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

[max power 21]

@ [ASA]Oden-

Prolly looks familiar to you. ;) (BTW, is it ironic that I'm *now* the guy with the reputation for not supporting the rights of devs to choose?)

Late edit:

Interesting article -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11706476

"[Good ideas] come from crowds, they come from networks. You know we have this clichéd idea of the lone genius having the eureka moment.

"But in fact when you go back and you look at the history of innovation it turns out that so often there is this quiet collaborative process that goes on, either in people building on other peoples' ideas, but also in borrowing ideas, or tools or approaches to problems.

"The ultimate idea comes from this remixing of various different components. There still are smart people and there still are people that have moments where they see the world differently in a flash.

"But for the most part it's a slower and more networked process than we give them credit for."

Make of it what you will....

No one is arguing against collabouration, I don't think. The forum is a collabourative network, so is OFPEC, etc. But do I really want to be forced to collabourate with someone like Col.Well, or ArmA2cat, without my knowledge or consent?

Perhaps not applicable to this community, I find the way Hollywood is going with its focus groups, etc, is not helpful to the quality of movies.

I think it comes down to with whom you're collaborating.

Edited November 8, 2010 by Max Power

[NoRailgunner 0]

So for now the best solution is to have a bureaucratic law enforcement service net/master server which checks all pbo's automatically and compares it with biometric data and permissions from the ip owner?

Of course the user/player is forced to be constantly online - no matter if he or she is editing/scripting, playing or making models...

[dmarkwick 261]

No one is arguing against collabouration, I don't think. The forum is a collabourative network, so is OFPEC, etc. But do I really want to be forced to collabourate with someone like Col.Well, or ArmA2cat, without my knowledge or consent?

Perhaps not applicable to this community, I find the way Hollywood is going with its focus groups, etc, is not helpful to the quality of movies.

I think it comes down to with whom you're collaborating.

I think the article wasn't specifically advocating collaboration, more that good ideas come from making connections while studying external examples. Focus groups will design a camel when the brief was a horse, but most great inventions are done on the back of previous work.

[max power 21]

So for now the best solution is to have a bureaucratic law enforcement service net/master server which checks all pbo's automatically and compares it with biometric data and permissions from the ip owner?

Of course the user/player is forced to be constantly online - no matter if he or she is editing/scripting, playing or making models...

I think the article wasn't specifically advocating collaboration, more that good ideas come from making connections while studying external examples. Focus groups will design a camel when the brief was a horse, but most great inventions are done on the back of previous work.

Good thing the community has so many good external examples :)

[dmarkwick 261]

Good thing the community has so many good external examples :)

Indeed :) there are many fine addons that wouldn't exist without them, including my own. :)

[xxbbcc 6]

Case in point against encryption:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1784593&postcount=86

I couldn't have found this problem without the ability to look into a campaign .pbo. The error message says it's a problem with CBA, but it's really not - CBA simply detects it as an error but the problem happens in the campaign logic. With encryption, this would take days for a set of people to debug (first the player to try to figure out what's wrong, then CBA people to learn it's not their error, then finally the campaign author to go through the code and fix it. If just one person along that chain doesn't care, it'd take ages at best to correct something like this.

The only reason I found it was because I could look through 3 .pbo-s and finally stumble upon the parts that are wrong.

[max power 21]

Indeed :) there are many fine addons that wouldn't exist without them, including my own. :)

I think I remember you getting help from Norsu, or am I completely off base? This isn't going anywhere accusatory, btw. I'm just asking.

Case in point against encryption:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1784593&postcount=86

I couldn't have found this problem without the ability to look into a campaign .pbo. The error message says it's a problem with CBA, but it's really not - CBA simply detects it as an error but the problem happens in the campaign logic. With encryption, this would take days for a set of people to debug (first the player to try to figure out what's wrong, then CBA people to learn it's not their error, then finally the campaign author to go through the code and fix it. If just one person along that chain doesn't care, it'd take ages at best to correct something like this.

The only reason I found it was because I could look through 3 .pbo-s and finally stumble upon the parts that are wrong.

Or, you know, you could just enable and disable addons and try a different campaign or mission. If there is a problem with a campaign, that's sort of the campaign writer's issue. If there is a license on a campaign that asks you not to reverse engineer it, then you have no business going in there in the first place. If the campaign writer doesn't care about that, why would he encrypt it in the first place?

[xxbbcc 6]

Or, you know, you could just enable and disable addons and try a different campaign or mission. If there is a problem with a campaign, that's sort of the campaign writer's issue. If there is a license on a campaign that asks you not to reverse engineer it, then you have no business going in there in the first place. If the campaign writer doesn't care about that, why would he encrypt it in the first place?

So how would that help me with playing through this campaign? I can point the finger, too, that it's his issue but that doesn't get me a working campaign.

Plus, why would I want to spend hours moving around various addons to figure out what's crashing the game? (We're talking about ~150 .pbo-s - not all of them would be suspect but at least 15-20 would have to be checked in various combinations.) I already hardly have time to play, I'm not willing to spend my free time in trying to recreate an error scenario if there's an easier way (Notepad) to find the problem.

Also, the issue happened in CBA. So first they'd have to determine that it's not their issue really, it just surfaces there. That'd take at least several days and it'd be a total waste of their time. Then a similar round with the author (if he's contactable and willing to fix.)

At the end, I didn't fix the error but I tracked it down, hopefully cutting down the waiting time. If the author doesn't fix it in a reasonably short time (less than, say, 3 days), I'll fix it myself locally.

[max power 21]

This is still an argument for convenient leisure time.

[xxbbcc 6]

I didn't say it wasn't.

[dmarkwick 261]

This is still an argument for convenient leisure time.

I think convenient leisure time is the main purpose. When all's said and done, we are working within a game environment set up for our leisure, and the addons represent, for some of us, a larger amount of that leisure. I think, if the pastime is stepping outside of leisure to the extent that you believe your data and work should be protected from the culture of casual browsing, you're moving into the more serious and more relevantly structured VBS2 culture.

[vilas 477]

How many words...:butbut: And all they are about the things which happen seldom enough. After reading some post it is easy to start thinking that every week houndreds of thieves try to re-release every addon or campaign/mission as their own work.:rolleyes:

i think they afraid of Turbosquid

not community itself, but fact that some people here were cheated, someone sold for money their models from addons on Turbosquid

decrypting ODOL > MLOD > 3DS > sell on Turbosquid for some $ ( 30-100 maybe )

i think this is main thing they afraid

Edited November 9, 2010 by vilas

[CarlGustaffa 4]

That's the excuse that is claimed over and over, but for most when the heat is turned up the real reasons emerged - "don't poke", and the why - the motivations remains unanswered (false bug reports can have a number of reasons, not just inexperienced poking).

Of course I induce my own problems into it (you seriously can't grasp the amount of problems I have had to figure out), and fixing those teaches me a great deal about scripting and problem solving.

It was recently said: try a different campaign or mission when something fails. So play my mission as is or butt out? There wouldn't be many (if any) missions left to play. And I'm not in this for the gaming (not anymore anyways), only for the editing. "How stuff works" is my middle name - take that away, or make it too hard to enjoy doing it, and the game has (for me) zero value.

We all want all the secrets from BIS (mod friendly attitude), yet several seems to want to sit tight on their secrets themselves (mod unfriendly attitude). Not sure if it's anything to it, but some claims this is happening on Civilization5 too now: Pay up to get the mod tools and you can create DLCs, the rest of you are pretty much screwed (can be delay time though, as tools for OFP back in the day - I hope so).

Professionalism for the better? In some cases, yes. There are marvels of professional mods out there for several other games. But it makes it that much harder for those joining to get something useful out of it. I'm betting most of them didn't join the modding community only to find out they have to reinvent the wheel for every thing they want to do. It takes forever to make a good MP mission, even SP missions can be a bloody nightmare for the beginner.

[dmarkwick 261]

I think I remember you getting help from Norsu, or am I completely off base? This isn't going anywhere accusatory, btw. I'm just asking.

Norsu isn't a name I'm familiar with, but I have often received help from many people :) and if Norsu is a modelmaker then I would say most likely not, as I only make simple models that mostly are not even visible.

Generally any substantial help is referenced in my readmes.

[dm 9]

"don't poke", and the why - the motivations remains unanswered

Why should we have to justify our reasons to you?

What makes you so special that you assume you have the right (you don't, by the way) to poke in our content anyway?

This is what boggles my mind. Someone puts in a huge amount of time and effort to create something, and is then called arrogant when he (or she) requests that people not poke around in it...

To flip it the other way round:

why should you be able to poke in other peoples content?

And if you say "learning" then I will say "That's the excuse that is claimed over and over" ;)

[dmarkwick 261]

why should you be able to poke in other peoples content?

And if you say "learning" then I will say "That's the excuse that is claimed over and over" ;)

It remains the reason, why should a new reason be generated because you've already heard the main one? :)

OK, to approach the "why should you have the right" etc, the reason I'm most inclined to give will probably mean nothing to people who insist on a definable legal reason. The fact is, it's the way the ArmA2 modding community works. Whatever is put out as public, is publicly viewable. That's the caveat for ArmA2 modding, you learned by example, and others learn by your example. It feeds and nourishes on itself, and is done naturally by the open nature of the entire process. It seems that for whatever reason some people don't like that, but as I said it's the caveat.

As I said, people will dismiss that as having no legal ground, but it's the case. If you wish to bring legal considerations into a previously open and sharing community then there will be a natural amount of friction, as we've seen in this thread. At the risk of repetition, I should say that the next logical step for people wishing to start hiding their work from perusal is to move on to the VBS2 product, it's expensive but you get what you pay for as far as protection is concerned. Given the amount of monies some here have spent on software licenses it might even seem reasonable :)

[TRexian 0]

why should you be able to poke in other peoples content?

I think 3 reasons have been repeatedly proffered, although they are unpersuasive to you:

1) to learn (this is of personal importance to me, as a scripter);

2) to determine if the contents of someone else's mod have been illicitly grabbed from another mod;

3) (appeal to convention) because it has been a 'right' among OFP/ArmA modders since the beginning.

Like I said, these do not persuade you. That does not mean they are invalid, just that they are insufficient based on your own personal philosophy.

Edit: Pay no attention to DMarkwick, he tends to ramble on....

[whisper 0]

Why should we have to justify our reasons to you?

What makes you so special that you assume you have the right (you don't, by the way) to poke in our content anyway?

This is what boggles my mind. Someone puts in a huge amount of time and effort to create something, and is then called arrogant when he (or she) requests that people not poke around in it...

To flip it the other way round:

why should you be able to poke in other peoples content?

And if you say "learning" then I will say "That's the excuse that is claimed over and over" ;)

learning claimed over and over because this is how it has been done since OFP demo days, and on the years after, and by that time I don't recall you having any issue with that, funnily enough....

this is what boggles my mind, personaly, people easily forgetting where all came from when it fits their agenda

anyway, see TRexian answer above. the "checking content source" reason should be more than enough.

Edited November 9, 2010 by whisper

[mrcash2009 0]

If everything was protected to the lengths that people would "prefer" to how things are realisticly (that has never changed for eons in many forms of creativity and ownership) then progression in general would be stunted, simple as that ... the rest is a debate on morals and shades of grey that could last an eternity.

You can see it from both sides, I can, but either way .. unless it went hard line to the point of stagnating everything then no creativity would happen and progress.

How much of ACE is off the back of BIS? For example ... so if BIS took the hard-line, we wouldn't have ACE. How much of features that are in recent BIS features based on modders ideas?

If everyone never took a peak under the hood of anything it would be game over, how many scripters DPBO content and modules to understand how things work to use it without full information and alot of head scratching?

Back engineering .. its been around for time, and will be here for time, and those who overly protect will only isolate themselves, even if you dont like to know that. If you really feel you need to protect you only have the law, money, processes to prosecute, or ... never letting anything leave your hard drive.

Either be protective and do things so the law is on your side to stop someone and take those steps & processes, or do what you do knowing that something may happen that you dont like becuase unless you live under a rock can you avoid it 100 percent?

Edited November 9, 2010 by mrcash2009

[vilas 477]

many times i dont agree with DM, but he is right when says that learning is just false excuse

cause when it comes to model and texture, you won't learn anything from texture in PAA (you could learn from multilayer in Corel or Photoshop) , you won't learn from seeing mesh of model , cause you not see steps ( also when debinarised ODOL lost all selection, so you have clear mesh without selections )

of course i don't change my mind /statement done few sites ago, i am voting not for closing PBO, but also understand people who have been stolen and their freeware addon content was sold on Turbosquid for money (i understand their voices to have option to close their addons )

i just wanted to say that DM has right when he say that learning is false excuse, cause you won't learn from them

saying that someone must cooperate is bullshit too and as DM said - someone spent hundreds of hours and other wants it just like that

when i had no idea how much time something costs i had other opinion in past , i was not rated work high

i know that some MP clans are taking and dividing addons, cause they must save FTP space and have their own unique addons because of clan needs , sometimes i also edit for my own PC (changing crew, deleting ACE dependance, changing weapon to my weapon when in addon of infantry there is not realistic imo weapon )

and i know that some addonmakers might be against it

but i just wanted to say about DM words, not about issue here

learning from ODOL > MLOD without selections, or texture is not possible, learning from sound files is not possible

learning is possible from configs, scripts etc.

if people who make those high-poly models of planes want lock their addon - let them have it , it's their right

if they not want their model to be repacked by MP clans - it's their right too

[st_dux 26]

why should you be able to poke in other peoples content?

People should be able to "poke around" in other people's content because there is nothing that says they can't, and community-owned, open-source software is the cornerstone of every healthy modding community. Every mod, addon and halfway-interesting community-made mission or campaign would not exist today if it weren't for people being able to look through the .pbos of others (including the .pbos of BI themselves).

[rksl-rock 1300]

People should be able to "poke around" in other people's content because there is nothing that says they can't, and community-owned, open-source software is the cornerstone of every healthy modding community. Every mod, addon and halfway-interesting community-made mission or campaign would not exist today if it weren't for people being able to look through the .pbos of others (including the .pbos of BI themselves).

Community content is FREEWARE not Open source.

Authors of freeware have the same rights as payware and commercial publications.

[whisper 0]

many times i dont agree with DM, but he is right when says that learning is just false excuse

cause when it comes to model and texture, you won't learn anything from texture in PAA (you could learn from multilayer in Corel or Photoshop) , you won't learn from seeing mesh of model , cause you not see steps ( also when debinarised ODOL lost all selection, so you have clear mesh without selections )

of course i don't change my mind /statement done few sites ago, i am voting not for closing PBO, but also understand people who have been stolen and their freeware addon content was sold on Turbosquid for money (i understand their voices to have option to close their addons )

i just wanted to say that DM has right when he say that learning is false excuse, cause you won't learn from them

saying that someone must cooperate is bullshit too and as DM said - someone spent hundreds of hours and other wants it just like that

when i had no idea how much time something costs i had other opinion in past , i was not rated work high

i know that some MP clans are taking and dividing addons, cause they must save FTP space and have their own unique addons because of clan needs , sometimes i also edit for my own PC (changing crew, deleting ACE dependance, changing weapon to my weapon when in addon of infantry there is not realistic imo weapon )

and i know that some addonmakers might be against it

but i just wanted to say about DM words, not about issue here

learning from ODOL > MLOD without selections, or texture is not possible, learning from sound files is not possible

learning is possible from configs, scripts etc.

if people who make those high-poly models of planes want lock their addon - let them have it , it's their right

if they not want their model to be repacked by MP clans - it's their right too

There is not only 3D shapes in an addon.

The allmighty "we are professional 3D artists therefore we deserve special treatment and we'll treat your needs as nothing" behavior could do with a bit of towning down.

What is learned from an opened addon is config, selection usage when available, scripting techniques, and such....

And, again, this is so since 2001 and the source of knowledge of the very people advocating for closing content comes from peeking into BI's stuff

[rksl-rock 1300]

There is not only 3D shapes in an addon.

The allmighty "we are professional 3D artists therefore we deserve special treatment and we'll treat your needs as nothing" behavior could do with a bit of towning down.

What is learned from an opened addon is config, selection usage when available, scripting techniques, and such....

And, again, this is so since 2001 and the source of knowledge of the very people advocating for closing content comes from peeking into BI's stuff

Yes which is why we (allmighty professional 3D artists ?) were talking about locking the PBO and protecting everybody's work not just the model. Go back and read the thread again. Its the people that want access to config and scripts that are saying "just protect the models".

[TRexian 0]

Authors of freeware have the same rights as payware and commercial publications.

And the same limitations... and a more difficult time showing damages in the event of an IP violation. :)

All the problems, none of the income!

Why do we do this again.....? :D