Empire of the Iguanadons

So there's apparently some controversy brewing over Kayle and I exercising our legal rights under copyright law to have the SmaugFUSS distribution removed from MudBytes. Tangentially this seems to extend to AFKMud as well and supposedly some horrid dangerous precedent is now being set by this. If this bores you to tears or makes you want to pull your hair out, don't feel bad. For some odd reason there was even mention of QSFP but I fail to see why as it's not even related.

First off, let me get this out of the way now: I am not a lawyer and my analysis does not constitute legal advice. This is merely one author's opinion on the matter based on my own research into copyright law. If you have an IP related issue regarding licensing and copyright, consult an IP attorney and don't blame me or the MUD community for passing off conjecture as real advice.

So to get things rolling, we need something to analyze.

The DIKU License:

/***************************************************************************
 *  Copyright (C) 1990, 1991                                               *
 *  All Rights Reserved                                                    *
 ***************************************************************************/

                             DikuMud License

                      Program & Concept created by


Sebastian Hammer
Prss. Maries Alle 15, 1
1908 Frb. C.
DENMARK
(email quinn@freja.diku.dk)

Michael Seifert
Nr. Soeg. 37C, 1, doer 3
1370 Copenhagen K.
DENMARK
(email seifert@freja.diku.dk)

Hans Henrik St{rfeldt
Langs} 19
3500 V{rl|se
DENMARK
(email bombman@freja.diku.dk)

Tom Madsen
R|de Mellemvej 94B, 64
2300 Copenhagen S.
DENMARK
(email noop@freja.diku.dk)

Katja Nyboe
Kildeg}rdsvej 2
2900 Hellerup
31 62 82 84
DENMARK
(email katz@freja.diku.dk)


This document contains the rules by which you can use, alter or publish
parts of DikuMud. DikuMud has been created by the above five listed persons
in their spare time, at DIKU (Computer Science Instutute at Copenhagen
University). You are legally bound to follow the rules described in this
document.

Rules:

   !! DikuMud is NOT Public Domain, shareware, careware or the like !!

   You may under no circumstances make profit on *ANY* part of DikuMud in
   any possible way. You may under no circumstances charge money for
   distributing any part of dikumud - this includes the usual $5 charge
   for "sending the disk" or "just for the disk" etc.
   By breaking these rules you violate the agreement between us and the
   University, and hence will be sued.

   You may not remove any copyright notices from any of the documents or
   sources given to you.

   This license must *always* be included "as is" if you copy or give
   away any part of DikuMud (which is to be done as described in this
   document).

   If you publish *any* part of dikumud, we as creators must appear in the
   article, and the article must be clearly copyrighted subject to this
   license. Before publishing you must first send us a message, by
   snail-mail or e-mail, and inform us what, where and when you are
   publishing (remember to include your address, name etc.)

   If you wish to setup a version of DikuMud on any computer system, you
   must send us a message , by snail-mail or e-mail, and inform us where
   and when you are running the game. (remember to include 
   your address, name etc.)


   Any running version of DikuMud must include our names in the login
   sequence. Furthermore the "credits" command shall always cointain
   our name, addresses, and a notice which states we have created DikuMud.

   You are allowed to alter DikuMud, source and documentation as long as
   you do not violate any of the above stated rules.


Regards,



The DikuMud Group


Note:

We hope you will enjoy DikuMud, and encourage you to send us any reports
on bugs (when you find 'it'). Remember that we are all using our spare
time to write and improve DikuMud, bugs, etc. - and changes will take their
time. We have so far put extremely many programming hours into this project.
If you make any major improvements on DikuMud we would be happy to
hear from you. As you will naturally honor the above rules, you will receive
new updates and improvements made to the game.

The MERC License:

Merc Release 2.1
Sunday 01 August 1993

Furey	mec@shell.portal.com
Hatchet	hatchet@uclink.berkeley.edu
Kahn	michael@uclink.berkeley.edu



=== 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.

In order to use Merc you must follow the Diku license and our license.  The
exact terms of the Diku license are in the file 'license.doc'.  A summary of
these terms is:

	-- 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.

Our license terms are:

	-- Copyrights must remain in original source.
	-- 'Help merc' must report our help text, as shipped.

Notice that our license terms don't include keeping our names in the login
sequence.  If you want to keep a line in there referring to Merc, or referring
to us by name (Furey, Hatchet, and Kahn), we'd appreciate that, but we don't
require it.  But you must keep the original Diku authors in the login sequence.

If you do not follow these license terms, we will ask you to comply.  If that
doesn't work, then we will talk to your system administrators (not about your
running a mud, but on the grounds that you're using our copyrighted software
without permission).

These are very generous terms for any software.  If you don't want to accept
them, feel free to run some other software, or write your own.

The SMAUG License:

 ****************************************************************************
 * [S]imulated [M]edieval [A]dventure multi[U]ser [G]ame      |   \\._.//   *
 * -----------------------------------------------------------|   (0...0)   *
 * SMAUG 1.4 (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 by Derek Snider |    ).:.(    *
 * -----------------------------------------------------------|    {o o}    *
 * SMAUG code team: Thoric, Altrag, Blodkai, Narn, Haus,      |   / ' ' \   *
 * Scryn, Rennard, Swordbearer, Gorog, Grishnakh, Nivek,      |~'~.VxvxV.~'~*
 * Tricops and Fireblade                                      |             *
 * ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *

=== 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.diku'.

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.  Their license
agreement is in the file 'license.merc'.

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.

In order to use SMAUG you must follow the Diku license and our license.  The
exact terms of the Diku license are in the file 'license.diku'.  A summary of
these terms is:

        -- 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.

Our license terms are:

        -- Copyrights must remain in original source.
        -- 'Help smaug' must report our help text, as shipped.
        -- A mention that this is a SMAUG based MUD must appear in the
           login sequence.
        -- You must not block access to your SMAUG mud from the SMAUG
           development site (game.org).
        -- You must not operate your mud with any contraband area files
           and must remove any areas in question immediately upon request.
        -- You are requested to notify us that you are operating a SMAUG mud,
           to include the address of the mud, and whether or not you want us
           to put a link to your mud on our SMAUG mudlist webpage.

SMAUG makes no effort to retain compatibility with any original Diku code,
Merc code, any patches, upgrades or code snippets designed for any Diku
derivative other than one designed for SMAUG.  (See 'smaug.txt').

The question at hand is distribution rights. Do Kayle and I have the right to revoke distribution rights? According to copyright law, only we as copyright holders ever had those rights to begin with. Throic and his team in turn hold those rights to Smaug, the Merc guys hold those for Merc, and the Diku team hold those rights for the Diku codebase. Without a license of any sort, there are no rights beyond those given by law to the authors.

You require a license in order to grant rights to others. Restricting rights is legally redundant as nobody has them to begin with, so right off the bat, any clauses which restrict are out. The DIKU license, which is the root of the tree, only has this to say:



If you give away a copy, their license must be included. This is the only clause which specifically mentions distribution rights of any sort that aren't a restriction. This is pretty shaky ground to stand on since it only implies that you have the right. An explicit clause stating you have distribution rights is almost certainly necessary. Given the language barrier issues we can't even be entirely sure what this clause is saying. The license is also likely written with Danish law in mind rather than US law, so there's no way to know without consulting an attorney what rights this license is giving you under US law. Remember, copyright has international treaties covering it, but that isn't necessarily true of licensing which many people regard as part of civil contract law.

The rest of the things mentioned in the DIKU license are irrelevant since they deal with use, modification, and publication in "articles" which I'm assuming means newspapers, magazines, and the like. So let's move on to Merc.



Those two additional clauses meant to cover rights granted under the Merc license do not pertain to distribution. So there's really nothing to see here. Pay attention ROM users, as so far you're not any better off than Smaug users. I digress.

From the Smaug license:


Again, none of Smaug's additional terms pertain to distribution. So again there's nothing really to see here. For the curious, the AFKMud license is also guilty of mentioning restrictions on what you can't do and mentions nothing about your distribution rights. Unless you take that "do whatever the hell you want with it" clause literally.

So where does that leave us? Playing dangerous legal games with nothing but conjecture as an anchor, that's where. The entire DIKU branch distribution chain is hinging on an iffy clause that doesn't come right out and explicitly grant you anything, and under the law, you explicitly have nothing. So we come right back to the rights given to copyright holders under the law, one of which is the right of distribution.

Kayle and I have chosen to remove the SmaugFUSS and AFKMud codebases from MudBytes as per our rights under the law. The site rules governing uploading only grant them a non-exclusive right to distribute anything that is submitted there. They do not grant that right in an irrevocable fashion. I should know, I wrote the rules there. So if they don't like it, then they need to change the wording of the rules to include "irrevocable". chances are that wouldn't hold up though even if it was there as an irrevocable license can only be enforced either via a signature on a signed document or a legally recognized e-signature on an electronic document. MudBytes collects neither.

Bottom line: The DIKU license does not bar us from exercising our copyright rights.
.........................
RIP United States of America

July 1776 - November 2012.

Sounds like a good enough spoiler, hopefully that works.

Well as usual I haven't been told anything one way or the other yet. I can't say I appreciate being cast as the devil in all this either when I did nothing wrong and am being vilified over a license the site isn't even a party to. So there's nothing official decided yet.

You're being cast as the devil and vilified?? I'm telling you, the mud community (particularly when it involves a major forum site) is almost always way more ...interesting and dramatic... than any soap opera that's ever aired. *shaking his head and chuckling*

I probably shouldn't have said anything. Samson, I assumed you and Kayle had discussed the solution before he announced it, and I'm sorry if I stepped on any toes or was the bearer of any ill-will.

I'll clarify for Conner et al: The solution does not pertain to AFKMud, only the other FUSS bases. But, as stated, nothing official yet.

Seems to me this would've been a good situation for Kayle to have been in touch with Samson via IM while deciding what to post then.

So, in a nut shell, you're saying that it's still "game on!" regarding all the stuff that actually bears accreditation directly to Samson, but that Kayle caved on the rest?

It's still officially "game on" for all of it because while I will support the site linking out to SmaugMuds.org I will not approve of them distributing the package directly. Kayle and I had a rather heated discussion about this but at no time did he ever mention a solution to me over IM or email. He simply sprung it on the forum at MB as though he'd consulted me on it - which he has not yet.

His post more or less paints me as the devil in all this claiming I misrepresented the truth. Those of us tuned to political circles know that's PC speak for "you lied". I did not lie. I made the demand, Davion ignored it, I wasn't aware of that until more recently. I really don't get what the motivations are behind all of this because all it turned into is another fine example of what the MUD community has become.

It also serves to effectively erode the rights of developers if the community willfully refuses to obey and enforce distribution licensing. That's why I called it as akin to software piracy, because that's precisely what it is.

What can you expect from a bunch of vultures who have no real purpose in life, who, to make themselves feel big and strong, resort to victimizing people via the internet. Bunch of pathetic losers need to grow a set of balls and get the fuck over themselves. I should stealth my way into the next mud meet and go and kick Davions and Crats asses and anyone else who is stupid enough to jump into the fray, i was going to do it last time, but got talked out of the idea, hopefully i have free time the next time the do it.

I see Tyche posted another one of his Pulitzer Prize winning posts. Way to add nothing to the debate. At one point i used to think you were funny, now i just think you are a goose with too much ADHD going on to be able to construct a meaningful post.

You know, i should not post on days when I feel like kicking the cat.

Oops, sounds like Kayle overstepped his authority in an effort at reconciliation.

Wait, it was Kayle who cast you as the devil and vilified you??
Yes, well, I can't argue about it being "another fine example of what the MUD community has become" because of two things: a) I haven't followed the discussion first hand (intentionally) & b) I'm pretty unhappy with the MUD community in general too.

I can't argue that point either, I just hate to see someone brandishing such terms in respect to the whole community in general like that because it paints all of us, myself included, in a rather bad light that I would not want to have to try to defend against, especially considering in this case we've touched on some issues that may just not be defensible that certainly make quite a large segment of the community at large guilty of an actual crime that most of us do everything we can to prevent others from engaging in.

Oops, RL interfered while I was writing that last post and Fury got one in before I hit the post button...

@Fury:
Um, careful, in this country they can lock you away for fighting, especially if you've got witnesses who say you started it and losers who decide to press charges.

No, you probably shouldn't post when you're feeling that way.

"another fine example of what the MUD community has become"

MB is not the THE mud community, it is A mud community, one that is very dysfunctional and unwelcoming to anyone who does not/will not, follow the party line. Take a quick look over the happenings of the last 12 months and you will see exactly what i mean.

Someone new comes along, who has spirit and passion for making a game, they might be a little weird, might not spell perfectly or have great grammar, they make some posts about how excited they are about their ideas, and within no time, they are barraged with negativity from all corners until they give up on their dreams like everyone else has at MB.

I have said this before, but it still remains true, any advice you get from anyone at MB is going to be bad advice, you are not going to get cooking advice from a bricklayer, why the hell would you take advice on making and running a mud from people who do neither of these things.

The sad thing is, MB and TMC attract the noobs, and then they get broken by the like of Crat and Drizzt and then leave the hobby forever. In the early days of my mudding hobby i never had anything to do with mud forums etc, and the day i started having something to do with them was the biggest mistake i have ever made, MB and TMC are not worth the time and effort, they are filled with people who could not care a rats ass about MUDs and most are just broken pathetic people who are out to shit on as many noobs as they can find.

My initial mud had 15+ people online during peak times and rather than focus on that, i focused on making a name for myself on forums and playing THE GAME with people who did not really deserve my time and attention. The idea of MB, TMC, IMC and I3 are all good, but the reality is, they fill up with broken people who have no passion for MUDs, do not run muds and really don't want anything to do with muds and the end result of such is obvious to anyone outside looking at it.

Thats the reason why you have endless drama on MB, none of them have any purpose, so they have to parade and proselytize their own misguided point of view to give themselves a reason to be there. Boored people are only ever going to cause trouble, get rid of all the EX mudders from MB and the whole place will be a much better place.

You also don't seek legal advice from MUD administrators.

Wow, Fury.. I'm not sure I entirely agree with your post, but I am quite impressed with how well it's written. On the other hand, I don't disagree with most of your post either. The main thing I disagree with is your initial statement, actually, because I do believe that MB, TMC, TMS, IMC, I3, etc may not be the whole MUD community but they do seem to be an accurate reflection of the majority of it. Of course that's really sad for the community as a whole, but at least neither of us is saying that all of the people within the MUD community are like that, so there's still cause for hope.

Samson, the sad fact is that, while that should be entirely basic common sense, far too many members of the community do exactly that regularly, particularly with regard to copyright law issues.

The main reason i think that way Conner is because the vast majority of successful muds do not have anyone that frequents those places, so, to my way of thinking, there has to be a reason why the BEST of what muds have to offer are being intentionally absent from this community that people speak of and that is because MB, TMC, IMC and I3 are not representative of the greater mud community and the only ones who seem to prosper in those places are those who are broken and disillusioned with mudding as a whole.

I hardly consider the opinions of DH, Crat and Co, to be representative of the greater mud community, this is not to say that they do not have intelligent things to say, because often they do, but rather, that that their interests are not purely about the betterment of muds as a whole.

The absence of the staff of the best muds, to me, speaks volumes, why do you not see those who run the best games? One possible answer is Image. Another might be about self esteem, no one likes to be torn down, and on MB, TMC, IMC and I3 you are much more likely to be torn down, than built up about your ideas.

Mmmm Fresh raspberry and 80% cocoa while chocolate muffins, just cooked a still hot from the oven, total decadence in a cake. LOL An interesting side effect of having a bad day is that i cook, making spinach and pumpkin gnocchi next with a basil, chili and garlic tomato sauce, garlic and herb bread, and a nice rocket and baby spinach salad with crispy lardon's black olives, that's dinner and desert covered for tonight Oh and lardons, dont know if you use that term in the USA is pork belly, and you cook it to a crisp like bacon.

I suppose you have a valid enough point, but it seems like these others would still need some sort of collaborative resource to really be successful, or do you suppose they just visit the same sites as lurkers?

Considering I don't eat pork at all, your meal plan other than the muffins doesn't sound very appealing to me, but each to his own, eh?

I'm sure I sound like a broken record about all this but I think your top tier MUD admins/owners/etc hang out over at TMS. If any games can claim to be on top of the hobby, it's those. So if you're looking to get advice or just hang out with people who know their stuff, that's where you'd want to do it. Topics like this rarely come up there and even when they do, they get handled in a calm and civil manner and nobody goes off half-cocked calling each other liars.

I've always more or less avoided the forums at TMS in the past because they seemed as active as the ones at either MB or TMC and those two keep me more than busy enough on their own given all the other stuff I was involved in, but maybe now that I've mostly given up on those two I'll have the time again to go look into the forums there then.

It's definitely quite a difference. The atmosphere is much friendlier there than at TMC or MB. You still have some of the usual suspects hanging out there, but since the group isn't complete it doesn't tend to lead to blow-ups while they show off their e-peens to each other.

That does sound enticing.. perhaps even inviting.

You were told in that heated discussion we had over it that I was going with the link solution.

They're not distributing the package directly.

After you provided me with an identical AIM log as the one Davion provided me, I don't know how you could claim they used butchered logs. It was your providing that identical log that made me realize that you had in fact, never asked for the removal of the FUSS project code from the MudBytes Repository to begin with. You asked for things you had authored, and you specifically mentioned AFKMud. Since neither of us have ever listed the FUSS bases as our own work, instead choosing to list them as Various, or Community. They don't fall under your request. Because we're not the sole authors. A great many people have invested time, effort, and code into getting the FUSS bases where they are. Revoking MUDBytes right to distribute because of a personal issue with them, after realizing that it WAS simply a personal issue and no violation of any form on their part, left a bad taste in my mouth; and a taint on the project. I could not in good faith let that taint hang over the project. I am not the sole author of the FUSS bases. I am not the sole maintainer. I'm not the sole contributor. Therefore, my personal feelings don't matter. What matters is that the work a great many people put into that base is widely available, and that their right to see their work put to use isn't trampled on because you or I disagree with the actions of someone else.

No one here, save probably Hana, can claim to have looked at this with as much scrutiny as I have. I discussed this for several hours with Davion, and then with Samson, and both provided me with identical accounts of the conversation. I compared these two conversations provided WORD BY WORD. They are identical. No changes. No butchers. No Alterations. Identical. My request for MudBytes to cease distribution of the FUSS Bases was done under a false pretense. Even by your own admission, you didn't phrase your request the way you should have. And thus you can claim no ill will towards someone else for your own mistake.

As for the licensing part of the discussion here, I spoke to a friend who works with this sort of thing all the time (read: lawyer). He reviewed all three licenses, and his opinion was that the licenses do in fact grant the right to distribute, but that they do it in an ambiguous way. The fact that distribution is fine is evident by two statements in the original Diku License:


and:


You'll probably argue that it doesn't specify as to what counts as giving away or what have you. But it doesn't matter. The license grants the right to give away any part of DikuMUD. It doesn't matter if you give away one file, or all of it. The fact remains that there is a clear intent to allow distribution. Ambiguous as it may be, the intent is there.

This is really strictly between you two. Whatever faults you may have (perceived or real), I will say that you usually do stand behind your friends better than the picture Samson painted last week. This is why I was rather surprised that he was saying not only that he was being vilified on MB but that it was by you.


As one of those "great many people" I couldn't care less about the bad taste it may have left in your mouth and I don't really care who believes that the project has such a taint (though I would rather it not bear one in the first place, but a dispute between Samson and Davion/Kiasyn doesn't qualify as a taint to me), but otherwise I do agree with what you're saying here. I have enough respect for Samson that I am quite willing to support his decision to have the entire FUSS project removed from MB if he feels that it should be since he was the project lead from its inception (on both FUSS and MB) as far as I know (and I've been involved with FUSS almost since its inception) but I had been saying since the beginning of this incident that I didn't feel like it seemed the right course because I hadn't seen the MB admins actually do anything negative toward the repository they're running and because we (Samson and many others, including myself) very vocally established MB from the onset as a repository to serve the entire community without gaps except for that software being distributed illegally. (License violations and such) and this isn't really the case here.


Has anyone here even implied such a claim to date? Including Hanaisse? Personally, I'd specifically posted repeatedly that while I was reading bits of it, almost exclusively via RSS feed, I was specifically trying to not actually get involved for my own reasons.


Gee, that's what I'd been saying all along too. I don't think the wording is very clear and it certainly doesn't specifically say anywhere "You may distribute", but it's quite obviously implied. I just don't know (or care to know) licensing law well enough to know for certain if, unlike so many laws, it follows plain common sense. Glad to see that someone's finally gotten a lawyer to respond about it though, that should settle the issue finally short of someone on the Diku Team actually bringing this license to a court somewhere. And, it also exonerates all of us who use Diku derivatives of the wording I objected to Samson using earlier as well, at least until such time as a member of the Diku Team tries to come forward claiming otherwise in a courtroom. Aside from the fact that I seriously doubt that a member of the original Diku Team would bring this into a court given the past examples we've had, I also think we'd be able to argue that, collectively, we've been under the completely reasonable impression from the wording of the license that distribution had been consented to, at least by implication, without being given any reason to question that impression for decades even with the scrutiny that the entire community could give the license over the years without being told otherwise by any of the original Diku Team even when they were still involved and well aware that their code was being distributed both as original works and as various derivative works, and therefore if that wasn't implication was incorrectly being interpretted we're all sorry and will happily cease all distribution but can not be faulted for having done it in the past.

Well unlike some people involved in this debate who claim to have consulted phantom attorneys on the matter, I'll just put this here:



I attached a copy of the Diku license and send it to the legal advice tea at softwarefreemdom.org. Here's the response I got back from one Daniel B. Ravicher:


Note his opinion that this isn't an open source license, and that he specifically states that #1 through #4 would only apply if it was. So you people can take the legal bullshit and shove it until you're prepared to put up actual names of people willing to go on public record as this man was gracious enough to do even though I didn't pay him a dime.

This is exactly the can of worms that shouldn't be getting opened with this stuff because there's no guarantee the judge you get in court won't rule the same way this lawyer analyzed the situation.

At this point I don't give a fuck what spin you want to put on what you said in public Kayle, it's right there for all to see. You told them all the entire incident was my fault and stopped just short of implying I did it all on purpose or something and that I'm an asshole for it. Well I'm tired of it. You all wanted me to be an asshole. So be it. I'm an asshole. Happy now? Good.

Well put.

At this point I don't give a shit about this issue any more. For all our sakes GET OVER IT. Please.

I don't care who said what to whom, who has logs and who doesn't, how everyone interprets what happened is a matter of personal opinion. How it makes each party look is a matter of personal opinion. Right now you both look like a couple of women holding a grudge, and it's just sad (<--- personal opinion). That's what this has boiled down to. Enough already.

It doesn't even matter anyway. MB hasn't added the link (as far as I can see) so who cares???????

So, they made all that fuss about whether or not FUSS could be distributed from MB and then didn't even bother to add the link anyway once it was settled that they could distribute it that way? There's some irony to be found in that...

Welcome to the world of Muds, where who has a log is the winner. Smokey the Bear would POWN on mudbytes with all his logs.