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I was wondering: are there any mud source codes available that don't have restrictions regarding making money off of the game? An additional question: has GPL come to mudding?

Stay away from the Diku/Merc branch and you can probably find
a decent amount of codebases with little restrictions on
making money.

As for GPL, I'm sure there's some.

http://www.gammon.com.au/downloads/dlsmaug.htm

Says SmaugFUSS is GPL compliant

Zeno_McDoh wrote:
Says SmaugFUSS is "GPL compliant"

That means the opposite of what one would think it would mean.
It was cleansed of GPL code.

Anyway there's an older list of open source muds here:
http://www.mudbytes.net/index.php?a=articles&s=Open_Source_Mud_Servers

This page on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD_trees

might be useful in determining the ancestry of a particular mud source from one the main groups if it's not immediately clear (DIKU/Merc derivatives should, in general, I think, be pretty obvious by name or in the motd file -- since the license agreement requires clear citations of the makers).

Don't get seriously involved in using something before you carefully read the licenses, and watch out, if you have any familiarity, for code that might be borrowed intentionally or otherwise from things with more restrictive licenses.

If you don't mind building the game from the ground up, try Socket Mud. All you get is the socket, but the author has very little restraint on what you do with his code. Pretty sure there are some extensions off of socketmud that run on similar licenses.

> If you don't mind building the game from the ground up, try Socket Mud. All
> you get is the socket, but the author has very little restraint on what
> you do with his code. Pretty sure there are some extensions off of socketmud
> that run on similar licenses.

IMO, not the best one to use if you're looking to 'make money'. Very easy to argue that SocketMud is Diku derived.

The DGD LP mud driver was recently made OSS, and I
believe Coffeemud also fits this OP bill (that's how I
read the fine print last time I tried).

YMMV, IANAL.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

Way I see it people are going to argue that your source is diku derived whether it is or is not. Having used both SocketMud and Diku, I see very little similarity in the two. All socket is, is a socket interpreter plus a few utilities that were never part of Diku. Is every game with a socket now going to be diku derived? That's it, we're calling it, Diku 1, everybody else 0. I call shenanigans.

Sidonie wrote:
I was wondering: are there any mud source codes available that don't have restrictions regarding making money off of the game? An additional question: has GPL come to mudding?

I released Gladiator Pits II under the MIT licence, you can download it from here. I don't know of anyone who uses it apart from me though (God Wars II is based on it). The original Gladiator Pits is also available from here, although it's even more basic.

For the record, I consider the GPL a bad choice for mud licencing.

Lajos wrote:
Way I see it people are going to argue that your source is diku derived whether it is or is not.

A few people might argue based on minor similarities (such as on that other recent thread), but you're not going to see serious accusations without some pretty compelling evidence. Take my Comparison of Merc 1.0 and Medievia IV for example - statistical comparisons of the source code, quotes from numerous well-known mud developers who examined the code, and a statement signed by the mud owner under penalty of perjury confirming that it was his mud being compared.

On the other hand there's also another high-profile mud that I strongly suspect of being based on Diku, but there's no clear evidence, so I keep my mouth shut.

I think it is a darn shame about Medievia IV, but I was mostly just letting off some steam. I know there are legitimate accusations of copyright infringement.

But SocketMud is an easily recognized open to download source code. Even if there was confusion, it is subject to verification. I think that makes it a better option than just writing a new one from scrap yourself which only makes you a target (like ZyreXIAIX, the gentleman who was recently accused of copying the Circle login procedure), not to mention the socket is one of the most difficult portions to write (I remember reading a lot of RFCs when I was considering writing a mud client, and I don't believe I understood all of it, and forgot the rest of it). So when Jindrack dropped SocketMud because of a possible connection to Diku, I just couldn't help but feel he was the pot calling the kettle black.

> So when Jindrack dropped SocketMud because of a possible connection to
> Diku, I just couldn't help but feel he was the pot calling the
> kettle black.


Maybe it is a 'pot calling kettle black' type statement with my post on the thread being referenced where I stated some of my experiences in creating a 'custom' codebase.

Forgive me for not posting any specific code examples, as I'm at work atm and sneaking on TMC to read forum posts. The SocketMud/Diku similaries is something I've discussed with other GW admins a few times. HOWEVER, the Mud community in general has excepted it as a custom/original source and have never (to my knowledge) and do not plan on challenging its origin.

That being said, as I stated earlier I do not feel it is the best choice in existing sources to try and 'make money' from. I have no problems pointing out similarities between that and MercNet (a striped to networking code Merc derivative).

I personally would recommend the SocketMud II (socketmud++) release as being a choice for 'making money'...

Haven't kept up with the latest releases of SocketMud, was just something I tried a few years ago, and I liked it. I ended up giving up and going back to work on my SWR though; building a game from the ground up is a lot more work. I mean the game didn't even have an editor, I had to write one specifically for it (thought I did a pretty decent job too it only needed a few tweaks).

I endorse looking through the various releases of SocketMud if you're interested in building a game from the ground up. As far as similiarities between MercNet and SocketMud go, I'm not really all that interested. I believe there are similarities; socket is mostly just a socket, so they are bound to use the same libraries and potentially even the same grammar (as I recall the author of SocketMud made it as something of a joke, don't quote me on that).

KaVir wrote:
For the record, I consider the GPL a bad choice for mud licencing.

Care to elaborate on this? Does the GNU AGPL (GNU Affero GPL, https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html) seem any better to you?

Also, I have some Java code that lies, or might lie, somewhere between MU* and MUD at some point, with the exception of the socket libraries (which I borrowed from the Processing core libraries, which are licensed with LGPL) and I am pretty darn certain that they don't borrow from Diku/Circle or anything else, since I haven't really seen much of any of the code for those.

For curiosity's sake, KaVir, what do you think is a good license to use for muds?

Istarian wrote:
Care to elaborate on this? Does the GNU AGPL (GNU Affero GPL, https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html) seem any better to you?

Muds live or die by their ability to stand out from the competition. From the above licence:

"if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software."

With such a licence you'll always be running a stock mud; as soon as you implement something unique, you'll have to offer the full source code to everyone else.

Istarian wrote:
For curiosity's sake, KaVir, what do you think is a good license to use for muds?

There are lots of suitable licences. Personally I rather like the MIT licence.

Well, I could and might contend that stock functionality is not a bad thing. If it meant that everyone had cool stuff instead of codebases stagnating until someone saw fit to update the original, that wouldn't be so bad, would it?

Having to patch together a ramshackle collection of snippets to make a mud that is up to some standard that people expect might be informative and useful for learning, but it's probably a royal pain in the ass for someone who just wants to create a game world and run with it.

Also, your database isn't part of the code, and since the database is a huge part of what makes one mud different from another, I have a hard time seeing how this really constitutes a problem. Do you especially mind sharing?

Muds compete in monopolistic competition. In otherwords they compete on what is different. If every mud has the same functionality then the only competition comes from staffing. This is all fine and dandy, but what if the most popular staffs aren't the ones that put out the most work? It would make sense that the most popular staffs are the ones that work hardest on PR. So now you have a clash in the world of mud design. You have the people that build and get nothing for it, and the people that take and have the world. This seems like a recklessly bad situation for new games. The popular ones are already in production, so what is the point in contributing to their success and not your own?

Istarian wrote:
Do you especially mind sharing?

I like the freedom to choose what to share.

Lyanicwrote:
I like the freedom to choose what to share.

That's understandable, but it does limit growth to some extent and not really benefit the community.

Lajos:
I don't really have much of a stake in this, but I would think that the overall well-being of the community should have some priority over instant gratification since it is kind of a niche thing.

Competition is good, but having to start from the bottom and fix all the problems yourself, and manually reconfigure the entire mud before you can work on the game in a more abstract fashion or add new features hampers competition. You can't compete if you don't have a chance and a suitable, working codebase.

Before you reply, we are discussing principles here, so keep that in mind. I'm not saying it's true, it's just the way I see it.


(Comment added by Istarian on Sun Apr 1 21:32:05 2012)

*Before you reply, we are discussing principles here, so keep that in mind. I'm not saying it's true, it's just the way I see it.

** Well, i am claiming this as truth by saying that's what I believe about it, but I suppose it might be disprovable if I could see evidence otherwise.

In principle then they shouldn't open their own mud but contribute to another's directly instead.

Istarian wrote:
Well, I could and might contend that stock functionality is not a bad thing. If it meant that everyone had cool stuff instead of codebases stagnating until someone saw fit to update the original, that wouldn't be so bad, would it?

I believe it would be, yes. If every mud were the same, you'd lose much of the incentive for players to congregate on one particular game, making it very difficult to reach critical mass and retain a playerbase. And without any playerbase, even the most creative of developers can rapidly lose the motivation to keep going.

Take the original God Wars mud for example: It was at full capacity 24/7, and always had players waiting to connect. I actually had to implement a connection limit so that I could log on to my own mud.

When the code was released, dozens of new GodWars muds sprung up, but the total number of GodWars players didn't really change - they just spread out across all those new muds. As each mud had such a small playerbase, none of them had much luck retaining players, and most soon lost interest. Today the number of GodWars muds has shrunk to about a third of its original amount, and few of them have any players at all. Even their combined playerbases don't come to close to that of the original mud.

Competition drives innovation. If muds can't gain a competitive edge over each other, then there's no benefit in innovation, only risk. I believe we would see a lot more stagnation if everyone had to release their source code.

Istarian wrote:
Also, your database isn't part of the code, and since the database is a huge part of what makes one mud different from another, I have a hard time seeing how this really constitutes a problem.

That depends entirely on the game. The original God Wars used pretty much stock Diku/Merc content - it was the game mechanics that made it different.

God Wars II is obviously completely original, but once again it's the mechanics that really make it stand out. In fact most of its content is actually generated by the mud.

Istarian wrote:
Do you especially mind sharing?

I like having the freedom to choose what to share, the same as Tyche. I've shared many ideas and design concepts, numerous snippets, even a few codebases. But I don't wish to share everything, nor do I think I should be expected to.

Istarian wrote:
That's understandable, but it does limit growth to some extent and not really benefit the community.

Ever played CoffeeMUD? It's feature-rich, with some cutting-edge functionality, and the owner is a talented coder. But the mud is open source, and I strongly believe that's one of the main reasons why it has practically no players.

For me, the hardest part about developing a mud is motivation. My Last City mud had some pretty innovative features, but it never picked up a regular playerbase, and I eventually lost interest and shut it down. I nearly gave up on God Wars II a few times in its first year of development (and the rest of the staff did give up on it), but once it reached beta and started building up an active playerbase I found myself becoming a lot more motivated.

If God Wars II hadn't attracted a playerbase, it would have died years ago, the same way that Last City did. The only reason I added MSP is because several blind players requested it, and one offered to create a soundpack. The only reason I added MSDP is because one of my players wrote and shared a TinTin++ script that pummelled the mud with excessive data requests, and I wanted to provide him an alternative way to access the data before too many players started using his script. It was only once I'd added MSDP that I realised it could also be used to drive a GUI, and the knowledge I'd gained from adding those two protocols encouraged me to start looking into more options.

Once I'd implemented all those protocols in my mud, I turned them into a snippet and released it into the public domain. That was almost exactly a year ago. Since then, more than two dozen muds have added my snippet, and several of them have already used my generic plugin to design their own custom GUIs. Those muds now support sound, graphics, unicode, extended colour, clickable text, and several other new features.

Furthermore, seeing 25+ muds adding support for all those protocols has encouraged several client developers to expand their clients. FMud has added MSDP, for example, while Atlantis is considering adding it. Mudlet has added a GUI autoinstaller in direct response to my posts on their forums. BlowTorch has added extended colour at my request, and is considering adding other features introduced by my snippet. And so on. As more clients support these features, more muds become interested in my snippet, which then attracts interest from other client developers.

In short, I consider my snippet a benefit to the mud community. But if I'd made God Wars II open source, it's extremely unlikely that I'd have ever created it. Instead you'd just have yet another half-finished codebase floating out there, and I'd be doing something else.

Istarian wrote:
I don't really have much of a stake in this, but I would think that the overall well-being of the community should have some priority over instant gratification since it is kind of a niche thing.

Surely making my mud open source would be "instant gratification"? You're suggesting I let people eat the goose immediately instead of waiting for it to start laying eggs.

In addition to the concerns raised by KaVir, I would also be extremely reluctant to work on a game whose inner workings I'd be required to share with its players.

A game is quite unlike other pieces of software in that a big part of the fun is figuring out how to do things well. I don't see how anyone is expected to suspend disbelief and have fun in the land of Oz if they can see the Wizard moving levers everywhere they turn. It would also give a huge edge to players who are able to read the code, and that's just wrong.

Such a license may benefit a community-built framework or an app that "inches towards perfection" in terms of features of usability but it simply doesn't make sense to me for a game codebase where there are many "right" answers, paths, directions.

I have to agree with Kavir here, on just about every point.
For licensing, I would also add Public Domain as an option
that almost no one seems to consider. I'm guessing because
people generally seem to want credit for the work they've
done?

My biggest road block to using a standard code base is that
I have always wanted the ability to one day charge money. I
may never get to that point, nor does it matter if I do or
don't, but I have the freedom to do so whenever I want to. I
have instead used mud development as a tool to learn
different languages and provide a fun environment to try
some more advanced concepts without all the unnecessary
overhead that a graphical multiplayer game can require.

Sharing your source code also opens you up to criticism as
we've seen in another thread on TMC recently. While
constructive criticism can help someone improve their
skills; folks insulting a coder because of their lack of
knowledge of something or perhaps their older/different
style of programming isn't very motivating nor encouraging.

In the end, it's all about what motivates someone. If
contributing something that will hopefully get used by lots
of people in some open source project is what makes them
happy, then that's great. Not everyone agrees or gets
excited with this type of environment.

There seems to be a conversation going on as to what is more
important: the engine or what is done with the engine

Developers would tend to gravitate more towards the engine
being more important and users would tend to gravitate
towards what is being done with it. I'm sure there's
exceptions, as you could have someone that's more interested
in the mechanics that make up the ride then the ride itself.

pjarosak wrote:
For licensing, I would also add Public Domain as an option
that almost no one seems to consider. I'm guessing because
people generally seem to want credit for the work they've
done?

To quote some results from a quick Google search on the matter (result page link):

Liability. Public Domain does not prevent people from suing you if your symbolic math library ends up killing their dog.

and:

Also, to be Public Domain you have to actually "uncopyright" your code.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html:

"Under the Berne Convention, which most countries have signed, anything written down is automatically copyrighted. This includes programs. Therefore, if you want a program you have written to be in the public domain, you must take some legal steps to disclaim the copyright on it; otherwise, the program is copyrighted."

Istarian wrote:

Tychewrote:
I like the freedom to choose what to share.

That's understandable, but it does limit growth to some extent and not really benefit the community.

Also, I don't particular like the idea of forcing "share-alike" restrictions on those who want to use what I do release. So I've been using an MIT/BSD-like license.

IRT that Affero GPL license provision posted earlier. I've got this picture in my head that should I make some changes to my mud, a bunch of people are going to login and shout "Hey you changed the game! You must release code now! If you don't we'll shut you down!" That might be more annoying and damaging to the community. ;-)

Istarian wrote:

Lyanicwrote:
I like the freedom to choose what to share.

All this time, I didn't even realize I was Tyche...