Hi all, I am considering using murk++ as a codebase to base my development on, mainly because it is one of the few c++ codebases I have found that isn't missing in action or similar (ugh!). However, I have a question about the diku license (darned annoying license as it is). The line I am commenting on appears:
You may under no circumstances make profit on *ANY* part of DikuMud in any possible way.
If you are to take this literally, then if you make $15 per month in donations, and you pay that entire amount to a server costing $19.95 a month to run, then you are, in affect, making negative profit on diku mud (in affect, no profit). Is this indeed what the license states? Also, I have read a couple places on this forum that donating in exchange for items or other such perks is against the license, but I don't see how. Following the example from before, if you make -$4.95 profit, then you are making no profit, even if you are "selling" the items. Also, if you were to sell purely decorative items, such as eq that does nothing but look pretty, no affects, something like a type of hat you can't get anywhere than donating… perhaps a "I donated! 2012 hat", then is this also violating the license? I just wanted to get people's opinions on this matter, so I can be corrected if I am wrong – I don't want to, as they put it, be sued. I will state right out that my opinion on the profit portion is that if you make no profit, even if you accept money for donations, then it would be inside the license as stated. Thanks, -Michael.
If you want an informed opinion on the wording of the license, ask a lawyer.
If you're giving someone something of value then it's a payment and not a donation.
The intent of the Diku authors was that you shouldn't charge for their work. You can probably substitute 'just for the disk' with 'just for the server costs'.
There are plenty of codebases whose licenses allow you to make money from them, eg. Nakedmud, DGD, Coffemud.
This is what Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt of the Diku team has said on the subject of donations:
Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt said:
I feel it is important that i make clear how i see the limits of the licence; You should know i am not against donations as such, and he may sell his merchandise as he pleases, but he may not use the game directly for this. The way i usually define this is if the players get some tangible modification within the game for their donations. Then it becomes commercialized. They pay for a service that is within the game.
I have no wish, nor any legal background for stopping donations made from commercials on the website, that offer no compensation game-wise. Nor have i any wish for preventing people selling merchandise on their website, that is related to the game (titled tshirts, mousepads etc..) .. in fact i recommend that you get your money this way.
Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt said:
I just want to make clear where exactly the licence applies. And that is of course where using the sourcecode we have supplied, or sourcecode derived from our work.
If you give people any in-game benefits for their donations, you are in fact giving a service for the money you have rescieved. That is a commercial transaction, and thus you are commercializing our work. This we object to.
What i wanted to make clear, is that legally and morally we have no control of what you do, that you do not use our work for. Thus, if you want to sell mousepads and whatever from your website, we will not object.
If people want to donate money to you, personally, without having any services rendered using our software, we will not object to this. But if you use our software to render services for money or goods you rescieve, this we object to, as you are then commercializing our software. That we object to.
There are plenty of codebases whose licenses allow you to make money from them, eg. Nakedmud, DGD, Coffemud.
I gave the poster the link to a bunch of C++ muds. Here's a link to open source muds sorted by language: http://sourcery.dyndns.org/wiki.cgi?Open... with links back into the same repository. Note that Mud++ isn't listed, because it's under both the GPL and non-commercial restrictions. As earlier I'd recommend AweMud being the latest, and one well written and maintainable, IMHO. Although he might wish to check out ScryMud and WolfShade for more complete games.
I am considering using murk++ as a codebase to base my development on, mainly because it is one of the few c++ codebases I have found that isn't missing in action or similar (ugh!). However, I have a question about the diku license (darned annoying license as it is). The line I am commenting on appears:
You may under no circumstances make profit on *ANY* part of DikuMud in any possible way.
If you are to take this literally, then if you make $15 per month in donations, and you pay that entire amount to a server costing $19.95 a month to run, then you are, in affect, making negative profit on diku mud (in affect, no profit). Is this indeed what the license states? Also, I have read a couple places on this forum that donating in exchange for items or other such perks is against the license, but I don't see how. Following the example from before, if you make -$4.95 profit, then you are making no profit, even if you are "selling" the items. Also, if you were to sell purely decorative items, such as eq that does nothing but look pretty, no affects, something like a type of hat you can't get anywhere than donating… perhaps a "I donated! 2012 hat", then is this also violating the license?
I just wanted to get people's opinions on this matter, so I can be corrected if I am wrong – I don't want to, as they put it, be sued.
I will state right out that my opinion on the profit portion is that if you make no profit, even if you accept money for donations, then it would be inside the license as stated.
Thanks,
-Michael.