Permission to Quote/Link to some Forum Posts?

Hi Mr. Gammon and other forum posters.

I'm blogging about my experiences designing a MUD and I linked and quoated to a few good things that I've seen you post on the forums.

I've already done so and then I thought I should seek permission first. (I know, should have done so before hand. I couldn't find a email and your support line is gone, since MC is freeware now. So, I'm posting here :)

my blog is makingtherpg.wordpress.com. I'm going to get my own domain and hosting soon. I'm just too busy (aka lazy) to do so. I've linked to a book list you suggested and really long post about MUD design. That's really all I'd like to use.

Thanks in advance.
Monique
eboni at artistique-designs.com

You are welcome to quote what I have said, and I presume I speak for other forum writers too. I assume you would attribute any quotes (ie. either give the link to the forum URL itself, or if you reproduce the posting, state the name of the person(s) you are quoting).

You can quote anything I said as well, and what Nick said about attribution would be fine with me too. :-)

Likewise, as long as you're retaining attributes and not taking the quotes out of context, you're welcome to quote any of my posts at any of the forums that you run across one you like as well. ;)

On your blog you say:



[Apart from the misspelling of "accept"] - I am not sure any code base would stop that. I am no lawyer, but I would think that even a non-profit organization could accept donations, freely given, without too many problems.

For example, the Smaug, Merc, and Diku licenses all prohibit operating "for profit" or charging for distribution.

Now assuming you let people play for free (ie. no charge for joining) then you are not charging for distribution. Also, I strongly doubt you will run at a profit, no matter how hard you try, especially if you don't charge anything.

You could do what I do and put a link on the download page, suggesting maybe if someone likes your game they make a donation through Paypal. Totally optional, and even without such a link someone could put money in an envelope and mail it to you.

As far as I know the "community" doesn't really have consensus on this point, although I believe at least some of the original developers have said they're fine with development. Basically people are divided into two camps: those who interpret "profit" as accepting any form of money (i.e. they're interpreting the license as reading that you cannot accept any form of revenue), and those who interpret it as meaning you cannot charge for access or for content, including exchanging donations for trinkets. The former camp says that donations are not acceptable and the latter sees no problem with it as long as there are no trinkets in exchange.

Personally my interpretation is the same as Nick's. In fact, I'm not sure it's even legal to forbid donations that are completely separate from the game. But, eh, I'm not a lawyer.

Still, the safe bet (if you want to avoid community stoning) is to steer clear of codebases that refer to money in their licenses. It's quite unlikely that any of this would ever go to court, so really it's about reputation and moral imperative, for whatever those are worth to you.

I'm happy to see that some of my original questions are helpful to others. I was the creator of the thread you mentioned! :)

Use common sense in your quoting and you should be fine. The more exposure the forum gets the better. I'm not sure why anyone would prevent you from quoting or linking to a public forum, but it is certainly courteous of you to ask.