Let's put this in a nicer, less egotistic way...

[soundnfury]

3 minutes ago, stupid_chris said:

And I'm not about to discuss my motives here and now, so I'd appreciate if we do not go into a discussion of whether I should or not have done it, because I'm not participating.

Fair enough.  I may not agree with the choice you made, but I'd fight for your right to make it.

[HMIC]

I have to agree with @RoverDude and @stupid_chris on this one.  Modding support for a game is like a gift.  You are given the liberty and freedom to modify the prodcut to your personal desires or needs and share it (or not) with the community.  So as everyone has repeated, be respectful when using or demanding a specific mod, it's about all you can do here.

Most of my develoment life has been on the corporate environmet, so I can't really talk much about open source, it's just not my specialty.   I've seen some very cruel and twisted things in my corporate environment to the point people even stop cooperating and sharing ideas at conferences or helping each other out in fear the will get sued, fired or their idea stolen by the competition.  It gets so sad, I wish stuff would be more like the modding comunity for gaming.  But in this coporate world of development, when there is a dollar sign attached to everything you make, well.... use your imagination... and prey it does not end up like this for modding in general.

Mod, create, share (if you want) and contribute to the improvement of a product, that's about all I can say in short.

 

Edited April 14, 2016 by HMIC

[Agathorn]

This thread is self-defeating because it is self entitled attitudes like this that make me want to vanish and leave you with nothing.

Being polite, showing appreciation, those are the things that encourage modders to be more active and thus avoid the problem you are complaining about.  The opposite, IE this post, discourages modders.

[Farix]

19 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

And yeah, all paths still lead to 'don't act like a spoiled brat', be nice, ask nicely, respect modder's wishes.  While it probably sounds like a broken record by now, it's something that sometimes this community forgets.

This is precisely why I have not uploaded my TAC Life Support Declutter script to SpaceDock. I have absolutely no confidence that the SpaceDock will respect the wishes of the mod creators if the mod creator decides to pull their mods from the site or a third party uploads the mod to the SpaceDock. This lack of confidence stems form one of the SpaceDock developers saying that a mod creators are s*** out of luck in such a situation if the mod has an open source license. The irony is, Curse, dispute its reputation of "being evil", is actually more respectful towards mod creators by removing third party uploads or allowing mod creators to close out the mod.

[Randazzo]

6 hours ago, regex said:

Convince mod authors to use more permissive licences.  That's all you can do.  It's their work, their choice, anyone else has literally no say in the matter.

That is where the thread should have ended.

Though I am happy to add my own garbage to the pile: If you don't like the way something is being done, create something better of your own. If you're too lazy to learn how to do that, you already have as much as you deserve.

 

[Superfluous J]

This plan would surely cause less mods to be abandoned.

Because they'd just not get written in the first place.

[soundnfury]

2 minutes ago, Farix said:

This lack of confidence stems form one of the SpaceDock developers saying that a mod creators are s*** out of luck in such a situation if the mod has an open source license.

On the other hand, I'm glad they said so up front, so that you know to avoid them.  As long as they make that policy clear (and I hope they do), then there's nothing "evil" about acting on it.

Part of why I have a little bit of sympathy with the "but your license said I can do this" position is that it's best to be clear about what's OK and what's not; that way no-one gets surprised and feels betrayed.  And one good way to be clear about what's OK is to define it in your license — though of course it's not the only way.

If the only signal you've given* about forking is to choose a permissive license, don't be surprised if people think they have the right to fork at-will — and get touchy if you "take that away".

 

* Not saying that's true of any examples that have been mentioned in this thread, btw.

[anxcon]

52 minutes ago, Andem said:

a tad unfair and unrealistic.

which part? 1st? totally can, 2nd? i can amend the 1st

46 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

But it's within his rights, even if we disagree with it.

best part is licenses can indeed block individuals or companies (though gets complex when you consider workarounds), but it can solve the bad apple issue, without hurting the others as just jumping to more restrictive licenses

11 minutes ago, Randazzo said:

If you don't like the way something is being done, create something better of your own. If you're too lazy to learn how to do that, you already have as much as you deserve.

i might accually cry at that beautiful statement

[Snark]

So, speaking as a modder, just gonna toss my two cents in the ring here.

First things first.  A few basic statements that I'm going to assert are absolutely and completely true, no ifs-ands-or-buts about it.  If you don't agree with the following list of statements, then you are Wrong™, and there's no point in trying to have a conversation with a modder about it.

1. Modders absolutely own their own property, which is the mods they create.
2. Modders absolutely have the right to choose whatever license they wish.  If they want absolute, it-dies-with-me restrictive license, they completely have that right, regardless of circumstances.
3. Modders have absolutely no obligation to anyone.  At all.  For anything.  Under any circumstances.  Ever.
4. Corollary to the above:  People who use a mod have absolutely no right to expect anything from a mod author.  At all.  Under any circumstances.  Ever.
5. Really.

And when I say "ever," I mean ever.  Just to be clear, let's take an extreme example:  I dunno what kind of license MechJeb has on it, for example, but suppose it happened to be a restrictive one.  If sarbian wanted to pull the plug on it tomorrow and leave the half-million-or-whatever users high and dry-- many of whom would find KSP practically unplayable without it-- all of the above would still apply.  Really.

@Matuchkin, I appreciate your frustration, but the fundamental problem that you keep running into is that you simply don't want to accept the absoluteness of the above principles, and keep trying to make end runs around them.  You're giving lip service to them, but then practically in the same breath trying to tack on conditions or considerations, such as "...but what if it's really really popular" or "...but what if the community really depends on it" or anything else.

You can't.  It won't work.

Here's why it won't work:

Not only are the above rules the way the world actually works, it's good that those are the rules.  And you know why?  Because if those weren't the rules, we wouldn't have mods.  If writing a mod were to put me under any obligation, or I didn't own my mod, or I couldn't choose what to do with it... I would NEVER be so stupid as to produce a mod.  It would give me an extreme disincentive for doing so.

If you read the stuff I post in the forums-- and there's a lot of it-- you'll find that I'm generally a very friendly, approachable, live-and-let-live, understand-the-other-guy's-viewpoint kind of person.  I suspect most of my readers would agree.  But speaking as a modder, I'll tell you:  if you start looking to step on any of the above principles, I'll get very prickly, very fast.  Having those principles available is why I can be friendly.

Giving mod authors the freedom from obligation and the freedom to pull the plug is a big part of what makes it attractive to write mods.  You may think you're doing the community a favor by trying to make it harder to pull the plug, but you would be doing the community itself a grave disservice by doing so, because the flow of mods would dry up faster than you could shake a stick at.

Just to take an analogy, for a moment:  I do most of my shopping at a store that has a very generous return policy.  At first glance, it might seem almost stupidly generous.  Bought it six months ago?  Don't have the original receipt?  Don't have any particular reason why you're returning it?  No evidence of defect?  No problem!  They take it immediately and cheerfully, no forms to fill out, no questions asked.  And that's why I shop there, and that's why they get my business.  If some bright-eyed young manager type thought "oh!  it's bad when customers return goods, we're losing money, we should try to restrict that" ... well, that would be a really bad idea.  Not just for the customers, but for the store.  It would drive customers out the door, and the store would lose money.

 

Also:  Not only can't you solve this problem, Matuchkin, but actually, it's a solved problem already.  There is no set of circumstances that isn't accounted for.

• Problem:  Beloved website used by all suddenly goes down without warning.  Solution:  Community cares enough about it that they come together and there's a replacement website up in barely 24 hours!
• Problem:  Beloved mod goes down.  Friendly author is happy to pass the torch.  Solution:  Well, actually, there's no problem!  Move along, nothing to see here.
• Problem:  Beloved mod goes down.  Angry author chooses to pull the plug completely.  Restrictive license.  Solution:  Somebody will write a replacement for it.  Might take a while, but it'll happen.  (If MechJeb went down permanently tomorrow, I guarantee you somebody would be very quickly writing another autopilot mod.)

 

And finally, one last thing to remember as a player:  Caveat emptor.  You get what you pay for.  If there's a mod that you find yourself getting really attached to... go look at the license.  And go look at the mod's release thread to get a feel for what kind of person the author is, how active and engaged they are, how much fun they're having with the mod.  That'll tell you how likely it is that your mod will stay "live" for as long as you want to play it.  If you see it has a restrictive license, and/or the author seems embattled... well, don't get too attached to the mod.  Or rather:  if you do... then any heartbreak you feel when it goes under will be your responsibility, not the mod author's.

[soundnfury]

5 minutes ago, Snark said:

Modders have absolutely no obligation to anyone.  At all.  For anything.  Under any circumstances.  Ever.

Ok, I guess it's time for me to be Wrong™.  There may be differences in social customs between game modders and open source hackers, but in my world, if you release a piece of code, you are implicitly promising to support it as long as people are using it.  And, if you want to stop, your final duty is to find someone else to pass it on to.  These duties can be negated if you say so up front, but otherwise, it's part of the covenant you enter into by being part of the hacker community.  (The "no warranty" clause in the licenses doesn't count as a negation of those duties; this is about social custom, not law.)  If Linus did something that killed off the kernel, you can bet the pitchforks would come out.  (He's actually been very careful to set things up so that nothing he does can kill off the kernel.)

And there's a whole bunch of people out there raised in that community, and they're going to have that expectation of anything with a GPL or BSD or MIT license on it.  And if you aren't willing to take on that burden, that's fine, but you should say so when you release.  If you don't, then however unreasonable you may think they're being, however right you may be, you still shouldn't act surprised when it happens.

[rbray89]

22 minutes ago, Snark said:

 

• Problem:  Beloved mod goes down.  Angry author chooses to pull the plug completely.  Restrictive license.  Solution:  Somebody will write a replacement for it.  Might take a while, but it'll happen.  (If MechJeb went down permanently tomorrow, I guarantee you somebody would be very quickly writing another autopilot mod.)

 

This actually happened with the pre-cursor to Kopernicus. The dev behind Planetfactory pulled the plug and left, and Kopernicus was built from the ground up with MUCH a better structure and ideology.

[monstah]

10 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

but in my world, if you release a piece of code, you are implicitly promising to support it as long as people are using it.

Dude. And people call the Kerbol system unrealistic.

[Superfluous J]

8 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

Ok, I guess it's time for me to be Wrong™.  There may be differences in social customs between game modders and open source hackers, but in my world, if you release a piece of code, you are implicitly promising to support it as long as people are using it.

I find this interesting. As a long-time open source user, and almost-never open source (or closed source) writer, I was not aware that this was the case anywhere. Coming from just looking at modders, I can say the custom has always been that it's better to have something that may (but very likely won't) vanish than nothing at all. I wonder if the difference in paradigm is because modding is more transient. People get bored of games and move on while you can use the same utility programs for a lifetime.

[Snark]

17 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

There may be differences in social customs between game modders and open source hackers, but in my world, if you release a piece of code, you are implicitly promising to support it as long as people are using it.

If that were the case... I would never release a piece of code.

I write my mods to improve my own game experience.  I happen to think they're pretty good, and I like to help people, so I'd like to release my mods so other people can use them and get some value out of them.  And it turns out that my mods are pretty popular-- not on the MechJeb scale, but I've had many thousands of downloads and one of them's currently in the top-10 on SpaceDock.

But I do that with the understanding from the get-go that it's my mod and I have no obligation.  At all.  If there was even a hint of obligation anywhere, I never would have released any of my mods to the public, I would have kept all of them for my private consumption, and many thousands of KSP players would not have had the chance to enjoy my mods.

So how would that be a win?  For anyone?

17 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

These duties can be negated if you say so up front

The rules around any mod are crystal clear.  It's right there in the license.  And every mod posting site-- whether it's a release thread on the KSP forums, or a SpaceDock page, or whatever-- requires that you say what the license is, right  there in black and white, right from the get-go.

So it's totally obvious to anyone who uses your mod what the rules are.

And the license generally makes it pretty clear that the author's not obligated to do anything.

[soundnfury]

Just now, 5thHorseman said:

I wonder if the difference in paradigm is because modding is more transient. People get bored of games and move on while you can use the same utility programs for a lifetime.

Yeah, it might be because we hackers have realised we're basically holding up the sky at this point.  I mean, if Linux, or BIND, or GCC disappeared, it wouldn't just be a nuisance.  Half the Internet would grind to a halt.  Hell, look at what happened with leftpad recently.  Somehow, while we were merrily playing with code, we became responsible for things.  Some of us are still struggling to come to terms with that (*cough* jwz).

2 minutes ago, Snark said:

But I do that with the understanding from the get-go that it's my mod and I have no obligation.  At all.

And, like I keep saying, that's fine.  But if you don't make that clear, then there are going to be people who don't see it that way, and they're going to keep on pestering you.  Illusion of transparency; just because it's obvious to you doesn't mean it's obvious to them.  And we have to deal with the world as we find it, not as we feel it ought to be.

So I'm not saying you have to have an obligation.  I'm not saying the people who expect it of you are right.  I'm just saying that they will expect it of you, and no amount of arguing on threads like these about what whiners they are will stop them doing it.  Because you'll be lucky if one in a hundred of them reads this thread.  The rest of them will just download your mod, and whine, and whine, and whine.  And there is nothing Squad or anyone else can do to change that.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

57 minutes ago, Snark said:

[...]

This is a beautifully written post. +replike

 

 

[Snark]

3 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

I mean, if Linux, or BIND, or GCC disappeared, it wouldn't just be a nuisance.  Half the Internet would grind to a halt.

That's right!

And do you think that the fact that Linux et al have licenses (and a large and diverse supporting community) that guarantee that they can't just disappear overnight might just possibly have something to do with the fact that so many companies choose to use them?

The folks who produced those tools could have put very restrictive licenses on them.  If they had done that, they would have produced an interesting little boutique product that nobody would have wanted to use and it would have died a quiet death.  They've become as massively successful as they are precisely because they happened to choose permissive licenses.

It was entirely the authors' right to choose the license.  And entirely the authors' right to walk away, if so desired.  And because they happened to choose permissive licenses, by design, they guaranteed the life of their creation.

18 minutes ago, Snark said:

But I do that with the understanding from the get-go that it's my mod and I have no obligation.  At all.

 

7 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

And, like I keep saying, that's fine.  But if you don't make that clear, then there are going to be people who don't see it that way

Except that I do make that clear.  Blisteringly clear.  It's right there in the license, spelled out in black and white.

If people choose not to read the license, then that's their problem, not mine.

8 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

...they're going to keep on pestering you.

I'm just saying that they will expect it of you, and no amount of arguing on threads like these about what whiners they are will stop them doing it.  Because you'll be lucky if one in a hundred of them reads this thread.  The rest of them will just download your mod, and whine, and whine, and whine.

Sure, no problem.  I have no problem if anyone complains.  Sticks and stones, and all that.  If I had a thin skin, I shouldn't be hanging around in the forums.  They're welcome to complain all they liike.  Haters gonna hate.

Bear in mind that this entire thread has nothing to do with complaining about whiners, or mod authors being unhappy with the public perception, or anything else.  All of this is simply because the OP was trying to make the case that something should be done about this situation, and trying to make a case that mod authors do, in fact, have some sort of obligation.  Or that if we don't actually have one, we should have one, and the system should be changed in a way that makes it so.

So nothing that I (or any of the other modders on this thread) have said has anything to do with complainers.  It's simply addressing that original contention, specifically:

• Is there any obligation?  No.
• Can there be any obligation?  No.
• Should there be any obligation?  No.

And in that long-winded rant where I said this,

1 hour ago, Snark said:

1. Modders absolutely own their own property, which is the mods they create.
2. Modders absolutely have the right to choose whatever license they wish.  If they want absolute, it-dies-with-me restrictive license, they completely have that right, regardless of circumstances.
3. Modders have absolutely no obligation to anyone.  At all.  For anything.  Under any circumstances.  Ever.
4. Corollary to the above:  People who use a mod have absolutely no right to expect anything from a mod author.  At all.  Under any circumstances.  Ever.
5. Really.

...the TL;DR of that whole thing was simply "Nope, modders have no obligation."

And as you say,

15 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

And, like I keep saying, that's fine.

...

So I'm not saying you have to have an obligation.  I'm not saying the people who expect it of you are right.

...then I see you're in agreement here.

Hooray discourse! 

[soundnfury]

23 minutes ago, Snark said:

The rules around any mod are crystal clear.  It's right there in the license.

And yet people who fork someone else's mod to remove x64 guards are apparently out of line, even when the license allows it.

There are always social customs beyond the bare license text.  Because no license can anticipate everything, and if it did it would be so long no-one would have time to read it.

When communities with different social customs overlap, there will be friction.  So you figure out what the differences are, and put up big flashing signs to warn people from the other community about them.  Or you just put up with the whining, or you stop releasing mods.

Whining back won't achieve anything

2 minutes ago, Snark said:

Sure, no problem.  I have no problem if anyone complains.  Sticks and stones, and all that.

Great!  Then we're in violent agreement.

(It can be hard to keep track of what positions different people are arguing, when there are about half a dozen sides to the argument.)

[stupid_chris]

7 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

And yet people who fork someone else's mod to remove x64 guards are apparently out of line, even when the license allows it.

This is what we call "fair use". With an open license, I was hoping people would improve upon RC, not bring me support problems. So now, I simply require to approve of a derivative for it to be distributed. It's simple. I have approved two out of two requests I've had since this is in place. And I'd really only say no for something I believe would harm RealChute rather than help it. It's a safeguard I wish I did not have to put, but unfortunately I had to.

Edited April 14, 2016 by stupid_chris

[Matuchkin]

@Snark that was impressive. I find no objection to your statements, and see all the problems with my reasoning. However, I have part of a mind directed towards this:

54 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

And, if you want to stop, your final duty is to find someone else to pass it on to.

(Of course, if "final duty" means "the generic thing to do" in this context)

 

54 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

If Linus did something that killed off the kernel, you can bet the pitchforks would come out.

With my current understanding of modders, no matter what the rules are, no matter who has the right for what, the easier way will most likely be picked over the harder/ worse way. My goal here is to find a good, easier way to keep mods running with volunteers, letting mods remain in the communities, etc.

To keep up in this discussion, I need you to explain to me the mindsets of modders, the methods they will choose over others, the reasoning that goes through their heads when they choose whether to let a mod "live or die". Otherwise, my mindset will not progress.

54 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

if you release a piece of code, you are implicitly promising to support it as long as people are using it

Ok. No. Just no. Like... NO...

Everything else you said had something to it, but this specific sentence is getting snipe'd by half the people here, just for its contradiction of Snark's five holy commandments. Yes, I am also trying to find ways around them. But what I'm doing is my own method of experimentation, to understand various concepts, rather than flatly contradicting them and saying that it is like that "in my world" (because everyone in the forums is currently operating under the forum's world, certainly modders).

Oh, and I see you're a hacker. Not to be rude or degrading, but that is not exactly something to take pride in.

Edited April 14, 2016 by Matuchkin

[stupid_chris]

@Matuchkin, you are digging your grave with every single small font line you make.

And to explain the mindset: it's my intellectual property, if I am angry at the community because of the way I've been treated, you bet I will pull the plug on RealChute and leave everyone in the dark. I'm not a slave.

[Snark]

13 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

And yet people who fork someone else's mod to remove x64 guards are apparently out of line, even when the license allows it.

Depends what you mean by "out of line."

If the license allows it, then they're perfectly within their legal rights to do so.  So no, not "out of line" in that sense.  But it's a jerk move.  Well, okay, that's a judgmental statement.  More objectively, it's a stupid move.

Why?  Because it alienates the mod writers.  And it pushes mod writers to use more restrictive licenses that won't allow that sort of thing.  Which in turn leads to exactly the same situation that the OP was pulling out his hair about, when a mod author leaves a mod and people can't take up the torch.

13 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

There are always social customs beyond the bare license text.

No.  There aren't.

Social customs aren't real, not in the sense that matters here.  It's not that people don't care about them.  Sure, it makes me really angry when someone does something that I consider to be a "jerk move", i.e. violates what I consider to be a social custom.

The problem is that there are no universally agreed-upon social customs.  There really aren't.  Different people have really different opinions.  What one guy thinks is a "jerk move", another person considers to be quite right and proper (as is demonstrated by the vehemence in this thread).

What's real is what's in black and white, in the license.  Because it's clear, unambiguous, and legally binding.  Sure, it doesn't cover everything, nor should it try to, because that way lies madness, as you say.  So by design, it only covers the very essentials, specifically exactly who is allowed to do what with the mod, under what conditions.

Because it's simple, that's why it works.  It makes no "implied promises".  It simply is what it is.

People can understand what they're working with, and then they'll have realistic expectations and probably have a happy life.  Or they can be totally clueless, and choose to ignore the information presented to them, and have really unrealistic expectations, and probably end up pretty unhappy.  It's up to them.

13 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

So you figure out what the differences are, and put up big flashing signs to warn people from the other community about them.

Yes, exactly.  It's called a "license."

13 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

Or you just put up with the whining

Sure!  It's what every mod author does, on a daily basis. 

13 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

or you stop releasing mods

Which some people do, true.  I haven't done that, myself... because of the licenses.  Which say that I don't have to do anything I don't want to, so I can cheerfully ignore any requests I happen not to agree with.  Makes life very happy and relaxed.

13 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

Whining back won't achieve anything

That's true.  Good thing no mod authors are whining about anything in this thread anywhere, but simply letting folks know how the system works, since some folks appear to be laboring under some misconceptions.  They could go read some software licenses instead of all this stuff, if it would be more enjoyable reading. 

[linuxgurugamer]

49 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

There may be differences in social customs between game modders and open source hackers, but in my world, if you release a piece of code, you are implicitly promising to support it as long as people are using it.

What are you smoking?  I don't mean to be insulting, but let's take a look at my most recent mod, KRASH.

First off, KRASH was developed from HoloDeck, with the author's permission.  While it wasn't necessary, I asked for permission first, and he requested that I change the name, ergo, KRASH.

Now, I spent a lot of time debugging it.  Probably more than I should have (estimate of >40 hours), but I wanted to release a quality mod and had a very obscure bug to trace down.  Apparently I did, people seem to like it.  

Now, let's say that KSP is insanely successful, and also say that KRASH is very popular.  Very good for Squad, and Squad will continue to support it because they are earning money from it, so it pays for them to support it.  But what about me?  You are saying that I have promised to support it forever, or at least a very long time.  It takes time to support.  Are you willing to pay me for my time?  If so, I'd be happy to support you (be careful, my time is very expensive).  But if you are not going to pay me, then why should I support it 5, 10, 15 years from now when people are trying to run KSP on Windows 15 and there is a problem with KRASH.  For that matter, am I supposed to support it from beyond the grave?  Because, I'm not a youngster anymore, and while my family is fairly long-lived, I just had an encounter with cancer, and there is always the chance that I won't be around.  So the license will allow someone else to continue it.

There is no promise to do anything.  There is only the support for as long as I care to give it.  If I stop, then my reputation suffers (maybe).  

Personally, I will support it for as long as I have interest in the game, and then some.  But one day, I'll move on, and at that time I really won't care about any implied promise made years earlier for something I did for free.

I care a lot about licenses, to the point that there was a part mod I wanted to update, but the license didn't allow any changes, so I contacted the site administrators to see if a proposed action I wanted to do was allowed.  It actually started a big discussion amongst all the moderators, and their decision was initially against me, but after consideration, they approved my action.

[Matuchkin]

8 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

 There are always social customs beyond the bare license text.  Because no license can anticipate everything, and if it did it would be so long no-one would have time to read it.

1. You're talking about "society always wins". Yes, that can be effective with a large amount of people and a service to send info all over said amount of people (i.e. news agency+ a few million people= you-do-what-they-tell-you-to-do-or-you-get-shamed-internationally) , but that certainly does not apply to modding.

2. We're not talking about illegality. In here, there are no social customs beyond a license, and anyone who decides to create said customs is doing so illegaly.

3. A license can not anticipate everything. That doesn't mean we should violate the license. I stressed multiple times about the kindness, legality, etc of my proposal, and I am not going to stress again.

[RoverDude]

@Matuchkin I think it's been explained pretty clearly (Both @Snark and @stupid_chris have been abundantly clear.

 

10 minutes ago, Matuchkin said:

To keep up in this discussion, I need you to explain to me the mindsets of modders, the methods they will choose over others, the reasoning that goes through their heads when they choose whether to let a mod "live or die". Otherwise, my mindset will not progress.

This implies (and I say this with all due respect) that whether your mindset progresses or not really matters.  It does not change who owns the IP, nor does it change their right to do with it what you will.  

If the question is 'how do I better encourage people to stick around, use open licensing, and potentially pass a torch', that bit's been spelled out a few times   Be nice and be respectful.  It's pretty easy, though it doesn't always work out... and that's ok too.

Edited April 14, 2016 by RoverDude