*disclaimer* I have played A3L, and am still an active member of the community there. I also donated $30 as a gold donation in order to be white-listed as a civilian. I actually have no real understanding of scripting at all especially in arma 3 so it is very difficult for me to make an accurate observation with regards to what has been taken, script/mod framework wise. I am also currently only 18 and have little/no legal experience so if you after reading that decide my opinion will be invalid then I do apologize and don't waste you're time reading this. I also make no attempt to deny this post will be as biased as can be but I will endeavor to be as honest as I can.
In terms of my A3L playtime if this interests anyone I joined late sept of this year. I was a civilian for a while running around doing not very much but enjoying myself greatly, eventually attempting to become a lawyer in the virtual lakeside world, this was pretty tricky given the framework in the mod currently but I did my best, after struggling for a while I decided to apply to be a member of the EMS which I have been for little over 2 weeks now and again have greatly enjoyed it especially with the new CSE update.
Now I know this isn't an issue with A3L itself and the game-play but how it is run. The issue with regards to donations is an issue of BI's TOS and is an issue between BI and the owners if A3L and this does need do be disputed between them, and as this has developed it seems clear to me A3L now has BI's attention and it is there job to investigate that further if they so desire. I'm sure if someone does have solid proof and yes because of the legality of the issue they would need to contact BI directly and I would advise that instead of posting on this thread. So far from what I have read the evidence you seem to want to take is that of a YouTube comment. Now don't get me wrong it may well be the case but that scenario is very unlikely from everything I have seen. It is very very easy to get hold of a gun and very very hard to get hold of a project lead, I myself have waited for hours firstly to get white listed and at times after that waiting for an admin which sometimes never even happens, I know this is a separate issue ad little to do with this but it does bare weight on the validity of the claim. There is also the issue of the age limit for A3L which is 16. All in all the evidence is rather weak and circumstantially from what I have seen highly unlikely. And without the valid proof I would discount it entirely, as anyone can post almost anything on the Internet as you should all be aware.
Furthermore there is the issue of the use of peoples modded work without their permission, in particular Tonic and Robert Hammer. The main issue people seem to have is they see whoever that PayPal donation goes to massively profiting from others work. Now profit is a net gain. Due to the situation of A3L's accounts not being made public this is a big issue, numbers don't seem to add up, there's no way server costs could be as much as donations. Currently as I mentioned there is no actual figures so no way of telling if this is right or wrong. However even if all the donations are not spent, so long as they are put aside for later use for the mod there is no commercial gain from them at all. If that money is not spent beyond mod expenses including a stockpile for later use then it cannot be counted as profit. Now I'm going to make the assumption here that this must have been discussed with BI and more in depth detail been given to them but based on the current seeming lack of action from them I'm going to assume that no profit is made. It not like there is any advertising on the website or an ad-fly link for the download at all either. So if donations are clean A3L is clean. However I do think that either the financial info should be made public or at least given in full to the mod makers.
As to the issue of using mods without the authors permission, now I am a little bit out of touch with this one I will admit but it appears the most aggrieved is Tonic and Robert Hammer has been aggravated to the point of requesting A3L stop using his content. I do struggle a little bit here to understand why mod makers get so upset. I understand if their work was being taken and claimed it was made by someone else then I would understand the frustration but I don't believe this was the case, A3L was always a collection made by many different developers as far as I was aware and if I had inquired as to who made what I'm sure I would have had the correct answer I just never did, like so many other people I just enjoyed what was there. In the same way you don't really look for the makeup artist assistant in a movie I didn't check out who made this and that. I would also understand the frustration if there was profit from their work that they missed out on or didn't want out of principle but that issue is covered earlier and impossible to determine at the moment. I have to say I find mod makers wanting to reserve the right to stop people using their content that they released to be used very frustrating. Why would you make content if you did not intend for it to be used, it's hardly used for a negative purpose, profit-making ignored. Personal disagreements should hardly make mod users suffer. To use an analogy; there is a sports coach who takes a team to practice, and the teams having real fun practicing and it's all great until the pitch owner turns up and tells them all to leave simply because it's his pitch and he doesn't like the coach maybe because they had an out of sport argument or even because they don't like the way the coach coaches (makes the mod run). The pitch was intended to be used for sport and if it's not used there's an empty pitch and the pitch owner doesn't gain the only thing is the people playing miss out. I also feel like the users who are trying to get A3L taken down are like passersby who saw what happened and go tell the coach that he can't play because they heard the pitch owner say so again probably because they don't like the coach or the way he coaches. Same principle applies no-one really wins just the players lose. And I know analogy wise I'd be a player but I'm trying to be neutral here and I still think it's a fair point.
I don't think this what appears to me which hunt to get A3L taken down is very beneficial to anyone, keeping down the analogy route only the players lose, you passersby win nothing nor really does the pitch owner. I guess a suitable alternative would be to give suggestions to the A3L team about how the could improve their coaching. Maybe you want clearer financial info or more obvious credit given which would be understandable. (Still think it's a bit silly as a passer by but maybe you own a pitch elsewhere or something so a bit of modder on modder empathy comes in). But I do believe trying to shut down A3L and close the pitch is not the right path and one in which there would be no winners and there are other paths available with multiple winners.
Just my two cents, many thanks if you actually managed to read it all.
Dom
