Oolite Bulletins

Sorry for this, but the textures are not longer available.

This work is to much annoyance for me.

Good luck all
bye
Sung

I really don't want to agrue with you. You have really improved the game!
I take a very open view to anything i submit. I regard anything I submit as the propety of the community to do what they like with. As I've said, I didn't put a link to your texts on Box because I wanted to offend you. I really just thought: "A lot of Ooliters can't use your cool texs as Oosat2 has not been updated. I'll just put them up so other people can enjoy them."

Bear in mind as a fellow Dev, I Submitted an OXP to Osat 3 weeks ago and it has not been updated. It just seemed a shame to me that Ooliters had no way ATM to get your texturs.

I tryed to put your text up unmodified. Rejected. Over 10M, Took out asteroid and notice - accepted. Honestly, I hope you'd take this as a compement. I love your work and wanted to help in making your texts available immedatley. I had to take out 100k to make the text available, as Box would not accept a 10M plus.

Please accept my appolagy for fidiling with work. It was not meant as an offence. Just as a These are really cool! Make em available!

Sung - don't go! Your textures rock, and what LB is saying is that he was trying to help you get them seen by more people. That's why he was hurt when you had a go at him. We all admire your work and want you to remain a part of this community.

How very strange, very sad. Not sure what to make of that - except that perhaps some English/Germanic language/moral code has been broken that we were unaware was there to be broken?

Well Sung's textures are out there - I've got a copy - I'm guessing several score if not hundreds of us grabbed them when they first became available so its not like Sung (apologies Sung if you're still reading the forums for taking your name in vain or talking about you in the third person) can take them back.

So what happened? I'm guessing from LBs post that he made them available via box while Oosat2 is updated and had to strip out the tiniest portion to make it under 10MB limit?

Well if that's it then it's all very ho hum, quite the anti-climax I was hoping Sung would work his magic on some of the other ships out there - imagine the Behemoths done in a similar style - they'd have looked amazing (no offence to Behemoth's original creator - they're fab models as they are).

Well I guess the candle which burns twice as bright burns half as long...

Hmm...

Sung's textures are wonderful and a great addition to Oolite which I would love to see remain available.
But,
If he doesn't feel comfortable with the prevailing attitude here that stuff released if fair game for further use + modifying by others... Then, that's fine.
But,
I would suggest Sung is quite correct and we should stop using his textures.
( There are other graphic-artists )

While I'm pontificating:
What makes me happy, here?
In rough order of importance:
-I release an .oxp - phew!
-Someone says they like it - great!
-Feedback ( +ve or -ve ) shows someome actually tried it - wow! thank you
-Someone uses a part of my output in their own .oxp - something I did was 'worthy' ( perhaps OTT there )

Get it?

@Sung:
Please stick around - you're good, I like your work, but I suspect the above is much the way a lot of contributors here look on their work.
( Ok, maybe I pushed the point a litte far )

@LB:
If at all possible, PLEASE stick around.

@Charile - I was so pleased when Doc took Oo-Haul from YAH and used it as inspiration for one his oxps.

I'm not going to stop using Sung's textures - that would be like LB saying "I've had a few critisisms about Assassins not being completely finished so I don't want anybody to play it anymore - will you all please uninstall it because I'm a bit huffed and you're tweaking my ideas to suit your own personal wants/needs."

(just using you as an example LB - nothing more - Assassins is such a huge oxp that adds extra ships and stuff that's all)

You're right others will come along - you yourself are redesigning (once your PC is up and running again!) the ships and you're pretty damn fine at the old texturing business yourself so you could probably come up with textures that suit the smoothed ships more in which case I will "jump ship" again and continue to make Oolite a progressively "prettier" looking game (without changing the fundamentals of game play)

LittleBear wrote:

The Copyright position of Oolite in general has always been frankly doubious as it is based upon Bell & Barben's Elite. This work is copyrighted to them and their moral rights are infringed by anybody using their models and textures in any way whatsoever.

As far as I’m aware, the models are the only thing that could be argued to be copyright infringement. (This is somewhat unclear, because it could be argued that they’re a separate implementation of a design concept rather than a strict copy, but I’m not going to go there.) The game textures are original work, and Sung’s textures are a separate original work, which are not based on Elite. The code is conceptually based on Elite, but to my knowlege no actual code comes from Elite; as such, it is not a copyright violation. (Game concepts are not subject to copyright, and everyone in the industry would be in a right pickle if they were.)

LittleBear wrote:

Many taleneted Freelance Artistis (such as Ramon and Griff - not even their real names, which rather shows their approch to the project)

People using nicknames on the Internet really does not show anything.

LittleBear wrote:

Sorry. But in my view, YOU CANNOT OWN what you submit to Oolite. We are all ripping off B&B.

LittleBear wrote:

Anybody can do anything they like with anything I submit to the project. Its not my work, I'm using Giles's code and Giles in turn is using B&B's idea's. Nobody should assert ownership or use any Oolite stuff for commerical purposes.

Really? Does a “rip-off” not suggest some sort of financial defraudment? In any case, the “you cannot own” thing is clearly wrong. The vast majority of contributions to Oolite are not based on or derived from Elite. Someone creating original ships of their own design for use with Oolite is not “ripping off” B&B, and owns the copyright. Someone commiting new sound code written from scratch for Oolite, with absolutely no relationship in any way to how sound was handled on eight-bit systems, owns the copyright to that, and is not “ripping off” B&B.

Sung’s case is somewhat of a grey area because some/most of the textures in question are used together with ship models whose design is based on those in Elite; as such, while the textures are original works, the combination of texture and ship is a derived work partially owned by either B&B or Giles, depending on how you interpret the status of the ships.

Was only huffed at the idea of someone attemting to treat OOlite as a commerical enterprise. Everybody I've met on the boards tends to treat Oolite suff they've done as share a like and are always pleased when you use there work. I'm always flattered rather than huffed when somebody take code that I've done and re-uses it. Hell, they woudn't be an Assassins.oxp if Giles, Murgh, Heretic, Womabat and the othe Masters of Code had taken that attidude. I learnt (ie stole) a lot from looking at their code!

The whole thing is a steal from Giles (in turn a steal from B&B), It is arrogant, wrong and dishonest to assert rights to anything. "All of your OXPs are Ours. We allow you to continue" (B&B).

@Ahruman

I don't mean "rip off" in a negative way, but we are plainly copying. Giles's missiontext is word for word a copy of Elite (B&B) in it various versions. And deliberatley so. Giles set out to re-imagine Elite and did so.

The reason B & B don't sue us is because we don't make money from what we do. At least in UK law, a Civil Wrong is either a tort or a Contact breach. Copyright is a tort. You are entiled to damages to put you in the position "as if the tort had not been peformed." Moreover, tort is not actionable without loss. There may be a breach of B&B's copyright, but as long as you don't sell stuff you copy from Elite, B&B suffer no loss and so the tort is not actionable legaly. More importantley, it is not moraly wrong, as you are not using someone else's work to make money. If Giles had never written Oolite (since he does not sell it) how would B&B be worse off? However once you start posting Models from Elite on your own Commercial website and start saying that you are the author, then things get more tricky. You may have done the texture but you didn't do the model. The tort is actionable, as you are using another authors model for Commercial gain.

So as long as Oolite remains "just for fun" and we are not making money out of it, B&B won't take action. But I do think a line is crossed, at least morallay, when people start saying things like a retextured model of B&B's is an adversiment for their commercial services.

I respected the moral rights (in both senses!) by immedatley removing the link. But I think there is somthing wrong with trying to assert rights on what is meant to be a fun project!

My point re: Ramon as a proffessional Graphic Artist, was that you don't see his real world webseite plastered with Deamon Class Crusiers, Mongoose Fighters, Scorpions, Vintage Adders, VIP Transports, etc etc. He submitted these (and other ships) to Oolite in the spirit of the project to be used for the improvemnet of the game not himself. Same goes for Griff!

LittleBear wrote:

"All of your OXPs are Ours. We allow you to continue" (B&B).

I see another NiktOo: 'All your OXP are belong to us!'

Captain Hesperus
"Bad taste, thoroughly bad taste."

OK here's my take:

This BB and community has so far been one of the most selfless and helpful on the net. Giles made Oolite expandable allowing the community to continually improve the game we all love.

LB, in my book you are up there at the very top with Dajt, Ahruman, Dylan etc along with all the other wizards, you must have put hundreds of hours work into your OXP's and we, the Oolite community are totally indebted to you and I personally thank you for helping to enrich this old boys life. Assassins alone is virtually a game in itself, absolutelly superb. In addition you are also one of the most helpful guys on the BB, and I for one really really appreciate what you are doing.

Sung, you are new on the block, your work is excellent, and I really like it, but it now appears that you are just doing it to advertise yourself for personal gain. When someone offers help you declare it as interference, and throw your toys out of the pram, not only that you ignore profuse apologies and rant on regardless like a spoilt child. Heed this advice - Go Away, and don't come back, we don't want you, we don't need you, you are superfluous. As Charlie quite rightly said, there are other graphic artists out there.

@Ahruman - do us all a favour please and put a block on Sung.

Not really going are you LB?

guys, i've made us all an LB signal, beam it into the skies when your shipdata.plist throws a wobbly,

Class!

TGHC wrote:

Heed this advice - Go Away, and don't come back, we don't want you, we don't need you, you are superfluous. As Charlie quite rightly said, there are other graphic artists out there.

@Ahruman - do us all a favour please and put a block on Sung.

I don’t see that this is motivated at this time. Sung’s reactions seem a bit strong – more so, perhaps, because of language problems – but he’s not the only one. Let’s all try to calm down a bit before making any life/ooniverse-altering decisions.

I agree with Ahruman. Just because Sung had a strop about LB 'doing out of his credit', it's no reason to bar him. But at the same time, I agree his response was quite OTT for the situation. Maybe if he'd read through most of the Expansion Pack threads he might have gained a better understanding of OXPing and the way the commOonity functions. No-one here is trying to do anyone out of their dues, but at the same time a little bit of leeway, especially when there's a language barrier, is needed. I do hope that Sung realises that no-one means him ill, his contributions (as shown by the poll) were appreciated and that members of the community even supported him when he was accused of possible copyright/ intellectual property theft.

@LB - I hope you aren't serious about stopping contributing, you have become one of the corner-stones of the advancement of the Oolite experience, and I think the community would be diminished by your loss. Besides, we need at least *one* sane individual here!

Captain Hesperus

Well I don't want to be shouted at for submitting somthing!

Loved your Articale on the Deamon Class Crusier to the Wikki Captain. But how would you feel if Ramon had then posted saying that you had taken his image and he didn't give you permission to use it?

He woudn't and I'm sure he is rather flattered that you decided to use a ship he had desgined. But strickly its the same breach of Copyright. But you don't expect to have other Ooliters behaving like this!

This is not the Oolite Way!!!!