Phantasmal Site > Archive > License Rant

Phantasmal's License

(If you actually care about software licenses for MUDs, you can also read my ranting on the subject courtesty of Skotos. I believe that the current situation vis-a-vis MUD software licenses is doing MUD development significant harm.)

I'm a free software guy, mostly. But as Stallman has apparently acknowledged, there are some odd special cases. Not cases where Free Software or Open Source are wrong, just cases where they don't work as you'd hope.

For instance, say a corporation grabs a documentation & formatting tool. The company modifies it, passes it around the company, generates public documentation from it and otherwise goes wild. As long as that tool's binary executable file stays inside the corporation they don't have to give out any source code changes they make. Even if they generate publicly-distributed documentation from it. That's a situation where even if you GPL the tool it doesn't help. That's because GPL, like other similar licenses, assumes that what you're trying to restrict is binary-only distribution. And for a standard app that model works great. You have to distribute the app for the author to steal your accolades and give nothing back.

Where it doesn't work is where the binary doesn't get distributed to potential users. The case above with the corporation is just such an example. The documentation isn't tied to the tool, it's not a derivative work, so none of the free software licenses on the tool make a whit of difference.

Incidentally, some tools (like old versions of GNU bison) get around this by sticking a whacking great lump of their own code into their output. That code is licensed, so the resulting code is a derivative work. That still doesn't solve all the problems.

MUD clients are just apps and standard Free Software and Open Source licenses work just fine for them. You distribute the MUD client binary like normal and the licenses work as intended. Somebody modifies the MUD client and redistributes it and then has to give out source code -- just like the GPL says.

MUD servers are another matter entirely. An example: the Phantasmal source code gets downloaded by Bob the Sysadmin -- so far, so good. He uses it to run a MUD. He makes changes which I, as the author, would love to have and distribute. Let's say Bob writes a feature to get all his NPCs to act fully intelligent using only 5% of the CPU. This is a great feature that the public can ooh and ahh at, and it's a result of my work combined with Bob's. We'd like the server to be under some wacky Free Software license so that Bob has to show me the changes he's made, and regular Phantasmal can also have these excellent uber-intelligent NPCs everywhere. Bob, being new to free software, isn't interested in releasing his spiffy new feature, and would far rather keep it to himself only.

Even if I've used the GPL (which is the most restrictive Free Software license out there), Bob hasn't distributed me a server binary, so he owes me no source code. All I'm seeing are the results of Bob's server running, which entitles me to nothing at all -- even though their server is based on my work. The GPL (and all other Open Source and Free Software licenses) simply don't cover this at all.

There's one more thing to consider: content. A running MUD would like to make certain things unavailable to its player base, like the solutions to all its puzzles. I don't want a license on the server to say "you have to distribute everything to anybody that logs in". If I did, all content and puzzles would have to be public to all players as well... So I'd like to distinguish code from content, specifically general code from code supporting a particular puzzle. It's a very difficult distinction, especially in a legal license (and I'm not a lawyer).

This is a nasty situation. Since I'm a supporter of Free Software and of Open Source, it bugs me. People are using Phantasmal, and I really wish there was a good license for this situation. If you know of one then please, please let me know. Hell, let Richard Stallman know and I'm sure he'll make sure everybody else finds out :-)

In the mean time, Phantasmal is entirely in the public domain. If I'm not going to be able to restrict its use in the way I want to (so I can see the source code to other people's features, dammit!) I'm not going to restrict it at all. You still need a DGD commercial license to use Phantasmal to make money (or else you'll need to port it to something other than DGD, which would be very difficult), but that's just because DGD requires it -- Phantasmal can be used in any way you please.