Spring RTS Engine

With my moderators hat on:

As was mentioned already, us mods were asked by various infra/game devs to come up with community wide guidelines on making forks and mutators within the Spring community - to replace the guidelines currently written by individual games.

We've done so - you can find a draft version on https://springrts.com/wiki/Licenses_Forking_Mutators. It tries to write down essentially the same principles that we already act on, in a transparent and broadly enforceable way.

Our plan now is to get feedback & opinions from anyone interested on the draft (with the intention of adopting it if no major issues are uncovered). So please feel free to read and offer your comments, as replies to this thread. (-> please do not edit the wiki page!)

To those who were already shown parts of previous draft versions: During the revisions & discussions that took place (amongst us mods) we tried to involve the most affected people when we considered possible options, but this does not mean that the version we asked you for comments on is the one we actually settled on; please check the link above carefully.

GG

Silentwings wrote:feedback & opinions

Floris wrote:GG

If you have issues with something in the draft, please elaborate more clearly.

its OK

I remember when it was just *expected* to ask permission, before all this license crap.

all this license...

I understand your point - but to make clear: Springs perspective on licensing issues are not changing and are not up for debate here. They are mentioned for background info.

The focus here is that devs involved with popular games put in work beyond tangible licensed content: they build/support an online community around their game. We don't want these communities exposed to "cheap" attention grabbing attempts via impersonation on our own server, but at the same time we want to encourage content that is shareable/forkable by those prepared to put in genuine effort & development of their own.

senna has been doing that for years though hasn't he? did he finally stop?

Smoth i respect these written guidelines, Also TA and PA are very different.

viewtopic.php?f=91&t=34326


The thing is PA have small geos build by commanders and then nixtux added it into TA.

There are also new units, different costs, wich is certainly a very difference from TA

neat

Since https://springrts.com/wiki/Licenses_Forking_Mutators seems to have received broad approval without any request for changes, we'll adopt them as our community policy on how we handle forks and mutators.

I've added https://springrts.com/wiki/Community_Docs, linked too from the main wiki page, to better organize the various related docs on the wiki.

Please add them to https://springrts.com/wiki/Category:Spring (all pages should be categorised)

Not sure how to do this, I added [[Category:Spring]] to the page source, but it doesn't seem to have changed anything on https://springrts.com/wiki/Category:Spring

Community docs is now in there... please do the same for the forking guidelines

more a practical issue: the game license should allow redistribution of the game as it is. else it can't be uploaded/used in our current infrastructure without violating the license.

This seems clear (and of course there is no other option for games wanting to use rapid etc). I added a short note to the FAQ about it.

abma wrote:more a practical issue: the game license should allow redistribution of the game as it is. else it can't be uploaded/used in our current infrastructure without violating the license.

I would think that is a given?

Most cases make note against distribution when desired, not the other way around right? Maybe that has changed in recent years with all the push for assuming the negative rather than the affirmative?

smoth wrote:I would think that is a given?

Most cases make note against distribution when desired, not the other way around right? Maybe that has changed in recent years with all the push for assuming the negative rather than the affirmative?

i assume(d) so, too but its better to have it cleanly written down in this case. :)

No spring project that I can think of has set precedent on how that should be written.

A moderator's responsibility is to keep the forum clean and friendly. Game developers are responsible for their own games. I think this is quite natural, but if someone disputes this then just go ahead and lay out the arguments.

XTA has a history before spring, and so do some other *A games. I don't see how a moderator can have anything to say about how we label our own work.

Spring has both forum & lobby moderators. This primarily concerns content moderation on the lobby server.

I don't see how a moderator can have anything to say about how we label our own work.

You are free to label your work however your wish - but in some cases (as is hopefully clear in https://springrts.com/wiki/Licenses_Forking_Mutators ) Spring may decline to make it available on Springs own servers.

As said,

Silentwings wrote:... tries to write down essentially the same principles that we already act on, in a transparent and broadly enforceable way.