Sure he is. Kyndig pissed him off so he revoked Kyndig's distribution rights, and if you piss him off he'll revoke your distribution rights. And if someone downloads the code and pisses him off, he might revoke their right to prepare derivative works… And if someone pisses him off who happens to be using the code in their mud, he just might revoke their rights to perform and display his works.. This authors peculiar view on distribution rights can just as well be applied to the other copyrights he granted.
FUD.
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I would bet my left nut you'd be posting here and on every mud forum screaming about it. And no doubt there would be a great deal of sympathy, and much flamage directed at Thoric. I would imagine that many people would cease to use Smaug for fear they'd have the rug pulled out from under them because of the unreasonable, irrational and intemperate author who made promises/grants of copyrights but couldn't be trusted to keep them.
FUD
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Suppose Michael Chastain signs up for Mudbytes and you ban him because he violates your rules. He then retaliates by sending a DMCA request to you requesting that all Merc code be removed from the site. Of course you'd then be obligated to remove the entire Merc tree wouldn't you?
FUD
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Suppose KaVir logs into a Godwars mud and the admins ban him for violating their PK rules. He then retaliates by revoking their license to perform and display his works, and sends a takedown notice to the host.
FUD
Here's a classic example of why people just let Tychery slide off them like bat guano on a rainy day. You're a slippery sloper, Tyche, a Manichean absolutist. You appear to believe that either things are black and white, or they aren't, PERIOD.
So long as it suits you.
And AFAICT, what suits you is being able to harangue people into handling copyright in a way that fits your high horse. I suggest you slap yer own ass on that saddle, mate, and ride the high horse into the sunset in search of IP nirvana. Yer copyright heaven ain't here.
Because here on planet Non-OCD, people recognize distinctions between justified expressions of protest and inveterate asshattery.
Guess which category you fit into?
Don't get me wrong. I'll defend your right to blah blah and yakety schmakety, and in fact your redfaced blustering serves a purpose convenient to me. By all means keep it up.
Because it just shows to go everyone here exactly the kind of person who cares about such poinlessnessess.
Asshats.
Though really, it's be nicer if you could just discuss things like a normal person.
-Crat
PS Can't you just be normal? How hard is it? Just…BE NORMAL
Tyche, if any of those people chose to revoke distribution rights, then it's well within their right to do so.
I never said they didn't. As A matter of fact in response to Samson's, "He's perfectly within his rights to revoke distribution for any reason he sees fit. It's his code.", I responded "Sure he is".
Justice said:
Having just checked the diku, merc, and smaug licenses, none of them grants the right to distribute.
Oh they didn't?
Diku License: This document contains the rules by which you can use, alter or publish parts of DikuMud.
USC 17.1 Section 101: “Publication” is the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. The offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public display, constitutes publication. A public performance or display of a work does not of itself constitute publication.
Dictionary.com pub·lish 1. to issue (printed or otherwise reproduced textual or graphic material, computer software, etc.) for sale or distribution to the public.
Yes the Diku license grants distribution rights under restrictions (I count 3 of them). Both the Merc and Smaug license incorporate the Diku license in its entirety and while adding restrictions of their own, don't add any further restrictionones on distribution rights.
If the MudBytes staff agrees with your strange reading of the license, it would follow that they are infringing the Diku group's copyrights by distributing the code. And since only the license gives them the right, I'll expect they'll be removing all Diku code from the site.
Justice said:
Unless Darien's license expressly grants the right to distribute, he is well within his rights to revoke it.
Let's try it again since I noticed some people around here seem to enjoy repeating themselves…
The kind readers of the mudconnect site have updated my understanding of this, and gently redirected my opinion of my action in this regard. I see that as author, I do indeed have copyright that supercedes any verbiage in GPL, and I now see the fragility of Open Source, which depends on the continued trust of authors' responsible exercise of copyright.
As a developer, I'd rather have a reputation for responsible copyright behavior than keep my pride. I am therefore stating here that my revocation of Kyndig's right of distribution was made under erroneous assumptions, and is no longer in force.
I thought you'd be lecturing Darien on "responsible copyright behavior". Try to be more consistent, if you wish to be taken seriously.
The stories on your web pages are fantastic and funny. They could be made much more believable if you actually quoted the responses made by your detractors. :-)
Did you really think I meant "gently redirected my opinion of my action in this regard" in a way other than sarcasm? Oh please tell me you did!
What I choose to do with my copyright is my business. And what Darien chooses is his. Thanks for worrying about my consistency, I'll thank you to keep your eye on your own.
Actually Tyche, I think people here would very much appreciate it if you were consistent. Either authors have the right to revoke distribution or they don't. There's no middle ground here. Darien demanded his code be removed from distribution. Kyndig refused. Darien took it to the next level, Kyndig complied. End of story. It doesn't matter why. It only matters that he had that right.
If Thoric came here and demanded the removal of all Smaug code ( and we could actually verify it was him mind you ) then we'd be obligated to remove it. End of story. And that would include derived works from Smaug since they too would no longer have legal standing for us to distribute here. Yes, including AFKMud. We would of course insist on verifying his identity before just yanking it all. Kyndig would not have had much problem verifying that Darien is who he claims to be.
Would I be pissed? Sure. I might even rant and rave about it for awhile. I'd almost certainly blog about it and raise hell. But that wouldn't change a damn thing. In the end I'd just take all of our additions to Smaug and force them into some other Merc derivative. The AFKMud name would live on. It would just assume a different ancestry. Unless of course the Merc guys came along and told me to get bent too. In which case there are public domain alternatives which mimic Merc closely enough to force into working. But I digress.
Bottom line: You're full of crap. Everyone can see that. Darien did not release his snippets to the public domain. He did not cede distribution rights to anyone who feels like it. His license grants no such authority, and as such Kyndig only had an implied non-exclusive license to distribute. Which was revoked. Done deal.
You also seem anti-mudmagic, and I can't figure out why you post, and release entire codebases to his site, still.
The reasoning is almost 100% because I care more about the existence of the codebase and helping people who post questions relatingto the codebase than I do about my personal distaste for Calvin and how he administers his site.
Derived works are a whole other section of licencing and legalities. Now if all they did was change the function-name and strip the credits, that would be another story all together, but you get my point.
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Suppose Michael Chastain signs up for Mudbytes and you ban him because he violates your rules. He then retaliates by sending a DMCA request to you requesting that all Merc code be removed from the site. Of course you'd then be obligated to remove the entire Merc tree wouldn't you?
Apparently you didn't catch that…so there it is again. Derived works are not really another thing entirely, and someone can revoke the right to distribute a work derived from their own. Also Tyche does not seem to be saying you had no right, so much as saying you were not in the right. That's the difference between right and wrong in an ethical or rational sense, not whether you were legally in the right.
Anyone that posts or lives or does anything can and will be the target of criticism, it's part of life.
Boy is that ever true. Becoming a codebase maintainer was a wake-up call for me. It doesn't matter how kind, decent, etc you are, or the pureness of heart from which your actions derive.
There will always be someone, sometimes groups, sniping from the sides, trying to trip you up, trying to take you down.
In my opinion, those guys aren't the most upsetting thing. It is, after all, to be expected. There are people who *enjoy* being nasty, *enjoy* the failure of others. It's only natural you'll be a target if they notice you.
No, those guys are kind of like feral animals…there's only so much blame you can assign them before you have to accept some responsibility for handling them correctly.
What really upsets me are the people who don't like the flamers, who actually agree with you, but say nothing. They stand by, watching you fight for what they agree with, without a peep. *Those* people upset me.
I don't like being a target for doing what i felt was my right todo.
Anyone that posts or lives or does anything can and will be the target of criticism, it's part of life.
Amen to that. I've certainly been on the receiving end of such criticism myself over the years. But usually not directed toward my rights as the copyright holder :)
however, when it comes to something like this, there shouldn't be any criticism unless your personaly affected by what I did.
And unless Tyche is a big rom snippet user, i doubt he was personal affected by my choice.
Everything that affects anyone in the MUD "community" invariably affects everyone else in the MUD "community". By this I mean you revoke ROM snippets, someone making a ROM MUD may now be less successful. Their lack of success may then cause their MUD to fail. A player that played their MUD may then never MUD again. That player never MUDding again is one less potential "customer" not only for that specific MUD, but all MUDs and therefore affects Tyche.
This is why alternate resources exist. If someone doesn't like how mudmagic runs their site, they can find the same code elsewhere. Before Mudbytes, about the only alternatives available were scattered FTP sites, or non-mud related code submission sites. Since we opened, several others have too, and we welcome it. The competition is healthy and it provides the community plenty of choices for distribution channels. So places like mudmagic are no longer a effective monopoly on the community. People are realizing this too and beginning to make use of other sites. So it's not damaging to anyone if an author chooses to skip distributing through mudmagic for moral and/or legal protest reasons.
thats a pretty strung out way of looking at things.
if one of my snippets causes a mud to fail because someone cannot find it on mudmagic, then their mud deserves to fail. I'm sorry, but i'm not the best coder, and i don't claim to be, so if my snippets are holding the fabric of the mudding community together, then there is a bigger issue at hand.
In all seriousness though, my snippets are available on my own site, and mudbytes, if mudmagic users want me snippets, they can very easily bring up google, and search for rom code snippets, oddly enough, my snippet site crops up there, on the first or second page(last time i checked)
and they are pretty actively downloaded. So really, once again, may of affected afew people, they may of had to of learned how to code, or search google, or god-forbid, visit the competition of mudmagic.
sorry, but i fail to see how it affects them that badly that you would paint such a sad picture of the mudding community.
if a mud fails, and a players leaves the community, then most likely, he would of left anyways when the mud shutdown from any other cause.
hell, i've seen mudders leave mudding because they simply grow out of it. Or grow into Graphical MMO's.
If as you put it, a mud shuts down because he couldn't get one of my snippets, which would of drawn in players, then really, the mud was in a bad spot.
and it makes one less mud in the competition, and lets face it, we all want our muds to be successful, and the less crap muds, the more chance of players coming the way of the good muds.
now that statement will spark atleast 3 retorts from people, but look at it this way, i release my code so that coders have a chance to learn from what i've done. And what i've done is scower the internet searching for howto's, tutorials, examples, and forums with people searching todo what i'm trying todo, i've learned from actively doing my homework, and i release my snippets so that people can hopefuly find something that they've wanted to look into themselves.
But if they aren't doing the research, and the searching of the net, then they aren't going to find it.
anyways, i'm not sure what i was getting at, my Sgt just asked me questions and i'm too tired to re-read what i was saying. but i'm sure it had a point.
FUD.
FUD
FUD
FUD
Here's a classic example of why people just let Tychery slide off them like
bat guano on a rainy day. You're a slippery sloper, Tyche, a Manichean
absolutist. You appear to believe that either things are black and white,
or they aren't, PERIOD.
So long as it suits you.
And AFAICT, what suits you is being able to harangue people into
handling copyright in a way that fits your high horse. I suggest
you slap yer own ass on that saddle, mate, and ride the high
horse into the sunset in search of IP nirvana. Yer copyright
heaven ain't here.
Because here on planet Non-OCD, people recognize distinctions
between justified expressions of protest and inveterate asshattery.
Guess which category you fit into?
Don't get me wrong. I'll defend your right to blah blah and
yakety schmakety, and in fact your redfaced blustering serves
a purpose convenient to me. By all means keep it up.
Because it just shows to go everyone here exactly the kind
of person who cares about such poinlessnessess.
Asshats.
Though really, it's be nicer if you could just discuss things like a normal person.
-Crat
PS Can't you just be normal? How hard is it? Just…BE NORMAL