LICENSE

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THE NEOLITH LPMUD RUNTIME INTERPRETER & ENVIRONMENT: COPYRIGHT & LICENSE
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1. ORIGIN AND UPSTREAM FOUNDATION
The neolith driver is a general-purpose, stability-focused virtual machine 
interpreter optimized for modern development toolchains. This codebase is 
derived from MudOS (specifically originating from MudOS v22pre5) and the 
foundational LPMud driver architecture. 

In strict accordance with the original copyrights held by Lars Pensjö and 
subsequent upstream authors, all original copyright notices remain fully in 
effect. This software and all derivative implementations MAY NOT be used in 
any way whatsoever for monetary gain or commercial purposes without prior 
explicit written permission from the original copyright holders.

2. DRIVER MODIFICATION, CONTRIBUTIONS, AND FAIR-CODE ALIGNMENT
This driver's modification rights are governed by a permissive framework
designed to maximize developer experimentation and infrastructure stability,
while remaining aligned with upstream MudOS/LPMud licensing limits:

   (a) PERMISSIVE MODIFICATION: You may freely modify, refactor, and optimize
       the driver source code. There is NO copyleft enforcement; you own your 
       modifications and may keep your custom code changes entirely closed-source, 
       proprietary, and private.
   (b) CONTRIBUTION INBOUND LICENSE: By submitting code, documentation, tests,
       or other changes for inclusion in this repository, each contributor agrees
       that once merged, the contribution becomes part of this project and is
       licensed under this project's Fair-Code terms as stated in this LICENSE,
       subject to the upstream MudOS/LPMud foundation described in Section 1.
   (c) FAIR-CODE SCOPE FOR NEOLITH-ORIGINATED CHANGES: The Neolith project does
       NOT impose any additional non-commercial-use restriction on code that was
       newly added or modified within this project by Neolith maintainers or
       contributors. This is intended as a more permissive project-level policy.
   (d) UPSTREAM COMMERCIAL BOUNDARY: Any distribution, deployment, or execution
       of this driver-whether modified or unmodified-remains constrained by the
       upstream non-commercial requirements of the LPMud/MudOS ecosystem, because
       Neolith is a derived work and upstream copyright holders' terms remain in
       effect.
   (e) COMMUNITY ECOSYSTEM: While closed research and private performance forks
       are fully permitted for internal or private deployment, contributors are 
       strongly encouraged to submit upstream pull requests to ensure core 
       compatibility with the primary neolith toolchain.

3. MUDLIB / USER CONTENT
The neolith driver is agnostic to the LPC files it compiles and executes.
This license applies only to the neolith driver source code and accompanying
documentation, unless a file explicitly states different terms.
LPC mudlib code, game content, and other user-provided scripts are separate works
and remain licensed by their respective authors under their own terms.

4. NO WARRANTY
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL ANY
COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

5. UPSTREAM RESTRICTION ENFORCEMENT AND LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY
The non-commercial-use restrictions referenced in this LICENSE originate from
upstream MudOS/LPMud rights holders. The Neolith project and its contributors
do not claim ownership of those upstream restrictions, do not provide legal
authorization for commercial use of derived works, and do not assume a duty to
police, enforce, or litigate upstream licensing claims on behalf of upstream
authors.

If you need legal certainty for commercial activity, you must obtain permission
directly from the relevant upstream rightsholders.
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