04 Mar, 2011, Lyanic wrote in the 121st comment:
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Why did I ever post this? I should have known what would ensue. Can I pull a Davion and make the thread disappear?
04 Mar, 2011, Runter wrote in the 122nd comment:
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I dunno why you would make that distinction at all. It's against the license to "raise a ton of money" in the first place. It doesn't matter where you get your jollies spending it on. In your hypothetical the authors may very well allow you to do that after the fact. But they wouldn't necessarily allow you to make money to send to them. It's clear they want it free, not royalties (at even 100%).
04 Mar, 2011, David Haley wrote in the 123rd comment:
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plamzi said:
Of course it matters what you do with the money. In my hypothetical case, if you raise a ton of money through donations and sales and send all of it to the makers of DikuMUD, are you not in complete compliance with their license? You are.

How do you even establish what I do with the money?

Let's say I take donations. Runter gives me $100 because he thinks I'm awesome.

In five days, I go to the store and spend $100 on a sweet new gizmo.

Did I use the $100 that he gave me? Did I use $100 I already had?

So we have a first problem, which is that what you're describing requires analyzing something that is basically impossible, unless you are requiring that the donations live in a special account with audited purchases. But then these aren't donations anymore!

You're taking the word "donation" to mean something it doesn't. Once I give you money, it is yours. If I gave you money along with some contract or agreement (like you might have with a merchant at a store) then you might or might not have some obligation in return (such as giving me the money). You might even have an obligation to keep that money in some account and only use it to pay operating costs. But these are no longer donations!

If this is truly so obvious and common, surely you'd have at least some pointers to a reference? I think we're both tired of the back-and-forth, but I'm genuinely curious at this point if I somehow missed some massive legal point. For, indeed, your position is completely alien to me.

You're completely correct that intention often matters in the law. If I were taking "donations" and then "donating" things to people who "donate" to me, then I am clearly using the whole structure to hide that it's a commercial transaction: my intention is clearly to circumvent the license.

Where I completely disagree is that a perfectly legit donation with absolutely no consideration in return somehow changes character based on whether I spend the money on my VM, my domain name, my web host (which could be my VM), beer, or pizza. I guess we might have to agree to disagree if you have no resources to point me to, because this simply makes no sense to me. :sad:

Runter said:
From what I understand David's point is that it doesn't matter what you do with the money. I agree with him on that point, at least. Where I differ is the in the legality of accepting donations at all. Even if "just for the disc."

Yes, Runter is correct. And yes this is all assuming that donations are ok (which we have reason to believe according to the author that they are). I will note though that a donation "just for the disc" is no longer a donation, it is a purchase.

A donation is a transfer of money without any expectation of service or product in return. That's why they're called donations, and not purchases, contracts, etc.
04 Mar, 2011, Runter wrote in the 124th comment:
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I suppose that's true. Really, the problem I have with "donations" are just people calling transactions for services donations. I.e. incentive to donate based on game rewards or even denial of services. The old "we're gonna shut down if you don't donate more" is a pretty classic case of incentivizing donations with denial of services. One could argue that they're simply letting people know that it can't be self funded. But I sort of think that type of ultimatum is inappropriate, too.
04 Mar, 2011, David Haley wrote in the 125th comment:
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Yes, anybody using donations to hide transactions is no longer really taking just donations. And I agree that using the "denial of service" threat to solicit donations is a little sketchy, but since there is still no explicit link between me giving money and the game running for me, it's a little murky IMO. (That is: if you donated and I didn't, I could still use the service, even if your money were used to support the server.)

Regarding the disk, I wonder if you could charge shipping and handling… but then you have to establish that you paid for exactly that and not more.
04 Mar, 2011, Runter wrote in the 126th comment:
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Before I stopped playing free to play games, I would generally quit any mud I was trying out if the admins had a MOTD regarding donations to keep the game running. Or anything of that sort. Even if it's completely legal as a player I found it to be a little untoward. It also makes you question the sustainability of the game over the long term. It may be a fly by night operation if the admin can't afford 10 dollars a month to keep it running. (for most small games)
04 Mar, 2011, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 127th comment:
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'Of course it matters what you do with the money. In my hypothetical case, if you raise a ton of money through donations and sales and send all of it to the makers of DikuMUD, are you not in complete compliance with their license? You are. '
Nope you are not, they would make profit of the Dikumud code….tada ! this is great fun to see how people distort the profit world to say you cannot take money in any way.
Even the lines about the disk is completely stupid. It is like their license could prevent me to send the DikuMud code by mail without paying from my own pocket.
Ya know what, if I had to send a blank disk, it would cost money…If incidently there was some code on it….what would be the differences ? None and the license cannot prevent me form sending the code at the exact price of a blank disk. what they meant in there is probably that you cannot charge for your time ( and or fuel) spent to go to the post office but I bet definitely not for the stamp and the disk itself.
04 Mar, 2011, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 128th comment:
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'It may be a fly by night operation if the admin can't afford 10 dollars a month to keep it running. (for most small games) '
Yeah like Sony never stopped servers for a pay for game…..snicker
04 Mar, 2011, Ssolvarain wrote in the 129th comment:
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I say we just call the people soliciting donations for server costs a bunch of cheap bastards.

We can also tell them to get a haircut and a real job to support the $10 server costs themselves.

Legal… illegal…. either way they're still a bunch of misering penny pinchers.
05 Mar, 2011, Cratylus wrote in the 130th comment:
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Heh, remember when the MB admins were all uptight and threatened to ban people
who posted useless material and locked threads they felt were going nowhere?

Good times, good times.

Anyhoo, people should stop complaining that this topic never dies.

They love talking about it, no matter how much they complain, that's why it never dies.

Regarding the old chestnut about hiring a lawyer to opine on this, it's worth noting that
for the most part lawyers are paid to advocate some specific opinion using the law as
their tool and arena. While there may be some value in their assessment of the merit
of a position, it isn't really authoritative, since when you have two lawyers in a room, you're
liable to get three opinions. What lawyers are mostly supposed to be good at is arguing a
position in an adversarial system. You want to use a lawyer correctly in this context,
get standing and sue.

Won't happen tho, and so I suggest what I'm pretty sure I've said elsewhere many times.
The legal aspects are mostly moot if nobody's going to actually test them in a legal proceeding.

The ethical aspects are the most unmoot, because that is something there can be a general
community agreement on, and social consequences can be made to enforce this agreement.

AFAICT that's how it works now, by default, and while it only kind of half works to deter thieves,
well, it's better than nothing at all.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
05 Mar, 2011, David Haley wrote in the 131st comment:
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Many people base their ethical opinions of the matter on what they believe to be the legal issues, e.g., whether or not you violated the license. Somebody might feel that donations are fine, but interpret the license as saying they're not ok, and therefore holler at you if you take donations.
05 Mar, 2011, Cratylus wrote in the 132nd comment:
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David Haley said:
Many people base their ethical opinions of the matter on what they believe to be the legal issues, e.g., whether or not you violated the license.


If you don't get wrapped up in decontextualizing the ESL based license, and if you pay attention also to subsequent
clarifications, and if you accept as valid and relevant the wishes of the authors, I think it's harder to gin up artificial
constructs that technically fit the words of the license while disregarding the obvious preferences of its authors.

IMO if the license really is as flawed as folks make it out to be, then if you really want to get hyperlegalistic about it,
it's as easy to argue that it is impossible to follow at all, as it is to argue that it allows this one thing or that other thing.
And lacking adjudication or context, it seems to me that "it cannot be followed" is the proper default position.

But we do have context, and we do have to take into account the expressed wishes of the authors, and the "permission
to use" (call it license if you must) includes more than the hosed up text being waved around in Chamberlainesque manner
by all involved. That wider, context-inclusive acceptance of our "permission to use" goes beyond the dumb legalisms
that really defeat themselves if you follow them to their logical conclusions.

It has more to do with what is right and just, rather than what I can justify to be right.

Did I mention I got 100% on Cold as Ice expert guitar? Maybe you can spend some cycles on something of
practical use like figuring out how to beat my score.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
05 Mar, 2011, Runter wrote in the 133rd comment:
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I dunno why people even weigh in with comments about a thread needing to die There's nobody twisting arms to read them. Do people just forget that the thread with the title "Diku License Violation" is the one they don't like reading? Or are they just gluttons for disappointment/annoyance/punishment?

With that being said, now that Crat has weighed in we really need someone to shut this thread down. Things are getting dangerous.
05 Mar, 2011, David Haley wrote in the 134th comment:
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Crat, I wasn't disagreeing with you. I was merely suggesting why people's perception of the legal issues and their ethical judgments are not always separate. ESL license indeed.
05 Mar, 2011, sankoachaea wrote in the 135th comment:
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A donation is a donation. Which I think was more his point. If I ask for money, and you give it to me, and I don't sell you anything, that is a donation. It doesn't really matter what is done with the money.

The license does not and can not restrict you from taking donations. The restriction is that you may not profit from the codebase. Therefore, if you solicit for donations (on your website or in your MUD) and are not offering anything in terms of in-game rewards or perks to your players for donating (i.e. selling, though it's a tertiary consideration) and you use the donations solely and exclusively for operating costs (so as not to be considered profit) then you are within the legal (and moral, in my opinion, though orthogonal to the topic) bounds as specified in the license.
05 Mar, 2011, Cratylus wrote in the 136th comment:
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David Haley said:
Crat, I wasn't disagreeing with you. I was merely suggesting why people's perception of the legal issues and their ethical judgments are not always separate. ESL license indeed.


I liked your point about fungibility, btw. Seems to me that it's insufficiently pointed out that
every dollar you don't have to spend on server costs is one more dollar you can spend on
hookers and blow…and if that ain't profit I dunno what is.

I'm of the opinion that the anti-capitalist licensing fads early in mud development were a bad thing.
These days restricting commercial use of your free (iykwim) code is kinda weird and oppressive…I guess back
then others profiting (!!!) from your code was weird and oppressive, I dunno. But if it had been
relatively easier to start up muds with a concretely rewarding incentive to be awesome (personal
pride and satisfaction is nice but people have to put bread on the table) we'd have more high
quality muds now, I think. Sure you might have to pay in some way for that quality. But we are
not communists after all, right?

Right?

…omg…
05 Mar, 2011, sankoachaea wrote in the 137th comment:
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Someone asked why these topics should even be discussed..

If nothing else, they prove to be a good platform for humour.
05 Mar, 2011, Runter wrote in the 138th comment:
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sankoachaea said:
A donation is a donation. Which I think was more his point. If I ask for money, and you give it to me, and I don't sell you anything, that is a donation. It doesn't really matter what is done with the money.


Quote
If you solicit for donations through your MUD (DikuMUD) and use them for ANYTHING other than operating costs, you are profiting and committing a serious crime, both legally and morally.


*shrug* He doesn't seem to be supporting your previous statement. So that's why it was weird for you to say you were in agreement. I think he said *exactly the opposite* of what you said above. Furthermore, your two statements seem to be at odds. So which one do you really mean?
05 Mar, 2011, KaVir wrote in the 139th comment:
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Rarva.Riendf said:
Ya know what, if I had to send a blank disk, it would cost money…If incidently there was some code on it….what would be the differences ?

The difference is that "distribution" is one of the rights protected by copyright law, the Diku licence is the only thing granting you permission to distribute the DikuMUD source code, and it stipulates that you don't charge for the disk.

Cratylus said:
I'm of the opinion that the anti-capitalist licensing fads early in mud development were a bad thing. These days restricting commercial use of your free (iykwim) code is kinda weird and oppressive…I guess back then others profiting (!!!) from your code was weird and oppressive, I dunno. But if it had been relatively easier to start up muds with a concretely rewarding incentive to be awesome (personal pride and satisfaction is nice but people have to put bread on the table) we'd have more high quality muds now, I think.

I'm not convinced. Much of the innovation I've seen over the years has been from people who moved away from the old and established codebases, and the licence has caused more than one developer to make a clean break and start from scratch. Would we have more high quality muds today if the Diku licence had been less restrictive? Or would there just be more Diku derivatives instead of custom muds? Would as many people have even released their code for others to use if they could instead have profited from it personally? We can only speculate.
05 Mar, 2011, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 140th comment:
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Cratylus said:
I liked your point about fungibility, btw. Seems to me that it's insufficiently pointed out that
every dollar you don't have to spend on server costs is one more dollar you can spend on
hookers and blow…and if that ain't profit I dunno what is.

It is different expenses, as I said already if you pay a server to run dikumud it is not for yourself anyway but for other people. So any dollar spend in hooker is only a different expenses, but definitely not a 'profit'
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