Intellectual Property and Dead Souls
updated 23 June 2006
When I began work on Dead Souls, I hadn't
thought that I'd have much to worry about, in terms
of intellectual property, or IP. Given that Dead Souls
was itself "public domain" software, it didn't seem
like it would be an issue. Little did I know!
There have been some areas of concern for
folks in this regard, and this article is intended
to clarify my actions and intent when it comes to
Dead Souls and IP. The main issues break down into
three main categories:
The legal status of Dead Souls
The controversy over Cygwin GPL violation
The question of MudOS distribution
The legal status of Dead Souls
Dead Souls 1.1 was the final release of the
Dead Souls lib made by Descartes in the late 1990's.
DS 1.1 was placed into the public domain, meaning
that Descartes released all copyright to the lib,
making it freely distributable in any form by any
one in any way, including commercially.
This was in stark contrast to the strict
reservation of copyright for his other mudlib, Nightmare IV.
Nightmare IV remained under his copyright, and it
further had a highly restrictive license which
imposed limits to its use beyond that which is normally
enforced through copyright law.
Descartes vigorously defended his NM IV licensing
and copyright, and to this day old-timers in the LP
mud community look back on Descartes's withdrawal of the
NM IV lib from public distribution with some bemusement.
Whatever one thinks of his motives, it must be said that
Descartes was effective at squelching the unauthorized
distribution of the Nightmare IV lib.
This has left some people with the impression
that Dead Souls is somehow tainted by restrictive
licensing. For Dead Souls 1.1, this is not true. DS 1.1
can be used in any way one sees fit.
Dead Souls 1.2 and above, however, are not public
domain. They are GPL, meaning that whatever one finds
in Dead Souls 1.x to 2.x that is *not* found in DS 1.1
does in fact retain copyright and its distribution is
subject to the requirements of the GPL.
Translated into layman's terms, this means that
the current versions of Dead Souls cannot be distributed
unless their source code is also distributed, they are
otherwise entirely free to be distributed whether
commercially or otherwise. The experienced LP coder at
this point will object: "Hey, that doesn't make sense! LPC
is an interpreted language, so distributing it is de facto
distribution of code!"
From a technical standpoint, it's pretty senseless
(with some exceptions) to GPL Dead Souls. The lib itself
runs in the form of plain text..there's no way to hide
the source even if you wanted to. In this sense, GPL'ing
DS is meaningless.
However, I wanted to distribute DS in Windows
binary format, which meant in this case using Cygwin. To
use Cygwin, I needed to comply with their licensing which
as GPL made it a prerequisite that Cygwin was to be distributed
porting other software only if that software complied with
GPL-style licensing. By making Dead Souls explicitly
GPL, I could comply with Cygwin licensing and distribute
the driver binary I created.
To clarify, whatever is in Dead Souls now that
was in Dead Souls 1.1 is still public domain software.
Whatever is in Dead Souls now that was not in Dead Souls
1.1 is copyrighted.
UPDATE: 23 June 06
Dead Souls is not GPL. Due to the incessant nitpicking
of pedants who are overconcerned with software licensing, I
am revoking GPL. Dead Souls is copyrighted, and you can download
it and use it under no obligation to share anything. However,
I retain distribution rights. When I have nothing better to
think about I will decide on some "official" license to slap
on it, or come up with my own.
But all I want to do is code the greatest LP lib ever,
and I am just through with thinking about licensing.
My guess is that some licensing Nazi will read this and
try to find a way to make my life difficult because I revoked
GPL. There is just no pleasing some people. Just leave me alone,
please. Can't you just leave me alone?
The controversy over Cygwin GPL violation
In early 2006, one of the sites that provided
downloads of Dead Souls to the public abruptly pulled it
from distribution. Apparently someone had complained
to the site administrator that Dead Souls was in violation
of the GPL, and it was improper to host it.
This was a shock to me, because I thought I
had been scrupulous in my adherence to Cygwin policy.
To summarize, there was a Windows version of DS
which contained a pre-compiled Windows executable, to
permit the mud to run in Windows. This executable was
created in the Cygwin environment, and the
only way it would run on a Windows computer is if that
computer had some files called dll's, or "dynamic link
libraries" from the Cygwin environment. Since the point
was sharing the lib with people unwilling or unable to
compile for Windows, including the dll's along with the
executable seemed like the reasonable thing to do.
I examined Cygwin's policy on distributing their
dll's, and based on my interpretation, it seemed ok. It
turns out my interpretation of their licensing was incorrect.
What I thought they meant was that if you have
possibly modified their dll's, you cannot distribute them unless
you also distribute the source code.
What they actually meant was that whether or not
you had modified the dll's, you cannot distribute them unless
you also distribute the source code.
I queried the Cygwin licensing discussion list and
searched their archives until I found an example like Dead Souls.
A software company used Cygwin dll's and distributed them
without source, but when told they were in violation of the
Cygwin license, they simply added the dll's source code to their
download page, and this satisfied the Cygwin licensing folks.
I changed the download pages for Dead Souls to
make available the source code for the Cygwin dll's I was
distributing, and the site administrator allowed the
Dead Souls downloads to continue.
That's it. That's the whole story. Some folks have
chosen to inflate this event into allegations of Dead Souls
containing "stolen" code, which is as baffling to me as it
is untrue.
UPDATE: 05 June 2006
It turns out that despite the efforts outlined above,
distributing the Cygwin linked executable is still impermissible
according to Cygwin. The problem is that MudOS is not Open
Source, meaning linking with it is considered (by many, though
not all) a violation of the Cygwin's GPL.
Please see the news page item on this issue.
UPDATE: 06 June 2006
Dead Souls no longer uses Cygwin in any way. Questions
of GPL compliance with Cygwin linked libraries are now dead.
There is a new Windows version of Dead Souls available, and
it is a native Windows executable.
The question of MudOS distribution
The question of MudOS distribution hinges partly on
the meaning of "fair use," which is a notoriously slippery
concept in the already hard to grasp field of copyright law.
I'd like to make a disclaimer here that I am not a
lawyer, and am therefore most certainly not a copyright
lawyer, which is a field as full of necromancy as any
mud you're likely to play. What I state here are my
opinions based on my layman's understanding of the law.
Copyright in the U.S. is generally understood
to mean the set of exclusive rights an author holds over
her work, and these rights flow from the Constitution of
the United States which empowers Congress to legislate
in this area. Congress has done so. In order to promote
the arts and innovation, the U.S. has made it law that the
only person with the right to distribute a work (such as a
book, music, etc) is the author. She may negotiate with
others to permit them to distribute also, but absent this
positive action on her part, the distribution or
reproduction of her work or even a derivative of it
is flatly against the law, be it commercial
or otherwise.
Unless...
Here's where it gets tricky. It is illegal to
copy and distribute Bon Jovi's music, period....unless
you're making a mix CD for a friend. The principle at work
here is "fair use," which is an extremely ill-defined
standard by which actually it's ok sometimes to
do things that ordinarily constitute violations of
copyright.
Other known fair uses are quoting for journalistic
purposes, mimicking for parody or satire, copying for
personal backups, etc.
The "known fair uses" are generally not enshrined
in statute law. They are known from precedent. When
a court rules that something is fair use, then we have
a general rule of thumb we can follow...until another
court rules otherwise. That's about as close to written
law as you're going to get on this: court decisions.
This means that in a case where things are not
spelled out for you in black and white, you have to
follow your best judgment and hope you don't get sued,
and if you do, hope you don't lose, and if you do, hope
you haven't caused actual harm to the complainant.
This is the situation with the distribution of
MudOS. I have asked Marius, the current maintainer, for
his permission to bundle MudOS with Dead Souls. I got
no reply, but I came upon this: Marius tells someone off
In that document you can see that Marius would
have been happy to let someone not only copy MudOS, but
actually take it over completely and lead it forward...
if only they had emailed him first. The key part of this
document is where he states,
"That's all it would have taken to get my blessing, either
implicitly as a result of my silence (which is most likely
what you would have gotten), or explicitly by my saying so
in response."
This is about as clear a signal as I'm likely
to get as to how the copyright holder feels about the
general distribution of MudOS. I hope he reads this and
goes on to give me explicit permission, but in the
absence of that, my good faith interpretation of his
statements leads me to the conclusion that he really
does not care and it's ok with him.
Which, in my layman's view, does not fall squarely
into "fair use" territory, but between that and a
tacit passive permission and the fact that no
action has been taken against web sites which feature
MudOS as a download, it is reasonable cause to interpret
the bundling of Dead Souls with MudOS as "not wrong."
This doesn't mean that Marius has somehow allowed
his copyright to lapse. Should he contact me to order
me to stop bundling MudOS with Dead Souls, I would be
obligated to do so.
For anyone in the Dead Souls community worried
about that, please note that this would not be a fatal
blow to the UNIX lib. It would just make downloading a
two step process, thus making it more difficult for
beginners. For Windows users, however, the effect *would*
be devastating, because most Windows users don't have
the skill or experience to compile their own driver
executable. Let's hope this doesn't come to pass.
Update, 09 June 2006
Thanks to the sharp looking out of Skout, I
was able to find Marius and we had the following conversation.
The only editing done here was excluding the noisy "Joe enters the room."
type messages, and formatting for clarity:
You tell Verbal: howdy. i'm the maintainer of dead souls, and i'm told you
maintain mudos. i'd like to ask for your explicit blessing in what I'm doing:
http://dead-souls.net/articles/copyright.html#3
Verbal tells you: Yep, that's me. I am also Marius of mudos.org
Verbal tells you: I got your email, but unfortunately my response bounced.
Verbal tells you: I'm fine with you distributing the MudOS driver bundled with Dead Souls.
Verbal tells you: I would ask that you contribute any patches you've applied to the mudos-patches mailing list, though.
You tell Verbal: sure thing. sorry i had to idle, visiting a friend in the hospital
You tell Verbal: i'll submit the diffs for sure...i'd just thought the list was dead
You tell Verbal: if you don't mind, i'll use a transcript of our conversation
on my webpage, so anyone in doubt can have their mind set at ease.
Verbal tells you: no problem. all of the lists are still alive, though there's
not much traffic.
Verbal tells you: go ahead and use the transcript. that's cool.
To the best of my ability to tell, it really is the
man himself I was talking to. Anyway, I hope it was, because
if it wasn't and he reads this, he might get awful pissed!
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