[MUD-Dev] Cash for Lawsuits

[Richard.Woolcock at rsuk.rohde-schwarz.com]

Brian 'Psychochild' Green wrote:
>
> UCMM Administration wrote:
> >
> > <<EdNote: What have the DIKU license holders said publicly about
> > this if anything?>>
> >
> > One of my IMC Network MUD owner's have brought up alot of ideas
> > to me about how to go apon a lawsuit against Medievia for breaking
> > the license. I am aware that money is an issue, but what else is
> > stopping it from moving forward?
>
> [snip]
>
> Could someone fill in this poor commercial graphical MUD developer on
> the details of what's happening? What's the nature of the violation?
>
> I can make some assumptions from this post, but I would like more
> info.

Here is a little history for those not familiar with the situation:

In February 1993 Michael Smith (aka "Highlander"), Anthony Rowley (aka
"Balor") and Michael Krause (aka "Vryce") started a mud called Medievia.
This mud was based upon Merc 1.0, which is a derivative of Diku Copper,
and it officially went up "non-test basis" on April 1st 1993.  Around
September 1993 Mr Krause was given the boot after a huge "war of the
gods", although due to having shell access he was able to reinstate
himself.  Shortly afterwards he took over the mud completely, although
the precise details of this takeover are beyond my knowledge.

Around 1995, Vryce - now running "Medievia III" started selling equipment
to his players.  As this goes against the Diku license it resulted in a
huge flame war (which has lasted to this day) and resulted in Vryce
renaming his mud "Medievia IV", stripping out the Diku credits, and
claiming that he'd rewritten it from scratch.  Medievia IV opened to the
public in February 1996.

At the same time Medievia IV opened, one of it's coders leaked out a
copy of the source code in order to prove to everyone that the code had
not been written from scratch.  This code has been passed around over
the years, although a mixture of very poor programming style and the
threats of legal action from Vryce have resulted in nobody actually
using it for themselves.

Recently - as generally happens every few months - another flame war
started up on usenet concerning Medievia, and the usual people stepped
in on either side; the old-timers attacking Medievia, the Medievia
players and staff defending it.  This time, however, it went a lot
further than usual.

Urged on by one of the Medievia players who was constantly asking for
proof, I threw together a website of information which included quotes
from various well-known people in the mudding community who had seen the
code, diff's of several files and statistics of how original they were
(ranging from 14.0% to 68.2%), a scanned fax in which Michael Krause
signed a statement under perjury that the code was indeed Medievia IV,
and various other bits and pieces.

After Vryce refused to respond to the allegations, Medievia's listing
was removed from both Top Mud Sites and The MudCenter.  You can check
out my website here:

http://www.kavir.dial.pipex.com/med.html

--

KaVir.

<EdNote: Whacking huge legalese signature deletia.>
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