Question TbaMud license change

This is actually only somewhat correct. There currently isn't any limit to taking an area from the mud distribution and plugging it into another mud. It's not even hard to do.

The change is that currently, if you do that, you can't make any monetary gain. The current license is based on the former DikuMUD license :

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.

This means that it's not an open source license. Now we finally have a chance (because the DikuMUD license changed and the CircleMUD license changed after that) to make it - real - open source I think we should take it.

Yes, this means someone may take your area and use it on a mud. Has that not been the purpose all along? Now, though, they may be able to get donations to run the servers. To be frank, I hardly think any MUD is now popular enough to garner a higher return than that.

thomas wrote: This means that it's not an open source license.

In case anyone wondered - this line in the definition of Open Source Software is not covered by the old license.

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

Hi Guys, let me ask a thing.

If I modify the tbamud code and use it in my own 'fantastic super lucrative mud server', must I release my version of the code?

Its not clear to me if the LGPL is applied only to software redistribution of if its like the AGPL that enforce the code release even if I am just providing a service based in the library code.

If I am hosting a MUD Server, so I am not redistributing the code, in this way can I keep my changes to my private use?

Thanks in advance!

Kind Regards
Giuliano

LGPL means that if you convey an application based on LGPL license, you must expose the source code. In this context, convey means letting other people have your binaries. So we at tbaMUD feel this one. It is what we want.

However, the requirement does not extend to the case where your users are connecting to your code via a network. So your 'fantastic super lucrative mud server' would be safe as long as you are not selling it. And then, you'd only need to give the source to the people you're selling it to.

Actually, the GNU Affero General Public License (commonly called the AGPL) has this requirement. This is why we are not adapting that one.

Out of curiosity, was any further progress made toward relicensing TbaMud? Per brief discussion on the CircleMUD ML a year or so ago, it seemed like the main blockers were going to be getting in touch with the "big patch" authors (particularly for ASCIII PFiles, DG Scripts, Oasis OLC...). Also I don't recall whether TBA incorporates any of the old Curious Areas Workshop content, but if so it didn't seem like there was much interest hope of relicensing that. Separating out content which isn't relicensed should be fairly trivial, so the C source code is presumably the first hurdle in this.

Indeed, we made a push for it. However, we struggled to get in touch with the source code authors (who we were focusing on). The initiative has slowed somewhat - I'm busy at work, and I think the same goes for Rumble.