Roadmap change - first standalone release

athanasios · Post by **athanasios** » 08 Jul 2007 23:26

Tekky can you stop please this fruitless discussion?

This is my sun drawing and it is copyrighted. Whoever makes a derivative, I will take him to court.

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » 08 Jul 2007 23:42

*closes curtains*

...just in case

griffin71 · Post by **griffin71** » 09 Jul 2007 00:40

Too bad, for the sun has now gone down over an interesting discussion...

Tekky · Post by **Tekky** » 09 Jul 2007 01:56

Bilbo wrote:How can you find this? Code is in C++, original disassembly was in ... assembler, surprisingly (At least I hope no "higher" disassembler was used which is able to convert some parts of the code to C So technically it is not same (...)

According to this wikipedia article, Interactive Disassembler was used to create OpenTTD. I think this program is able to create C code instead of assembly code, or at least recognize local variables, function calls etc. so that the assembly code can be rewritten to C easily.

From a legal standpoint, however, it is not relevant whether OpenTTD was created using a disassembler or a decompiler, because both are reverse engineering.

Bilbo wrote:(...) though it is "derived work", but same (theoretically) effect would be done if openttd was thoroughly examined without disassembling and then you'll program "the same behavior". Would that make it more legal?

The actual design of the program is also protected by copyright to a limited degree. This means that you would be violating copyright by making your own implementation of a design of an existing game. However, it may be enough to make a few changes to the game design so that you would no longer be violating copyright.

But when it comes to the source code, it is not sufficient to make a few changes. This is because every single function is protected by copyright (as long as the function is more than a few lines long). Also the program structure itself is protected. This means that a complete rewrite would be necessary to get rid of any copyright issues.

Therefore, the answer to your question is clearly "yes". There is a big difference in whether only the design is copied or whether the entire implementation (e.g. source code or disassembly) is also copied, because the implementation has far greater copyright protection.

athanasios wrote:Tekky can you stop please this fruitless discussion?

This is my sun drawing and it is copyrighted. Whoever makes a derivative, I will take him to court.

Nobody is forcing you to read this thread

And this subject is also not off-topic.

By the way, I don't think your drawing is protected by copyright, since only an insignificant amount of 'mental labor' was required to create your drawing. I have therefore created my own derivative work of your drawing. I hope you like it

Archonix · Post by **Archonix** » 09 Jul 2007 09:26

Tekky wrote:
Bilbo wrote:(...) though it is "derived work", but same (theoretically) effect would be done if openttd was thoroughly examined without disassembling and then you'll program "the same behavior". Would that make it more legal?
The actual design of the program is also protected by copyright to a limited degree. This means that you would be violating copyright by making your own implementation of a design of an existing game. However, it may be enough to make a few changes to the game design so that you would no longer be violating copyright.

No it isn't, it absolutely is not, and I have no idea where you get this from. Copyright protects the written code, however it's distributed. It doesn't protect ideas, it protects implementations of ideas. If it protected ideas, like gameplay ideas or general plots, or gameplay design, it would stop innovation dead because you'd only be able to get one implementation of any particular idea.

By the way, I don't think your drawing is protected by copyright, since only an insignificant amount of 'mental labor' was required to create your drawing. I have therefore created my own derivative work of your drawing. I hope you like it

You have very odd ideas about what copyright is. It isn't about 'mental labour' or anything like that. A created work is a created work. Under the Berne convention a work is automatically copyright the moment it is created and nearly all the countries represented on these forums are signatories of the Berne convention. What that means is, any created work, no matter how significant you might thing it is, is automatically copyright the creator. This post is copyrighted to me. I own it. I don't own the idea of making an argument against someone elses argument, which would be an extension of what you earlier wrote regarding copyright of gameplay design.

The legal grey area I spoke of earlier was the reverse engineering, which is becoming less of a problem with each code commit. It was never a particularly huge problem to begin with; decompilers are not capable of producing C code as far as I know. Now, what that means is that it is possible to argue that the assembler code produced by decompiling the TTD binaries and the code that OTTD consists of are two seperate entities, and that the decompiled code was essentially a spec, which makes OOTD technically a clean-room implementation of the same ideas.

It's all very technical though; it'd have lawyers arguing for several years, I reckon, and so it's unlikely it'll ever go to court. Not that it matters, the changes to ottd are so profound from those days that it would be very hard to prove the provenence of the code. At that point, at least in US law, it would seem that OTTD is reaching fair use territory and should be in the clear once the graphics have been changed.

So. Can we stop now? People are getting bored.

kaan · Post by **kaan** » 09 Jul 2007 09:41

Ok, I'm going to bite.

In several countries that participate in the Berne convention there is a rule that for something to be considered as a work that is protected by copyright it has to have a minimum standard of creation. That means that this post isn't copyrighted in these countries.

As for ideas and copyright then I'm not so sure that it isn't a grey zone.
You try and write a novel about a wizard boy named harry that goes to wizard school and lets see what happens

Oh well, I'm done feeding the trolls

Archonix · Post by **Archonix** » 09 Jul 2007 23:36

Well how about you look at it like this: try writing a story where a boy goes to a wizard school and has adventures. Ursula leGuin's Earthsea books, written a long, long time before the famous Harry, start out with a story like that but I don't see anyone encouraging her to sue Rowling. That's because you can't copyright an idea. If the two implementations of an idea are sufficiently similar then yes, you may have a case (for example teh russian author who wrote a story that was essentially the same as the first harry potter book, but which changed details - he flew on a violin instead of a broom, for example) but in this instance, we're talking about a computer game. Different dyamics come in to play with software. Copyright law considers only the code, not the ideas they embody, not the 'methods and concepts' they express; the code itself is all that is measured, and if the code is sufficiently different then it can't be argued that it's the same, no matter what lineage it has.

That's the entire point.

benc · Post by **benc** » 10 Jul 2007 02:00

kaan wrote:Oh well, I'm done feeding the trolls

They're still hungry.

Would it be out of place for me to suggest (1) locking this thread and all others like it; then (2) redirect folks to, say, http://wiki.openttd.org/index.php/Legal ... of_OpenTTD ?

At least that way the back-and-forth would be centralized. And heck, a consensus might eventually form.

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 10 Jul 2007 02:48

benc wrote:heck, a consensus might eventually form.

And there might eventually be a blizzard in hell.

Bilbo · Post by **Bilbo** » 10 Jul 2007 02:53

benc wrote: Would it be out of place for me to suggest (1) locking this thread and all others like it; then (2) redirect folks to, say, http://wiki.openttd.org/index.php/Legal ... of_OpenTTD ?

At least that way the back-and-forth would be centralized. And heck, a consensus might eventually form.

Well, there is nothing there ... maybe put there some page like "See this end of this locked thread for more info

"

benc · Post by **benc** » 10 Jul 2007 03:45

DaleStan wrote:
benc wrote:heck, a consensus might eventually form.
And there might eventually be a blizzard in hell.

Forgive my naive optimism. Still, I say let the hotheads fill up 15 pages worth of blab on the wiki's discussion page. Better than seeing threads like this one pop up every couple weeks.

Bilbo wrote:Well, there is nothing there

Yet. Some enterprising individual can take the first crack at outlining where OpenTTD is, legally. It's a wiki, anyone can edit.

SoofMan · Post by **SoofMan** » 10 Jul 2007 22:49

OK. Got it.

So I understand that OpenTTD is Far, Far, Far Away from standalone version.

Is 1.0 going to be standalone then ?? (Yes, i know it will probably take YEARS to reach 1.0, but I'm asking anyway).

Got plans reaching that far people ?

-------------------------
Well, i could actually help in development a little, as I'm a programmer.

Does anyone know what is the estimated number of lines of code that needs to be rewritten ??

athanasios · Post by **athanasios** » 11 Jul 2007 03:06

SoofMan wrote:Yes, i know it will probably take YEARS to reach 1.0...

DECADES...

(I hope not.)

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 11 Jul 2007 03:08

Once I finish brutalizing the OpenTTD svn servers, ...

Somewhere between 26000 and 130000 lines, probably. Yes, folks. Fully one fifth of the lines in the OpenTTD source has not been changed since revision 1.

(Exact numbers, as of rev 10505: 130544 total lines in the src directory. Of those, 26558 (~20.34%) have not been changed or moved to a different file, even accidentally, since rev 1.)

Bilbo · Post by **Bilbo** » 11 Jul 2007 03:51

DaleStan wrote:Once I finish brutalizing the OpenTTD svn servers, ...

Somewhere between 26000 and 130000 lines, probably. Yes, folks. Fully one fifth of the lines in the OpenTTD source has not been changed since revision 1.

(Exact numbers, as of rev 10505: 130544 total lines in the src directory. Of those, 26558 (~20.34%) have not been changed or moved to a different file, even accidentally, since rev 1.)

Yes, but if you look at "svn log -r1":
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1 | truelight | 2004-08-09 19:04:08 +0200 (Mon, 09 Aug 2004) | 1 line

Import of revision 975 of old (crashed) SVN
------------------------------------------------------------------------

So in fact there were 975 revisions before revision 1 ... but how many was changed between "crashed r1" and "crashed r975" ... I don't know.

And maybe there was even some developement on the source before it was put into svn...

athanasios · Post by **athanasios** » 11 Jul 2007 04:25

DaleStan wrote:26558 (~20.34%) have not been changed or moved to a different file

"Moved" doesn't count. Shouldn't we only count "changed"?

NCarlson · Post by **NCarlson** » 11 Jul 2007 04:53

Tekky wrote:I don't think Chris Sawyer is the copyright holder. The game was published by Microprose which has been taken over by Atari/Infogrames.

Impossible to say who is the actual owner at this time without knowing what contracts Chris Sawyer signed. My understanding is that it is quite common for this sort of software to revert to the author a number of years after it is no longer published. That said, Locomotion not carrying the TT title would suggest otherwise... Has he commented on copyright ownership at any point?

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 11 Jul 2007 05:31

Bilbo wrote:So in fact there were 975 revisions before revision 1 ... but how many was changed between "crashed r1" and "crashed r975" ... I don't know.

There's no longer any evidence of those earlier revisions, so I conservatively assumed that ...

Actually, I just did the easy thing. grep the output of svn blame.

athanasios wrote:"Moved" doesn't count. Shouldn't we only count "changed"?

Well, we should. Similarly, changed accidentally also doesn't count (or, at least, wouldn't). But svn blame isn't smart enough to do either of those.

We have one thing that should act to increase the number of changed lines, and another that should act decrease the number of changed lines. I'll grant that my count can't be proven, but it should be close to valid.

NCarlson: krtaylor once did the appropriate research, and determined that the copyright should belong to Atari. He contacted them, with the intention of purchasing the source code and they said, in essence, "It's not worth our time to figure out if we hold copyright."

Bilbo · Post by **Bilbo** » 11 Jul 2007 13:02

Well, renaming of filenames does not counf for "svn blame", since all .c files were renamed to .cpp about 2500 revisions afgo, yet in .cpp files there are still lines from revision 1. Although copy & paste move (cut piece of code from one file and paste it elsewhere would be "blamed" as a change ... )

DaleStan wrote:
athanasios wrote:"Moved" doesn't count. Shouldn't we only count "changed"?
Well, we should. Similarly, changed accidentally also doesn't count (or, at least, wouldn't). But svn blame isn't smart enough to do either of those.

We have one thing that should act to increase the number of changed lines, and another that should act decrease the number of changed lines. I'll grant that my count can't be proven, but it should be close to valid.

belugas · Post by **belugas** » 11 Jul 2007 13:10

DaleStan wrote:There's no longer any evidence of those earlier revisions, so I conservatively assumed that ...

I do have a revision before the current r1, something like r615, IIRC. There are some differences, but not as much as one would expect. It is pretty close to r1. So I would say your calculation/evaluation is close to reality. I would love to get my hands on the real r1 though...

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