On Sun, 17 Aug 1997, Gary Barnett wrote:
> On Sunday, August 17, 1997 6:33 PM, Daniel Koepke
> [SMTP:dkoepke@CALIFORNIA.COM] wrote:
> > On Sun, 17 Aug 1997, Andrew Helm wrote:
> >
> > -+And what if I agreed with the license? You seem to have stopped mid
> > -+sentence there, Daniel.
> >
> <snip>
Unfortunately, some people resort to snipping parts of a quote in
order to gain an advantage. Taking the quote into context you'll
see that I was not refering to the CircleMUD license but a
hypothetical license in which the contractee had to become the
contractor's slave for 5 years.
Here's the full quote:
Andrew Helm wrote:
> Daniel Koepke wrote:
> > Their signature is use of the product after being aware of the
> > stipulations of the license. Hence, while it's unlikely that anyone would
> > become Jeremy's slave for 5 years to use CircleMUD (sorry, Jeremy :), if
> > we wanted to put that in the license, he *could*, and if you agreed with
> > the license.
>
> And what if I agreed with the license? You seem to have stopped mid
> sentence there, Daniel. The truth of the matter is, even if I did agree
> to a license which said I would be Jeremy's slave for the next 5 years,
> it still wouldn't be legally valid. The CircleMUD license might not have
> the power to restrict other people from sending in money of their own
> free will. I do not know for sure, as I said before the only opinion
> I can give on this issue is that you really ought to see a lawyer about
> it because it's questionable.
[end quote]
Gary Barnett wrote:
> Umm. Have you ever thought that maybe the spirit of the license is
> what you are honor bound to fulfill? Forget legality. The honorable
> path is to not accept money, donations or anything else but maybe
> some praise from whoever stops by and likes what you are doing.
> The mud shouldn't be a profit center, unless you are willing to start
> from scratch. After all, no-one forced anyone to download circle and
> start running it. You chose this path, and out of respect for those
> who did the homework, you should follow their wishes, even if they
> are not able to write an iron-clad thou-shall-not document that is
> fully binding in the courts.
>
> To do anything less is not honorable, and will bring bad things
> to your mud in the long run, IMHO.
Yes, I agree completely. In my original message I said:
[quoted the parts of the license prohibiting donations]
[mentioned the questionable legality of the CircleMUDs
prohibition on donations and suggested that anyone
who wanted to know for sure should see a lawyer]
The legal validity of parts of the license aside, I
would not try to accept donations for running a CircleMUD
if I were you. The author's intentions are clear, and it
would be damned rude to go against them. If you really want
to have the community help support your mud there are three
options you can take: find a free server, write your own
mud, or send e-mail to Jeremy and talk it over with him.
As you can see, I share your view. :)
> If you were just asking out of academic curiosity, please forgive
> the tone of my post. If you are really looking for a way to recoup
> the money you are spending, maybe you should take up a different
> hobby, one that is less expensive or allows you to pull in a few bucks
> as partial compensation for your time and effort.
No problem, the tone of your post was quite nice, actually. :)
BTW, I'm not the one who asked about donations. I was repsonding
to someone who did. The list is archive at
http://post.queensu.ca/~listserv/wwwarch/circle.html
Also, you can get the posts in this thread by sending the
following command to listserv@post.queenus.ca:
GETPOST CIRCLE 1328 1330 1336 1338 1355 1363 1373 1377 1394-1395 1402 1407 1410-1411 1413
Remember, since people can modify the text of thier repsonse,
it's best to get someone's viewpoint from their original message.
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