At 03:47 AM 8/18/97 -0700, Rasdan wrote:
>On a side note, pertaining to the recent lengthy discussion of the
>CircleMUD license, and the no donations clause:
>
> Does this clause also prevent the selling of merchandise (such as
> tip books, etc) with only the name of the mud you are running,
> and saying nothing about CircleMUD.
>
> The reason I ask this is that we are working on coding into our mud a
>sound system whereby certain events that occur within the mud trigger
>specific sounds played at the player-end. Now, we are going to make all
>the sounds we use available for downloading from the web page
>(eventually). However, the .zip file will be quite large and download
>times will be quite long.
>
> To save the people downloading some time, we are considering offering
>CDs containing all sounds, with a small install program to install the
>sounds in the proper location, for sale. We only intend to charge the
>cost of the CD plus shipping and a small $2 fee.
>
> Are we bound by the CircleMUD license not to do this? If so why? since
>we are not making any profit off of CircleMUD.
How can you say you are not making any profit off of CircleMUD. The sounds
are to be used with CircleMUD and that is the reason you are selling them,
right? Basically your making it so people have to pay to use all of the
features of your MUD. That would be like if I said "you can play my MUD all
you want for free, but if you want to use spells you have to send me $10"
If the sounds had nothing to do with the MUD you could charge as much as you
want to whoever you want but you are selling sounds to be used with your
MUD. So if the person doesn't use your MUD then they probably won't want
the sounds. That means that when someone buys the CD with the sounds, it is
because your MUD earned the money for you. that isn't allowed by the
license. Maybe if you charged only what it would cost you to make the CD
and make no profit then it might be okay (but now that I think about it you
probably couldn't do that either). besides, who wants to use a MUD that has
features that they have to pay for? I know you said they could just
download it, but not everyone can download things onto the computer they are
using for any number of reasons.
But I'm not a lawyer so I couldn't possibly know. I would like to know why
everyone wants to make money off of CircleMUD anyway? The only thing that
can happen as a result of charging people for CircleMUD is that CircleMUD
will be replaced by some other game that everyone can play and that is free.
one more quick comment (then I will shut up...I promise...maybe).
It is pretty dumb to say that no one you know from your MUD can send you
money. I develope software and sell it. If someone from my MUD couldn't buy
my product just because they play my MUD I wouldn't be able to use CircleMUD
because of the business I could lose because of the license. If someone
sends you money to help out your MUD, to pay to keep your MUD running, or to
buy parts of it (code, worlds, logs [in case they want to spy on someone
;)]} you have to give the money back (or if its a check i guess you could
just rip it up and burn it but you should tell the person so they don't
think they have less money than they actually do). It might not be a
legally binding agreement but who cares! Just don't accept the money. Try
to keep the integrity of CircleMUD intact at least long enough for me to get
mine up and running.
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