New CircleMUD License FAQ

From: Jeremy Elson (jelson@circlemud.org)
Date: 08/21/01


Hi everyone,

I get email all the time asking questions about the CircleMUD
license.  Mostly, people are asking what's legal and what isn't.
Usually, such questions take a lot of time and thought to answer
correctly, and more often than not I say "I'll get back to that
later..." and then never get back to it :-(.

This evening I spent a couple of hours going through all my old email
and writing up a new CircleMUD License FAQ which I hope will answer
everyone's questions on my views of the license.  (You can find a link
to it from the mail CircleMUD web page.)  Note that the opinions
expressed theirs are mine alone; they might not be shared by others in
our community, or for that matter by a real lawyer.  It was just my
attempt to come up with a list of answers to the questions I am asked
most frequently.

Frankly, if I were writing a new MUD today from scratch (which I'm not
:-) ), I would just put it under a license such as BSD or GPL that has
no commercial restrictions.  But, we inherited the DikuMUD license's
ban on commercial activity, so we are left with the job today of
making some tough decisions about what "commercial activity" means,
exactly.  I hope the FAQ answers more questions than it raises.

And now, back to lurking :-)

Best regards to all-
Jeremy

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