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ffur2007slx2_5

Do you think it's necessary for BIS providing lockable binPBO?

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Right ;) I'm sorry but there is a lot more to modding than model and vehicle config. But I see where the shoe is pressing - it's the reluctance to share knowledge. It's all becoming rivalry, one mod being better than the other etc. Just check out how ECS was stripped completely for carriage returns, in an attempt to make it unreadable - worst mess I ever saw. Not impossible to fix (if I could at the time, anyone can). It obviously had nothing to do with preventing it from being used commercially. And I surely don't think it was done to help us learn from it. Being capable of making it readable, I learned a lot from it.

In spite of my (and others) contributions to the community knowledge base, you dare to say that my (and others) tendency towards protection indicates an unwillingness to share knowledge? Are you insane?

To address your answer to Rock: Quite simply, you're saying that your urgency overrides the rights of other people. That is sorrily wrong, my friend.

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Have fun. Guess I can't ask you for permission to add an XEH to your config for our weekend event. Now I'll just have to do without that permission. Good thing it isn't protected, that would really ruin the event... Just kidding ;)

And then one of the people who took part of the event decides that he likes it so much that he will use it with his friends and those friends decide to re-distribute it further and before long someone will get some kind of an error or bug with it, contact the original author and then everyone will be mad at everyone because stuff was edited and distributed without permission. :yay:

This is EXACTLY the kind of reason why you shouldn't edit other peoples stuff without permission. ;) And it IS ALL about the respect for other peoples work. If you don't respect other peoples work, I won't respect you or anything affiliated with you. If we cannot respect each others enough to ask for permission or respect the rights of others then theres no point in even releasing anything publicly anymore.

Lets cut the bullshit people! HONESTLY! We should be mature enough for this. The only reason you who don't support locking pbo's is that it would prevent you from ripping other peoples addons for your own selfish purposes. I do believe some of you use these possibilites for learning but I also do believe a lot of you like to reconfigure other peoples work without permission for private use inside a clan / gaming group. Since the only proper reason that I can think of unpboing addons is to modify them for your own purposes. The models you don't have permission to change anyhow and for any "learning purposes" you can read the configs for example ingame. For scripting there are so many tutorials available to do just about everything and a lot can be simply done by testing it. Of course this would mean that you have to actually learn to do something instead of just copypasting the code from something that someone else made.

Okay if they don't completely lock the pbo's how about they make them so that you could only read the config from them (like we can now with the BAF stuff), but not extract the pbo? That would give the people who want to "learn from the config" the chance to learn from it by making the config read-only. Of course this wouldn't allow you to rip the scripts and models but its halfway there. I suggest that if there will be no locking of pbo's then at least make it so that the models could not be "reconfigured" to something else ie. the addon would stay as it was originally released and others could not edit it. And before you say it I know this would not help with addons that are just a collection of scripts but as said by the great Dwarden himself on the copyright stuff: "It doesn't matter if you CAN do something, it still doesn't give you the right to do it".

Edited by Sekra

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Lets cut the bullshit people! HONESTLY! We should be mature enough for this. The only reason you who don't support locking pbo's is that it would prevent you from ripping other peoples addons for your own selfish purposes.

A request for maturity followed by that...

Nice one.

Some of you get way too angry over this, so much so that you let it get in the way of what you are actually trying to state. This isn't the first time for a couple of you either. Keep in mind that this discussion so far is about the protection of something you are making unofficially and for free, hopefully as a hobby in that case.

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Keep in mind that this discussion so far is about the protection of something you are making unofficially and for free, hopefully as a hobby in that case.

And what about the models that are made for commercial use or use parts of commercial work that have been granted a permission to be used for non-commercial purposes like Arma 2 and then get ripped and sold on modelling sites?

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That is a risk those companies granting the permission should be fully aware they are taking, as I'm sure they are.

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Do you think any of them are giving those permissions anymore after the ripping tools were introduced? I'll give you a hint of the two possible answers: "Yes" is not it.

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And what about the models that are made for commercial use or use parts of commercial work that have been granted a permission to be used for non-commercial purposes like Arma 2 and then get ripped and sold on modelling sites?

There are some people out there in the real world who are called lawyers for those cases.

If there will be any kind of locking for custom made addons/mods/missions a lot of people will quit modding immediately.

Either you are able to protect your IP on your own or you are not.

Xeno

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If there will be any kind of locking for custom made addons/mods/missions a lot of people will quit modding immediately.

And in the same time the people who make quality addons already have left the community in masses (simply take a look at how much quality stuff was released for ofp vs arma 2) because of all the ripping that is being done. If BIS provided a way to just read the configs and clearly prohibiting any editing of any addons instead of allowing the community to let any 12 year old to rip and sell the models in 2 simple clicks, would any of you agree to this? Just because the thieves might (and probably will) eventually crack the system, doesn't justify the community in hacking and publicly distributing those tools. And again why is it so bad if the person who makes the models himself/herself from scratch be given the possibility to protect it? There still would be everything that has been released so far available "for learning". I WANT to see more people making quality addons for A2/OA. But just look at how many people quit the community per year because they got ripped off by someone. And how many new groups come along that provide actual quality addons?

And quite honestly if the attitude is "if I can't rip your work for my own purposes I'll quit the community" the better. I'd rather see a small amount of quality addons than a large amount of crappy ones. Instead of trying to lure new people into modding why not for a change try to focus on keeping the ones that already do great addons with the community?

Edited by Sekra

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If there will be any kind of locking for custom made addons/mods/missions a lot of people will quit modding immediately.

This same argument was used when the odol explorer tool was introduced. In reality, not much has changed.

Of course, if they choose to quit, that is their choice. Uncoerced, I might add. Just like if modders were able to choose to lock their work, it is their choice. I don't think that you can begrudge anyone for having or wanting that freedom.

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This same argument was used when the odol explorer tool was introduced. In reality, not much has changed.

Of course, if they choose to quit, that is their choice. Uncoerced, I might add. Just like if modders were able to choose to lock their work, it is their choice. I don't think that you can begrudge anyone for having or wanting that freedom.

So what ?

Either you are mature enough to take care of it yourself or you are not.

I guess a lot of people here think that somebody else will take care of it, like BIS.

That's totally wrong. If you release something then you are responsible for it. No matter what happens. It's you who has to fight for your IP and nobody else.

The people who want to do the wrong things won't be stopped by "locked" pbo's.

Xeno

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I'm pretty sure that the sort of people who'd sell ArmA2 ripped stuff on Turbosquid don't mind where they get the models from. So any commercially or otherwise available model, from any source, has the possibility of ending up on Turbosquid under another name. ArmA2 must be a very small element in this, and although I can see how the modeler would take exception, he's only a tiny part of another larger problem.

Although we might see these models for sale, I still don't see evidence of sales. I'm sure it happens, but is the problem in any way of significance other than the copyrights violation, which happens anyway even for non-ArmA2 content? It sucks, but it's not an ArmA2 problem.

The modelmaker could, if he wanted to stave off as much ripping as possible, release the model for sale himself at Turbosquid. I'm not saying it's a great idea, I'm saying its a damage limitation for people afraid of their stuff being ripped, which it apparently will in any case whatever format it's released in anywhere.

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So what ?

Either you are mature enough to take care of it yourself or you are not.

I guess a lot of people here think that somebody else will take care of it, like BIS.

That's totally wrong. If you release something then you are responsible for it. No matter what happens. It's you who has to fight for your IP and nobody else.

The people who want to do the wrong things won't be stopped by "locked" pbo's.

Xeno

We do do our best, especially those of us who are members of AM4AR. Grouping together to give us more eyes to watch is one way of enhancing the security of addon makers. When someone shows something off, or provides screenshots, for example, it's often easy to see if something looks familiar or not. Some things are not so obvious. Providing a way to lock a pbo with encryption or protection gives us another tool to reduce ip rights violations by prevention rather than always running after a culprit after the fact. It also would give us greater legal recourse. It's not about asking other people to handle it. I think you're a little out of touch. Many of us watch each others' backs and put as much effort in as we can to protect each other. There are limits to what we can do, however. Even if we caught everyone on these forums, the penalty is a permanent banning- a deterent for some but really, in the grand scheme of things, a slap on the wrist. Lots of us probably don't have the resources to create international lawsuits every time the next 'Col. Well' makes a new unit. These are bad situations with bad consequences. The ability to reduce the number of these incidences would be nice.

I think if the community could write an encryption tool, we would have already. Unfortunately, these models must be read by the engine, so such an endeavor requires support from BIS. It's simply the reality of such a concept.

In sum, your argument that we're trying to get someone else to take responsibility for our own security is absolute pants- laughably misguided and stupendously uninformed tripe, and somewhat insulting.

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So what ?

Either you are mature enough to take care of it yourself or you are not.

I guess a lot of people here think that somebody else will take care of it, like BIS.

That's totally wrong. If you release something then you are responsible for it. No matter what happens. It's you who has to fight for your IP and nobody else.

The people who want to do the wrong things won't be stopped by "locked" pbo's.

Xeno

with all due respect thats bogus and you know it. The fact that you can't just look into the source code of any software has sure stopped alot of people (yes software piracy exists, but imagine the true scope of it if all software was just "open").

Setting that aside, what exactly is the difference of you fighting for your IP or BIS allowing the community to make use of a function that they have already implemented?

I dont really see why all the modelers in this thread who are pro-choice getting bashed? Why can't I have a choice in the matter of my work? And same for a scripter, why can't he have a choice? By no means does it mean that all addons will be locked. Heck most addons that come out now aren't even binarized.

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I dont really see why all the modelers in this thread who are pro-choice getting bashed? Why can't I have a choice in the matter of my work? And same for a scripter, why can't he have a choice? By no means does it mean that all addons will be locked. Heck most addons that come out now aren't even binarized.

Well, in fairness I'm not trying to bash, I'm just setting out my opinion. Quite often a different opinion is seen as bashing, and more often a different opinion is voiced in bashing terms :) (not by me I hope ;))

And, the fact is that BIS has maintained an open nature for modding, which has worked out, for the most part, very well :) I don't say that some ripping hasn't happened, but I do say that within the ArmA2 world it's quite well policed, and outside it's a very tiny part of a larger non-ArmA2 problem.

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Guys could you please humor me with a simple answer to a simple question? Is the true reason why you are against pbo locking because you could not edit other peoples addons for private use if the pbos were locked? I know many of you guys who don't want the pbos to have the option to be locked are genuinely talented addon makers and scripters. You guys don't need to learn that stuff anymore, you know it already. If you want to help starting modders use your work, then you would have the option not to lock your pbo. This totalitarian attitude against people having a chance to protect their work really saddens me and I do believe without any intervention from BIS in this matter we will end up losing the last great modellers in the community. I would rather see protected addons coming from RKSL and RHS rather than seeing them leave the community, would you not? Of course I do not speak on their behalf and the decision is theirs but their addons are better quality than BIS releases and they deserve to have the right to protect them if they want to like any other addon maker. And they do seem to want it from what I'm reading in this thread since BAF has already proven that it can be done.

And I'm sure if you want to learn any advanced stuff from them regarding addon making they will gladly help you if you ask nicely. I've got a ton of help from various people just by asking nicely and they've had no obligation to help me. What ever happened to the atmosphere of OFP addon making where everyone was working together instead of opposing everyone in every matter just because you don't like them? (Although I do see a glimmer of hope here seeing that RKSL-Rock and Max Power actually seem to agree on something! :D )

So to reiterate my question: Do you want unlocked pbos to be able to edit them the way you want privately? Is this reason even a SMALL part of why you are so against this?

and a bonus question: Would you rather see the people who want the pbo's locked to leave the community and we'd never see their wonderful addons released?

Edited by Sekra

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Guys could you please humor me with a simple answer to a simple question? Is the true reason why you are against pbo locking because you could not edit other peoples addons for private use if the pbos were locked? I know many of you guys who don't want the pbos to have the option to be locked are genuinely talented addon makers and scripters. You guys don't need to learn that stuff anymore, you know it already. If you want to help starting modders use your work, then you would have the option not to lock your pbo. This totalitarian attitude against people having a chance to protect their work really saddens me and I do believe without any intervention from BIS in this matter we will end up losing the last great modellers in the community. I would rather see protected addons coming from RKSL and RHS rather than seeing them leave the community, would you not? Of course I do not speak on their behalf and the decision is theirs but their addons are better quality than BIS releases and they deserve to have the right to protect them if they want to like any other addon maker. And they do seem to want it from what I'm reading in this thread since BAF has already proven that it can be done.

And I'm sure if you want to learn any advanced stuff from them regarding addon making they will gladly help you if you ask nicely. I've got a ton of help from various people just by asking nicely and they've had no obligation to help me. What ever happened to the atmosphere of OFP addon making where everyone was working together instead of opposing everyone in every matter just because you don't like them? (Although I do see a glimmer of hope here seeing that RKSL-Rock and Max Power actually seem to agree on something! :D )

So to reiterate my question: Do you want unlocked pbos to be able to edit them the way you want privately? Is this reason even a SMALL part of why you are so against this?

and a bonus question: Would you rather see the people who want the pbo's locked to leave the community and we'd never see their wonderful addons released?

The simple fact is, I leaned most of what I know by following example. Plenty of people have already left the community due to some grievance or other, and the community still thives :) I don't always have the time to answer a question in a helpful or full way. I'm sure people learn stuff by looking at my addons, and that's perfectly fine. And I always give permission for people to use parts of them.

Very occasionally I do alter a released addon for my own purposes, but that's not the reason I abstain from the encryption suggestion.

People leave, people arrive. The arriving people learn from example.

Edited by DMarkwick

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People here often speaks about something which sounds like HUGE WAVES of addon creators who left the community because they couldn't protect their addon's PBO.

Could you give us some names, please?

Not that i want to make it sound unimportant - even one skilled addoncreator who left is a real loss, but i have this feeling that some of you are exagerating too much.

So please, state at least approximate numbers, if you want to use this as a valid argument.

And even better - let's stop arguing who is right, because we all thinks its us and nothing can convice us otherwise, so let's just make a poll and lets see how that ends.

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You want a list huh? I'll have one, atleast a partial one, for you tomorrow. The thing is, it's not going to be ones who left for the specific reason you stated, many of the ones I think of left because people were ripping off their work, selling their models online, releasing their models as freeware, spreading the source files around the community, etc. etc. etc.

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Lets cut the bullshit people! HONESTLY! We should be mature enough for this. The only reason you who don't support locking pbo's is that it would prevent you from ripping other peoples addons for your own selfish purposes.

Yeah, calling people thieves to their faces is a real polite way to argue your point. You've got real class there, just like Darkhorse 1-6. Good to have you around.

So to reiterate my question: Do you want unlocked pbos to be able to edit them the way you want privately? Is this reason even a SMALL part of why you are so against this?

It is the case, yes. Why is that a problem, again?

1. I asked several addon makers, several times, over various channels to make various changes to their mods. I mostly got arrogant refusals or the requests were simply ignored. In this case, I can just open said mod and make whatever changes I need for my own purposes. I simply gave up asking / recommending and only do so when I see outstanding work.

2. In many cases, missions may be somewhat intersting but terribly done. This is increasingly the case with A2 - old OFP missions were, in many cases, better implemented in my opinion. Having the ability to open the pbo and change things, I can correct problems that I have with these.

I consider these uses, in addition to using the sources as learning material are perfectly normal in my view. Kju's work on the PROPER project comes to mind - I learned a lot from his work and guess what, I didn't rip any of it off.

I don't see why I'd even need anyone's permission to change something that no one ever uses other than me - especially when the author doesn't even reply anymore. (Kju comes to mind again - would be interesting how CAA1 could be updated had the pbo-s been locked.)

The modelers do have a choice: if they consider their models such high quality that they're too good for this community, they can simply decide not to release those models for the game. I'm sure they can then sell those models on Turbosquid for big bucks and absolutely no one can steal them from there.

With that said, I greatly appreciate the work of those who - under the present conditions - still choose to create & release their models, scripts, missions, sounds, etc. They are the ones that keep this game going.

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I propose poll like this:

Q: Do you want BIS to provide means to "lock" PBO files?

(to make sure noone can look at, or edit its content)

1. Yes (i am a modder/scripter, i want to use it)

2. Yes (i am a modder/scripter, but do not plan using it myself)

3. Yes (not a modder/scripter, but i think it should be available)

4. No (i am a modder/scripter, but i am against such restriction)

5. No (not a modder/scripter, but i am against such restriction)

6. I don't care (i am a modder/scripter)

7. I don't care (not a modder/scripter)

Edited by 5133p39

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A poll would be total meaningless. its up to bis to include such a function

they have the final word in it. and the only word in it.

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an opinion doesn't hurt. BIS cares about us , they read their forums and even post in them (hard to find ya know!)

i vote for the poll

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i vote for the poll

You're voting on whether to run a poll or not? This thread has truly run its course.

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You're voting on whether to run a poll or not? This thread has truly run its course.

Ha ha ha, I was totally thinking the same. :icon_lol:

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My opinion: community made content should never be lockable/encrypted. I know there are people on these boards who refuse to allow "their" work into the outside world, but they're a small and insignificant element. It makes me wonder how they learned and why they then assume the stance that no-one must learn from their work.

EVERYONE here who contributes to the community, learned from direct examples. Its a very open and honest community for the most part, and I wouldn't like to see it fold up into jealous secrecy by the introduction of a checkbox in the binPBO application.

We should not define our community by our unfounded fears of our worst members.

Well said DMarkwick. You see this time and time again to the point of GIVE IT A BREAK ALREADY !

Create to create and not to use it to be a drama queen. Bis allowed the software to be open to the community for the community to improve what you like and if you like- share it.

No room for EGO's ! Post it to the forum and let your work of art shine through its repeatability, that should be ego boost enough.

A fix for ya !:

Make and sell your game and give it your own name.

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