06 Dec, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 22nd comment:
Korimyr the Rat said:
I can understand this, though I wonder at what point a MUD stops being the original coder's game and becomes the game of the people coding and building on a particular instance of it.
Never. Or to be more specific, it never becomes free of the original license conditions.
Korimyr the Rat said:
I haven't ruled out the possibility that I'm biased. I just think that if I'd invested years into something and released it to the public– in whatever form– that I could think of dozens of things that would offend me more than someone finding a way of profiting from it. Most of which I'd have no control over, and the few I could put provisions against in a license, codethieves would just go ahead and do anyway. This specific distaste for profit breaks my teeth. It's even stronger in other Open Source gaming communities– Roguelike aficionados seem particularly passionate.
Nothing in the OSI or FSF definitions of "open source" prevent the sale of software. The FSF/GPL definition kind of nerfs the idea, with the requirement of source distribution.
Why the Diku authors decided on their license is moot. It just is the way it is.
There are many far superior servers out there which allow commercial use and by design don't implement a canned game.
If one was genuinely interested in profit, one wouldn't boot up a mud server that implements what hundreds of free muds already have.
07 Dec, 2009, Fizban wrote in the 23rd comment:
KaVir said:
Most disagreements I've encountered relate to deceptive marketing or licence violations
Very much the case for me, my view always has, and always will be that if one doesn't agree with a product's licensing one should not use said product, not whine about why they feel they should be able to use it in a manner in which the product's license clearly prohibits.
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I think it's less to do with marketing, and more to do with an expectation that MUDs should be non commercial and therefore completely free.
In my experience such attitutes are extremely rare, and when they do occur are generally perceived as naive. Most disagreements I've encountered relate to deceptive marketing or licence violations, or (as Crat suggested) are simply a response to insulting or arrogant behavior from the mud owners.