| The question of the Copyright and Terms of Use for the driver is an old |
| one. Here is what I could salvage from the amylaar-users mailing list. |
| Important is Jacob's mail I received in 1999 which essentially casts |
| the current copyright terms in stone. |
| |
| -- Lars (not /Lars) |
| |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1993 03:11:29 +0100 (MET) |
| From: amylaar@meolyon.hanse.de (Joern Rennecke) |
| Subject: LPmud Copyright |
| To: busey@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (busey andrew), lars@cd.chalmers.se, |
| croes@swi.psy.uva.nl, gusar@uniwa.uwa.OZ.AU, duening@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de, |
| jacob@cd.chalmers.se, r_behren@informatik.uni-kl.de, |
| mud@alijku05.edvz.uni-linz.ac.at, alcaman@cs.tu-berlin.de |
| |
| Motivation of this letter: |
| There seems to be a potential for muds that run on dedicated machines |
| that charge fees from player to make the mud economically feasible. |
| The Copyright file says that LPmud can freely used iff it is not for |
| monetary gain. Now the debate what constitutes monetary gain and if |
| an individual license is an license to break the copyright, |
| is an interpretation of the license in Copyright or gives rights |
| independent the restrictions in Copyright has become a normal flame |
| war in the rec.games.mud.* groups. That is to say, one of the worst |
| thinkable. |
| |
| To allow muds to charge fees to cover costs, without going through |
| such debates every time, I suggest to amend the Copyright file |
| with terms under witch such a mud is considered to comply to the |
| 'no monetary gain clause' . |
| |
| Explanation of the recipient list and some individual messages: |
| |
| Busey Andrew: wants to set up a mud that charges fees to cover costs. |
| If the below rules won't make it into the Copyright, you can regard this |
| as a license - of course only for the code written by me. |
| Lars Pensj|: original author. |
| Please forward this letter to other authors that have contributed to 3.1.2 |
| who have a say in the copyright. |
| Felix A. Croes: wrote the non-corrupting indentation code for ed. |
| Sean A Reith: wrote Mud-sprintf() . |
| Lars Duening: wrote the Amiga port. |
| Reimer Behrends: wrote mergesort based sort_array() . |
| Herp: wrote get_object_actions() . |
| Jacob Hallen: is one of the people involved with the CD driver; the email |
| address was in the news recently... |
| Please forward this letter to the person holding the copyright for the |
| UDP connectivity(unless it's yourself :-) . |
| Alexander Weidt: |
| Please try to forward this letter to my brother... |
| |
| I hope to finally get terms which all autors can agree on that can be included |
| into the Copyright file. I suggest group replies, so that we can get some |
| kind of discussion going (unless there is immediate approval from all |
| authors :-) . When you have objections, please try to point out what is |
| wrong with these terms. Even better would it be if you had a solution |
| to the problem. |
| |
| Joern Rennecke (Amylaar) |
| |
| Proposed Terms: |
| 1. A LPmud may charge fees from players to cover running and machine costs. |
| 2. Running costs in these terms are the cost for the network connection, |
| electric power to operate the host machine, wear of backup media, |
| repair costs for the host machine, and cost for a bank account. |
| For the costs of a bank account to be considered runnung costs, |
| they must not habe been considered according to 8. , and the |
| institute has to be choosen with at least usual consideration on |
| terms and costs of the account and that there must be no affiliaton |
| with the institute. |
| 3. Money to cover running costs for a maximum of 18 month may be accumulated |
| in advance from fees to smoothe fluctation and to ensure stability of |
| the mud. The spare money has to be kept separate from personal money |
| and should be invested in trustee investment if liquidity allows. |
| If the mud is permanently put down, this money has to be refounded to the |
| playeres. |
| 4. Machine costs are costs for buying, installation and upgrade of the host |
| machine. The costs have to appear on a bona fide purchase / service |
| contract with a person/institution that is not affiliated with the |
| person who sets up the mud. |
| When the host machine is put out of use, or parts of it are removed for |
| other than technical reasons, are parts are nor re-inserted after the |
| technical resons for removal and not re-inserting have become void, |
| the current value of the machine that has put out of use/the removed |
| parts is to be subtracted from the machine costs. |
| If thus more money has been paid for machine costs than there are |
| currently, the surplus amount has to be refounded to the mud players. |
| 5. The machine cost share in the fee may not be more than 1/2400th |
| of the machine costs per month. If the mud has less than 100 players, |
| it may be up to machine costs / 24 / number of players, but not more than |
| 1/120th of the machine costs per month. |
| 6. When money has to be payed back to the mud players, only those that |
| have payed at least once a fee within the last 24 month are to be |
| considered. For these players, the money is distributed in the ratio |
| of the all fee shares ever payed to cover machine costs. |
| 7. All players pay equal fees. |
| 8. Banking costs that have to be paid by the mud administration and are |
| immediately connected to incoming money transactions can be subtracted |
| from the transferred amount before counting it as payment of fees, |
| provided that the institute was choosen with at least usual |
| consideration on terms and costs of the account, and that there is |
| no affiliaton with the institute. |
| 9. The amount of voluntary donations is unlimited. A donation is not |
| considered voluntary if it is connected with special features or |
| favours in the mud other than an hounarary mentioning of the donor, |
| or if the donor is made to believe that such a connection exists. |
| Reasonable measures have to be taken that there is no |
| misunderstanding on this point. |
| |
| Comments: |
| 3. You may not use the money of the mud to bridge personal inliquidity. |
| Don't gamble with other persons money, e.g. investing it in junk bonds. |
| 5. Fees should not be arbitrarily raised so that players can be driven |
| out. I considered a fixed minimal distributen of the costs to be |
| the best means to codify this. |
| Absolute figures are bound to become void by inflation. |
| 6. The 24 month period is introduced to allow to erease records of |
| clients after two years, and to keep overhead affordable. |
| 7. We don't want favourites to get a free lift, and others grudgingly |
| paying extra. If you think somebody needs free access, find someone |
| who pays for it, or make a found payed from voluntary donations. |
| |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1993 17:10:44 +0100 (MET) |
| From: Lars Pensj| <lars@cd.chalmers.se> |
| Subject: Re: LPmud Copyright |
| To: amylaar@meolyon.hanse.de (Joern Rennecke) |
| Cc: busey@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu, lars@cd.chalmers.se, croes@swi.psy.uva.nl, |
| gusar@uniwa.uwa.OZ.AU, duening@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de, jacob@cd.chalmers.se, |
| r_behren@informatik.uni-kl.de, mud@alijku05.edvz.uni-linz.ac.at, |
| alcaman@cs.tu-berlin.de |
| |
| I agree that fix of the copyright is needed. I would prefer to use the |
| Gnu Copyleft, as I don't care any longer if anyone makes money from it. The |
| important thing is that it is free, which means noone will be able to make |
| much money anyway. |
| |
| Any thoughts about it ? |
| |
| /Lars |
| |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1993 20:14:10 +0100 (MET) |
| From: Jacob Hallen <jacob@cd.chalmers.se> |
| Subject: Re: LPmud Copyright |
| To: amylaar@meolyon.hanse.de (Joern Rennecke) |
| Cc: busey@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu, lars@cd.chalmers.se, croes@swi.psy.uva.nl, |
| gusar@uniwa.uwa.OZ.AU, duening@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de, jacob@cd.chalmers.se, |
| r_behren@informatik.uni-kl.de, mud@alijku05.edvz.uni-linz.ac.at, |
| alcaman@cs.tu-berlin.de |
| |
| > Jacob Hallen: is one of the people involved with the CD driver; the email |
| > address was in the news recently... |
| > Please forward this letter to the person holding the copyright for the |
| > UDP connectivity(unless it's yourself :-) . |
| |
| I represent everyone involved in the CD driver. The UDP stuff is to be |
| considered public domain. All other parts are covered by the non-profit clause. |
| Code origination from me, Johan Andersson (Commander), Ronny Wikh (Mrpr), |
| Lennart Augustsson (Marvin) is covered by it. We have no intention of |
| allowing people to charge money for the usage of our driver, or borrowed |
| pieces thereof. |
| We consider the acceptance of volontary donations as fair practice, and we |
| can accept the charging for the use of extra equipment needed to allow |
| people to access the mud, as long as there is a reasonable way to access the |
| mud without being charged. (Providing modem access at a cost while allowing |
| free access over the internet is an example of such a setup.) |
| |
| My personal view is that an elaborate setup of terms like the one in the |
| original letter is unreasonable. It is designed for a very specific set of |
| circumstances. It is impossible to check and it is very bureaucratic. |
| It does not have my support. |
| |
| Jacob Hallen |
| |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1993 23:35:12 +0100 (MET) |
| From: Multi User Dungeon <mud@alijku05.edvz.uni-linz.ac.at> |
| Subject: Re: LPmud Copyright |
| To: lars@cd.chalmers.se (Lars Pensj|) |
| Cc: busey@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu, croes@swi.psy.uva.nl, gusar@uniwa.uwa.OZ.AU, |
| duening@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de, jacob@cd.chalmers.se, |
| r_behren@informatik.uni-kl.de, alcaman@cs.tu-berlin.de |
| |
| Lars> important thing is that it is free, which means noone will be able to make |
| Lars> much money anyway. |
| |
| You are speaking about the GD,correct ? Normally, many a site uses an unmodified |
| GD based upon which is a more or less heavily or not heavily Mudlib. Based upon |
| this Mudlib is the work of the `wizards' ... Sorry for repeating known stuff. |
| |
| This makes most Muds differ from each other. So, the fact that the GD itself |
| is free, doesn't imply that you won't make money. |
| |
| Another point to argue: maintainig a Mud takes time .. a LOT of time. Usually, |
| doing so is not fun at all. I experienced that the more players you have, the |
| less fun it is fore the adminstrators. You spend a lot of time coding, |
| searching and fixing bugs ... and I think, this can be regarded as a |
| service for players (... and players really can be a pain sometimes ...) |
| Would it be legal to charge money for that ? |
| |
| Another thought: Internet Muds. They run on internet, usually on computers |
| owned by a school or university, some with, some without the knowledge of |
| the site adminstrators. Would it be legal to charge money when you run |
| a Mud on equipment not owned by yourself ? And, even if you own the computer, |
| do you pay for the internet link ? If not, I fear you must not charge money |
| for a Mud without speaking with the network adminstrator since you are using |
| the network components (router/bridges, even cables :-> ...) for free. |
| |
| How difficult is charging money in European Muds ? Not that I plan |
| to do so for HM (it's closed for players currently anyway), but isn't there a |
| big difference according to the "accounting mechanism" (ugh, bad english :-) |
| that is used in the States ? I heard that it is much more easy to make |
| financial transactions within the States. So, I suspect the "Mud money charging" |
| discussion arrives from the US :-) |
| |
| Greetings, Herp (mud@mud.uni-linz.ac.at) |
| |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| From jacob@cd.chalmers.se Sun Oct 24 17:02:53 1999 |
| Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin |
| Subject: Re: Newsgroups |
| From: jacob@cd.chalmers.se (Jacob Hallen) |
| Date: 24 Oct 1999 16:02:53 GMT |
| |
| In article <380f817d.35916528@news.earthlink.net>, |
| Lars Duening <lars@bearnip.com> wrote: |
| >On Thu, 21 Oct 1999 12:11:36 -0700, Ilya |
| ><ilya@spam.free.gamecommandos.com> wrote: |
| > |
| >>Hey Lars, what hope is there, if any, of getting |
| >>something going in the LP world, using LDmud or |
| >>whatever, that can be used commercially? |
| > |
| >Unfortunately only slim hope: the parts written by the Genesis folks |
| >are definitely non-commercial; but rewriting is difficult because |
| >nobody remembers _which_ parts are concerned (and mailed requests |
| >haven't been answered). And I haven't asked the other contributors |
| >yet, either. |
| |
| I have a pretty good idea of who wrote what parts of the early version 3 |
| gamedrivers. All in all there have been about 30 people involved. Unless |
| you recode the entire gamedriver from scratch, or build from assembled pieces |
| with known copyright restrictions, there is no way you can come up with |
| something that does not infringe on the rights of someone who will not |
| allow commecial use. |
| |
| Jacob Hallén |
| |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| |