Danger of popular mods dying off?

[WinkAllKerb'']

Jefferson is pretty young, you can't write anyithing, this thread, thoose posts, some source code without copy past(e), or at least rearranging it, using some letters and caracters, i paid my licence for using caracters i have some dictionnarys at home.

So yes headhunter you must be allowed to use letters and caracters in some way.

As Grey said all modding aspect are pretty easy what miss the most actually are fair doc to get faster in + all supiscion and tackle around the modders forum(s) wich from a "vet." player point of view stink like ... but i can understand thoose who are all scary of each others. NoMrBond will probably react to this etc ...

Speaking of EA & Maxis, i love the fact Ocean Q. sailed away to sea if he can work on some indies plannable natural disaster simulation. some Jule Vernes sub'visions are so true ...

To cross post an answer of what's PoleCatEasy said in one of his thread: dunno if the gaming industry lost it's soul, or intend to sink as many players ones as possbile.

DaMn that's a lot of lost soul sacrified on hypocrisis hostel, we all know who take advantage of this and where it lead ...

WAK before things turn too bad once again, wich in case of ksp will be a terrible waste, but hey it's just a player able to mod advice rearrange this advice the way you want it's not under any licence ...

Edited October 7, 2013 by WinkAllKerb''

[Greys]

WinkAllKerb', in all honesty I can't really understand what you just posted...

The first paragraph seems to assert that you must own a dictionary to be legally permitted to speak english and that's just so not right...

I don't know what the second paragraph is saying at all, but I hope NoMrBond isn't scary of me, I try not to scared at people.

Maxis made a boat?

I don't want to go to hypocrisis hostel...

To be clear and not silly (no offense intended by the above silliness) this last sentence is half the problem of this thread. If your post is not under any license then normally it would be considered to be All Rights Reserved and nobody would be allowed to do anything with what you've said, including quotes of it.

Now, that's purely an example, in reality a forum post is treated as a form of speech and unless said speech is a performance or piece of literature it's just speech and that's not protected under copyright law though it might be protected under some other things like confidentiality agreements(NDAs, doctor/patient privilege) and state/trade secrets, patent laws, etc, all depending on what's been said and what contractual agreements the speaker and listener have set up beforehand.

[PolecatEZ]

I cannot imagine anyone logically defending the premise that limiting a creator's right to control over his or her own work would ever, possibly, somehow encourage mod development. All it does is enable hangers-on to succeed on someone else's hard work - because leaving full control in the hands of the creator doesn't, in any way, limit the ability for others to create original content.

You pretty much just dismissed the entire body of human scientific, technological, and yes, even artistic achievement. EVERYTHING is derivative, its just a question of degree. Scientific progress, for example, is very closely derivative. Even the scientists we think as "great" all whole-heartedly "stole" the work of their predecessors, even sparking a few cat fights which did benefit humanity when the smoke cleared. In science today though, there are many cases of potentially lifesaving achievements locked away due to patent and copyright protection. Tracing the lineage of an idea or an art form is quite a fun topic. In literature, for example, all valid plot types were exhausted by the Greeks 2500 years ago, everything since then is "derivative" crap. Copyright itself is a relatively new legal construct and cultural concept. Lots of stuff in that link, if you're interested.

In other words, those who can, do... those who can't, redo what someone else has done.

And good on them. Why do we need 12 parts packs which have at least half their content as exact replicas of another pack? Why do the creators here need to reinvent the wheel every time, whether they can do it or not, when a simple texture change or part re-size will work perfectly? Why would a designer of a mod who sees everything he needs spread across 4 other plugins need to learn coding from zero just to do the same thing?

Please don't go quoting Jefferson in some attempt to justify appropriation of intellectual property in the name of "liberty". Do you honestly think a Libertarian would advocate taking someone else's work for another's personal gain? Where's the "liberty" in being told one must "share" with others; in being told how one must allow others to benefit from one's own effort?

There was quite a famous case of a "libertarian" that did hold this view.

Nearly every sensible argument regarding protection of artistic or intellectual property involves a right to make a profit. If you remove profit from the equation, it makes even less sense.

This last link is one I read maybe 4 years ago while researching something else, but keeping those ideas have shaded my opinion since then: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/07/opinion/07iht-edsmiers.html?pagewanted=all

I think I've exhausted all energy I care to put in this fight, as it seems like I'm talking right past people with TLDR bs, cheers guys. All the links in this thread are for those interested in another point of view on the subject, I don't think I could improve on any of these ideas any more.

[NoMrBond]

I don't know what the second paragraph is saying at all, but I hope NoMrBond isn't scary of me, I try not to scared at people.

Fear not, I'm not scared of you Greys, you've been polite and helpful each and every time I've heard from you with advice.

The fear in question was due to a request to make some parts which matched the functionality of an indev mod which had, as far as could be ascertained, ceased development. I was already making similarly (but not identically) functional parts before the request, but I didn't want to usurp someones project idea if they were still working on it.

[Tiberion]

And good on them. Why do we need 12 parts packs which have at least half their content as exact replicas of another pack? Why do the creators here need to reinvent the wheel every time, whether they can do it or not, when a simple texture change or part re-size will work perfectly? Why would a designer of a mod who sees everything he needs spread across 4 other plugins need to learn coding from zero just to do the same thing?

.

Because they might actually learn something new if they have to do it themselves, and their work product might actually be better and they might come up with something new. I can speak with some authority on this matter since my first mod (for anything ever, not just KSP) was a derivative of 2 mods that resulted in NovaPunch, and when I moved beyond just adapting those old parts into making my own new content I discovered how little I really knew and jumped in the deep end. There is really no comparison which path is "better" for overall creativity.

And there is a vast difference in sharing of ideas in science and literature and taking someone else's pixels or bits and bytes and just using them. Show me an author who just loads up Shakespeare in a text editor and makes some "corrections" and then releases it as his own work. He would be the laughing stock of the literary world, so I am afraid your example leaks a bit of water.

And I think we might have a different threshold of what is "famous"

[HeadHunter67]

You pretty much just dismissed the entire body of human scientific, technological, and yes, even artistic achievement. EVERYTHING is derivative, its just a question of degree. Scientific progress, for example, is very closely derivative.

If, as you say, there is no original thought or innovation, there'd be no progress. Since the patent office has yet to close, I'm going to state that your claim is inaccurate.

Why do we need 12 parts packs which have at least half their content as exact replicas of another pack?

Why do we need 12 people copying someone else's work, if what you say is true? If you want to cherry-pick parts packs, you can already. There's no need to redistribute the work, unless one holds the belief that they know what people want better than those who actually create original content. There's never been any restriction on how content can be employed for personal use.

It seems the greatest advocates for unrestricted use of others' work are those who do not create original content themselves. They will proclaim that there is nothing original to begin with, but they'll happily cannibalize any of it that they find. The fact is, there are a lot of innovative and original mods, for this game and for others. And for every Kethane or KAS out there, there's a dozen "parts packs" that are nothing more than config hacks.

[PolecatEZ]

And there is a vast difference in sharing of ideas in science and literature and taking someone else's pixels or bits and bytes and just using them. Show me an author who just loads up Shakespeare in a text editor and makes some "corrections" and then releases it as his own work. He would be the laughing stock of the literary world, so I am afraid your example leaks a bit of water.

I agree, some of them were pretty bad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_William_Shakespeare_screen_adaptations

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Re_Imagined_Text.html?id=x4C7JqgDltAC

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/shakespeare-adaptations

Seriously, does nobody else Google before they construct an argument? The money shot though is that William Shakespeare himself ripped off completely other notable works of his day, put his name on them with some very minor tweaks, and released them. Darn the fact that pesky CC-XX-ND 3.0 laws wouldn't be around for another 400+ years - the world would have been spared the scourge of Shakespearean drama. Everything is derivative. Even the pixels. Next thing you're going to tell me is that the Bible wasn't derivative and that nobody changed a few words and released it...

I know I promised, but don't offer such low-hanging fruit.

If, as you say, there is no original thought or innovation, there'd be no progress. Since the patent office has yet to close, I'm going to state that your claim is inaccurate.

It makes for a sentence with a noun and a verb, but otherwise lacks a coherent thought. Progress happens through evolutionary process, in which minor changes nudge things forward. This can be rapid or slow, or even stagnant, but it does eventually budge. The patent office exists for money, where I said that copyright arguments make the most sense. If there were no profit motive, there would be no patent office. Since here there is no profit motive, I question why copyright is necessary.

Why do we need 12 people copying someone else's work, if what you say is true? If you want to cherry-pick parts packs, you can already. There's no need to redistribute the work, unless one holds the belief that they know what people want better than those who actually create original content. There's never been any restriction on how content can be employed for personal use.

Why buy a "Best of" collection album when you could buy all the albums and cherry pick your favorite songs? Its convenient. You could make the argument that people should listen to music and spend countless hours weeding their collections themselves, but some people just want to jump right in and enjoy some tunes based on someone else's arbitrary preferences. If someone were to release a pared down parts pack, I know I would certainly use it.

****if any aspiring hacks or cannibals want to do this for the community, I'll send you my list of all useful mods with open licenses to help you get started****

It seems the greatest advocates for unrestricted use of others' work are those who do not create original content themselves. They will proclaim that there is nothing original to begin with, but they'll happily cannibalize any of it that they find. The fact is, there are a lot of innovative and original mods, for this game and for others. And for every Kethane or KAS out there, there's a dozen "parts packs" that are nothing more than config hacks.

Are you saying that mining resources in a space exploration game is an original concept? Or having a winch? Or robotic parts? I would say these things are quite an obvious progression in a game such as this, and that their creators happened to be the first (or second, or third) with the ability to develop these ideas and win in the war of ideas. Their copyright was irrelevant to their success in this. The last part sounds dangerously like elitism or a personal attack...somehow people that voluntarily choose to contribute to this game should be somehow discriminated against based on their skill levels coming into this. So are parts creators and programmers better people than those that find other useful niches and fill them, cannibals and hacks? Am I somehow receiving the same retirement benefits as you for doing less work? I digress.

Edited October 7, 2013 by PolecatEZ

[Tiberion]

I agree, some of them were pretty bad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_William_Shakespeare_screen_adaptations

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Re_Imagined_Text.html?id=x4C7JqgDltAC

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/shakespeare-adaptations

Seriously, does nobody else Google before they construct an argument? The money shot though is that William Shakespeare himself ripped off completely other notable works of his day, put his name on them with some very minor tweaks, and released them. Darn the fact that pesky CC-XX-ND 3.0 laws wouldn't be around for another 400+ years - the world would have been spared the scourge of Shakespearean drama. Everything is derivative. Even the pixels. Next thing you're going to tell me is that the Bible wasn't derivative and that nobody changed a few words and released it...

Yes believe it or not I have had a literature class before, and my choice of Shakespeare was on purpose indeed because he is the most "borrowed from" author... pretty much ever?

Can you point to any derivatives of Shakespeare that are good, that moved culture forward? There are maybe a couple of the movies that aren't terrible, but would we be worse off if they had not been made?

Nevermind that his works were generally plays that were meant to be adapted and performed and that he fought fiercely to control that to make money in a time before copyright. In fact, he is one of the major reasons early copyright took form in England

Oh, and the actual instances where someone took the manuscripts and rewrote them as a literary piece (those self-same Re-Imagined Texts you linked) are considered particularly abhorrent.

And once again I must highlight the distinction of basing something off of an idea or a theme (in the case of Shakespeare borrowing things) and taking concrete work product (in the case of KSP the pixels and code, not the idea behind a mod.)

Using Kethane as an example - if someone were to code from scratch a new mining mod that functions similarly but doesn't borrow or emulate the codebase or artwork, that doesn't break the copyright. The same applies to written works, you can write on a similar idea or theme and even use the same construction, but as long as you aren't lifting prose or using copyrighted characters, then there is no copyright strike. It might be distasteful and plagiaristic, but not illegal.

I am quickly running out of the will to delve deeper into a copyright debate though, we're deep in the weeds now. My point stands that its a huge reach to say that its better to let people use whatever they want instead of learning the skills on their own, and I reject the notion that copyright "kills" creativity.

It's not a black and white issue, I think there is a place for derivatives or the re-use of assets within the terms of the license, but they must be done responsibly and with some deference to the original author. Trying to replace or destroy the original work is heinous. It's its as simple as "Hey this license says okay, so I should do whatever I want and consequences be damned!"

[PolecatEZ]

The idea was that the underpinning argument is basically "Open licenses only lead to bad things (variously called "disasters", "hacks", etc)"

Creative use of an open license can indeed improve the community, and my own little "thing" (hesitant to call it a mod) has proven this, or at least disproved the above theory.

Another argument is that open licenses creates lazy or morally bad people, or that everyone that wants to contribute must necessarily "skill up". I would argue against this as well, everyone should devote as much time as they like to improving the body of work created for this game. If there is ample opportunity presented to do so, and the niche is not being filled, the ecological vacuum should be plugged for the health of the system, until something better comes along. Most of these little odd jobs don't require massively skilled labor, just creative use of existing tools and parts.

I haven't yet seen any other compelling argument other than the straw man you present in the last paragraph. I'm sure Squad would enforce blatant acts of outright theft without serious improvement, on a case by case basis. I would argue it would be easier to police these extreme(ly rare) acts than enforce a patchwork of licenses and non-licenses. As well, attribution would not be stripped from an open modding policy, so borrowed work would still belong somewhat to the original author. Particularly bad borrowed works would be subject to market forces and disappear quickly, unless it stars Leonardo DiCaprio and then the human race is stuck watching it in high school for millennia to come. If these market forces don't materialize, the community can create standards or a vote system or the like, with voluntary participation.

The last argument is most troubling, which is "Squad wouldn't do that (open license enforcement) because we would all take our toys and leave just the crappy mods behind." - Ayn Rand would have a warm fuzzy about this, if she wasn't such a heartless sociopath. It implies that the mod creators aren't confident in their superiority and hold some kind of fear someone could, indeed, improve upon their work - thus somehow robbing them of...something intangible. Having someone do worse using their work as a basis would cost them nothing and only elevate their esteem. Regardless, it inserts a very emotional stake on things that leads to irrational actors in the system. You've seen a few cringeworthy responses from your own side, I'm sure. To me its like poking a Tea Partier until a racist pops out.

Please don't give me any more cheap target practice, I really feel like I'm spawn camping with the Apache in BF2 now.

[HeadHunter67]

It makes for a sentence with a noun and a verb, but otherwise lacks a coherent thought.

Hey, according to the post to which I was responding, you should repsect it for its artistic and literary integrity!

The patent office exists for money, where I said that copyright arguments make the most sense. If there were no profit motive, there would be no patent office.

Yet, new things would still be invented. The point isn't the patents themselves, it's that innovation and original invention continues to happen.

Why buy a "Best of" collection album when you could buy all the albums and cherry pick your favorite songs?

Because your definition of best and mine are bound to differ vastly. What makes you think we'd agree on music when we can't agree on the rights of the musician?

Are you saying that mining resources in a space exploration game is an original concept? Or having a winch? Or robotic parts?

I would say these things are original concepts in KSP - and the people who created them had to do so from scratch, they didn't copy off someone else's work.

I'm not sure why you'd take anything I say as a personal attack - did you have reason to think I was speaking about you, rather than to you?

[Arran]

I havent digged through all the posts..

But do i think some mods are dying out, yes they are..

The reason why, my best guess is simple, (been there myself) making a mod isnt that hard (relatively speaking ofc) but maintaining a mod in a still developing game that can make your mod go from working to notfunctioning within one update, can be tiresome..

Then with so many people, you will get bugs, on wich some can be pretty hard to solve, and undoubtly also can destroy someones passion, if he/she didnt thought through well enough how much work a mod can be..

In some cases maintaining and updating the mod can become even a daytime job, and you need to be a very special kind of person to keep motivated to maintain some of the more complex mods..

This right away shows how much dedication developers must have to complete a project thats pushing bounderies (like KSP does for example) and makes you repect them even more imho..

We seen allready a number of populair mods from where the creator havent shown any signs of life for weeks or even months in a row, on resons we only can speculate about.. (to busy RL, bored with KSP and moved on, etc etc)..

i seen this happen in many games, not just KSP..

And to me, i only can applaude to modmakers that keep working on their mods volentairy..

[HeadHunter67]

Can you point to any derivatives of Shakespeare that are good, that moved culture forward? There are maybe a couple of the movies that aren't terrible, but would we be worse off if they had not been made?

A minor digression, but I would submit the films of Akira Kurosawa. Any astute student of literature can see that Ran is simply a samurai retelling of King Lear, that Throne of Blood is a retelling of Macbeth, etc.

But I'd caution anyone against taking that as anything like reworking someone's mod - Kurosawa was capable of making old stories new and original and engaging because he did it his own way - the only common element is the theme, and even that is changed significantly.

[Tiberion]

Please don't give me any more cheap target practice, I really feel like I'm spawn camping with the Apache in BF2 now.

Well since we (I mean you) fallen to the lowest common denominator of just being petty, then sure, I think we can just agree to quit now.

I think we have very ably demonstrated why it is very VERY important to choose a proper license when releasing something now, so thanks for that.

HeadHunter: Hmm, yes I suppose those are pretty good examples, and also something that has gone pretty far afield from its origins too

Edited October 8, 2013 by Tiberion

[PolecatEZ]

Hey, according to the post to which I was responding, you should repsect it for its artistic and literary integrity!

I respect that fact that art appreciation is very subjective. As for the patent office, the onus is on them to make decisions about just what degree of innovation has taken place. Having an inventor shout "I iz creativ!" will not guarantee him a patent for anything. This process is very arbitrary, and patent clerks actually need a post-grad degree and pass some kind of grueling certification in order to qualify to make those calls.

Yet, new things would still be invented. The point isn't the patents themselves, it's that innovation and original invention continues to happen.

That was never in doubt, but the romantic notion that creativity strikes from the heavens isn't accurate. The Sternberg approach to creativity is what I taught when I did game design seminars and round tables, whereby I tailored it to suit game design. Its probably the most accepted definition and description of the general process, and you will note that it has little to do with the magical concepts of innovation and originality. Dumbed-down versions of Sternberg's theories can be found in almost every basic game design textbook.

I don't expect you to actually read, but it would be great if you understood that divine inspiration only happens in the movies and that real creativity involves using knowledge and background to coalesce into something that pushes a field forward. Its a very organic process, evolutionary, derivative.

Because your definition of best and mine are bound to differ vastly. What makes you think we'd agree on music when we can't agree on the rights of the musician?

Note that I wasn't talking about your definition or my definition of best. I was talking about the pecking chicken they hired at the sweatshop to select songs they thought were cool and bundle them as "Best of..." or "Greatest Hits of..." albums. Regular people then purchase these albums out of convenience, and if there were no market, they wouldn't continue this practice. I can admit to owning a few myself, and I think they're just peachy. So why couldn't some enterprising individual make a greatest hits parts pack and distribute it - without being beaten up by the "real modders"?

This was just an example, I'm sure there are other meta-mods that can be made. Texture packs that seamlessly blend the looks of two different mods...like space-age aircraft carriers (B9 textures over BoatsR3 parts), or an entire texture pack that gives Kosmos black shading to Novapunch Parts. Why couldn't dead mods, which are still requested, be revived when all that is needed is a simple .cfg tweak? (this is a philosophical, not a legal question, btw)

I would say these things are original concepts in KSP - and the people who created them had to do so from scratch, they didn't copy off someone else's work.

So from scratch they invented their own programming language to articulate what the mod would do? There were no code samples, hook documentation, libraries to borrow from, tutorials, college classes taken in programming, long hours dissecting the work of others...and that's just direct attributions to the work they do, we can't even begin to give credit to their environmental circumstances, outside of their control, that conspired to give them the perfect storm of a programming machine. The genetics and parenting that helped them hone their mathematical ability. The good public schools which some of us paid taxes for to help their skills. The collective knowledge and expertise of tens of thousands of programmers and mathematicians that came before them that contribute to their knowledge...or at least lies at their fingertips. Thousands of hours of playing other games and watching inspirational movies that gave them a solid foundation for knowing what to create.

Nothing is created in a vacuum. Everything is derivative.

I'm not sure why you'd take anything I say as a personal attack - did you have reason to think I was speaking about you, rather than to you?

Seriously, you mentioned those who made "nothing more than config hacks." A few of us here do indeed fall into that category, so yes, you were addressing a categorical group to which I am a part. I honestly can't tell if you're trolling now. And yes, all we want is just to steal your stuff and destroy the community, and burn down something or something, but we're lazy so we'll get to it later. Boogedy, boogedy. Happy?

I think I'm finally done, for reals this time.

I'll be handing out grades for this debate at the end of the semester.

If you want to address any point of mine, send me a PM please.

[trekkie_]

mod makers own their mods (and the direction it goes), simple at that. there's a fundamental difference between freedom of changing or taking over something, and freedom of use. mods are a freedom of use item. keyword: use. not take, USE.

I for example, did a complete remake of an old mod, from scratch, in my own vision. The basic elements of design match, but they're completely unique shapes and textures, along with various other custom differences. making something yourself, from scratch, is the only way to go. If you can't do that, then you have no reason to be apart of any modding.

General part mods are however, timeless for the most part. They typically work with any or most versions of KSP and only require config changes to work properly, if that. Part mods constitute the majority of mods in the game.

For mods in general, you should need the permission of the mod maker to update change or re-release it.....unless those updates are additions you can release yourself third party. Mod makers don't need to take a haitus then possible come back to find their mods are being altered and controlled by someone else, regardless of if credit is given.

[HeadHunter67]

I want to know how someone can argue that copyrights or licenses kill creativity, and then argue against creativity itself? If someone traces an illustration of a comic book character, can they claim they've done something "creative"? Would it not be more creative to learn to draw? I don't buy the notion that just because the pens and paper came before, that this puts the tracer on the same creative level as the artist.

[WinkAllKerb'']

xD @grey, not sure 'koan' usually mean something at all especially when they are spelled with an english as bad as mine, but dare win shake spear evolution of this thread from a rorschach point of view is kinda interesting.

It's a WAK a(like) mole story: When H meet H'it result in a big bang He laugh wich could sound weird @ first but this old story is made from ashes and will also return to ashes without any lie senses hidden in it.

Let's try a /yawn i heard it's communicative.

(N.A.: all word in this post, that are made from letters wich themselves are derivative of some older caracters and ideo/picto-gramm that evolved for thousand years are under the license of almost everyone forgotten who, yes i do aggree memory lacks are sometime convenient to make word your own)

I got a chicken in the garden and it's eggs breakfast time, or may be i have an eggs and then a chicken ... bah nevermind let's focus the break fast.

[OdinYggd]

Looks to me like this thread is really starting to wobble now, and doesn't have enough juice left for the reaction wheels to fix itself.

Mods come and go. That's how it is with software, especially software written by enthusiasts for a rapidly-changing game project.

I remember when the yeti permissions module for Minecraft stopped being usable, that was so frustrating as a longtime user of it on a bukkit server.

But you do eventually find replacements with similar features, the plugin loading changing with the game itself until after a few months or years it barely looks like the game you remember.

If you're really worried about your favorite mods dying out, encourage the use of the more open licenses so that other people can carry on what you created if you aren't interested anymore.