This year marks, more or less, the 40th anniversary of the Multi-User Dungeon, or MUD. This post on Metafilter focuses on the first MUD, ultimately called MUD2, licensed to CompuServe, and later killed by that company. MUDs really began to proliferate with the LPMud, created by Lars Pensjö, which, first, was extensible, and second, spawned numerous free and public domain versions of the code (many of which predate the 'official' invention of free software at Stanford in 1989). I started internet programming on the LPMud in 1987 (accessing the internet through Athabasca University's servers), taking advantage of the Object Oriented LPC parser he built with the system to make it extensible.
People forget the origins of these early licenses. Here's George Reese (aka Descartes of Borg), writing in 1994: "Since all drivers except DGD were derived from LPMud 3.0, they all require a copyright at least as strict as that one, which basically states that you can use the server as you like, so long as you do not make a profit off of its use." More, to the people who take this free code, change it (by adding a comma or notice), and commercialize it he writes: "you used the original author's software. You did not have to use it, and they did not have to let you use it. Playing legal games based on legal technicalities (real or imagined) is slimey and unethical." Pretty much my views too.
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