DikuMUD

From Free net encyclopedia

DikuMUD is a multiplayer text-based adventure game (a type of MUD) written in 1990 and 1991 by Sebastian Hammer, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyboe, Michael Seifert, and Hans Henrik Staerfeldt at DIKU (Datalogisk Institut Københavns Universitet), the department of computer science at the University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Commonly referred to as simply "Diku", it was greatly inspired by AberMUD, but Diku was one of the first multi-user games to become popular as a freely-available program for its relatively addictive gameplay and similarity to Dungeons & Dragons.

Diku's source code was released in 1991 and became the "source" of one of the largest trees of derived code from a MUD-like source code package. It has been the basis of a vast number of MUDs, including AlexMUD, Eris, GrimneMUD, MUME, and Sequent (MUD), as well as a number of offspring MUD engines such as CircleMUD, Merc, NiMUD, SillyMUD, and SMAUG.

The DikuMUD license is generous, but does not permit all possible uses. The source code for DikuMUD is publicly available at no charge, anyone can run an unmodified or modified DikuMUD without paying any royalties, and modified derivatives of the DikuMUD code can be publicly distributed. However, the DikuMUD license includes the following requirement: "You may under no circumstances make profit on *ANY* part of DikuMud in any possible way. You may under no circumstances charge money for distributing any part of dikumud - this includes the usual $5 charge for 'sending the disk' or 'just for the disk' etc." Thus, DikuMUD is not open source software as defined by the Open Source Definition (OSD), because the OSD's clause 6 requires "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor", that is, commercial users cannot be excluded. For the same reasons DikuMUD is not Free Software as defined by the Free Software Definition, because it fails to meet the requirement that the program gives "The freedom to run the program for any purpose" (it forbids commercial purposes). DikuMUD (and its derivatives) is developed in essentially the same way as open source software / Free Software, however.

The first DikuMUD is usually considered to have been AlfaMUD.

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Everquest controversy

There was a minor controversy in late 1999 and early 2000 regarding whether the commercial MMORPG Everquest, developed by Verant Interactive, had derived its code from DikuMUD. It began at the Re:Game gaming conference in 1999, where the Director of Product Development for EverQuest, Bernard Yee, stated that EverQuest was "like Diku". He did not specify whether he meant the code itself was derived from DikuMUD, or if it just had a similar feeling. Some attendees had understood it to mean the former. After the Diku group requested clarification, Verant issued a sworn statement on March 17, 2000 that EverQuest was not based on DikuMUD source code, and was built from the ground up. The Diku team no longer finds any reason whatsoever to believe any of the rumors that EverQuest was derived from DikuMUD code.

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