Modder's view of personal (unreleased) edits of their mods?

[anxcon]

we all know mods have licenses, most of time that's chosen for public usage
i'm curious what modders think of Joe Do-Little editing it, compiling, and using JUST FOR HIMSELF

EDIT: not asking legality or permissions etc, asking how modders feel! nobody ever mentions it

Edited April 14, 2016 by anxcon

[Superfluous J]

How would the modder even know? Can't care about something you're not even aware of.

That said, I don't think legally (at least in the US) you're in any way restricted from modifying the code in any way you see fit for your own personal use.

[stupid_chris]

4 minutes ago, anxcon said:

we all know mods have licenses, most of time that's chosen for public usage
i'm curious what modders think of Joe Do-Little editing it, compiling, and using JUST FOR HIMSELF

In 99% of the time, doing anything for personal usage is permitted, even most restrictive licenses. It's when you release said forks that it can become a support nightmare when the mod is still very active.

[anxcon]

yes yes ignoring that whole "can i legally do it", i'm after feelings! i never see someone mention it

[stupid_chris]

1 minute ago, anxcon said:

yes yes ignoring that whole "can i legally do it", i'm after feelings! i never see someone mention it

Someone apt enough to modify my code to do something he wants is forcefully aware of the risks, so it's not like id care. The only problem I would have is if/when that finds itself in the hands of someone who does not acknowledge these risks and then asks me for support.

[Andem]

If someone is happy with every feature save one, PLEASE make changes to it. I would prefer you not spread it around without my permission, but so long as you're happy to recompile and support your version.

[JohnnyPanzer]

I chose " I like they enjoy at least part of my work, even if they do change it".

I mod because I enjoy making models and trying to wrap my head around some basic code. Every download is just a huge bonus. Someone liked something I made. Yay! If they want to change it, they still must have liked some part of it. Still yay!

[tg626]

I voted "If you don't release it, and it's just you using, knock yourself out" but I'd add , lemme see what you did and maybe I'll roll it into the official version.

[Teknoman117]

Happened to notice @Thomas P. mentioned Kopernicus.  

Bryce Schroeder (the other guy that started it) and I had quite a vision for Kopernicus when we started it, part of it was that I needed a break from some crappy contract work I got myself involved with.  Unfortunately after a few months I was back at university and I had no time to work on the mod, and Bryce was trying to finish his master's degree.  I left it for a bit and it stagnated, which means we ended up with a cobbled together solution (anyone remember KopernicusTech?) of a few different mods that only worked so well together. 

Personally, I felt a bit flustered seeing KopernicusTech, not because I was upset about people using my code (I lost that right when I uploaded everything to the internet for free), but rather that my vision of a well designed, no compromises on quality mod had become what it had become.  This wasn't meant to insult anyone who was working on it, but we all have to agree it was a stop-gap until something better came along.  When we originally set out to create Kopernicus, the only other "planet adding" mod was Planet Factory, which while it functioned, was a very "hacky" solution.  It was also released under a restrictive license ("no modifications of this source without my explicit approval" kind of thing).  Since the developer disappeared, this meant we had to start from scratch, although I will admit I looked at the source for some hints into how some things worked.  We knew that since Kopernicus had a significant potential to become a large mod in the community, if either or all of us had to deal with real life, we didn't want others to have to start from scratch.  This is why we chose to release Kopernicus under the LGPL license.  Regardless of how we "felt" about things, development could continue.

Needless to say, ~a lot~ of people shied away working on Kopernicus because the PSystem replacement Kopernicus uses is arcane and undocumented at best.  Especially after having to fool Unity into doing some strange things (I spent 2 weeks attempting how to create prefabs at runtime).  Either way, when Thomas came along and wanted to take over development, he made a fork and submitted some pull requests to change things.  After talking to him for a few weeks he seemed to understand what we had wanted to do with it so I gave him access to the main repository.  That was a bit over a year ago now.  I was wholly ecstatic that someone wanted continue where we left off, because I really wanted this mod to be a thing but I myself was trying to finish my degree, and I couldn't afford any distractions (I'm graduating in a month finally, and got a job at Sony Computer Entertainment America (the playstation people)).  

Either way, this is basically my thoughts on the matter.  Everyone who is modding KSP should be doing out of enjoyment for some reverse engineering and project development.  If you're only programming for the fame, you're doing it wrong and eventually will burn out.  We're a community here - modding isn't easy, and people tend to enjoy the results.  If someone else wants to contribute to your mod, or hell, take it over it you're unable to continue developing it, be happy that someone enjoys your mod so much their willing to contribute their time to it's development.  If you see forks of your mod running about and you're intent to centralize your mod for compatibility's sake (basically what i did when KopernicusTech was around), figure out WHY people are forking and having multiple versions.  Kopernicus's reason was because the planetary configuration was in one file which belonged to the mod (System.cfg).  This sparked the idea to fully support (and require) ModuleManager, which enabled multiple independent planet packs to peacefully coexist in one installation.  I went around to the most popular planet packs whose developers would open a dialog with me about supporting module manager, and also consolidated all the Kopernicus forks when the PQS modding system was completed.  From what I could tell at the time, none of the developers were upset at this, and it made Kopernicus just that much better.

TL;DR - we're all supposed to be doing this for fun.  Be happy someone enjoyed your work so much as to contribute to it or attempt to continue to improve it when you're unable.

Also, this is a very relevant article in this scenario - http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/forking.html

Edited April 18, 2016 by Teknoman117

[Kenobi McCormick]

If I were a mod creator I would encourage it, hell, I may roll that patch into the official thing. Save me the trouble of porting it, stab your name in the credits, go from there. Welcome to the team, the coffee's cold the cheezits are stale but we have more mello yello than god!

[jwenting]

Don't expect me to support your custom modifications of my software, and don't release them to the public without verifying with me. If you can agree to that, feel free.

I don't do KSP mods, but that's always been my policy when writing software.

[sarbian]

On 14/04/2016 at 9:40 PM, Thomas P. said:

The only exception is when a fork is made just to avoid things like CompatibilityChecker for KSP version updates (I never locked on Win64 or so), or if the forker is an incompetent person that has no idea what he is doing and just wants to get rep / fame. Then I would get kind of angry, and would say my opinion in the public, because Kopernicus has such a large userbase, that I a) don't have the time to deal with bug reports that are caused by stupidity and b) don't want that thousands of people get their saves destroyed because of fork who are advertised heavily but don't work.

This