How come UO is "out there"?

[Phantasmagorian]

Can someone explain to me how it's possible all these emu/free shards even exist? How did the code get out?

 

[DreadLord Lestat]

The servers were reengineered. It is not the actual Ultima Online code. Many games like Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes have emulators as well. As far as UO, anyone can start and run their own basic shard but it is tougher and you need to be good at coding to do more custom stuff.

 

[Draza]

i believe originally the "server" software was released with the disc. as long as a fee was not accepted to play, copyrites were not enforced. but alot of this was in the early days of mmos, and it kinda set precident