Member Discussions

Ok, I need to understand some stuff on this topic, I'll keep it short and sweet:

o What proofs are there that it's really a DIKU derivative? sure I saw the source from 2001, but maybe he restarted from scratch using only original code or something?

o Who are you to enforce a license that does not belong to you? It belongs to the peoples who made DIKU and because it was a school work it also belongs to DIKU department in university of Copenhagen, so if they don't enforce it it's none of your business to. It's like if I got assaulted on the streets and someone would fill a complaint to the police instead of me and go before a judge etc and get the person jailed etc...

o The fact that mudconnect and kyndig list it proves that they don't care at all about it and that they think you are whining about anything and losing time feeding trolls instead of concentrating on more useful discussion, they are sick of all the ramblings and flames about it.

o Wheter you like it or not, he won't get punished he chose to violate the license and DIKU never did anything about it it seems, it's is own Truth that DIKU license can be raped and you are his enemies in his ultimate goal of destruction and no one in power oppose him.

What proofs are there that it's really a DIKU derivative? sure I saw the source from 2001, but maybe he restarted from scratch using only original code or something?

He began with Merc, edited the Merc, falsely claimed that he rewrote his Merc from scratch after he began breaking the license, his Merc-like code still lingers, and more Merc details. I guess it is all possible that he could've really rewrote it from scratch, however the probability of that is next to nothing.

Who are you to enforce a license that does not belong to you? It belongs to the peoples who made DIKU and because it was a school work it also belongs to DIKU department in university of Copenhagen, so if they don't enforce it it's none of your business to.

No one around here is enforcing the license, we're all just trying to show that Med is breaking the license. None of us have gone to court over this (yet). There is a great explaination of why the DIKU creators won't enforce their license on KaVir's page too.

It's like if I got assaulted on the streets and someone would fill a complaint to the police instead of me and go before a judge etc and get the person jailed etc...

You do know that can happen, right?

The fact that mudconnect and kyndig list it proves that they don't care at all about it and that they think you are whining about anything and losing time feeding trolls instead of concentrating on more useful discussion, they are sick of all the ramblings and flames about it.

What the administrators of TMC And Kyndig do are completely different. Just because they put the MUD on a list doesn't mean that they agree with what Medieva is doing, nor do they disagree with us.

Wheter you like it or not, he won't get punished he chose to violate the license and DIKU never did anything about it it seems, it's is own Truth that DIKU license can be raped and you are his enemies in his ultimate goal of destruction and no one in power oppose him.

What faith one has in a perfect solution.

I have to say i think it is complete crap of TMC to list medievia or any other license breaking game.

It's like your local tv channels lets your local drug dealers have advertisment strips between the tv shows.

"Come to our street and buy drugs, we have 14 different kinds!"

It's like your local tv channels lets your local drug dealers have advertisment strips between the tv shows.

<sarcasm>
They host political ads, don't they? Politics are just like drugs. Once you get hooked, you're hooked for life.

Damn right. It's irresponsible to list them. All the muds that are stealing the IP of one of the codebases, or stealing IP from Tolkien, Dragonlance, Pokemon, etc etc should be delisted and shunned by all responsible mudders.

--matt

I wonder how many MUDs would be left on MUD Connector after such a culling and if you'd even need a search engine to go through the list or if one page would be enough...

All the ones run by responsible, ethical admins would be left. The others are not worth associating with in any way.

The fact is, if people are going to have a problem with license violations, it's nothing more than pathetic hypocrisy to bitch and moan about Medievia and not the other muds that are even more blatantly violating licenses. At least Medievia people have the decency to deny they're violating the licenses. Many muds here openly TRUMPET that they're IP thieves, even going so far as to call themselves by names that shout out, "We're IP thieves!" For instance, "Shadows of Isildur".

--matt

o What proofs are there that it's really a DIKU derivative? sure I saw the source from 2001, but maybe he restarted from scratch using only original code or something?

I had wondered this myself. How many people actually saw the source? I guess I'm wondering how it came about; I never dug too much in to hear the entire story about it.

o Who are you to enforce a license that does not belong to you? It belongs to the peoples who made DIKU and because it was a school work it also belongs to DIKU department in university of Copenhagen, so if they don't enforce it it's none of your business to. It's like if I got assaulted on the streets and someone would fill a complaint to the police instead of me and go before a judge etc and get the person jailed etc...

Well, the point is is that they haven't enforced the license. That's the problem. Nobody has taken the measures to stop it, including the Diku team. It's more than a tad disappointing.

o The fact that mudconnect and kyndig list it proves that they don't care at all about it and that they think you are whining about anything and losing time feeding trolls instead of concentrating on more useful discussion, they are sick of all the ramblings and flames about it.

That doesn't prove anything. It's a list of MUDs, has nothing to do with whether people like them or not.

Wheter you like it or not, he won't get punished he chose to violate the license and DIKU never did anything about it it seems, it's is own Truth that DIKU license can be raped and you are his enemies in his ultimate goal of destruction and no one in power oppose him.

You're right about that, in a way. Without actions, instead of words, how can you stop him? Even if he's an admitted thief, he's not stopping.

Using Medievia as an example, it points out some disappointing things:

1) Medievia has proven that the property licences are meaningless in the MUD community. So many games have taken the Medievia theory and used the code without giving the authors credit. If you were to take up suit against all the thieves in the MUD community, it'd be at least 500 lawsuits. Despite the vast majority of offenders, there hasn't even been one case, though. This, disappointingly, proves that licenses on MUD source is equivalent not having a license at all, except that it leads to some upset people who can't really do anything. For these reasons, I have decided not to publicly release my own codebase, because I'm afraid of the same thing happening.

2) Even though some people do give credit, there's too many 'stock' muds out there, which basically have nothing good or innovative to show. Sometimes they don't even bother to change the banner. I think it's so silly, there's so many people who want to be mud owners, but won't put in the work; those people would be better off as players. It's truly a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. This reason also deters me from releasing a codebase, because I'd hate to see 50 versions of my game sitting around on servers.

3) The MUD community has been in a state of limbo on this for a long time. Personally, I'm sick of hearing about it. I wish people would either band together and do something, or just be quiet about it. I don't mean it offensively, but it's just that I'd much rather see progress in the matter; it seems like it's been at a stalemate for years.

4) I also agree with Matt's opinion (same thread; different branch) about MUDs that steal others ideas blantanly should be forced to shut down. Enjoying one's work is one thing, but stealing it is another. Seeing as how these matters are rarely touched upon, it seems like stealing ideas is 'ok, but slightly frowned upon.'

What I'm thinking:

Why don't all the people who have stock muds and haven't done much with them band together? Why steal when you can work together to create a more intense and more creative work. Most of you can't do it alone, but imagine what you could do together?

Instead of stealing ideas, why not use your own themes and show creativity? If we could get more cooperation, there could be much better works out there. It's so disappointing with the state it's in right now.

One sample of how this works is nethack. All the nethack players managed to band together and continue to improve the game. How come that doesn't happen in the mud community.

Those are my thoughts. I also apologize if I strayed from topic a little bit.

Medievia has proven that the property licences are meaningless in the MUD community. So many games have taken the Medievia theory and used the code without giving the authors credit. If you were to take up suit against all the thieves in the MUD community, it'd be at least 500 lawsuits.

It would be enough with one to scare off the rest of the license breakers.

With a minute amount of legal study even on your own terms. YOu would find that for the Diku creators to persue a claim would do nothing but put them in debt.

Because it is strictly stated in the credits that one may not profit or obtain donations for using the source, they can not legally receive any type of compensation in return for the many of muds that have used source code without credit.

Hense all their expenses to fight these battles.. then to win and be in the hole without return is seemingly rediculous.

MUDs are not a major profit association in online gaming. And while I like the open source idea, it has demonstrated very well that a system like that can not work in our social and economic society.

> Ok, I need to understand some stuff on this topic

Then read my website - that's why I put it there, and it covers all the so called "points" you listed:

http://med.kavir.org.

And didn't we cover this a few years back?

Sarapis, sorry, I'll put a tag in next time. :p

Because it is strictly stated in the credits that one may not profit or obtain donations for using the source, they can not legally receive any type of compensation in return for the many of muds that have used source code without credit.

I don't believe that the terms of use contract prohibits the Diku team from taking money in a suit involving violation of the contract. That money would be for damages and legal fees, not profit.

>All the muds that are stealing the IP of one of the codebases, or stealing IP from Tolkien, Dragonlance, Pokemon, etc etc should be delisted and shunned by all responsible mudders.

There's a subtle difference between the two things. While it might not be 'right' for the people to base their MUDs off these themes, at least their intentions are (generally) more honorable -they just love some author's work and build a MUD as a tribute of sorts. Especially in cases where the original author has passed away I'd be more inclined to give some leeway*. I would say that, in general, tribute MUDs like that simply create a wider customer base for the original (and forthcoming) products. Sure, it might not be quite right and I certainly condemn any commercial MUDs based on a tribute theme, but it's still a little bit better than what Medievia is doing.

E

* I haven't quite made my mind on the topic of this kind of intellectual property. The traditional kind (inventions and so on) should certainly be released to the public posthumously, but on the other hand I'd hate to see some slob completely ravish my, say, favourite comic. In any case, if you think about companies such as Disney, who have made a considerable part of their revenue reusing old public domain stories and yet they're clinging to their own characters (and having the precious Congress dance to their tune, as well.) I guess there's no easy solution. Capitalism corrupts.

Because it is strictly stated in the credits that one may not profit or obtain donations for using the source, they can not legally receive any type of compensation in return for the many of muds that have used source code without credit.

Complete utter nonsense. Authors are in NO WAY restricted by the conditions they license their source code under. What really takes the cake though is your authoritative opening 'With a minute amount of legal study even on your own terms...'. Please take your own advice.

> With a minute amount of legal study even on your own
> terms

With a minute amount of legal study even on your own terms, it should become clear that a copyright license is just a way for the copyright holder to extend some of their rights to other people, under certain restrictions if they wish. The copyright holder doesn't need to follow their own license/s, because they already have those rights - that's the whole point of owning the copyright.

> The fact is, if people are going to have a problem with
> license violations, it's nothing more than pathetic
> hypocrisy to bitch and moan about Medievia and not the
> other muds that are even more blatantly violating licenses

I treat all muds that violate mud licenses the same way, both here and on other mud discussion forums, newsgroups, mailing lists, etc. This should be blatantly obvious to anyone who has read my posts for any length of time.

It would be enough with one to scare off the rest of the license breakers.

Would it? Maybe if it came seemingly out of nowhere, by people who seemed like they were willing to enforce it, but I doubt it. The fact that it's gone on so long, it's really hard to turnabout things now. Even if Medievia was destroyed in a legal case, what would this show to Joe Blow, who is clearly violating said license, and has a 'heavily modified' Diku, but isn't as visible as Medievia? Why should he be afraid when it took, what 8 years for one lawsuit to happen? Anyway, this is all hearsay and 'what-ifs', because we all know that there will likely never be a lawsuit on Medievia, and even less of a chance of someone taking up in arms and going after all of the other violators.

Do I need to remember you that VieMUD is a Diku derivative done by the DIKU team and the codebase cost something as well as playing on a MUD with that codebase ?

Even if Medievia was destroyed in a legal case, what would this show to Joe Blow, who is clearly violating said license, and has a 'heavily modified' Diku, but isn't as visible as Medievia?


Well i don't know about others, but if the mud isn't even visible to people, i don't really care.

But when it is a mud that is reknown and has over 100 players... It is a wolf that is eating up our sheeps and should be killed and slaughtered, preferably hung up on a pole so the rest of the wolves stay away...

Hephos

'It is based on the DIKUmud codebase and has been developed since 1998 and open public to players since 2001. The code is almost 99% custom with only the socket network still inherited from DIKUmud.'

- quote from Sharune web page

Either my war-horse is suffering from incontinence or something else is giving off a funny smell. I think you need to invest in a new abacus.

I only hope that your new codebase isnt the old Diku with the socket code, ahem, changed. Or, alternatively, the entire thing ported to Java - along with the vast amount of uncredited snippets that have obviously been used in the DIKU sharune creation.

Could there be an underlying motive behind your Medthievia debasement? You know, something like wishing to close down a mud, thereby releasing a large number of paying customers who will require a new P2P game to support?

-------------------------------------------------------------
When we look to hunt the wolf we must
not ignore the cubs it has bred, for
one day they may choose to build lairs
of their own.

MUDs are not a major profit association in online gaming.

I will take a wild guess that Sony or EA would disagree with that statement. :P

Thanks for checking out our website :P

I only hope that your new codebase isnt the old Diku with the socket code, ahem, changed. Or, alternatively, the entire thing ported to Java - along with the vast amount of uncredited snippets that have obviously been used in the DIKU sharune creation.

No it is not our old diku code, not even remotely close. And yes, the new code we are doing is based completely on Java.

We're gonna be happy to let anyone that believe we are using others source check out our javadocs if needed. Or source if it comes to that.

Uncredited snippets? Yeah right. Maybe you would be so kind and tell me where you got that idea from? "Vast amount"... hilarious. Get some clue before you slam people, or you'l look like a fool yourself, unfortunately.

As a matter of fact, maybe you can point out even ONE snippet we are using?

I will take a wild guess that Sony or EA would disagree with that statement. :P

One can assume that he meant text-based MUDs.

At any rate, I don't see why you'd pick on that tidbit. In speaking of open source, regardless of the forum, it has been proven countless times why open source fails; because it's nice in theory, but not everyone plays by the rules.

Even, aside from open source, just look at how many "so and so stole my codebase" posts and you'll get a glimpse of why we have a serious problem. I emplore someone to try to come up with a solution that will convince everyone to work together. Saying "stealing is wrong, and I have a license to back me up" doesn't seem to be working.

Which leads to the following, what should be done to have medievia removed from the TMC listing?