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Discussion regarding unathorised forks of mods and their distribution


Camacha

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*Snip*

Now let's talk crayons.

This is less a case of slapping someone's hand because they want to borrow our crayon, and more a case of us, as the provider of crayons, getting annoyed because little Veruca decided to break the crayon in half. I didn't think I had to tell people, when borrowing my crayons, that they should not melt them or break them in half (because now I have people complaining that I distribute broken crayons and that's not fair). So in the end it is easier to just not let people borrow the crayons. It's sad, but it's the truth.

*Snip*

Mostly stayed out of this conversation because it seems like a flame war with no real objective... and since i use 32bit it doesn't matter to me one way or another...

But...

Sometimes, interesting things can happen when you break (or melt) the crayons.

crayon4.jpg

Melted-crayon-rainbow-1024x809.jpg

I can pretty much guarantee crayola never planned on people melting their crayolas like this... However i highly doubt that they care what people end up doing with their crayolas one way or another.

I personally don't see the point in forbidding mod usage on 64bit. Some people will be able to use it with no problems, and others will happily live with the problems.

If a mod author doesn't want to support it, that is also their choice. As soon as someone posts anything to do with 64bit they lose all future support or response. Whacking your users with a ruler because they simply dared to use a mod on 64bit however seems counterproductive to me. And since all mods require open source there will always be people re-enabling 64bit one way or another.

I am not, in any way shape or form, trying to say what is right or wrong... Simply pointing out what is.

Personally i think both sides should step back and calm down though... Because flame wars like this is what really poisons people and drives them away, and when tempers are running this hot on both sides, it is very easy for simple misunderstandings to explode into major issues.

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If a mod author doesn't want to support it, that is also their choice. As soon as someone posts anything to do with 64bit they lose all future support or response. Whacking your users with a ruler because they simply dared to use a mod on 64bit however seems counterproductive to me. And since all mods require open source there will always be people re-enabling 64bit one way or another.

It's easy to say when you are not the one who has to sort between the real bugs and the x64 crash in his mod thread.

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Okay, this thread went places over night.

Can we all take a step back and let things develop at this point without making the pile of bile this thread is turning into even bigger?

1) Any harm done by the release of the mod of a mod (64-bit enablers in this case) has at this point been totally overshadowed by the harm the community is doing tearing into itself on this issue.

2) Any changes mod makers are going to make due to the presence of this mod have at this point happened.

3) It has only been 5 days since Senshi released his 64-bit enabled versions, that is not enough time to determine anything about what sort of lasting impact it is going to have. Can we at least give this a few weeks and see what the initial results are before we start trying to change the rules we play by to fix a problem that we actually have not identified the specifics of?

4) If you are going to post in this thread, please stop for a minute before hitting the post button and make sure you post is both civil and relevant to the thread. We have passed the point (probably several pages ago) where any meaningful discussion happened and people have locked into their positions and are screaming about it, but won't hear the opposing sides argument over their own voices now.

Again, the damage this community is causing to itself by "discussing" these mods is vastly greater then any damage the mods themselves are causing, so can we all please take a deep breath and remember we are all KSP players here?

Thanks,

D.

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It's easy to say when you are not the one who has to sort between the real bugs and the x64 crash in his mod thread.

Require full crash logs before doing anything, and go from there... I'm not trying to say it would be easy, but it would be easier than this flame war that, in the end, wont change anything...

And people use software, however they want to, all the time. Be it how the author wanted it used or not. Just look at all the DRM cracked software on torrent sites and everywhere else...

With the requirement of open source for KSP mods, that just makes it all that much easier, and thus inevitable. At the end of the day you will never force everyone to act the way you believe they should act.

If a Mod author truly cannot accept that on a fundamental level, then they would be better off keeping their mods private, or sharing them "As Is". No Support for anyone, or only people the author knows and trusts. Yes the community will suffer, but at least the person donating their time wont have to.

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I can pretty much guarantee crayola never planned on people melting their crayolas like this... However i highly doubt that they care what people end up doing with their crayolas one way or another.

I think the major point here is that Crayola would care if it's something which would hurt its business. What you posted does not hurt Crayola's business, and probably helps them (at the very least due to the sale of those crayons).

In a similar fashion, modders care when somebody does something which causes excess bug reports to land on their laps. I suspect many of these modders would be happy if somebody added features to their mods, stuff like replacing all 30 TAC life support canisters with two size-tweakable canisters. The only thing they can possibly expect to get out of this is more x64 bug reports. Hopefully it's not many x64 bug reports, but I see why the modders are pessimistic about this.

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And I never said I care about the platform they run it on. If it please them they can run my code on a mainframe.

The only thing I care about is that my support thread is full of noise. And asking for more info does not lower the noise. When we add measure to lower the noise level we are not pleased that someone lower the bar behind us. The problem is not use of the code by people who understand what they do, the problem is making binaires available to people who don't care about why we did it in the first place.

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I think the major point here is that Crayola would care if it's something which would hurt its business. What you posted does not hurt Crayola's business, and probably helps them (at the very least due to the sale of those crayons).

In a similar fashion, modders care when somebody does something which causes excess bug reports to land on their laps. I suspect many of these modders would be happy if somebody added features to their mods, stuff like replacing all 30 TAC life support canisters with two size-tweakable canisters. The only thing they can possibly expect to get out of this is more x64 bug reports. Hopefully it's not many x64 bug reports, but I see why the modders are pessimistic about this.

The crayon example is simple and it only goes so far... But at the end of the day nothing said in this thread or done on these forums will make everyone agree. You cant fight human nature. And you cant control how someone uses or abuses your work after it leaves your hands.

The best you can do is say "Don't do this." and when they eventually do it, say "I told you, don't do that." and ignore them.

Thus curling irons with labels warning not to be inserted into bodily orifices. No matter how much you try and idiot proof that curling iron, including forcing people to wear a chastity belt before using it, they will still manage to abuse it if they want to. At the end of the day you cannot stop some idiot from doing it, the best you can do is warn them it is a bad idea and move on.

If however you truly cant live with the idea of some idiot abusing your curling iron, your only real choice is to not make it, or only make a few and give them to smart people you know wont abuse them.

Again, a simple example that is by its very nature flawed, but i hope it gets my point across.

*Edit*

And I never said I care about the platform they run it on. If it please them they can run my code on a mainframe.

The only thing I care about is that my support thread is full of noise. And asking for more info does not lower the noise. When we add measure to lower the noise level we are not pleased that someone lower the bar behind us. The problem is not use of the code by people who understand what they do, the problem is making binaires available to people who don't care about why we did it in the first place.

I understand, i truly do.

But not everyone who knows the risks wants to download and install a compiler just to play the game how they want to play it.

I personally understand the risks but know very little about coding, so i may or may not be able to strip out a 64 bit checker. Thus if i were to run on 64bit i would look for a version with the work already done and i personally wouldn't complain when my game crashed. At least until i was able to replicate it in 32bit.

The best you can do is tell them the risks, and ignore them when they ignore you.

Edited by Chyort
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I understand, i truly do.

But not everyone who knows the risks wants to download and install a compiler just to play the game how they want to play it.

This is why I'm mostly OK with senshi's approach, but I could actually support that if s/he renamed the mods. How about Aerodynamics Improvement Redux instead of FAR?

I personally understand the risks but know very little about coding, so i may or may not be able to strip out a 64 bit checker.

Hence the tutorial in post #38 of senshi's thread. :)

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The best you can do is tell them the risks, and ignore them when they ignore you.

There's a lot more you can do. For instance, when/if I get back into modding KSP I have been considering licensing as ARR and releasing with a BSD 2-clause style no support policy. It just makes things easier. Personally, I haven't had any real issues with other people using my code and have been quite happy to share up until the Late Heavy Unpleasantness in the CC thread. That turned my thinking around. Also, Senshi is doing it The Right Way and a few of us wrongly shat on his thread, to be sorted out by ferram4 later on, so he's not the issue.

Really what it boils down to is support requests. Doing support as a hobby is crap; it's not at all fun. RedAV8R quit being the frontman for RO over support requests from people who simply can't be asked to read and who have terrible attitudes. As the userbase grows this sort of thing will crop up more and more. As NathanKell rightly points out, it is the job of all good users who want to see a healthy mod (and author) remain healthy to help with support and guide people with bad attitudes and no clues towards proper methods of interaction. It really does take a village...

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Really what it boils down to is support requests. Doing support as a hobby is crap; it's not at all fun.

I am seriously considering going at a "KSP Support Site" or something that requires forms to be filled out et cetera before the report can be submitted to avoid this crap.

It's gone a bit too far. I quote a post verbatim I saw in the FAR thread "i usse a stock plaane I bilt before i instllaed FAR when i try to fly it it flyips out plase hlp"

This person who shall remain unnamed. And it's not fair to make mod authors deal with this.

Edited by sal_vager
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I am seriously considering going at a "KSP Support Site" or something that requires forms to be filled out et cetera before the report can be submitted to avoid this crap.

It's gone a bit too far. I quote a post verbatim I saw in the FAR thread "i usse a stock plaane I bilt before i instllaed FAR when i try to fly it it flyips out plase hlp"

This person who shall remain unnamed. And it's not fair to make mod authors deal with this.

Whole thing is, they don't have to. And really if you have that big of a problem with just <i>reading</i> (not actually acting on or even acknowledging) something that stupid, then that's just sad.

Doesn't matter if 100 people in a row post like that modders are under zero obligation to do anything more than read them, and even then. Real problems posters might have are going to be of a very different caliber than that, even if its someone misreporting a x64 issue.

Edited by sal_vager
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This person who shall remain unnamed. And it's not fair to make mod authors deal with this.

No. That is the sort of request that users of the mod can help with and, regardless of what you think of the poster, it is a valid request. Other things that users can do to help is post a link to helpful stuff like how to make an actual bug report with logs (links are there but I'm on my phone), report nasty posts to get them cleaned, being actually helpful in a mod thread (and saving the trolling for GD, etc...), and other small things like that. Every time you visit the forums stop by two or three of your favorite mod threads and see if you can help.

That's where all this stems from: support. No one (that I know of, anyway) wants to do support as their hobby, especially if the requests are about something that simply cannot be fixed (Win x64), they want to have fun doing the things they do.

Edited by sal_vager
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So the solution is to restrict the license. And since we can't anticipate all things, ARR is really best.

I'm unfamiliar with ARR. Been retired for a decade so I've gotten out-of-touch. Googling found me this...

https://github.com/ustream/arr/blob/master/LICENSE

but that isn't restrictive at all so doesn't match what you were describing.

Someone else in the thread called it "AAR", but Google was even less help with that one.

Thanks!

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However frustrated we may become with each other at times, calling each other names like "idiot" just creates an atmosphere of antagonism, and isn't helpful to anyone. Also, please keep in mind that many people on our forum are not native English-speakers, so we can cut each other some slack about spelling and things of that sort, okay?

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No. That is the sort of request that users of the mod can help with and, regardless of what you think of the poster, it is a valid request. Other things that users can do to help is post a link to helpful stuff like how to make an actual bug report with logs (links are there but I'm on my phone), report nasty posts to get them cleaned, being actually helpful in a mod thread (and saving the trolling for GD, etc...), and other small things like that. Every time you visit the forums stop by two or three of your favorite mod threads and see if you can help.

Yup; any time that I can intercept a question so that Ferram or Porkjet or Arsonide or whoever don't have to deal with it, I do.

It's a bit of a fine line between "helpful" and "know-it-all git" at times, though.

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All rights reserved indeed sounds like a good solution until Squad steps in about the forks. Or the community decides to stop this madness (It appears that is not happening)

Steps in how, exactly? Squad already requires you to distribute a license which defines to others what can be done with a mod/project. You can't be outraged at a fork of your mod if every single copy that you distribute has text that specifically says you're okay with this happening. The correct way to prevent forks is not to allow them if you don't want them happening, or else alter the license text so that any fork has receive permission instead. It's not complicated

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Ban topics and posts about forks that primarily exist to remove locks or enable features that the creator of the project forked had locked for a reason. On this forum and the Reddit.

OR the community could just stop acting like they HAVE to have 64 bit and use 32 bit KSP that it was designed to run and be supported on.

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Ban topics and posts about forks that primarily exist to remove locks or enable features that the creator of the project forked had locked for a reason. On this forum and the Reddit.

Mod authors already have this power. There's nothing Squad needs to do. I guess they could require mod authors to write down what they want others to be able to do with their work, put that info in a file and require that file to be distributed with every mod I suppose. There may be some sarcasm in that last sentence

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Require full crash logs before doing anything, and go from there... I'm not trying to say it would be easy, but it would be easier than this flame war that, in the end, wont change anything...

And people use software, however they want to, all the time. Be it how the author wanted it used or not. Just look at all the DRM cracked software on torrent sites and everywhere else...

With the requirement of open source for KSP mods, that just makes it all that much easier, and thus inevitable. At the end of the day you will never force everyone to act the way you believe they should act.

If a Mod author truly cannot accept that on a fundamental level, then they would be better off keeping their mods private, or sharing them "As Is". No Support for anyone, or only people the author knows and trusts. Yes the community will suffer, but at least the person donating their time wont have to.

the requirement is for source available which is different from open source

"open source" implicitly includes the right to fork a project and make improvements

"source available" is just that, you can request the source code for personal use (inspection, self compiling) but that is where it ends,

All Rights Reservedâ„¢ is not open source but (on this forum) source available

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My 2cents.

If the mod author posted an open license, and the modified version is clearly follow the terms of said license, it is fair game.

Saying you wish to openly share your code with a license, and then expressing your disapproval when someone actually does something with that license, is childish. A person can't wave the open source banner and then get mad when people decide to fly under said banner.

It's that kind of passive aggressive stuff that will ruin any type of relationship.

If I say you can have one of my cookies and you decide to have one of my cookies, I would look crazy/looney if I got mad about it. This is the same deal.

Note: To be clear, I am not speaking about anyone in particular. (Nor do I care about any particular situation.)

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My 2cents.

If the mod author posted an open license, and the modified version is clearly follow the terms of said license, it is fair game.

Saying you wish to openly share your code with a license, and then expressing your disapproval when someone actually does something with that license, is childish. A person can't wave the open source banner and then get mad when people decide to fly under said banner.

It's that kind of passive aggressive stuff that will ruin any type of relationship.

If I say you can have one of my cookies and you decide to have one of my cookies, I would look crazy/looney if I got mad about it. This is the same deal.

Note: To be clear, I am not speaking about anyone in particular. (Nor do I care about any particular situation.)

True. On the other hand this prevents problems such as those with the TreeLoader. If the author disappears it's better to have an open license.

Ad author's wishes: You don't have to offer your seat in public transportation to the elderly but it's decent to do so.

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