*** Copyright and License Terms Diku Mud is copyright (C) 1990, 1991 by Sebastian Hammer, Michael Seifert, Hans Henrik St{rfeldt, Tom Madsen, and Katja Nyboe. Their license agreement is in the file 'license.doc'. Merc Diku Mud is a derivative of the original Diku Mud and is subject to their copyright and license agreement. Merc Diku Mud contains substantial enhancements to Diku Mud. These enhancements are copyright 1992, 1993 by Michael Chastain, Michael Quan, and Mitchell Tse. ROM 2.4 is a further derivative of Diku and Merc that adds further enhancements to the code base. ROM is copyright 1993 - 1996 by Russ Taylor. Tartarus is a derivative of ROM and is fully subject to the ROM consortium's copyright and license, as well as prior Diku and Merc licenses. It provides many additions to base Diku/Merc/Rom and has a lot of modified merc/ROM code. The Tartarus Code enhancedments and additions are copyright (C) 1997, 1998 by Daniel Graham. In order to use Tartarus code you must follow the Diku license (license.doc), the Merc license (license.txt), and the ROM license (rom.license). And, to make things more annoying, you must also follow the Tartarus license. A summary of license terms, which may all be found in the /Tartarus/doc directory are: For Diku Mud: -- No resale or operation for profit. -- Original author's names must appear in login sequence. -- The 'credits' command must report original authors. -- You must notify the Diku creators that you are operating a Diku mud. For Merc Mud code: -- Copyrights must remain in original source. -- 'Help merc' must report our help text, as shipped. For ROM code: -- Original author's name (Russ Taylor) must appear in login sequence. -- Must email aothor of ROM before you run it. -- You may not use the name ROM in your mud's name. For this code (Tartarus): -- No resale or use for profit of any tartarus code. -- The original author and his ackowledgement credits must be reported in the 'help tartarus' command as shipped with the original source. However: -- You do not have to include the -Tartarus code- author's name in the login sequence (hell, with all the other stuff you already need to include from the Diku, Merc and Rom licenses there probably wouldn't be room anyway). It would be nice to be included but you need only include the prerequisite Diku and ROM authors. --You may modify and redistribute Tartarus code without restriction as long as the original credits are given with the distribution. -However- you must adhere to the original licenses of Diku, Merc and ROM authors if you wish to use code that is specifically from their code releases (if you don't know which parts of the code are from which derivative base then you should either: ask for advice on it, obtain copies of their original releases and check what they coded, or not use it). These are basic terms of use for Tartarus code. If you don't want to accept these terms and follow them then feel free to write your own, or to simply obtain copies of Diku/Merc/Rom without Tartarus code and run that. Whatever you choose, have fun with it.