"d. hall" <dhall@OOI.NET> writes:
> There is one very small, itsy, little problem with JUST a GPL'ed mud.
> People could charge for it's use. Both DIKU and Jeremy have worked very
> hard to make sure that within their respective licenses, that you cannot
> charge for use of the running source.
I see no real problem with this. If the codebase could be used for
charging, we'd see a flood of charge-based muds. But of course this
wouldn't work because most would be stock. People would play on the
free ones and ignore the mostly-stock charge ones. There are no free
lunches, which includes making money from muds. People won't pay
unless there's something new, fresh, unique.
A GPL'd mud wouldn't be a problem. A lot of companies (cygnus for
one) make money doing custom alterations of GPL'd software or porting
it to embedded markets. Should Cygnus be prevented from making money
frmo the code?
Perhaps add a clause to the GPL stating that running the code in a
public environment would require the release of the source within a
year of opening, though that would be a bit unpalletable to most
people. But in and of itself the GPL is fairly well suited for a mud
license IMO.
--
James Turner turnerjh@xtn.net
http://www.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/~turnerjh/
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