Legal discussion regarding Steam Workshop

[Cephel 10]

And that is indeed, at least in my eyes, worth some clapping, although, again, if you took the patch road from the begging, it would have saved you the days and the troubles.

i'm sorry, i thought it was an obvious exaggeration on my part(no pun intended), while trying to prove a point.

It wasn't the case for the name and files on the steam workshop: It showed as Blastcore (or blastcore+/blastcore a3g or alike), the description was an obvious rant towards the original author (which was indeed named, in a very negative context) that was "unwilling or incapable" to provide the "needed" fixes, and updates, and the comments were on the same page

You said your provide the "proper" blastcore experience ("proper" might nit have been used as such, but that was the general idea)..for the rest, read the above.

Well we can't change the past, and hopecore per se wasn't planned as an addon at first, the first iteration was a bunch of bugfixes that HopeJohnson made and presented to OpticalSnare free of charge and no strings attached to be implemented into BlastCore. He could've just taken them and salvaged from it what he deemed useful and called it a day. But his actual reaction was "I didn't allow anyone to modify my work". This was not being received very well, as he didn't even bother to look at them, instead he just assumed we were trying to take from his glory or something.

To cut a long story very short, we were very frustrated by the time we arrived at our own solution to the problem and the steam workshop. The description and title have since been changed to better reflect what was actually their intended goal.

As for the patch road, honestly we didn't even think of it at first, it came to us in a sleepless night, crunching over how we can solve this situation and still be able to release our work to the public. Someone literally suddenly spoke up and said "why don't we make it a patch?" and then here we are.

I'm honestly very dissappointed just how hostile the modding community as a whole has dealt with this situation. Nobody bothered to look at the advantages this could bring to blastcore ( we offered our fixes and the entire source code multiple times, and were ignored and even hated for it ). Nobody took one moment to say "yes, blastcore really didn't get alot of attention lately, less than it certainly deserves". Some people even went as far as to claim they'd rather use a buggy month old version than to even take a look at what is essentially a community fix. And I know opticalsnare came out of the woodwork every now and then to promise he's still working on it, but the evidence shows differently. The last update for BlastCore was in January or so, that's a long time for what is pretty much the best mod currently out for Arma 3, especially since fixing most of these issues is not a very complex matter.

I don't wanna criticize OpticalSnares work ethic here, and don't wanna jab at how much time he decides to donate to the community in working on this mod. But not doing much AND not accepting help AND denying others from helping AND actively trying to shut down attempts at legally publishing fixes that do not violate his rights as a content creator, all at the same time? Very questionable.

I'm not saying it's like this, but it bears an uncanny resemblance to Patent trolling

=====

And I agree with the guy above me, can we please now go back to Steam Workshop issues, instead of discussing Blastcore here?

I forsee a massive issue here, if people ( just to use the most prominent example ), like CBA decide to not release their work to the steam workshop, this makes it impossible to flag CBA as a dependency in the S/W system, making manual download and reading through the description necessary. On the contrast, if CBA was on the workshop, it would automatically get downloaded with a properly flagged addon. This is a highly likely use-case and I think a seperate solution must be found.

Since I'm no fan of forcing people to do that, maybe we can appoint a community manager from BIS that is able to put popular addons onto the workshop with a special license, in case an addon creator does not want to use the regular license, that doesn't violate whatever freedom they see being violated by the standard license.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Cephel

[zooloo75 834]

listen lad: you should take this a bit less personal, partly because it doesn't concern you directly (i understand the frustration though). But while foul language is allowed (and i am glad because of that), it shouldn't be directed towards another person, not only because it shows a lack of civilization on your part, but firstly because it makes you look like dick, and it fades away any reasonable arguments following that.

I strongly think that if you need to curse in order to make yourself heard or to prove a point, you lost before you started. And that is coming from a 28 year old 6year long university year master graduate owning his own business, that swears like a drunken sailor in private for no reason at all.

I know and completely agree with you, but being civil proved no result. Just because a substring is within an array of foul words doesn't mean one should return.

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk

[roshnak 41]

Building upon other people's work is a core fundament of software development. People benefit from other people's work on a daily basis. Starting from the operating system you currently use, the browser you use to access this website, continuing with the webserver software, the database backend and the server scripting software that is being used to present you this website, down to the standard and character encoding that allows you type on your keyboard and have it be translated into readable letters ( and the layout of thereof ), finishing with the packet format, the protocol and the cable and server architecture that allows you to transmit these keystrokes to write this snappy response to me

Arma 3 itself would not be possible without literally hundreds of people who did groundwork to provide rendering pipelines, physics libraries and programming languages themselves. Everything in computer science is building on what other people did before you. Writing all that off as "leeching off of other people" displays a criminally narrow view of how the world works.

This whole line of logic is a bigger stretch than when you tried to claim that the CBA license legally bound all mods using CBA to be open source.

As for the patch road, honestly we didn't even think of it at first, it came to us in a sleepless night, crunching over how we can solve this situation and still be able to release our work to the public. Someone literally suddenly spoke up and said "why don't we make it a patch?" and then here we are.

This is the problem, though. If you had communicated your desires with other people in the Arma modding community before releasing your mod, they probably would have suggested this course of action in the first place.

You guys do this thing where you sort of almost apologize for going about this in the wrong way at first, then you undo it all by saying, "Well we really had every right to do whatever we wanted in the first place."

Also, this is nothing like patent trolling. The only way it would be like patent trolling is if OpticalSnare tried to claim that you had no right to create an effects mod at all, because he owns the idea of effects mods. What you did (at first) is to use substantial parts of his code without permission. Or, if you intended to submit them to him as a possible fix as you claim, you did it in such a manner that it really, really seemed like you were trying to release an alternate version.

(This thread is definitely going to wind up getting locked, right? Perhaps this discussion should happen elsewhere, although I do think it's a worthy discussion to have.)

Edited July 17, 2014 by roshnak

[zooloo75 834]

Well we can't change the past, and hopecore per se wasn't planned as an addon at first, the first iteration was a bunch of bugfixes that HopeJohnson made and presented to OpticalSnare free of charge and no strings attached to be implemented into BlastCore. He could've just taken them and salvaged from it what he deemed useful and called it a day. But his actual reaction was "I didn't allow anyone to modify my work". This was not being received very well, as he didn't even bother to look at them, instead he just assumed we were trying to take from his glory or something.

To cut a long story very short, we were very frustrated by the time we arrived at our own solution to the problem and the steam workshop. The description and title have since been changed to better reflect what was actually their intended goal.

As for the patch road, honestly we didn't even think of it at first, it came to us in a sleepless night, crunching over how we can solve this situation and still be able to release our work to the public. Someone literally suddenly spoke up and said "why don't we make it a patch?" and then here we are.

I'm honestly very dissappointed just how hostile the modding community as a whole has dealt with this situation. Nobody bothered to look at the advantages this could bring to blastcore ( we offered our fixes and the entire source code multiple times, and were ignored and even hated for it ). Nobody took one moment to say "yes, blastcore really didn't get alot of attention lately, less than it certainly deserves". Some people even went as far as to claim they'd rather use a buggy month old version than to even take a look at what is essentially a community fix. And I know opticalsnare came out of the woodwork every now and then to promise he's still working on it, but the evidence shows differently. The last update for BlastCore was in January or so, that's a long time for what is pretty much the best mod currently out for Arma 3, especially since fixing most of these issues is not a very complex matter.

I don't wanna criticize OpticalSnares work ethic here, and don't wanna jab at how much time he decides to donate to the community in working on this mod. But not doing much AND not accepting help AND denying others from helping AND actively trying to shut down attempts at legally publishing fixes that do not violate his rights as a content creator, all at the same time? Very questionable.

I'm not saying it's like this, but it bears an uncanny resemblance to Patent trolling

Right when OpticalSnare showed disapproval, you should have stopped. You are essentially stealing a work of art from a painter and telling him that you need to add some strokes here and there so other people will like it.

Understand when people give you the, "And who the hell are you?" look.

It's not our fault you guys neglected an author's wishes and continued effort.

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk

Edited July 17, 2014 by zooloo75

[kylejtown 1]

Well we can't change the past, and hopecore per se wasn't planned as an addon at first, the first iteration was a bunch of bugfixes that HopeJohnson made and presented to OpticalSnare free of charge and no strings attached to be implemented into BlastCore. He could've just taken them and salvaged from it what he deemed useful and called it a day. But his actual reaction was "I didn't allow anyone to modify my work". This was not being received very well, as he didn't even bother to look at them, instead he just assumed we were trying to take from his glory or something.

If OpticalSnare didn't want to accept your "bug fixes" and wouldn't give you permission to modify his work you should have then gone off and begun work on your own mod made from scratch.

It's that simple.

[PuFu 4600]

Well we can't change the past, and hopecore per se wasn't planned as an addon at first, the first iteration was a bunch of bugfixes that HopeJohnson made and presented to OpticalSnare free of charge and no strings attached to be implemented into BlastCore. He could've just taken them and salvaged from it what he deemed useful and called it a day. But his actual reaction was "I didn't allow anyone to modify my work". This was not being received very well, as he didn't even bother to look at them, instead he just assumed we were trying to take from his glory or something.

while i understand your pov, and i really don't want to take side nor turn this into a soap opera, some people have bigger egos than others, be it internet fame or other personal reasons it's not even worth trying to find out.

To cut a long story very short, we were very frustrated by the time we arrived at our own solution to the problem and the steam workshop. The description and title have since been changed to better reflect what was actually their intended goal.

As for the patch road, honestly we didn't even think of it at first, it came to us in a sleepless night, crunching over how we can solve this situation and still be able to release our work to the public. Someone literally suddenly spoke up and said "why don't we make it a patch?" and then here we are.

Again, a reaction to a reaction caused by your first action. Especially since you already had a first input, i cannot grasp the reasons you went that way. But past is past.

I'm honestly very dissappointed just how hostile the modding community as a whole has dealt with this situation.

i would say it was partly justified by the way things have been presented, especially since it was a about a "product" pretty well known.

I don't wanna criticize OpticalSnares work ethic here, and don't wanna jab at how much time he decides to donate to the community in working on this mod. But not doing much AND not accepting help AND denying others from helping AND actively trying to shut down attempts at legally publishing fixes that do not violate his rights as a content creator, all at the same time? Very questionable.

While from a "moral" pov i cannot comment (each with its own), from a "legal" pov it is well within his rights. He (or anyone else for that matter) is outside it, if we are talking about external dependent config file (the current form).

That being said, the core problem is the lack of communication outside your "safe bubble", with the (what you seem to sarcastically call) "elders"

@zooloo: this will only lead to an inferior result than the "no result" you stated.

Edited July 17, 2014 by PuFu

[Cephel 10]

This is the problem, though. If you had communicated your desires with other people in the Arma modding community before releasing your mod, they probably would have suggested this course of action in the first place.

We did, multiple times

And they didn't, instead they threatened us with legal action

Again, what you describe is not what happened. Our first request to OpticalSnare with a free and no strings attached set of fixes ( not even intended as an addon, just something that opticalsnare could look at, and steal the parts he likes ), was immediately shut down by people saying "you can't do that" and opticalsnare himself "did not give permission", they didn't even bother to look at what we did, nor what our intention was. We are not at fault here

---------- Post added at 22:18 ---------- Previous post was at 22:14 ----------

If OpticalSnare didn't want to accept your "bug fixes" and wouldn't give you permission to modify his work you should have then gone off and begun work on your own mod made from scratch.

It's that simple.

Right when OpticalSnare showed disapproval, you should have stopped. You are essentially stealing a work of art from a painter and telling him that you need to add some strokes here and there so other people will like it.

Understand when people give you the, "And who the hell are you?" look.

It's not our fault you guys neglected an author's wishes and continued effort.

No, we should've done with what we ended up doing, making a patch pbo, why reinvent the wheel. We like BlastCore, just not the buggy, not-working parts. And also not the yellow. And some other stuff.

If we'd made an effects mod from scratch, you people wouldn't be satisfied either, you'd call us idea stealers or something, we'd be forced to make it intentionally bad / and or intentionally more different from blastcore than we wanted it to be, just so people wouldn't call us stealers. Don't even pretend this isn't EXACTLY what would've happened

You are what we call "fanboys", you defend the object of your praise, trivial things such as us making an addon from scratch wouldn't stop you

[kylejtown 1]

We did, multiple times

And they didn't, instead they threatened us with legal action

Again, what you describe is not what happened. Our first request to OpticalSnare with a free and no strings attached set of fixes ( not even intended as an addon, just something that opticalsnare could look at, and steal the parts he likes ), was immediately shut down by people saying "you can't do that" and opticalsnare himself "did not give permission", they didn't even bother to look at what we did, nor what our intention was. We are not at fault here

---------- Post added at 22:18 ---------- Previous post was at 22:14 ----------

No, we should've done with what we ended up doing, making a patch pbo, why reinvent the wheel. We like BlastCore, just not the buggy, not-working parts. And also not the yellow. And some other stuff.

If we'd made an effects mod from scratch, you people wouldn't be satisfied either, you'd call us idea stealers or something, we'd be forced to make it intentionally bad / and or intentionally more different from blastcore than we wanted it to be, just so people wouldn't call us stealers. Don't even pretend this isn't EXACTLY what would've happened

You are what we call "fanboys", you defend the object of your praise, trivial things such as us making an addon from scratch wouldn't stop you

I guarantee people would not have called you "idea stealers" as long as your mod was made from scratch.

If you had made your mod from scratch the community would have benefited as whole. We then would have had two effects mods to choose from. More choice is almost always better. And had you gone down that path who knows maybe you and OpticalSnare might have ended up collaborating in some form or another, which yet again would have benefited the community.

This community has always supported modders who are making their own ORIGINAL work.

[roshnak 41]

We did, multiple times

And they didn't, instead they threatened us with legal action

Again, what you describe is not what happened. Our first request to OpticalSnare with a free and no strings attached set of fixes ( not even intended as an addon, just something that opticalsnare could look at, and steal the parts he likes ), was immediately shut down by people saying "you can't do that" and opticalsnare himself "did not give permission", they didn't even bother to look at what we did, nor what our intention was. We are not at fault here.

Unless something happened outside of the Blastcore thread that I'm not aware of, I watched as this went down. You posted a compiled addon to the thread. It wasn't compiled. But you guys did post it as an "open-source version of Blastcore A3."

You guys literally posted:

People with Git's are free to fork this and help develop Blastcore from its current state to what could potentially be a great and immersive mod.

Opticalsnare, you are free to take any of the many fixes from the community version and implement it into yours. However, this does not mean all fixes that you submit to Armaholic or to the github will be accepted.

Thanks, and I hope this leads to a greater product!

Surely you can see how this looks like you are taking over this project, even going so far as to tell OS that any updates he submits may not be accepted. This is extremely presumptious.

Edited July 17, 2014 by roshnak

[Cephel 10]

If you had made your mod from scratch the community would have benefited as whole. We then would have had two effects mods to choose from.

And now we also have two effects mods to chose from, what's your point?

[zooloo75 834]

We did, multiple times

And they didn't, instead they threatened us with legal action

Again, what you describe is not what happened. Our first request to OpticalSnare with a free and no strings attached set of fixes ( not even intended as an addon, just something that opticalsnare could look at, and steal the parts he likes ), was immediately shut down by people saying "you can't do that" and opticalsnare himself "did not give permission", they didn't even bother to look at what we did, nor what our intention was. We are not at fault here

---------- Post added at 22:18 ---------- Previous post was at 22:14 ----------

No, we should've done with what we ended up doing, making a patch pbo, why reinvent the wheel. We like BlastCore, just not the buggy, not-working parts. And also not the yellow. And some other stuff.

If we'd made an effects mod from scratch, you people wouldn't be satisfied either, you'd call us idea stealers or something, we'd be forced to make it intentionally bad / and or intentionally more different from blastcore than we wanted it to be, just so people wouldn't call us stealers. Don't even pretend this isn't EXACTLY what would've happened

You are what we call "fanboys", you defend the object of your praise, trivial things such as us making an addon from scratch wouldn't stop you

If you are incapable and/or too lazy to create your own mod from scratch, then you're obviously not cut out to be making a mod of this category. Leave it to those that know what they're doing.

[kylejtown 1]

And now we also have two effects mods to chose from, what's your point?

We don't have two effects mods to choose from, we have Blastcore, and a "Patch" which modify's the original mod, which was made without the original authors permission.

WHICH IS WRONG.

[zooloo75 834]

And now we also have two effects mods to chose from, what's your point?

And now we actually have two versions of the same mod because someone felt that they need to make their own spinoff available. Should be fun when updates roll around and a majority of users get confused and bug the shit out of you and OpticalSnare about the differences and which version they should download.

Oh well, sorry that you didn't have to write 5000 lines of code but did anyways because you didn't respect someone's rights and are now having to deal with the consequences.

[HJohnson 16]

Do i seem that i am talking about of my ass, or that i was born yesterday to you?

No no no, see thats the problem. Including F18 or F16 blah blabh blah just means it'll look like the jet. Yes, technically Crusty could go make NEW classnames with jets. That isn't the point of crust air. It overrides the EXISTING f35b/av8b/f18e and f/ch47 etc.

Its not so that you have new classnames with new jets lying around, it just adds the new flight characteristics to what you already have. This is so you don't have to change any missions or change anything. For example, you don't have RH_M4 and then RH_M4_JSRS one with vanilla sounds and one with JSRS Sounds. I think that is the misunderstanding. He wants to make all the currently used planes use the new air things (I don't know what they are exactly) but from what I understand, the original releases uses so much Arma 2 stuff that he can't override those values of the originals via a patch. Patching can't get rid of previously established things it seems, only adding or changing them.

Again, that doesn't mean you can rip open other peoples work, repack and call it your own.

He's trying to make a flight characteristics mod (which is his own and he can fairly call it his own) that effects all air assets in Arma. But since he couldn't/can't override the Arma 2 variables that are in the classes for whatever reason via a patch, you have to use a repackaged version.

If he were to have uploaded those F18's as "THIS IS CRUSTY'S F18'S AND NOBODY ELSE EVER DID ANYTHING WITH THEM" or if I were to have done "THIS IS HOPECORE, 100% MADE BY HOPEJ" then sure, your arguement would hold water. I gave credit and linked to the original, so did Crusty ( I think).

[JdB 151]

He's trying to make a flight characteristics mod (which is his own and he can fairly call it his own) that effects all air assets in Arma. But since he couldn't/can't override the Arma 2 variables that are in the classes for whatever reason via a patch, you have to use a repackaged version.

No, you have to check the readme and license file (if there's a separate file included) to see if and how you can reuse the content and ask for and receive permission. Only then can you edit the content and release it without replacing or obstructing the original author's content from functioning as it was originally intended in the case of adding to an existing addon unless the original author hands the project over to you or agrees to let you submit your own work to the addon. Otherwise you are adding to bogus bug reports that the original author might receive or even subduing the original addon entirely. Technical difficulties aren't a valid excuse for editing someone else's content without their permission.

Edited July 17, 2014 by JdB

[Tonci87 163]

Guys back on topic, please?

HJohnson made a terrible misstake by releasing his firstversion of the mod without speaking to OS first. Beeing a dick about it on the Forums and on Reddit wasn't very helpfull. I fear that this Community won't forgive that.However I personally don't have any problems with a patch version if all code is theirs.But at this point it is pretty futile since you will be out of source soon.

[Drakenof 11]

Your shit wont work in the next update shit machine, i have changed the method of writing my configs they will be almost impossible to read and edit unless you have the original config file to reference the effects to which you wont have. So when you open up my config again in the next release your be faced with a big fo sign. Btw if you do magically get through my measures that i have employed to MY WORK and start editing MY WORK i will simply change the ID's again which takes about a min for me because obviously i have the orignal and you don't, and everything you did will be broken in your release and you will have to start all over again constantly fixing your release. Bye fucker

How mad and pathetic one can be ?

Take a deep, long look people. This post, this thing as a whole, is what's wrong with the ArmA modding scene in general.

Take a long look. Sometimes i just wish this garbage scene would die for good.

Edited July 18, 2014 by Drakenof

[haleks 8212]

Take a long look. Sometimes i just wish this garbage scene would die for good.

Take a long look, that's a super dumb post.

You ain't helping anyone and just keep bashing on someone who's been bashed too much already.

[Kerc Kasha 102]

Take a long look, that's a super dumb post.

You ain't helping anyone and just keep bashing on someone who's been bashed too much already.

He's right though, that sort of attitude is worse than those stealing from OS as that sort of attitude is what is killing the community as nobody is learning from each other any more.

[bad benson 1733]

Take a long look. Sometimes i just wish this garbage scene would die for good.

what's with the general statements about "the community" anyways? what the fuck do some people they know? there's more going on than some drama about popular mods. many people are modding in their own circles where issues like this are non existent. and the views and sensitivities are as different as they come.

if some people have to use the main channels just to get more attention then they better deal with the consequences, if they behave like assholes. no one in their right mind would support locking down of knowledge or anything. OS is just upset and overreacting. it's really low to take his situational reaction as an example of his or anyone's behavior. HJ has been talking shit about him from the start. what's with that? that for me is the most/only relevant part. is that how you want "the community" to be? is that your vision of sharing? THAT is pathetic.

i'd really prefer random people not constantly drop turds on everyone who makes mods. where is the forums ule against talking out your ass?

as nobody is learning from each other any more

what makes you think that? what's with all the frustrated people and doomsday comments?! do you guys ever ask on the forums? do you ever try to make friends with people with similar interests? do you ever ask people for knowledge? don't cry that no one is throwing things after you...

being dicks to each other surely won't change what you complain about..

Edited July 18, 2014 by Bad Benson

[Cephel 10]

where is the forums ule against talking out your ass?

I wonder that too, considering that this

HJ has been talking shit about him from the start

is a blatant lie

[SonixApache 10]

Can't we all just work together, get along, and make ArmA the best modded game in existence? :)

[maddogx 13]

Thread closed pending a thorough cleanup.

I'm sick of reading this shit.