>I am just curious, but I see people throw around terms like
>'copyright' and 'license' and it is obvious none of you have any idea
>what goes into getting these. You do not just say your shit is
>copyrighted or has a license, software companies pay _BIG_
>money to lawyers to get these drafted and _OFFICIAL_. My
Copyrights are automatic. Using a lawyer only generates big fees for them,
at your expense. There are cases of burden of proof, as in can you prove you
did it first, but hey a lawyer can do little more to prove that than anyone
else.
>
>And another issue, in lawsuits where copyrights and licenses
>were violated _and_ proven (yet another major issue) the only
>compensation the author could receive were 100% of all funds
>the forging party made and any lost assets caused by the
>infringement. For a mud, this allocates to a whopping $0.00.
>(And no, time lost to develop does not count)
This all depends. Concepts like pain, suffering, humility, loss of quality
of life etc amount to enormous sums in todays courts.
>
>Once again, judgements rarely go to the plantiff in such cases
>do to the burden of proof . You can only code the same concept
>X number of times, and surely two people can come up with identical
>solutions to a certain degree (with such a limited media like C).
Limited media? I've participated in those stupid little games of how few
lines you can write the unix command 'cat' in. I was amazed to see the
amount of completely different results we all had, for the same problem.
>
>As to the original topic, if everyone has a problem with posting this
>guy's name to their startup screen (laugh), I will upload a simplified
>version of my terrain feature, and I could care less about credits. The
>real software I develop at work is where my heart is at.
Nod, thats the proper coder spirit there. I've also offered advice to anyone
wanting to know how I did it on Duris (much more modular and expandable than
many methods Ive seen.)
>. Also, if anyone is interested, In the
>past
>I contacted TSR concerning the use of their AD&D gaming stuff in a mud
>environment and got some real pleasant info. Mail me directly if you are
>interested in what I found out. (Also please note, that Wizards of the
Coast
>is now in control of their copyrights, so this info may be obsolete)
Any info you recieved from the last owners of TSR is completely outdated.
WotC has issued a license much like diku/circle/gnu/etc.
Use it all you wish, take no credit, nor any cash.
Fafhrd
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Ensure that you have read the CircleMUD Mailing List FAQ: |
| http://democracy.queensu.ca/~fletcher/Circle/list-faq.html |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 12/15/00 PST