As far as ethics, I get tired of people crying over "proprietary" rights or some such. If your scripts were made for RunUO, ServUO, or any other UO emulator, then by definition, they are OPEN SOURCE, and you have NO personal rights to speak of, beyond acknowledgement of authorship.
In the context of RunUO, you are correct, but software licensing is a tricky subject. RunUO is released under the GNU Public License (GPL). This is why I had to abandon using Awesomium in my webgumps project and use CEF3 instead, which has a GPL compatible license.
GPL is a poisonous license in that any code used that is GPL requires that you make the entire codebase licensed under the GPL or a compatible license.
When I wrote UltimaLive, I decided to use some search functionality and function signatures from MasterControl. Because MasterControl was released under the GPL, I was obligated to release the full source code of UltimaLive under the GPL.
Other emulators may be released under different licenses. For example, if an emulator released it's sourcecode under the MIT license, you could modify it / write scripts for it, and keep them proprietary.
If you release a program and you used any of the code from RunUO / ServUO, then you must license your entire program under GPL and make the source code publically available.
/***************************************************************************
* SequentialFileWriter.cs
* -------------------
* begin : May 1, 2002
* copyright : (C) The RunUO Software Team
* email : [email protected]
*
* $Id: SequentialFileWriter.cs 4 2006-06-15 04:28:39Z mark $
*
***************************************************************************/
/***************************************************************************
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
* it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
* the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
* (at your option) any later version.
*
***************************************************************************/
The complete license is here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
From the GPL FAQ:
In an object-oriented language such as Java, if I use a class that is GPL'ed without modifying, and subclass it, in what way does the GPL affect the larger program?
Subclassing is creating a derivative work. Therefore, the terms of the GPL affect the whole program where you create a subclass of a GPL'ed class.
Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the public?
The GPL does not require you to release your modified version. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.
But
if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the program's users, under the GPL.
Thus, the GPL gives permission to release the modified program in certain ways, and not in other ways; but the decision of whether to release it is up to you.
If I know someone has a copy of a GPL-covered program, can I demand he give me a copy?
No. The GPL gives him permission to make and redistribute copies of the program
if and when he chooses to do so. He also has the right not to redistribute the program, when that is what he chooses.
I want to get credit for my work. I want people to know what I wrote. Can I still get credit if I use the GPL?
You can certainly get credit for the work. Part of releasing a program under the GPL is writing a copyright notice in your own name (assuming you are the copyright holder). The GPL requires all copies to carry an appropriate copyright notice.
If I add a module to a GPL-covered program, do I have to use the GPL as the license for my module?
The GPL says that the whole combined program has to be released under the GPL. So your module has to be available for use under the GPL. But you can give additional permission for the use of your code. You can, if you wish, release your program under a license which is more lax than the GPL but compatible with the GPL. The
license list page gives a partial list of GPL-compatible licenses.
My friend got a GPL-covered binary with an offer to supply source, and made a copy for me. Can I use the offer myself to obtain the source?
Yes, you can. The offer must be open to everyone who has a copy of the binary that it accompanies. This is why the GPL says your friend must give you a copy of the offer along with a copy of the binary—so you can take advantage of it.
If someone steals a CD containing a version of a GPL-covered program, does the GPL give him the right to redistribute that version?
If the version has been released elsewhere, then the thief probably does have the right to make copies and redistribute them under the GPL, but if he is imprisoned for stealing the CD he may have to wait until his release before doing so.
If the version in question is unpublished and considered by a company to be its trade secret, then publishing it may be a violation of trade secret law, depending on other circumstances. The GPL does not change that. If the company tried to release its version and still treat it as a trade secret, that would violate the GPL, but if the company hasn't released this version, no such violation has occurred.