Oolite Bulletins

Aegidian wrote:

No. Top priority is to make a good and better game.

Yup. Not what we're talking about here though.

It would be silly to assume FD don't know about Oolite. Of course they do.

Agreed. Though what degree of awareness is debatable.

And it'd be wrong to assume they could take us down like that (*mimes snapping fingers*), they could try, but it's actually more complex than just asking a lawyer to 'sic em!'.

I guess that boils down to whether or FD is/was concerned about profiteering from Elite, or infringement of copyright (it was both in the case of the previous TNK incident). They swung into action pretty quickly last time. Berlios, oolite.org and aegidian.org are obvious targets for a 'cease and desist'.

Oolite benefits from publicity and to an extent FD benefits from the same exposure (of Elite, DB & IB's part in history and the continued play Oolite offers).

Also agreed. Attacking oolite legally would be very unfriendly to a fan community, but stranger things have happened...

Cheers,

Drew.

Something a little more subtle than a splash screen, perhaps. Maybe a "Want more?" option on the F2 menu that would lead to a very short explanation of how the game is free and that there are new "add-ons" and etc being created all the time and an addy.

That way it might entice a player to take a peek at it since it's right there where he/she/it goes to save their game, but wouldn't be "inflicted" upon them.

Ahruman wrote:

As Giles says, we have no basis for action here, at least regarding the core game. As for CC non-commercial licenses, they explicitly permit the use of unmodified works in “collections” (“such as … anthologies” “which, by reason of the selection and arrangement of their contents, constitute intellectual creations”) – as long as the full license is included or linked to – which probably applies here.

Except for those of us who distribute under a CC BY-NC-ND license...

It seems the 'clone' has been pulled from ebay. The reason given is that the item is no longer available.

Commander McLane wrote:

Ahruman wrote:

My inclination is to ignore it.

I'm inclined to agree.

My inclination is not to. I spend many many hours of effort in making OXPs and i don't see why someone else should make money off it. i KNOW they aren't selling just my OXP or even making them a selling point, but it's a principle. i get to thinking, why shouldn't i put the oxp on ebay myself and charge a £1 a time for it? don't see why my work or Giles' or anyone else's here should fund some lazy cnut's lifestyle.

I might be playing the devil's advocate here, but if someone went to the trouble of packaging Oolite up and selling it nicely, it -might- be quite worthwhile.

Wouldn't you like to have a nicely boxed copy of Oolite with printed manuals and whatnot? I can see that it -could- be a value-add this person was supplying, rather than being a lazy so-and-so getting rich of everybody else's efforts which seems to be the prevailing opinion. Without taking a look at an actual copy we won't know.

Mind you, legality (dubious or otherwise) here nor there, the proper thing for this person to have done would have been to approach the Commoonity and ask for permission - not just for the game itself, but also every other piece of content, artwork, etc. Apart from the standard "we don't want to raise the ire of Messrs B&B", I'm sure some people would have found the concept quite interesting.

Anyway, just a different viewpoint.

Micha wrote:

Wouldn't you like to have a nicely boxed copy of Oolite with printed manuals and whatnot?

It states that all you get is a disc... the box etc is for demo only.

It's 99.9% certain that the perpetrator is lurking as a member of this community, so perhaps this should be discussed more privately

Also it's not possible to get a box printed up economically in small quantities

TGHC wrote:

It's 99.9% certain that the perpetrator is lurking as a member of this community, so perhaps this should be discussed more privately

I'm not that sure, but it's possible. Crawlers are active on all boards, forums, platforms and Freshmeat, Twitter, Facebook and other sites are probably a pretty good source for these companies.

It's most likely not a company, it's an individual who obviously has good knowledge of Elite/Oolite, and he's included Add ons and fiction.
He doesn't have to be a member but he will have access to all the posts as a guest, I still we should be less publicwith this discussion.

TGHC wrote:

It's most likely not a company, it's an individual who obviously has good knowledge of Elite/Oolite, and he's included Add ons and fiction.
He doesn't have to be a member but he will have access to all the posts as a guest, I still we should be less publicwith this discussion.

If he is reading this then it might just have scared him off as his listing on eBay is gone. It would also show any would be seller the amount of hassle they get from the commoonity if anyone else tried it.

TGHC wrote:

It's most likely not a company, it's an individual who obviously has good knowledge of Elite/Oolite, and he's included Add ons and fiction.
He doesn't have to be a member but he will have access to all the posts as a guest, I still we should be less publicwith this discussion.

Raises the question - how much of 'private' can this discussion be? IRC is public as well, a mailing list could include him/her as well, etc.

And I don't think that you'll need that much knowledge to put such a package together. Just grab some screenies from Oolites own page, cut the linked videos together, polish them a little bit and there you are. Every nerd with a computer can do this. Putting the AddOns in that package shows at least that this guy/girl/whatever has a least digged a little bit.

And no, I'm not amused, but hey - I'm not really surprised as well.

Killer Wolf wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Ahruman wrote:

My inclination is to ignore it.

I'm inclined to agree.

My inclination is not to. I spend many many hours of effort in making OXPs and i don't see why someone else should make money off it. i KNOW they aren't selling just my OXP or even making them a selling point, but it's a principle. i get to thinking, why shouldn't i put the oxp on ebay myself and charge a £1 a time for it? don't see why my work or Giles' or anyone else's here should fund some lazy cnut's lifestyle.

What he said. I'll vigorously defend my works in this fashion (Wagar .v. Amazon 2011 ) - they are strictly non-commercial.

Can't tell without looking on the CD precisely what is on it (OXPs and/or fan-fiction), but packaging non-commercially licensed material along with commercially licensed material for 'free' in order to 'value-add' to the commercially licensed material is distinctly fishy. I don't like it. Do what you want with GPL, but not CC BY-NC-SA.

No money is to be made from any of my oolite stuff. Period. Full-stop. Small dot.

Cheers,

Drew.

We're all content with the outcome of this, I think, and between us have re-affirmed our views concerning 'our' game and what can and can't be done with it. If the person in question is a BB regular, or even member!, they will know how we feel, and why.
In a charitable frame of mind I could see this whole episode being the consequence of a 'good idea' that perhaps wasn't researched enough or thought through in enough detail.

Can I suggest that now we should move on, ignore this thread and let it slide gracefully into history.