Copyright-infringing on OpenTTD services (BaNaNaS, wiki, ..)

[wallyweb]

please visit the next thread: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=61265 .

Done!

[audigex]

WELL THIS IS MATURE!

Jesus, people, can we have a bit of decorum?

OpenTTD needed a system to deal with potential copyright issues when flagged. There was one, it possibly wasn't adequate or well publicized enough and caused an issue. Steps have been taken to rectify this. Further steps may need to be taken, let's leave that to the team.

There's no need for throwing your toys out of the pram.

[orudge]

Things do seem to have settled down a bit in the two months since the last message was posted here, at least.

[SquireJames]

Apologies if this is going over old ground, but I find myself somewhat astounded by what I have read.

I think the first big huge enormous points that have to be made are as follows;

A) It's just a small collection of pixels, and some NFO/NML code. You aren't fighting over a Van Gogh here.
B) None of you are (or at least should be as far as I am aware) doing this for monetary gain. Surely this renders any "Costs and/or Expenses" completely moot. Whether there is a pirated file up for an hour or a year, it's not taking any business away from you, or costing you anything directly. If you choose to jump in with both feet and start throwing legal bits of paper around, well that is your expense. It's like you standing outside my house and wanting to talk to me, and me choosing to smash my front window rather than open the door, then demanding you pay for it. It was my choice to do something that would involve personal expense. Gone through correct channels (i.e the door) it wouldn't have cost anything.

Still baffles and saddens me. I've been a part of several modding communities and none of them have ever kicked up quite as much fuss over copyright as certain people do here. Sure, one group was worried that the release of an importer (think of it as the decoding bit of GRFCodec, allows you to open other peoples GRFs) would mean a spate of 'stolen' models, which was a particularly strange paranoia of that particular community. I guess it's the scope that makes me giggle too. Not undermining what anyone does here, but these communities are dealing with 3d models, detailed textures, complex coding and so forth, and the most successful ones do commercially release their work. Think Day of Defeat or Red Orchestra. All we're doing here is editing tiny pixels from an almost 20 year old game, which we can never commercially profit from anyway. Seems a mountain out of a molehill.

The other very saddening thing is it's always the same few names that crop up time and time again. I shan't mention them specifically of course, lest I suddenly be accused of libel or something, but it's always those same two or three names. Makes you wonder whether they have anything better to do than obsess over someone altering their specifically pattern of pixels. I know that sounded sort of offensive, bluntness is a part of my condition i'm afraid, but it's true. There are more important things to focus on in life.

To use an analogy I thought of the last time this raised it's ugly head, we're all children in a sandpit. There are bigger kids in bigger playgrounds that get along just fine, even when more serious issues arise. Some of us here however seem to be unable to move beyond "Mrs Teacher! Jimmy took my spade without asking! That's steeeealing!"

If, and this is a sort of big if since I am not exactly good at this NFO lark and NML is coming along, albeit slowly, but IF I end up actually making a working GRF that I could actually release (as opposed to PNGs for other GRFs that someone else codes into their set) then frankly, it's completely open. Anyone can do whatever they please with it, and edit it in any way. I'd like credit where it's due, but it's completely optional and completely unenforceable. You decide to try and claim my work as your own? Well, you and I will know the truth, and it's up to you how you feel about that.

There is my "Official License" in writing

Moderators, sorry if this is stirring up a hornets nest but I felt the need to put my view across, which is what forums are all about right? People putting across their points of view and discussing them.