CKAN Discussion Continutation

[pizzaoverhead]

46 minutes ago, soundnfury said:

I think the right policy for CKAN to take here is that they should only accept NetKAN submissions from the mod author, because no-one else can know whether the metadata NetKAN sees will be accurate for its needs.  Whereas, I still think it's fine to accept .ckan submissions from third parties, and I don't believe that should require the author's consent (unless the author actively maintains their own CKAN metadata, in which case they should have the option to disallow third-party interference).

I think this is the crux of the issue: As a content creator, any malicious or just well-meaning but inaccurate user can break your mod in a manner that gives users the appearance of being endorsed by you.

[nobodyhasthis2]

1 hour ago, soundnfury said:

Suppose, for instance, that you have a proper bug tracker, but many bug reports go to the forum thread, and get lost under CKANspam.  Then, just don't follow the thread, state in the OP that bug reports should go to your tracker (and that bugs should not be reported against CKAN installations).  Anyone who has enough brain cells to find the bug tracker will have also understood that CKAN bugs shouldn't go there.

How many times can you say that before getting upset?

 

[RoverDude]

1 minute ago, `Orum said:

No, law is amoral, it says nothing about what you should or shouldn't do.  The point of a license is to express your intent, and if your license fails to enforce what you "want" people to do, then perhaps you should have picked a different license or written your own.  One cannot simply expect CKAN to know that you do or do not want your mod listed, so simply spell it out in black and white and this entire issue could have been avoided.  It's not about understanding the words, or being nice/mean, you as a developer should assume anyone can and will do whatever they are permitted to by your license, and should write or choose a license accordingly.

To release something that allows said rights, and then get upset when people exercise those rights is hypocrisy.

Yet the discussion here is not a legal one.  Legally, even an ARR license can't stop CKAN from doing what it is doing.  There's not much dispute there.

The oddity is that they are very selectively allowing de-listings, and even the change to restrict de-listings didn't exist when CKAN was launched, and was likely put in place to prevent certain mods from being allowed to leave.

Legally, nobody is disputing their position (they could even legally be more draconian).  Morally, it's both wrong, and inconsistent.

[Stone Blue]

10 minutes ago, `Orum said:

No, law is amoral, it says nothing about what you should or shouldn't do.  The point of a license is to express your intent, and if your license fails to enforce what you "want" people to do, then perhaps you should have picked a different license or written your own.  One cannot simply expect CKAN to know that you do or do not want your mod listed, so simply spell it out in black and white and this entire issue could have been avoided.  It's not about understanding the words, or being nice/mean, you as a developer should assume anyone can and will do whatever they are permitted to by your license, and should write or choose a license accordingly.

To release something that allows said rights, and then get upset when people exercise those rights is hypocrisy.

:bang-head-on-desk:
Of COURSE law is amoral.... Just because I may be within my LEGAL rights to stand across the street from your house, 24/7, and shout "I HATE XXXXXX" at the top of my voice, and make all kinds of other racket (that is whithin the scope of the amoral law), DOES THAT MEAN THAT I SHOULD, and that there will be no consequences other than legal ones, which I would be free and clear of?

So while you are standing there spouting the word hypocrisy, dont get upset, that that will be ALL you will be doing, cause you WONT be playing ball, when the modders laugh at your protestations of hypocrisy, and take the ONLY ball home with them...

Edited June 25, 2016 by Stone Blue

[`Orum]

3 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

Yet the discussion here is not a legal one.  Legally, even an ARR license can't stop CKAN from doing what it is doing.  There's not much dispute there.

Yes and no, there are legal complexities that are involved with ARR that could prevent CKAN from listing (particularly if you look at the US's DMCA), but if you're really that protective of your content, you probably wouldn't be releasing it to the public at all.

[RoverDude]

Just because I don't want an automated tool that will redistribute and incorrectly install my content (sometimes without my knowledge) does not mean I don't want said content available for users that want to use it.  It is not an all or nothing, and some of us would like the courtesy of being allowed a choice.  

Now.  Imagine the hue and cry if Curse scraped the forum for all redistributable content (and refused to allow the original content creator to remove the listing, even if it was out of date and was causing user issues).

Edited June 25, 2016 by RoverDude

[superdavekerman]

If you guys just want an IQ test for your mods, why post the binaries? Just publish the source code.

[mjl1966]

23 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

Yet the discussion here is not a legal one.  Legally, even an ARR license can't stop CKAN from doing what it is doing.  There's not much dispute there.

The oddity is that they are very selectively allowing de-listings, and even the change to restrict de-listings didn't exist when CKAN was launched, and was likely put in place to prevent certain mods from being allowed to leave.

Legally, nobody is disputing their position (they could even legally be more draconian).  Morally, it's both wrong, and inconsistent.

 

I'd think twice about the whole copyright issue here.  Licensing is about copyright holders granting permission, not being forced to allow a free-for-all with their software in ways they did not anticipate.  That the CC license is a "promise by the content creator" to do anything, especially in the face of repeated documented requests and demands that somebody stop distributing their copyrighted material, is good fodder for a legal debate, one which would not result in a cut and dried verdict in federal court.  Especially since CC is not intended for software.  The license could possibly be held null and void on those grounds alone, in which case all that remains are the cease and desist demands.  Have a nice day.

Debating the issue based on copyright law is foolhardy - it is a complex and difficult domain of law, especially when it comes to derivative works of software, which nobody here is qualified to interpret and understand.  Just because we can all read about it at Wikipedia doesn't mean we know what we're doing.  We don't.  We really really don't. 

Law is the LAST place anybody should be looking to resolve this issue - as any lawyer will tell you, "It depends."  Common sense and common interest are far more appropriate tools here.  Continuing to use standardized licensing intended for published works of literature and photography as a primary justification for actions that are contrary to the wishes of developers holding copyright on software is just asking for trouble. 

 

 

 

 

[`Orum]

40 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

Just because I don't want an automated tool that will redistribute and incorrectly install my content (sometimes without my knowledge) does not mean I don't want said content available for users that want to use it.  It is not an all or nothing, and some of us would like the courtesy of being allowed a choice.  

Then write a license that says that.  You can (and is often the case with proprietary software) put more, or less, restrictions on software than even ARR provides.  It's the very way software companies get around the first sale doctrine which would otherwise allow people to resell their products.

Edited June 25, 2016 by `Orum

[Jarin]

1 hour ago, Stone Blue said:

JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE EVERY LEGAL RIGHT TO DO SOMETHING.... DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD DO IT....

 

Let's put it in simpler terms

 

If your best defense of your actions is that it is not explicitly illegal, you probably need to reexamine your choices.

[swjr-swis]

11 minutes ago, Jarin said:

If your best defense of your actions is that it is not explicitly illegal, you probably need to reexamine your choices.

How does 'tactically nuking' fare when held up to that?

 

[SAS123]

You can think of CKAN as alot of things (library, etc.) But i think of it as a supermarket. A supermarket gets its stock from different contractors and then puts the items up for sale, and people come by and buy it. Some items will get more attentiom than others.

CKAN is similar, it takes links to the mods from lots of people, puts it on show and than someone will go and download it. Some files will be downloaded more than others.

What i think is instead of Banning Third party distributing, people get a license that does not allow the mod to be Publicly Shared or Distributed by a Third Party Software/Program without the developers permission.

[anxcon]

8 minutes ago, SAS123 said:

You can think of CKAN as alot of things (library, etc.) But i think of it as a supermarket. A supermarket gets its stock from different contractors and then puts the items up for sale, and people come by and buy it. Some items will get more attentiom than others

sellers have a right to decline a distributor (the supermarket) to sell their product, ckan is doing nothing more or less than torrents, have fun in that rabbit hole

[HebaruSan]

3 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

So does that mean that the policy no longer requires All Rights Reserved for de-listing? ModuleManager still has an open license as far as I can tell.

Attempting to answer my own question, it appears that this is the official address of said policy, which as of this moment still draws a distinction between All Rights Reserved and free licenses, with the former de-listable and the latter not, which suggests that @politas has been acting unilaterally against the project policy he (presumably) agreed to obey by joining the CKAN team. It will be interesting to see where this goes from here.

https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN/blob/master/policy/de-indexing.md

In addition, this ...

7 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

If any of the CKAN folks are still reading, it looks like this is caused by the KSP versions for 1.1.4 and 1.1.5 being overly specific...

		"ModularFlightIntegrator": {
			"module_version": {
				"1.1.5.0": {

					"ksp_version": "1.1.2",

				"1.1.4.0": {
                  
					"ksp_version": "1.1.2",

				"1.1.3.0": {

					"ksp_version": "1.1",

Apparently if you have KSP 1.1.3 installed, that matches "1.1," but not "1.1.2," so it falls back to installing that older version that was (accidentally?) flagged as being more broadly compatible; if I change that first ksp_version value to 1.1.3, "ckan available" switches from 1.1.3.0 to 1.1.5.0. This should probably be using ksp_version_min and ksp_version_max instead (and/or "1.1" should be changed to "1.1.0").

... should be detectable purely as a consistency check within the metadata, without any automated testing of real live installations, simply by assuming "strict linearity" in supported KSP versions as new mod versions are released (i.e., it should never be the case that an older version of a mod supports newer versions of KSP than newer versions of the same mod). I'm planning to take a look at that after I finish making these chicken burritos, with any resulting code published into the public domain.

[mjl1966]

1 hour ago, SAS123 said:

You can think of CKAN as alot of things (library, etc.) But i think of it as a supermarket. A supermarket gets its stock from different contractors and then puts the items up for sale, and people come by and buy it. Some items will get more attentiom than others.

CKAN is similar, it takes links to the mods from lots of people, puts it on show and than someone will go and download it. Some files will be downloaded more than others.

What i think is instead of Banning Third party distributing, people get a license that does not allow the mod to be Publicly Shared or Distributed by a Third Party Software/Program without the developers permission.

The challenge there is that CKAN can be rightfully called a web browser.  It's just downloading using URLs.  Then it installs, which is between CKAN and the user at that point.  You can't tell people which tool to use to download their software.  They can use a web browser, command line ftp or CKAN.  They all do the same thing.  All it's doing is automating the process of clicking a URL and dragging folders.  It's a real loophole situation.

There is no elegant legal solution here.  This is why many of us keep trying to steer the conversation away from licensing.  Licensing will neither help nor hinder - only cooperation will save the day CKAN.

Edited June 26, 2016 by mjl1966
clarity

[swjr-swis]

1 minute ago, anxcon said:

sellers have a right to decline a distributor (the supermarket) to sell their product

And consumers have a right to decide not to shop at a supermarket, or to buy a product, or both, when it becomes too much bother. I'm wondering if any of the parties to this battle realize how many silent 'consumers' have been watching in horror from a distance as market and producers riot against each other, and then shake our heads in sad disbelief as we walk away from both of them.

What use are 'open' licenses if the issuers reserve themselves the rights to change their mind at any point and 'close' them at their convenience? What good is a mod manager that has to be emasculated to not actually manage mods for me? What possible reason do I have as a 'consumer' to want to even deal with all this kindergarten-level tantrum from either side? I can only play with the toys when people feel like letting me and don't stub their toes on a bad morning?

I'm sick and done with this whole mess. Thanks to the actions and words of a vocal few, I just can no longer trust my game and my peace of mind to the hands of people who not only are utterly incapable of intelligent conflict resolution and compromise, but also feel justified to resort to peer pressure, blackmail and sabotage to get their way.

I have been reading the various exchanges and discussions strewn all over the past few days with growing disbelief and disappointment. Until just a few days ago, I honestly thought this was an actual community. Not just that, I sincerely used the KSP community as a shining example of how goodwill can make things simply work for everyone's benefit and enjoyment, in this age of ego and strife. And I have to say, right now I am ashamed I have ever been so naive.

My time is more important than yours. My opinion is more important than yours. My way or the high way. It's the legal thing to do. It's the moral thing to do. Outright ignoring of requests or offers for compromise. Overt threats of intentional sabotage. Holding the community or the mods hostage to get your way. Incitement of rioting to force your opinion or preference. 'Tactical nuking' as a way to demand action. And my absolute favourite here: in the same breath reiterating multiple times that this whole tantrum revolves around your time, opinion, wishes and preferences being disregarded/disrespected, while at the same time blatantly and proudly pronouncing your complete disregard of everyone else's time, opinion, wishes and preferences. Bravo. Whatever moral high ground there was left for anyone to claim has been efficiently, 'tactically', and very thoroughly nuked. Mutual Assured Destruction. Bravo, I say.

I have never been so proud of a community of aspiring and actual students, professionals, educators, mathematicians, programmers, rocket scientists, statisticians, engineers, designers, managers, consultants, and a just generally presumed-to-be collection of intelligent human beings. Goodness gracious. I've seen kindergarten classes resolve issues with less drama.

News flash: I don't need mods. I don't need CKAN. Have fun continuing to claim back and forth to each other how much more I supposedly need one over the other, and how much more I should be respecting one over the other, while indirectly or blatantly proclaiming your disdain and disrespect of my time in the process. When you're all done with your grandstanding and wonder where everyone has gone to, you'll find me and others over there playing our unmodded games without either of your oh so indispensable works and more importantly, without the drama.

swjr-swis out.

[mjl1966]

1 minute ago, swjr-swis said:

And consumers have a right to decide not to shop at a supermarket, or to buy a product, or both, when it becomes too much bother. I'm wondering if any of the parties to this battle realize how many silent 'consumers' have been watching in horror from a distance as market and producers riot against each other, and then shake our heads in sad disbelief as we walk away from both of them.

What use are 'open' licenses if the issuers reserve themselves the rights to change their mind at any point and 'close' them at their convenience? What good is a mod manager that has to be emasculated to not actually manage mods for me? What possible reason do I have as a 'consumer' to want to even deal with all this kindergarten-level tantrum from either side? I can only play with the toys when people feel like letting me and don't stub their toes on a bad morning?

I'm sick and done with this whole mess. Thanks to the actions and words of a vocal few, I just can no longer trust my game and my peace of mind to the hands of people who not only are utterly incapable of intelligent conflict resolution and compromise, but also feel justified to resort to peer pressure, blackmail and sabotage to get their way.

I have been reading the various exchanges and discussions strewn all over the past few days with growing disbelief and disappointment. Until just a few days ago, I honestly thought this was an actual community. Not just that, I sincerely used the KSP community as a shining example of how goodwill can make things simply work for everyone's benefit and enjoyment, in this age of ego and strife. And I have to say, right now I am ashamed I have ever been so naive.

My time is more important than yours. My opinion is more important than yours. My way or the high way. It's the legal thing to do. It's the moral thing to do. Outright ignoring of requests or offers for compromise. Overt threats of intentional sabotage. Holding the community or the mods hostage to get your way. Incitement of rioting to force your opinion or preference. 'Tactical nuking' as a way to demand action. And my absolute favourite here: in the same breath reiterating multiple times that this whole tantrum revolves around your time, opinion, wishes and preferences being disregarded/disrespected, while at the same time blatantly and proudly pronouncing your complete disregard of everyone else's time, opinion, wishes and preferences. Bravo. Whatever moral high ground there was left for anyone to claim has been efficiently, 'tactically', and very thoroughly nuked. Mutual Assured Destruction. Bravo, I say.

I have never been so proud of a community of aspiring and actual students, professionals, educators, mathematicians, programmers, rocket scientists, statisticians, engineers, designers, managers, consultants, and a just generally presumed-to-be collection of intelligent human beings. Goodness gracious. I've seen kindergarten classes resolve issues with less drama.

News flash: I don't need mods. I don't need CKAN. Have fun continuing to claim back and forth to each other how much more I supposedly need one over the other, and how much more I should be respecting one over the other, while indirectly or blatantly proclaiming your disdain and disrespect of my time in the process. When you're all done with your grandstanding and wonder where everyone has gone to, you'll find me and others over there playing our unmodded games without either of your oh so indispensable works and more importantly, without the drama.

swjr-swis out.

CKAN is not a distribution point.  It is a collection utility.  If you put your mod on the shelf in the grocery store, CKAN walks in and "buys" it, walks out and hands it to somebody in the parking lot.  A seller has no control over that.  The websites where the mods are hosted are the distribution points.  CKAN is just a "shopper" installed on the end user's computer.  It's not different than a web browser in that regard. 

One more time: "licensing" and other legal remedies are non-starters. 

[goldenpsp]

@swjr-swis Yea I know you are out.  Just a couple things.

Modders aren't sellers.  

No mods are being held "hostage" they are still freely available to download.

The community is fine.  Even a healthy community has a fight every so often. 

[`Orum]

44 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

<wall of text>

When you're all done with your grandstanding and wonder where everyone has gone to, you'll find me and others over there playing our unmodded games without either of your oh so indispensable works and more importantly, without the drama.

Hello pot, my name is kettle...

In all seriousness, ad homonym gets us nowhere.  It's naive to think that a policy change compromise from CKAN, while welcome, would do anything to prevent this from happening again in the future.  Tomorrow Curse could come out with a download manager that does far more insidious things than CKAN, and if developers don't arm themselves with the licenses to remedy such situations, it will happen all over again.

 

46 minutes ago, mjl1966 said:

CKAN is not a distribution point.  It is a collection utility.  If you put your mod on the shelf in the grocery store, CKAN walks in and "buys" it, walks out and hands it to somebody in the parking lot.  A seller has no control over that.  The websites where the mods are hosted are the distribution points.  CKAN is just a "shopper" installed on the end user's computer.  It's not different than a web browser in that regard. 

One more time: "licensing" and other legal remedies are non-starters. 

I get this, but there are pretty powerful things you can do with licenses that actually do remedy the situation.  See the CFAA and US v Swartz for an idea of the power that downloading restrictions can have, even if the case was ultimately dropped.

[Violent Jeb]

until i read this i had no idea CKAN was quite so insidious. Its kind of astounding that one rogue thing creates so many headaches for other content creators. The writing is on the wall. pandering to the LCD puts the enjoyment of mods for everybody at risk. Its like others have said, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

If CKAN can cause such problems, it is hampering continuity of mods in general.  its kind of surprising it hasn't been g-lined for this behavior.

I thought for sure it was opt in. For full disclosure I haven't had any issues when i have used CKAN but if a mod doesn't work I wouldn't think to complain or trouble a person doing such a service for the community.

Personally i'm going to take a "boycott" stance and proceed with manual installation, based on what I have read in this thread. As an end user, I only hope the mod makers don't get too discouraged from this "convenience". I want to support the mods themselves, not some app so I can have 150,000 mods that are no good when the big names disappear.

all just IMO. mod makers en masse in no way should have to negotiate like this for something they've made.

[superdavekerman]

It is opt-in, just not necessarily restricted to the content creator.

[anxcon]

2 minutes ago, superdavekerman said:

It is opt-in, just not necessarily restricted to the content creator.

when it is ckan who chooses to opt you in, does it still fit the title of opt-in?

[regex]

Just now, anxcon said:

when it is ckan who chooses to opt you in, does it still fit the title of opt-in?

Alternatively, one of your users?

[mjl1966]

1 hour ago, `Orum said:

Hello pot, my name is kettle...

In all seriousness, ad homonym gets us nowhere.  It's naive to think that a policy change compromise from CKAN, while welcome, would do anything to prevent this from happening again in the future.  Tomorrow Curse could come out with a download manager that does far more insidious things than CKAN, and if developers don't arm themselves with the licenses to remedy such situations, it will happen all over again.

 

I get this, but there are pretty powerful things you can do with licenses that actually do remedy the situation.  See the CFAA and US v Swartz for an idea of the power that downloading restrictions can have, even if the case was ultimately dropped.

I hear you; but I think the context here is different in that it's a closed loop community with a fairly small distribution network.  I may have been overly dismissive of licensing - I just don't think it's central to the real solution here.  Thanks for adjusting the rudder, as it were.  Good post.

[superdavekerman]

28 minutes ago, regex said:

Alternatively, one of your users?

I'm contrasting it with the Google indexer which follows links with no human involvement. It's not enough that you post a forum thread with your new mod and it magically appears in CKAN.  Someone has to choose to add it to the repo. The issue (I believe based on limited reading) is that anyone can add your mod with no approval process, if it has a permissive license. I'm not arguing for that mind you, there's a well established flame war already progress for that.