The world of MUDs is a co-operative effort by many people. For a very interesting history of MUDs (and the Internet in general) see the paper "Cultural Formations in Text-Based Virtual Realities" by Elizabeth M. Reid at:
http://www.ee.mu.oz.au/papers/emr/cult-form.html
The sequence of programs that preceded the creation of Area Editor was:
1. Diku Mud
2. Merc
3. ROM
4. SMAUG
5. Area Editor
Credits for these programs are given below ...
* Diku Mud is copyright (C) 1990, 1991 by Sebastian Hammer, Michael Seifert, Hans Henrik St{rfeldt, Tom Madsen, and Katja Nyboe. The full Diku Mud licence agreement is in the file "license.diku" which is supplied as part of the Area Editor archive.
* Merc Diku Mud is a derivative of the original Diku Mud. Merc Diku Mud contains substantial enhancements to Diku Mud. These enhancements are copyright 1992, 1993 by Michael Chastain, Michael Quan, and Mitchell Tse. The full Merc licence agreement is in the file "license.merc" which is supplied as part of the Area Editor archive.
* SMAUG is a derivative of the version 2.1 distribution of Merc Diku Mud. SMAUG contains substantial enhancements to Merc Diku Mud, including some features of the original Diku Mud that were removed by the Merc team. The full SMAUG licence agreement is in the file "license.smaug" which is supplied as part of the Area Editor archive.
* ROM 2.4 is copyright 1993-1998 Russ Taylor. ROM has been brought to you by the ROM consortium. Russ Taylor (rtaylor@hypercube.org), Gabrielle Taylor (gtaylor@hypercube.org) Brian Moore (zump@rom.org).
The full ROM licence agreement is in the file "license.rom" which is supplied as part of the Area Editor archive.
* Area Editor does not use code from any of the above programs, however it is designed to edit area files used by the current version of the SMAUG server (1.4), and ROM server (2.4). Area Editor is copyright (C) 1998 by Nick Gammon of Gammon Software Solutions. The full Area Editor licence agreement is in the file "license.txt" which is supplied as part of the Area Editor archive.
Other thanks
------------
Thanks to Brian Carter for many suggestions for improvements.
Thanks also to those users of Area Editor who have sent in their ShareWare fee.
