Three times over the past two weeks, I have had people show up on
my mud, create a character, look around and ask me for the source code to
my mud. I don't know if the people are finding out about my mud from this
list or if they are finding me from my mud connector listing. Just in case
they are coming from here, I'm posting this here.
All of them mentioned trying to learn Circle and C, but failing
and wanting my code "as examples of how to do things." For those of you
that are considering making a request like this... please don't. While the
base code of Circle is open source, anything a person does with the code
from the time they unzip it is not open source. I read through the license
several times, and the only reference to publishing code was from the
dikumud portion of the license:
"If you publish *any* part of dikumud..."
This means that publishing the code from my mud is entirely my
choice. I had one [insert favorite insult here] tell me that I was
required to publish my code since Circle was open source. I just laughed
at him and ignored his tells from that point on.
I have worked very hard to make my mud what it is. If you want to
duplicate the ideas that I have included in my mud, feel free to try, but
there's no f___ng way I'm just going to give you the code so that you can
duplicate my mud with zero effort. If you don't have the time or guts to
put into building a quality mud, then either settle for running a mediocre
mud or stick with playing muds. Coding and running a mud takes time and
effort and is not an easy thing to do.
I'm sure that other admins out there share my sentiments on this
issue. Asking for code from any mud for any reason is very presumptuous
and rude. I've given my fair share to the community and if I ever feel
like giving more, I'll do it. However, I will only give my code and ideas
to the world when *I* feel like it, not when some snot-nosed punk comes
and bangs on my door. Sure, I'm being selfish with my code, but it's not
something that I downloaded or borrowed. It's something that I /built/
with CircleMUD as the foundation.
I just did a diff between bpl 11 w/Oasis 1.3 (where I started) and
my C++ based mud as it currently stands and the diff came out to be a
little over 3.5 megs in size. Yeah. I think I have the right to be
selfish with my work and so does everyone else that runs a mud.
--
Zeavon Calatin, MageMaster of the Realms
Spear of Insanity
http://spear.kilnar.com/ telnet://spear.kilnar.com:1066
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Ensure that you have read the CircleMUD Mailing List FAQ: |
| http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~fletchra/Circle/list-faq.html |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 04/10/01 PDT