Spring RTS Engine

is it just me, or has noone realised that people dont follow what the licence sais.

thanks, bye.

Argh, my only problem with the interpretation of the GPL that you use (and the article you posted vaguely implies) is that there already is a license that implies that definition: the LGPL. LGPL is the version of the GPL designed for small, reusable components. GPL is meant to be applied to whole projects.

Even within the article you posted, there are people arguing with the author that his interpretation is rather liberal and not what RMS designed.

To make it clear: I enjoy and encourage people to use a sharealike copyleft license on their work. I just don't think that the GPL itself is appropriate for anything within Spring but a whole mod, or the engine itself. To open source on a per-file basis, the LGPL is simply more appropriate... unless I misunderstand your intent.

I would encourage you to reconsider re-licensing your code as LGPL. The LGPL is a subset of the full GPL, and thus your code could still be used in GPL projects. It would also allay the fears of the coders here, since they could use your files freely without worrying about how it affects their own files - the LGPL is much more clear on the fact that the _only_ files they would have to open would be the ones that contain your code.

And as for other people attacking Argh for licensing his code: you're just as bad. By failing to provide a license on your code, you technically retain copyright of it. If you're providing to the code, it is crucial that you provide a license, or otherwise people can't legally redistribute it. The real argument that should be considered is
a) BSD, LGPL or GPL for code, and
b) which CC license for data, and
c) do you provide a single, pure-GPL version of your project (including code, data, etc) so that your project can be included in Open Source Only repositories like Debian (even though a GPL license is meaningless when applied to data).

How about just putting

1. You must include a notice within your project, stating what GPL source you are using.

2. You must include either the original sourcecode in your project, or a textfile pointing to a location where users can obtain it.

3. You may not bitch, whine or moan, if others use your modifications of my sourcecode for their projects!

in your sources then? All problems fixed!

Argh, I linked you the very free software foundation itself, which clearly states that "In cases like these where the materials complement each other, we believe that the end result is a derivative work." So that means that according to the main GPL-enforcing organisation, if the script complemeting a model, FBI, and the rest of a an unit, is GPL, the whole unit must be GPL.

jcnossen wrote:Anyone would put the #defines in the order of the defined numbers, making the code the same as cavedogs..

IIRC It is actually legal to rewrite something that way while preventing that you actually copy the code. Not sure if that applies here, but if you create the code based on free information on the internet (say some TA site) instead of cavedog's copyrighted code, I don't think copyright still applies to it if it looks the same.

However, Argh's file are not rewritten, but plain Ctrl C Ctrl V. I can tell from the //comments, and from having seen quite a few copy'n'paste in my time.

jcnossen wrote:zwzsg: you have made your point against argh about 10 times with really long posts now... I don't really think it's going to change anything especially not with the way you target him. You turned the other thread into flames ffs.

I'm sorry, but what Argh has done and keeps trying to doing is just to damn wrong to just let it pass. But somehow people keep missing my point, and instead sidetrack on other issues. Is is that hard to see that those .h are not rewrite, but copy'n'paste?

CautionToTheWind wrote:I'd just like to point out that Argh and all others can dual-license their work.

Yes, their work. Not other people work.

I have no problem with people choosing whatever license for their own work.

But I have problem with people relicensing under GPL what isn't their creation, what every mods was already using before it was tagged GPL, what previously started with "Copyright 1997 Cavedog Entertainment". Especially when it then gets included into Spring official download.

I had to be denounced and put into a stop as he was just about to repeat with the smoke.

Sorry if I'm getting angry, but I thought if people just looked at the actual files I as I said on my first post here, it would be so obvious I wouldn't have had to say more. Yet people just ignore that bit and instead switch into some general consideration.

jcnossen wrote:How about just putting

1. You must include a notice within your project, stating what GPL source you are using.

2. You must include either the original sourcecode in your project, or a textfile pointing to a location where users can obtain it.

3. You may not bitch, whine or moan, if others use your modifications of my sourcecode for their projects!

in your sources then? All problems fixed!

I fully agree.

Most FAQs on GameFAQs for example clearly state in a legal header under what license they are released (if any) and what you are allowed to and what you're not to do with it in a language a normal human understands.

In regards to my commented GPL notice, I can certainly add that statement. Maybe then people will get a lot less antsy, if they know that my objective here is not to hunt people down who use my work but to prevent other people from privatizing my sourcecode.


Moving on, to all the other stirred-up misrepresentation and other crap that is still in this thread... let's get down to the real arguments, eh?



The privatization of my sourcecode (i.e., taking it out of public use by putting a version under strong copyright) is precisely what I fear, is my main motivation to use GPL, and is what my tiff with Fanger was about, since it's been brought up again.

If I'd known, for ONE MINUTE, that he would refuse to license any part of his work under the GPL, I would not have offered sourcecode to him, except maybe privately.

Fanger is very, very worried about someone using E&E's content and making another game with it.

And you know what? I am totally cool with that. I have felt the same way about some things I have done. I just didn't realize that, when I offered some sourcecode for a few minor things, and he didn't know what taking GPL'd stuff from me would mean. It was a terrible screwup for both of us, and I wish it hadn't happened, frankly.


Now, on to my legal perspective, given what I have read about the GPL v.3.0:

So far as I can determine, if we look at things legally, it is very clear that a BOS script is "a piece of software".

A "mod" is not. A "mod" is not just a collection of sourcecode, but also includes binaries that are seperate entities in and of themselves. A .S3O is a non-random collection of data designed by a human being, and does not require the BOS script, nor does the BOS script necessarily require the .S3O. It's not like, say, some 3D renderer or whatever, where nothing can be excluded without destroying the whole thing, or severely changing the function. I can write up two BOS scripts that are functionally different, but produce identical-looking results within Spring. Some are more efficient than others, etc., but that doesn't matter.

You could argue that a game made with Spring, therefore, is only entirely GPL'd if the true root of the game (Sidedata.tdf) were GPL'd. Otherwise, we're talking about software in a collection, some of which is GPL'd. Running a GPL'd piece of music through a GPL'd MIDI player does not mean that a non-GPL'd piece of music on the same CD-ROM is therefore GPL.

A mod is nothing but a bunch of binaries, that, together with a bunch of MIDI files (scripts) and a playlist (sidedata) becomes a game.

That is, frankly, how I view everything in Spring from a legal standpoint, based on my understanding of the arguments.

I don't think that's bad legal ground, frankly, but I'm not a lawyer. I just read their current opinions.






As for zwzsg's points about the header...

Let's start with the obvious part:

#define HEALTH 4 == #define ZWZSG_IS_A_FOOL_WHO_DOESNT_UNDERSTAND_BYTECODE 4 !!!

Can you say, "owned"?

I won't even have to make a mocking domain for that one, he's hoisted on the petard of his obsession with always being "right"

If I accept his irrational and illogical argument, therefore...

The only way I can have a header file that is "completely original" would be if I rewrote the COB interpreter to use different bytecodes, and then rebuilt Scriptor's Compile.cfg to also produce them. Think about it, coders: bytes are bytes. There isn't some convenient way to escape from this. So, is my use of those bytes, with the intended result being the assignation or acquisition of information to / from Spring illegal? I'd have to say no, because I got it from public sources- I did not, myself, break Cavedog's EULA

The COB interpreter simply uses knowledge from public sources (i.e., SJ / Fnordia didn't decrypt BOS back in the day, other people did, and posted on the Internet what the bytecode meant and what headers needed to be in it). And I certainly did NOT learn to decrypt COBs and build my own header from scratch- I got it from Scriptor, and started adding stuff as I went along.

If you do not accept that fact about how my header actually works as code, folks, you are directly challenging the entire legality of working with Spring, even the GPL version, that supposedly contains no Cavedog files! It's idiotic!

Lastly, but what the hell does "I'm sorry, but what Argh has done and keeps trying to doing is just to damn wrong to just let it pass." mean? What am I doing that's somehow morally wrong, people? I just want you to play fair, when I give you my work. That's called FAIR. Not EVIL. If your definition of EVIL includes other people assuming that you will play FAIRLY with them, then you are obviously emotionally retarded.

What people keep saying, when they say, "oh, just LGPL it", is "Argh, we're too lazy or proud of ourselves to do the work it takes to acknowledge how much we'd like to borrow from you".

I mean... motherfuckers ... if nobody gave a damn what I do, and whether I want you to use it, and whether it's ok legally to use it... then we would not be wasting dozens of man-hours arguing about this shit! Every llama who has posted retarded stuff like, "uh, yeah, you just suck" or whatever, shut up, you don't know what's actually going on here, and why it matters anyways.



Every other modder has either posted their work under the CC ... er...

Wait, has anybody posted an entire mod (not just some minor gameplay thing or some random content) as CC?

Let's count. That number, I believe, is still exactly ZERO. Unless I missed a license.txt in one of KDR_11's many smaller works, which I tend to think, based on his many statements to the effect, he feels should be considered CC, even though there is no license file to make it totally clear.

There might some other minor thing that I've forgotten about... sure, feel free to go, "haha, Argh's so stupid, he forgot X mod, which was released under CC", and I'll go, "haha, you're right, how could I forget that amazing Mod X? It contained 3 units and 3 scripts and was just a gameplay conceptual exercise, not anything anybody played for more than 5 minutes, but how could I forget it?".

Hmm... even funnier... who else has released their mod under LGPL, as everybody urges me to? Hmmmmmm. Let's count.

Zero.


Hmmmmmm.

I smell hypocrisy of the first order here. Unlike zwzsg, I don't "keep things around" to smack people around with or attempt to blackmail them in public, so I never even thought about it, until now:

NO OTHER MAJOR WORK FOR SPRING IS RELEASED UNDER A LESS-RESTRICTIVE LICENSE THAN NANOBLOBS.

Yup, that's right, folks- good ol' Boirunner and zwzsg's toy, Kernel Panic?

See any license info giving you the rights to do whatever you want with Kernel Panic? Do ya? Go on, show me the license.txt... cuz there ain't one! I just checked! So they have retained sole copyrights, and nobody can use their work without being in legal jeopardy!

Ha! Ha! Ha!

That is the sound of me, laughing at your hypocrisy!

Tell you what, fellow modders: LGPL your mods, because that's just "the right thing to do", and I'll put all of NanoBlobs under the LUA license (which basically is like the MIT one, i.e., "do whatever you want, we can't stop you").

I cannot do so, with the project I am working on now, due to licensing issues that I'm not getting into, but I'll be cool, and throw out a lot of free bones, like my newest animation techniques, some of my new FX stuff, and I'll happily share out whatever LUA I ever get around to doing, so long as it is something that isn't really specific to my current game.

So, do I get a prize, for sitting down and laying waste to all your arguments, arrogant moralisms, and deep-dish bullshit? Are we done now?

If I knew better, I wouldn't say this..

Looks like Argh just toasted a lot of people.

Maybe it would help if we actually looked at some of the relevant GPL segments, instead of simply asserting as to what the GPL does and does not do without referencing the GPL itself.

I will place all GPL segments in code blocks for ease of identification.

I'd also like to make it clear at this point, for those that generally assume that all I do is try to stir up trouble in the name of lulz, that I am being completely serious here, and that I am trying to help resolve the disagreement by actually referencing and interpreting the GPL.

The first relevant segment is this.
In plain English: if you create something and say that it is GPL'd within that something, then the GPL governs its use. Simple enough, right?

Well, not really. It seems that one of the points of contention is whether Argh actually holds copyright to the scrips that he posted. Argh states that his changes to the scripts are sufficient that he may copyright the scripts independently of any prior source. Zwzsg asserts that, as the scripts are clearly a derivative work of Cavedog scripts (and possibly other scripts created by members of the TA scripting community), Argh does not hold copyright and thus is not free to license the scripts under any license, GPL or otherwise.

At this point it might be helpful to explain what can and cannot be copyrighted, and how one comes to have copyright over a particular bit of stuff.

A copyright is the right of a creator of a creative work to control its use, distribution, and modification by others. In the absence of a given license, the assumed copyright is the most restrictive possible: nobody may use, distribute, or modify the work without the prior, written permission of its creator. (There are exceptions, and these exceptions differ from country to country. None of the exceptions apply here, as none of the exceptions allow another to issue the work, in whole or in part, under a different license.)

A copyright may not be applied to a discrete physical object, nor may it be applied to a method or way of doing something. (The latter is the domain of patent law, the former is dealt with by the laws that describe property, ownership, and title.)

This distinction is important. It gives us what is known as the "Chinese Room" method of 'getting around' copyright for code. Essentially, the "Chinese Room" method means that you can create a duplicate of an already-existing piece of code, and that you receive copyright for this piece of code, as long as you had no prior contact with the pre-existing code and created your version of it purely from descriptions or knowledge of the inputs, methods, and outputs used in the pre-existing code. You are in a figurative "Chinese Room", the code is outside of the room, and the only contact between the outside and the room is someone that tells you what the code does.

If there is any contact between the person in the "Chinese Room" and the pre-existing code, the "Chinese Room" is broken and the person may not apply a license to his version of the pre-existing code.

If I understand what zwzsg and Argh are saying correctly, Argh copied Cavedog and other scripts, made changes to them, and released them under GPL. As far as I can tell, Argh does not hold copyright over the scripts, and thus cannot license them; in fact, unless Cavedog's license stated otherwise, Argh does not have the right to modify Cavedog's scripts, nor does he have the right to distribute (modified or unmodified) Cavedog scripts, things based off of Cavedog scripts, things using bits of Cavedog scripts, et al.

Now, I think it's clear that the TA and Spring communities are not too concerned about Cavedog's copyright of its scripts, nor, presumably, is Atari. That's fine; while, legally, Atari could issue C&Ds (cease-and-desist orders) to most Spring modders based on their use of modified versions of its scripts, it has not shown any inclination to do so.

In order to be completely "in the clear", legally, we'd have to set up our own "Chinese Room" for all Cavedog scripts that we use, in any fashion. Someone who has not had contact with any Cavedog scripts - presumably someone who has no experience scripting for TA or Spring - would have to re-create the functions of those scripts, based only on information available about the scripting language (which, incidentally, cannot be copyrighted) and the functions of those scripts. (In order to be perfectly clear, I am not actually proposing such an undertaking, nor am I volunteering to be involved in it.)

TL;DR Version: Cavedog holds copyright on Argh's scripts, not Argh, and Argh cannot legally distribute his scripts under any copyright other than Cavedog's original copyright.

That's the legal answer. Since most mods are rather illegal anyways, I don't think the answer really shed much light on the ethical and moral questions. In other words, we're clearly OK with Argh modifying and releasing modified versions of Cavedog scripts, despits its illegality; the question is whether he has the right to license these (illegal) scripts under whatever license he chooses. Legally he is prevented from using the GPL on a work that he does not hold copyright over; however, as above, we're clearly not concerned with legality. Thus, discussing legality does not shed light on what Argh's rights are with regard to scripts that are illegal to distribute in the first place.

--------------------------

Intermission: "So a guy walks into a bar...

ouch!"

*rimshot*

--------------------------


The second question is the "infection" of a mod as a whole by inclusion of parts licensed under the GPL.

The relevant portion of the GPL is clause 2. For your enlightenment, I encourage you to read clause 2 as a whole; in fact, I encourage you to read the GPL as a whole. The part of clause 2 that matters to us is this:
In plain English, this means that if you use the GPLd work in your work, you are required to release your work under the GPL as well.

Again, not as simple as it seems. Why not? Well, think about this for a second: what is a "work"?

The central question for us to answer is whether a Spring mod constitutes a "work". If it does, then including ANY bit of GPLd code, art, modelling, script, or anything else means that the ENTIRE mod must be released under the GPL. If it does not, then GPLd code may be used freely in the mod, as long as the mod contains a notice that GPLd work is used, and the mod author makes the (modified or unmodified) GPLd work available to anyone else upon request.

This is where it gets really fuzzy, because, by releasing bits of sub-mod stuff under the GPL, we use the license in a context that it was not made to be used in, and thus may induce unexpected effects based on the interpretation of terms, phrases, and clauses that are specifically designed to address the use of bits of code in a bona-fide programming language as part of a bona-fide computer program.

The GPL inherently assumes that the licensed work is a program, or part of a program, designed to be compiled and run like any other ordinary program.

Important Point: the GPL is not designed to be applied to anything resembling parts of Spring mods, and thus I don't see why some people stubbornly insist on using the GPL in particular rather than a more general license that still achieves their end goals.

"Work", as used in the GPL, is one of those terms that is specific (in its use in the GPL) to computer programs and/or things strongly resembling computer programs in use. Despite looking like code, scripts used in Spring mods do NOT resemble computer programs strongly enough for the GPL to be unambiguously meaningful.

Personally, I am inclined to say that a mod would not be considered a (GPL-defined) "work", and thus using one bit of GPLd stuff does not "infect" the rest of the mod and cause the rest of the mod to be GPL. However, this is merely an inclination based on my limited understanding of the mechanics of how Spring actually uses the various bits and pieces of a mod. However, I acknowledge that certain mod-parts may in fact "infect" certain other mod-parts without "infecting" the entire mod - this is beyond my scope of understanding.

TL;DR Version: GPL wasn't designed to address mod-parts. Therefore, something other than the GPL should be used for mod-parts.

Final TL;DR Version: GPL + modding = phail.

Felix, no offense, but no. You have your facts wrong here.

I did not reverse-engineer, dissassemble, or otherwise break Cavedog's EULA. I have gotten information through the TA community, often at third and fourth-hand about methods, but that means nothing legally- when it comes to the "Chinese Room", I'm fine. I do not see any convincing argument here, and I clearly have copyright over my work.

Further, your argument basically implies that Spring's GPL version, in general, is illegal. I do not accept that argument, period.

And I have already dismissed the argument about my modified header file. You simply don't understand what it does at a computational level- it's just a string of numbers. They don't keep their names, and they don't even have to be in order.

Lastly, as I have stated previously, I simply do not accept your argument that an entire game is a "work". I do not see it that way, at all. This is the big issue, frankly. If a mod is a "work", then it's all or nothing, kids. Guess what option I'm going to pick? It's not all, I can tell ya that.

Each COB constitutes a discrete "work", and is therefore licensable, like any other software. When you distribute a game, you are not distributing one work, but many works, that happen to be compatible with one another and run concurrently within a larger computational framework. I said, "MIDI" because that's the closest analogy I could arrive at, frankly - it's a bunch of small works that all run concurrently, but are, at a computational level, essentially separate stacks.

Basically, I see this as a longer-winded, more bullshitty version of trying to get me to just let everybody have anything I make, for whatever reason whatsoever.

Plus you're accusing me of copyright violation and other criminal acts, which I find extremely offensive, since I took great pains to avoid any such problems, down to writing all new standard headers, smoke scripts, and other ancillary crap.

Making NanoBlobs able to be released under the GPL was a ton of work, and I am not retracting or giving you a single point here!




I mean, Christ on a stick, people? Do you understand what you're trying to do here? Do you understand what's at stake? Or are you too stupid to understand that what's going on here is a lot bigger than my ego?

If I ever say "yeah, NanoBlobs is not defensible", then it means that Spring's GPL release has voided its GPL status.

There is no way in hell that I am ever going to say otherwise, or give you a point on any of this, short of losing a lawsuit. Period.

I would assume that since work isn't defined in the license text it uses the legal definition which AFAIK would even consider the .sdz file a work.

BTW, Kernel Panic is public domain AFAIK.

I defined what is covered by what, quite clearly, in the license.txt of NanoBlobs. That's all that matters here, frankly- NanoBlobs is not covered under the license for Spring in general, and was my property before being so released.

My license states:

All BOS code included in this game is hereby released under the GPL.
All other information in this game is hereby released under the Creative Commons license.

If you need to know the details of the licenses, and your rights and responsibilities under them, please read the files GNU_PUBLIC_LICENSE.txt and CC_PUBLIC_LICENSE.txt, respectively.

Argh wrote:Felix, no offense, but no. You have your facts wrong here.

I did not reverse-engineer, dissassemble, or otherwise break Cavedog's EULA. I have gotten information through the TA community, often at third and fourth-hand about methods, but that means nothing legally- when it comes to the "Chinese Room", I'm fine. I do not see any convincing argument here, and I clearly have copyright over my work.

It's your own work, if, well, you made it yourself. If you started with a Cavedog script, Cavedog/Atari still holds copyright to whatever modified version of the script you made, unless Cavedog/Atari expressly and in writing transfers copyright of the modified script to you.

Further, your argument basically implies that Spring's GPL version, in general, is illegal. I do not accept that argument, period.

As far as I know, the Spring devs didn't use or have access to Total Annihilation's code, and they didn't use pre-existing code incompatible with the GPL inside Spring. When I wrote the post I thought about using Spring as an example of what is legal but decided it would be too complex and would emotionally involve people more than a neutral example.

For the record, insofar as I know, Spring itself (meaning spring.exe and its dependent files) is legal.

And I have already dismissed the argument about my modified header file. You simply don't understand what it does at a computational level- it's just a string of numbers. They don't keep their names, and they don't even have to be in order.

I know what a header file is, thank you.

A "string of numbers", as you put it, is no more or less a creative work than an actual computational script/program, and thus is no more or less subject to copyright laws than such a program.

Lastly, as I have stated previously, I simply do not accept your argument that an entire game is a "work". I do not see it that way, at all. This is the big issue, frankly. If a mod is a "work", then it's all or nothing, kids. Guess what option I'm going to pick? It's not all, I can tell ya that.

Did you even read my post?

I wrote:Personally, I am inclined to say that a mod would not be considered a (GPL-defined) "work", and thus using one bit of GPLd stuff does not "infect" the rest of the mod and cause the rest of the mod to be GPL.

In other words, I agree with you. However, unlike you, I acknowledge that the issue could easily go either way.

Because it is ambiguous, I recommended that some license other than the GPL be used. Because the GPL is ambiguous when applied to mod-parts, and because you clearly favor one interpretation over another, I feel like everyone's goals would be better achieved if a license that is more clear in this particular case were to be used.

Each COB constitutes a discrete "work", and is therefore licensable, like any other software. When you distribute a game, you are not distributing one work, but many works, that happen to be compatible with one another and run concurrently within a larger computational framework. I said, "MIDI" because that's the closest analogy I could arrive at, frankly - it's a bunch of small works that all run concurrently, but are, at a computational level, essentially separate stacks.

As I said above, I agree, but acknowledge that others disagree and believe that the license should be modified such that your intention is the only possible interpretation.

The caveat to my agreement is that it would be possible for one mod-piece to infect another without infecting the entire mod. As I said in my original post, this depends on Spring's actual use and treatment of each mod-piece, something that I have neither the time nor the inclination for investigate for myself.

Basically, I see this as a longer-winded, more bullshitty version of trying to get me to just let everybody have anything I make, for whatever reason whatsoever.

I'm trying to get you to use a license that clearly does what you want it to do. I want you to license your productions in a way that is both fair to any previous copyright holders and clear and unambiguous in meaning. I'm not trying to get you to do anything that is counter to your intentions.

Plus you're accusing me of copyright violation and other criminal acts, which I find extremely offensive,

Cry me a river.

As I said:
-I don't care if you violate Cavedog's copyright.
-Nobody else cares if you violate Cavedog's copyright.
-At this point, Atari/Cavedog doesn't care if you violate Cavedog's copyright.
-Therefore, the issue is moot.

since I took great pains to avoid any such problems, down to writing all new standard headers, smoke scripts, and other ancillary crap.

Stuff that you wrote yourself, without borrowing from Cavedog or other sources, you hold copyright to and can release under whatever license you wish. I think it's great that you went out of your way to make those portions of your works legally clear, even when it's obvious that nobody else cares about legality.

Making NanoBlobs able to be released under the GPL was a ton of work, and I am not retracting or giving you a single point here!

I'm just curious: why the fixation on GPL rather than other licenses? Really - I am curious.

It looks to me like you have two different goals:
1) Release your stuff under GPL.
2) Release your stuff in such a manner as to allow other modders to use it with the sorts of fair-use restrictions that you've described in many other posts, and without infecting the rest of the mod.

I had always assumed that goal 1 was simply a way of reaching goal 2. However, your recent posts lead me to believe that the GPL is an end unto itself, as I find that there is a general unwillingness to even consider other options that would better meet goal 2 to the satisfaction of both yourself and others in the community. This makes me wonder - what's so important about the GPL that you are unwilling to even consider or entertain discussion on licensing your work under another license more fitting to the type of work that you are releasing?

------------

edit. Looks like you edited your post.

I'm not sure what you mean.

As I said, I don't think there's any doubt about the legality of Spring itself.

Furthermore, I've outlined a legitimate method of making the most widely played Spring mods' scripts and other text mod-bits legal, using the "Chinese Room" method.

The most widely played Spring mods do make use of Cavedog's copyrighted material in their artwork, and that's not going to change.

I really don't get the causal link between:
1) 'I have the right to license derivative works of others' copyrighted works however I wish', and
2) 'If not, Spring is illegal!'

Again - nowhere have I argued against your right to license your own work with whatever license you wish to use. The issue is when you use others' work as a starting point and then license the result under your own license.

edit2. If you do so, I personally see no reason to respect your license, since I would not recognize your right to license a work that you do not hold copyright over.

My main issue is the one that was central to the writing of the GPL in the first place: I do not want my code taken and used for private purposes.

IOW, if Joe Blow, the Millionaire Kid, shows up with a budget and a team, and wants to build an entirely proprietary product, but they have very little in the way of scripting prowess, then he'll have to do it the hard way. The more really good, working stuff I can get done and release under the GPL, the more likely it is that Joe Blow will have to use some of it, and therefore we'll all benefit, instead of feeding some stranger who just happens to be bigger and meaner than we are.

My secondary issue is that I do not at all approve of the illegal-community ripoff behavior. I only work on stuff based on other people's IP with great reluctance, because I know I'm inviting a C&D and a waste of months of my lifetime. And I have been ripped off quite a lot, over the years, and it really pisses me off.

So, ideally, any license that I would want to use would require:


1. Very clear credit given to me, in any work that I contribute to.
2. Fair-use provisions that are rock-solid. I.E., you use my work, I can use whatever you did with it.


The big problem here is, the only such license I know of, that satisfies both requirements, and is well-tested legally, is the GPL.

It's not that I think it's ideal. In fact, it's damn extreme, and I don't like the original GPL at all, where Stallman's goal was, basically, to prevent anybody owning anything.

But CC'ing most stuff is out of the question for me, and I don't like chasing people down for minor infractions of copyright, just to make sure it's still valid (btw, that's the chief argument Spring's team has always made- Atari's rights lapsed years ago, when they did not shut the crackers down- and frankly, I think they're probably right- your musings about the development methods used are completely wrong- the SYs were all heavily involved in the decryption / hacking stage of OTA modding, actually, so claiming they did not break Cavedog's EULA is pretty laughable... the bigger issue is that Cavedog's copyrights are mainly still in place because nobody has really bothered to challenge them over it- I think their case would be dismissed if they sued the SYs, or me, for that matter- it's not like the author of Scriptor wasn't blatantly breaking the copyright provisions when he released it 6 years ago).




In short, everybody seems to be under the impression that I want people to use my code, so that I can screw them over later, or something and this is completely wrong. I simply do not want to be screwed over myself, and find that people have been using my work and not bothering to credit me, and if that happens, I want to be able to more than curse at them in public, frankly.

This was not a problem, the last place I was making games. The Freelancer modding world is very big on crediting everybody for everything- you often see mods with 20 different names in the credits, often for very minor crap, like making a single spacecraft for a huge mod. Moreover, they took copyrights fairly seriously. I still get emails from people, asking to use my work. I always say "yes", but it's the thought that counts.

However, when I got here, I very quickly saw that there was a different attitude- I remember distinctly a long flame-war with Caydr, because he didn't credit most of the people who made his mod's scripts, etc., and he just basically said, "meh, I don't remember, it doesn't matter, and who cares, I'm Caydr". And then people basically arguing that it was OK for them to steal whatever they wanted from whomever they wanted, because they believed that Spring was illegal because of the inclusion of Cavedog IP.

With that kind of bullshit going back and forth, and knowing that I had reached a level of skill in a variety of areas that whatever I did here would probably be pretty important to where things ended up, I became very wary about stuff. When NanoBlobs got near to a clean and working state, and was a "game" at least in some sense of the word, I researched various licenses, and picked the CC license with the least restrictions possible for the art and other content, and the GPL for the source, because I figured (wrongly) that people would want the animation code for things like the SpireRook and Strider for their mods, and that people would just put the sourcecode in their scripts folders and that'd be that- they'd satisfy the requirements of the GPL, as I understand them in the context of a Spring mod, but I would be lucky to get credited.

Instead, GPL'ing the scripts has been a nightmare! There has been continual bitching, and nobody has just asked me what was required, done what is required, and then gone on to make cool stuff with the scripts!

Now, what conclusions am I supposed to draw from this experience thus far, people?

1. That you are all perfect little angels, and if I just CC'd my work, I'd get lovely credit lines and Easter Eggs, for being nice and releasing nice code?

2. I would get treated like the countless guys whose units are in the OTA giant unit-dumps, who never ever get credited for anything at all?

Do you understand a little better now, why I am not inclined to give you an inch? Every bit of evidence says that if I do, I will regret it, frankly.

Argh, he's telling you to use the LGPL, prevents hidden distribution just as much (neither GPL nor LGPL affect projects that are never distributed to the public) but explicitely states that only the files licensed under it must remain open source, not the whole work it occurs in and thus doesn't create the ambiguity of whether work refers to the whole mod or just the script.

Also keep in mind that you won't be the one who gets to define ambiguous terms like that. No matter what you say constitutes a work, unless it's written into the license you use it's up to the judge or the FSF lawyer to define. If someone took your files and used your interpretation of the GPL (i.e. only the files he took from you are GPLed) the FSF could sue him and argue that the whole mod is a work and as such has to be licensed under the GPL and most likely the judge would agree.

EDIT: BTW, it's trademarks that expire if unenforced, copyrights are not affected by this. Like a patent holder a copyright holder can choose to tolerate an infringing work as long as he wishes and one day start to sue people. This is the reason companies never give you an answer to a question like "can I use your IP?" because a yes is a binding contract and a no would reduce the amount of fan promotion they get, never mind that very few projects ever grow enough to warrant a shutdown.

Shouldn't you be concentrating on your other projects? All of you? (But most particularly, argh )

About felix chinese room, thats funny. So if I have ever seen someone write say, a TA walk script, then I can never write such a thing myself and call it my own. remind me why IP = idiocy again.

I trust zwzsg that the cavedog files contain the same definitions AND same comments on them, so that must mean that part of Argh's files is made by Cavedog and has cavedog copyright. However I'm not sure if cavedog has made them avaiable under a specific license.

Is copyright still valid for text published under 'public domain'? If it is, the simple solution for Argh is to add 'this section has Cavedog copyright' to the sources that contain those defines... and he'll still be able to publish his full source with GPL license.

AFAIK no one can hold copyright on something that's in the public domain. That's exactly the point of public domain

Also I think it has been ruled in court already that a set of #defines can not be copyrighted (in the SCO vs IBM case).

Useless, pointless, hopeless.

Zpock wrote:About felix chinese room, thats funny. So if I have ever seen someone write say, a TA walk script, then I can never write such a thing myself and call it my own. remind me why IP = idiocy again.

Wrong, sort of.

The example you give is a gray area. I'm sure there's case law somewhere that would give us some guidance, but I'm not going to march down to UF's law library and spend days researching a hypothetical.

Here's what I can say for sure:
-If you copy Bob's walk script and adjust it for use on your unit, Bob holds copyright to your adjusted script.
-If you copy Bob's walk script and make heavy modifications to improve it, Bob holds copyright to your adjusted script.
-If you copy Bob's walk script and do X to it, Bob holds copyright.
-If you read Bob's walk script and then reassemble it from memory, it is the same as copying it, and Bob holds copyright.
-If someone tells you how Bob's walk script works and you independently code it, you hold copyright.

The reason you're in a gray area is that, in your example, you read Bob's walk script and then coded it based on your memory of the methods it used. Technically that's legal, but it would be difficult if not impossible for you to prove that no portion of your script is directly derived from Bob's script, and thus you wouldn't want to go to court because Bob would most likely win.

Zsinj... shhh, don't say that or else Spiked will want to see those features I was supposed to be making