Nightmare policy on code ownership Part I: Acknowledgement of Agreement This document serves as a binding contract between Nightmare LPMud (Nightmare), which consists of all immortals with coding directories in /wizards, and the individual immortal of Nightmare. Any person who accepts an offer of immortality on Nightmare also accepts the terms of this contract. Immortality on Nightmare is accepted by the individual once he/she has read this document and all other documents required by the administrators of Nightmare (holders of the position head arch). Immortality is granted to the individual by the administrators of Nightmare once the individual has accepted the terms of this agreement and demonstrated full knowledge of Nightmare laws and policies. This granting of immortality is exhibited through the promotion of the individual to the immortal position of level 21 immortal and the creation of a home directory for the individual, which will be called /wizards/(individual's name). Part II: The Ownership of Code All code created within or brought into the Nightmare LPMud environment belongs to Nightmare LPMud. Nightmare LPMud consists of all immortals with home directories. The administrators act on behalf of Nightmare with regards to implementation of Nightmare policy and this agreement. This does not imply a democratic forum or any say necessarily on behalf of individuals who are not members of the administration. The point is simply that the code does not in fact belong to the administration any more than any one else. It is just that, being that the code belongs to Nightmare, the administrators are empowered with the ability in their capacity as administrators to make decisions about what may be done with the code on behalf of Nightmare. Once an administrator leaves his/her position as administrator, that person loses all right to act on behalf of Nightmare with repect to code ownership or any other aspect of Nightmare policy. Once an immortal leaves Nightmare, ownership to the physical code contained in the individual's home directory reverts back to the individual. Any code physically outside of the home directory, whether created in whole or in part by that immortal, remains fully that of Nightmare. Any code which is both inside the individual's home directory and outside the individual's home directory belongs to Nightmare. The exception to this are backup copies of the immortal's home directory. Part III: The right of copying of Nightmare owned code All code created within or brought into the Nightmare LPMud environment is freely copyable by any other member of Nightmare. Such code may be used in any way the members of Nightmare deem appropriate, with the administrators of Nightmare working to maintain uniqueness within the Nightmare environment. This means that although the code ownership agreement states that an individual may copy and legally reuse verbatim code created by another individual, the administrators of Nightmare do not wish such things to happen. In pursuit of that goal, mud policy will reflect that no code should be copied verbatim (with or without original creator's permission), and that any code copied substantially from another member of Nightmare should retain header comments crediting the original creator. Part IV: The right to create, modify, or destroy code Individual immortals retain the right to deal with code inside their home directories as they see fit. This means an individual may create, modify, or delete any code that conforms to the laws and policies of Nightmare within his/her individual directory. No other individual acting as an individual may create, modify, or delete such code. Only administrators and those holding the position of arch may take such action when that action is deemed in the best interests of Nightmare. The administrators and arches also are responsible for the creation, modification, and deletion of communal files (those belonging to Nightmare, but not within the home directory of an individual) as they deem in the best interest of Nightmare in accordance with the policies and laws of Nightmare. Part V: Practical application: What does all of this mean? It means that when you leave Nightmare, you may take a copy of the code in your home directory and/or request that that home directory be deleted and not used by Nightmare. If, however, there exists code which you created whole or in part outside of your home directory, then you have no rights to it except that the code shall retain your name in header comments for credit. For elders, this means we may still keep your domains in the game, although we cannot keep your areas in the game. For administrators, this means that you may not take any code you created for the mud away from Nightmare, and you may only take copies of it if Nightmare policy allows copies of code belonging to Nightmare outside of Nightmare (at this time, this is not a problem, since the Nightmare mudlib is available in open distribution). It also means that immortal X can copy immortal Y's code with or without immortal X's permission. However, Nightmare policy is such that immortal Y cannot use that code without substantial change. Although copying nifty things from other immortals is not illegal here (this is in order to deflate egos and encourage learning), it is not in the mud's best interest to proliferate new code everywhere. So use of such code in the game (which is decided at approval time) generally will not be allowed by Nightmare policy. The point is that this agreement technically allows it.