that don't understand it, and try to do -something- about MUDs that do break it. Why should we care if the authors don't? To me, it's a matter of respect in general. I would like to see the community abiding by licenses because "it's the right thing to do" or at least because "I'll get hounded if I don't." I think at which point we, as a community, stop caring about the Diku License, then we might see a devolution toward an attitude of "I'll break what licenses I feel I can get away with" and I think that if we catch people early enough and teach them to respect the licenses from the beginning (even if the original authors don't care anymore), they're more likely to take that attitude with them in the future toward other codebases, toward other coders, or toward other parts of the community.

That's my 2 cents on it anyway.

I totally agree, however, legal opinion is all you have when one wishes to clarify what is meant by X clause in Y license in the absence of the authors or when no change has ever been made to the license.



Again agreed, in the absence of any corrections and updates to the license to close any purposed holes in the license, one can only conclude that the authors of the license were and currently still are very happy with the wording and the actions of a community that have been derived from there works. For me, there is no other conclusion to come to, i know that if i found someone doing something with my work that i felt was against what i meant in the license i would correct the issue as soon as is practical to do so.

Why are these arguments never directed at the licenses of derivatives like AFK and Circle for example, well simply, while they still follow the theme of the Diku license, they also extend it and make explicitly clear what is not and what is allowed to be done with that license.



I agree here to, tho there is very little actual intentional violation of licenses that goes on. Most fall into a couple of categories, A: noobs who have no idea about the credits and have ripped them out of the base and B: the rare episode where one actually does some real code theft, aka medeiva. The A's are very simple to action and mostly are encouraged by the fact that someone takes the time to explain things to them they don't understand. At this point however it is easy to have some over zealous people who will denounce and declare them to be the anti christ for these actions. I know how this feels from personal experience, where i have been labled all sorts of things because my code failed submission to mud magic.

Well there is so much more i could add to this discussion and i have only been back in a city for 5 days, i now have to go sit a chemistry practical and then pack my bags to head back to the mines so it will have to wait for another day.

The nice thing about the MUD community is that it's small. If somebody does blatantly violate the DIKU license, we (the community) usually find out, and we don't like it. If you violate the license, the cops might not bust down your door, but shit if you're going to receive a warm welcome here or on any other forum / community website.

I think that alone is a pretty effective deterrent.

No offense Tommi but I would be surprised if anybody could add much actual original content to this discussion after all this. :wink:

Maybe I am just an idiot but making profit means making profit. In order to modify their source code, you have to agree to the license… In order to agree to the license, you can't make ANY profit off of the code. Maybe your lawyers missed the part of *ANY* profit but that implies that you can't make money off of it… Not sure, I'm no armchair lawyer but making profit is making profit. Maybe I am taking it out of context but making money on a Diku based codebase, you're making profit off of their code…

EDIT: Not saying what I said is fact… It's just my observation of how the situation is…

Again, the arguments for and against this take on the issue have been played out numerous times. It just isn't that simple. We can repeat ourselves as much as we like, and even though many of our points ARE valid (and maybe even true), they've still been made on page 1, page 2, page 3, etc.