Oolite Bulletins

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

... The problem is that individuals HAVE the OXP, but because the author did not see fit to publish it with a specific license included IN the OXP, those individuals cannot be sure it is legal for them to redistribute it. Bumping it repeatedly will not help resolve the issue.

This is the result of this whole copyright nonsense gone overboard, really. Isn't Oolite supposed to be a hobby project of game enthusiasts, no?

No one even hanging on to a few shreds of barely sane mind is going to sue anyone over using or re-using nearly anything done for this game. I asked a guy working for the media in austria, no judge would even seriously consider a lawsuit about something like that, normally, as long as no money was involved.

How would it look in front of a court if one complained about one's stuff written as an add-on for a game that is a nearly-clone of a copyrighted other game and that has stuff from Galactica, Star Trek, Star Wars, Blake's 7 etc. etc. injected into it via mod, and neither the developer of the original game complains nor Lucas Arts etc., but some guy who has invested a few ten hours of hobby work into it does?

This whole issue is insane. In two quarrels of the past three people (!) of about three hundred mod authors have ever seriously complained about re-use or modification of something they did for Oolite. They were a vocal minority, an extreme minority. And Simon himself has repeatedly said - I asked him - that he is fine with his stuff to be freely used and re-used as long as his authorship was openly declared in that case.

I didn't want to re-open that can of worms originally, but now some of the really good stuff done by people for oolite starts to get the chop due to this copyright nazi insanity. This is crazy! Get a grip people! There are many mod projects out there, and while it is normal for people to sometimes get at loggerheads or be pissed off for a time if together in such endeavours usually it is clear that such projects are in effect open source and, if they wish to survive for years on end, effectively have to be.

Not wanting to attack anyone, but please, get back a sense of the reality of the situation, for everyone's and especially Oolite's sake concerning this topic.

My grumbling 0.2 Cr

L

PS: Cmd. Cheyd, this is no dig at you by any means. I know the legal situation on this in some countries ... between this and reality can be quite the gap. That's good ... or Oolite wouldn't even exist in the first place. So no bad feelings!

Neolite license stuff.
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.ph ... sc&start=0

@Lestrade:
In practise, one can almost always take the risk: does not make it smart advise. Anyway - respecting the authors wishes is just good manners.

And assuming the author cannot be reached and there's nothing stated for or against sharing their Oolite OXP work...we must assume they don't want it shared?