Re: [MUD-Dev] Mud hosting services

[SkeptAck#antisocial,com (Dundee)]

On Thu, 18 Nov 1999 09:36:35 -0500 Thu, 18 Nov 1999 11:00:01 CST, "AR
Schleicher" <ars#iag,net> wrote:

> IANAL, but if someone was to run a commercial UO server, 

Well, I'm not speaking of running a commercial server, I'm speaking of
mudhosting services leasing cpu/bandwidth/drivespace for non-commercial
servers.

The exact same concern (running a commercial mud when the lisense agreement
says you cannot), as far as I know, applies to most of the mud software out
there - you aren't allowed to run commercial servers using that software
either... and yet the mud hosting services *do* host those muds.

> I'd think OSI could
> go to a court and show that creating an emulator without having the UO
> service (and therefore agreeing to this part of the ToS) is virtually
> impossible, 

It would have been impossible for the first one (UOX), but all the rest that
came after UOX (opensource that it is), wouldn't have had much difficulty at
all.

Worst case, OSI tells the person running the server to stop it.  Best case,
they follow the precedent set with UOAssist (also developed in direct
violation of the ToS - for profit, no less - but now "approved for use with
UO").

'Course, the most likely case is that OSI will continue to ignore server
emulators (so long as they are non-commercial), until UO is so old that no
one cares any more.

> along with fairly good client code.  If there was anything like this outside
> of UO, I think it would be quite popular.  Is there any group working
> towards such a goal or something similar?

I think WorldForge (formerly "Altima")  http://www.rhrk.uni-kl.de/~szymanek/
is the only one that seems to be active any more.

It shouldn't be too very long before commercial game companies take the hint,
though.  I imagine they'll hit retail long before WorldForge is ready for
primetime.

-- 
http://dundee.uong.com/



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