Mod licensing and ethics

[CarnageINC]

After reading the License Selection Guide, I've still got a question about what is and is not allowed for the modding community.  From what I gathered reading into this topic already, its been beaten to death so my apologizes for rehashing it, I only do so for clarification for a community project I'm working on.  I'm re-combing the add-on release pages for outdated mods to add to the Add-on Development Mod Library.  I've found that since I've opened up my 'search perimeters', I've run into a lot of good mods with no license or restrictive license that haven't been touched in years.  I suspect that's the very reason there buried and have not been carried on by other modders.

My question is, can someone take ideas from a non-licensed or restrictive licensed mod and make it their own.  I understand not taking the authors part models or directly ripping their code but can you take the actual basic premise of the idea and remake it your own?  I ask because I can put a lot of these mods in my library for others to muse over or borrow from.  However I don't want to waste my time or exhume them if they ultimately can't be used for any reason what so ever. 

Ideally, I would like to get the input from moderators, Squad staff or modders who have a good understanding about this aspect of licensing.

 

Edited March 29, 2017 by CarnageINC

[stibbons]

Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. It is some opinions from somebody who's been peripherally involved in open source software for a couple of decades though.

36 minutes ago, CarnageINC said:

I've run into a lot of good mods with no license or restrictive license that haven't been touched in years.  I suspect that's the very reason there buried and have not been carried on by other modders.

Almost certainly. Where there's no license, you need to assume all rights reserved.

36 minutes ago, CarnageINC said:

My question is, can someone take ideas from a non-licensed or restrictive licensed mod and make it their own.  I understand not taking the authors part models or directly ripping their code but can you take the actual basic premise of the idea and remake it your own?

Yes. The way I see it, a license doesn't apply to an idea, just this particular implementation of an idea (see patents for protecting an idea).

The morality and practicality of reimplementing an idea can be a murkier area. For an actively maintained mod, it could be preferable to contribute to it rather than starting a new one from scratch. That said, there are plenty of examples of similar but different competing mods - different ISS parts packs, a handful of docking alignment mods. In my case, I'm in the middle of writing a serial hardware mod in a similar vein to KSPSerialIO.

But for abandoned mods it's much clearer cut. I say, as long as the new author isn't directly violating the license of the old mod, then go for it.

 

Edited March 29, 2017 by stibbons

[Urses]

To be on the sure side you have to mention the idea parent and you are mostly clear. Something like

"Idea for ... by XYZ

All resulting models and adaptions are my own result"

E: Background "European Business right" i'm a industrial salesman.

Edited March 29, 2017 by Urses

[Rodhern]

5 hours ago, CarnageINC said:

... I ask because I can put a lot of these mods in my library for others to muse over or borrow from. However I don't want to waste my time or exhume them if they ultimately can't be used for any reason what so ever.

So, possibly you will spend time to build a catalog of other authors' mod ideas. It seems a bit wasteful to me. If you want to build a library of mod ideas, why would it have to be only ideas/mods that once existed and was abandoned?

I am not necessarily against your idea. It is more that I am wondering if maybe your time is better used compiling an idea library (somehow).

[Randazzo]

As already mentioned, the -idea- behind a mod is not protected by it's license. If you see something you think is a good idea, but don't like the execution, there's no reason not to try your hand at making something better. Just don't steal their work. Theoretically everybody is just modding as a hobby anyway, so you're not taking food out of anyone's mouth if you do it better. I've personally seen a couple of my ideas be done better than I could do them, and it didn't bother me. I've also seen some bitter fights over perceived slights in the community too, so it just kind of depends on the individual authors and your own personal feelings about it.

In short, if you think you can improve upon an existing idea without stealing from the existing work, there is no legal or ethical reason not to.

Even if you can't improve upon it, there's still no legal or ethical reason not to, but why would you bother?

[diomedea]

All the above answers are giving good advice. Ideas in themselves are not covered by a license, that is used to protect actual work. Ideas are protected by patents (in general, meant to protect intellectual property), though have to meet requisites to be granted a patent (e.g. novelty, usefulness, non-obviousness). Indeed a number of ideas have been covered by patents in IT, and I would not exclude some in add-ons could be patentable too. But while our rules require a license be stated for any add-on (even a non-license, what is important is the author lets clearly know what rights he wants to grant to others, so his work can't be used without consent), there is no requirement to patent ideas, and so far no modder I know here showed to have made one. On the other side, a few modders have clearly stated what is in their add-ons is their own intellectual property, and so far I have always seen such statements respected in this community. On yet another side, it could well be an idea came from someone who we don't know about, but a modder found it and liked to implement it in his work.

As suggested already, I would always give credit to the original author who first showed a specific idea (though, such idea could not always have the patents "requisites", e.g. may not be a novelty if not within our community). And before using one idea, I would try to contact the original author and have his approval.

But because ideas are not registered unless patented (or at least there's a formal statement we could use to track one to an author), lack of evidence about ownership doesn't mean the idea can't be reused (contrary to all published works by community members, where property is evident in itself and lack of a license means no rights have been granted to reuse the work).

[Benjamin Kerman]

Stupid question, but how do you apply for a license? I have a mod that I am working on, but haven't looked into anything like that yet...

[diomedea]

2 minutes ago, Benjamin Kerman said:

Stupid question, but how do you apply for a license? I have a mod that I am working on, but haven't looked into anything like that yet...

You just choose one of your liking, the License Selection Guide gives good advice, but should you need further info, there's plenty on the web (websites for GPL, CC, MIT, and all others are full of info); if all the above still comes short, you may still require more info here (even in PM).

[CarnageINC]

Well guys, you've given me some good feed back on this.  It seems like a general consensus is that so long as your not directly ripping off another author that its exceptable to get an idea off another.  I think I will press forward and add those mods to the Add-on Dev Library.

4 hours ago, Rodhern said:

So, possibly you will spend time to build a catalog of other authors' mod ideas. It seems a bit wasteful to me. If you want to build a library of mod ideas, why would it have to be only ideas/mods that once existed and was abandoned?

I am not necessarily against your idea. It is more that I am wondering if maybe your time is better used compiling an idea library (somehow).

Library is already done, time has already been spent.  Look at the Dev pages for the library pinned there.