it seemed the polite thing to do. I really do thing we should all approach the project with this attitude rather than worring overmuch about the legal position! Its the friendliest board this side of Reaidquat after all.
Well said LB there's no substitute for common sense. Mind you Kaks seems to have gone AWOL...............you don't think.........he could be...........sleeping with the fishes do..............do you?
Send the Kakssignal and we should be seeing the Kaksmobile soon... Please? and play the theme songnanananana kaks man...
Thanks, Ahruman and Little_Bear, for reminding us again of the correct legal framework. I don't think I will ever get my head around it, and for everyday practicality I simply prefer to think that we all are working together on the project that is Oolite, and we do so in a spirit of helping out each other. Which of course means communicating one on one with the person whose ideas/script tid bits/whatever I would like to use.
So--and as neither the readme nor anything else around Ionics contains any copyright related statement--it would indeed be appropriate to contact Galileo, if you would want to do anything with Ionics.
Or just leave it as it is. (Although it would be too late for that, because the current bug-fixed version 1.2.1 is in fact already post-Galileo.)
I have no idea about scripting(yet!)and im not Rumpole of the Bailey so the legal technicalities are way over my head.
Cant some one just re-write Ionics and call it something else(Ramalamadingdong Inc.) and finish it off at the same time whilst putting in all the disclaimers needed(Ahruman knows!)so that EVERYONE in the ooniverse can tinker with it.
Different ships, different planets, organisations etc.....
Similar but not in breach of any "rightsholders"(?)rights?
Shame Ionics was abandoned.........
Where do i get a cloak for my SuperCobra from(Tangent, sorry.....)
In UK law interfering with this is a tort (or civil wrong) if and only if loss is caused. A tort (unlike a contract breach) is only actionable with proof of damage. So IMHO an OXP author would have no cause of action at common law if another OXP writer used his textures or any other part of an OXP in another OXP as he has suffered no loss by the other's actions. Doing so without asking or at least crediting the oringinal author in your readme would be rude and basicly not cricket, but not legaly actionable.
I’m not familiar with the details of The Intellectual Property (Enforcement, etc.) Regulations 2006, the UK implementation of Directive 2004/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. However, the implementations in several countries (including Sweden, if the proposed implementation bill passes) include the rather novel idea that copyright holders can demand damages in proportion to their interest in stopping repeat offense – an “interesting” conflation of civil and criminal law concepts, I’m sure you’ll agree. It also (more famously) gives right holders the power to demand personal information in cases were (at least in Sweden) the police would not be allowed to due to privacy concerns – although this part of the directive was ruled non-binding by the ECJ earlier this year (Promusicae v. Telefónica). The publishing lobby in Sweden has listed the UK as one of the countries where similar measures have been successful, but since they have a demonstrable tendency to lie through their teeth on such matters I won’t take their word for it.
Regardless of current implementation status, this is the direction copyright law is heading (for example, through the still-in-process criminal measures directive and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), and changes to copyright law tend to be applied retroactively (apparently to further incentivize the creators of the past, so they don’t suddenly decide not to have created Mickey Mouse, Space Oddity, etc. after all).
However, this is really a digression, and I didn’t intend to drag work into your Oolite-twiddling time. :-) The real points are:
By putting a license statement in your OXP’s read me file (and wiki page), you avoid any question – whether ethical or legal – over how your work may be used, and thus avoid setting it adrift in “rights limbo”. (We don’t have license statements for Oolite and clarification discussions just for the fun of it.) The Creative Commons ones are nice because, among other things, they have simple explanations in plain English (and various other languages).
Ethically, the correct thing to do if no license is specified is to ask. If the original OXPer is around it’s polite to ask even if there is a license; chasing them down if they’ve left the Oosphere when there is a license could be considered either the polite thing or rather rude depending on your perspective, so that’s a matter of personal judgement. If there’s no license and you can’t ask, well, you can either consider the OXP untouchable (the aforementioned rights limbo) or you can exercise some common sense in trying to guess the author’s intent.
You’re not likely to get in any actual legal trouble over an OXP, unless you write a Star Wars one that becomes wildly popular.
