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Released Mods / Re: Terrain Pack considerations
« on: November 28, 2019, 07:34:05 pm »
*De-lurks*
I'm not going to try arguing, since everyone's entrenched by now. I will just point out four things:
Yes. We are not mind readers. This is precisely why licencing and revoking licences was invented. There is no contract until you specify one. Going back and saying 'but there was a contract, everyone knows you can't wear green socks' is very poor form at the very least. I just looked, and neither TP's readme nor the first post in its thread says anything about even 'non-commercial use', nevermind donations. There seem to have been no general restrictions at all, unless you negotiated those with every user of TP you became aware of on a case-by-case basis.
This is precisely what most of those who've argued against this feared, Yankes being the first to fully articulate it. Modding is inherently an activity that consists of taking someone else's work and building on it. Sharing yours and then going 'no, but you can't use it unless you jump through these hoops' basically amounts to violating what little there is that passes for modder ethos. The only truly positive effect of such 'enforcement' is preventing people from claiming someone else's work as their own. That was never the issue here.
TLDR: This is someone I used to respect going for a 'Paid Creations' environment with none of the upsides of actually getting paid. I'm saddened, puzzled and clinging to a small bit of hope it won't transform a significant chunk of the community into a series of walled-off gardens.
*Re-lurks*
I'm not going to try arguing, since everyone's entrenched by now. I will just point out four things:
- A primary the source of this problem is a combination of poor communication and rudeness, most of which can be safely blamed on one specific user of Hobbes's work. But not all of it, unfortunately. Hobbes's reaction was and continues to be over the top and in poor form. And I don't really see anything changing if, hypothetically, the modder was polite, argued for donations being harmless or perhaps proposing to share them, etc. AFAICT Hobbes would still have gone into 'I'll take my toys and go home' mode. Given that he's a long-standing member of the community, a moderator and someone who occasionally tries to set standards, that's not a good precedent. SupSuper recently threatened to ban some users for relatively minor squabbling (aka the 'don't be a jerk' rule). What's going on here is full-blown drama initiated by a moderator. This is not good for the community as a whole.
- 'Authorship' has two primary components: money and ego, to put it bluntly. Both of these are completely legitimate concerns of all authors, I'm not trying to downplay either. But Hobbes's whole point here is to avoid money changing hands, so his motivation must be non-economical, i.e. moral. Moral rights serve three primary purposes:
- to change the behaviour of others (this has, obviously, failed or at least backfired to a significant degree),
- to influence others' opinion of oneself (that's a net loss, if this thread is any indication),
- to make yourself feel good about your work and its usage (TP is being stripped down and getting less used in the future, so ...).
"I will also personally no longer consider you a honorable member of the modding scene."
- What is the problem with donations, exactly? I'm also generally ill-disposed towards modders making money from their work, but for a completely practical reason: it encourages 'copyrighting' mods, hoarding and not sharing your work, cliques, drama and squabbling, all of which significantly damage any modding scene. Witness e.g. Bethesda's 'paid Skyrim mods' debacle. What was Hobbes's solution to donations? Diving head-first into the same kind of behaviour.
- As Meridian pointed out, for all practical purposes the Terrain Pack is now a standalone mod. It's not going to be included in anything more than a light compilation unless the authors are willing to waste tremendeous amounts of time building some sort of scaffolding around the Terrain Pack. If they're even going to do that, because Hobbes might find a new pet cause two years down the road and forbid using his work to anyone using Wolfenstein sprites, or partial nudity, or wearing green socks.
And e.g. FMP would now be either dead or frozen if Solarius didn't have to perform the same kind of updating work for the XCF. This is sabotage, even if it's sabotage with some good intentions attached.
Are you saying that anyone has the right to do whatever they want with my work because I haven't specified its uses?
This is a basic principle behind all contracts:
Yes. We are not mind readers. This is precisely why licencing and revoking licences was invented. There is no contract until you specify one. Going back and saying 'but there was a contract, everyone knows you can't wear green socks' is very poor form at the very least. I just looked, and neither TP's readme nor the first post in its thread says anything about even 'non-commercial use', nevermind donations. There seem to have been no general restrictions at all, unless you negotiated those with every user of TP you became aware of on a case-by-case basis.
...modders realize their rights and also start demanding that they are respected, then I can assure you, from the private messages I've been receiving through this whole affair from other modders, that you're going to see a lot more 'Cease and desist' notices happening.
This is precisely what most of those who've argued against this feared, Yankes being the first to fully articulate it. Modding is inherently an activity that consists of taking someone else's work and building on it. Sharing yours and then going 'no, but you can't use it unless you jump through these hoops' basically amounts to violating what little there is that passes for modder ethos. The only truly positive effect of such 'enforcement' is preventing people from claiming someone else's work as their own. That was never the issue here.
TLDR: This is someone I used to respect going for a 'Paid Creations' environment with none of the upsides of actually getting paid. I'm saddened, puzzled and clinging to a small bit of hope it won't transform a significant chunk of the community into a series of walled-off gardens.
*Re-lurks*
Maybe "ichthyic" sounds most cthulhish. 