SpaceDock.info (Mod Hosting Site)

[politas]

1 minute ago, Farix said:

The question is, if a mod author requests that SpaceDock remove their mod from their repository, will SpaceDock honor the request? The same applies to CKAN.

And the answer is, if the license the mod author chose gives them that right, then yes. If a mod author chooses to use a Free / Open Source license, then they have irrevocably relinquished some rights. That's the promise they make to their users when they use those licenses. It's also the arrangement under which they accept assistance from others to add to and help build their mod, which stops the mods from being entirely "theirs" from a legal perspective.

[Farix]

6 minutes ago, politas said:

And the answer is, if the license the mod author chose gives them that right, then yes. If a mod author chooses to use a Free / Open Source license, then they have irrevocably relinquished some rights. That's the promise they make to their users when they use those licenses. It's also the arrangement under which they accept assistance from others to add to and help build their mod, which stops the mods from being entirely "theirs" from a legal perspective.

You still didn't answer the question. Will SpaceDock/CKAN honor a mod author's request to remove their mod(s) from their website/app?

[TiktaalikDreaming]

4 minutes ago, Farix said:

You still didn't answer the question. Will SpaceDock/CKAN honor a mod author's request to remove their mod(s) from their website/app?

Yes he did.  "And the answer is, if the license the mod author chose gives them that right, then yes."

That said, while many licenses permit forking, I think a fork where nothing is changed isn't really in the spirit of intent of the term fork.  If someone grabbed my stuff and did new things with it, I'd have no trouble.  If someone just renamed it, I think I'd be a bit liquided.  I'm not sure I actually care about uploading elsewhere, but not forking it.  My worries there are more about updates and technical things. 

There is implied ownership inherent in most mod uploading sites.  And I can see that could be inferred to hint at license breach.  Although a lot depends on what the uploader puts around the page to let others know where the mod comes from.  Preferably with a link to the actual original content.

[sumghai]

12 minutes ago, Farix said:

You still didn't answer the question. Will SpaceDock/CKAN honor a mod author's request to remove their mod(s) from their website/app?

My understanding is that SpaceDock will reject the takedown request from the author, unless the mod was licenced under All Rights Reserved.

[ouyin2000]

47 minutes ago, Table said:

But in my opinion, I like SpaceDock, or previously KerbalStuff better

You are entitled to your opinion; that doesn't mean curse is "horrible".

[politas]

17 minutes ago, Farix said:

You still didn't answer the question. Will SpaceDock/CKAN honor a mod author's request to remove their mod(s) from their website/app?

I'm sorry that I couldn't give a simpler answer, but I gave a precise answer. It depends on the license.

[Buster Charlie]

1 hour ago, sumghai said:

While I can easily prove I've the original author of the mod, I'm using the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, which to my understanding automatically allows redistribution of remixes, even those whose content and redistribution are against my wishes. Unfortunately, I'm unable to retroactively apply a more restrictive licence to my work either.

I suppose the only C.Y.A. thing I can now to is to simply refuse to provide support to anyone who downloaded my mod from anywhere other than CurseForge or GitHub.

Why don't you just offshoot your mod into a new license and just don't provide any updates or support to a piece of software which you have no control over?

Next time you upgrade your mod rename it to SUM DUM 2000! with a new lisence and you're all set!

[politas]

5 minutes ago, sumghai said:

My understanding is that SpaceDock will reject the takedown request from the author, unless the mod was licenced under All Rights Reserved.

 Or if the listing in some other way breaches the mod's license. A derivative of a No Derivatives CC license, for example, or no attribution.

[Buster Charlie]

28 minutes ago, politas said:

And the answer is, if the license the mod author chose gives them that right, then yes. If a mod author chooses to use a Free / Open Source license, then they have irrevocably relinquished some rights. That's the promise they make to their users when they use those licenses. It's also the arrangement under which they accept assistance from others to add to and help build their mod, which stops the mods from being entirely "theirs" from a legal perspective.

Yeah I'm not quote sure why people would pick a license that is antithesis to their philosophy. As a mod user, I want to use CKAN, I won't ask for support from a mod if i'm going against the mod creators wishes, but if the mod author maintains their mod on github, and CKAN pulls from github, I'm not entirely sure what's wrong here.

[politas]

2 minutes ago, Buster Charlie said:

Why don't you just offshoot your mod into a new license and just don't provide any updates or support to a piece of software which you have no control over?

Next time you upgrade your mod rename it to SUM DUM 2000! with a new lisence and you're all set!

(Assuming of course, that you are the author of every bit. If you have included material provided by other authors, that is no longer possible.)

[Yemo]

1 minute ago, politas said:

(Assuming of course, that you are the author of every bit. If you have included material provided by other authors, that is no longer possible.)

But you could make the new name ARR, while leaving the contents at whatever license they were before...

[starkline]

Hello. I'm glad to see that there's a replacement for KStuff. A huge thanks to the team behind it!! I am, however, having an issue...

On KerbalStuff, I had my account there sending notifications to my "spam" email account, so maybe this issue was present there, but I used my normal email address for SpaceDock. Today, I noticed the following:

The issue is this: I just received an email notifying me of a mod that's been updated. Great, I thought. Then I noticed that the recipients field included everyone on SpaceDock that's subscribed for updates. I assume that my email address is being sent publicly to everyone on that list. I'd prefer not to have my email address sent out for everyone to see and use.

I can find no way to change my email address in SpaceDock. I can also find no way to delete my account. I know it's picky, but I'd rather not have an account at SpaceDock if my email isn't kept more private.

If this behavior is unchangeable, then please PM me and I'd like to have my email either changed, or my account deleted.

 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

19 minutes ago, starkline said:

Hello. I'm glad to see that there's a replacement for KStuff. A huge thanks to the team behind it!! I am, however, having an issue...

On KerbalStuff, I had my account there sending notifications to my "spam" email account, so maybe this issue was present there, but I used my normal email address for SpaceDock. Today, I noticed the following:

The issue is this: I just received an email notifying me of a mod that's been updated. Great, I thought. Then I noticed that the recipients field included everyone on SpaceDock that's subscribed for updates. I assume that my email address is being sent publicly to everyone on that list. I'd prefer not to have my email address sent out for everyone to see and use.

I can find no way to change my email address in SpaceDock. I can also find no way to delete my account. I know it's picky, but I'd rather not have an account at SpaceDock if my email isn't kept more private.

If this behavior is unchangeable, then please PM me and I'd like to have my email either changed, or my account deleted.

 

You're not the first to notice.  The spacedock crew already have this as a feature request in the queue.

[starkline]

Thanks for the info. Apologies if I was too blind to notice previous posts regarding this.

[inigma]

On 2/20/2016 at 1:55 PM, MisterFister said:

One and all, I'd like to contribute to this effort.  I have no technical expertise, but I do have LEGAL expertise, as I am graduating law school in 85 days (wow!) and my school has free student-clinic representation for non-profit corporate clients.  I am based in New York, USA, but I can access other jurisdictions either within or potentially outside of the United States through my own personal network of lawyers, law students, and other professionals.

KerbalStuff failed, ultimately, because of a poor incentive-model (cost of time and money) to update and maintain it.

SpaceDock, or any successor, will eventually run into the same problem in some form.  Squad's licensing, of course, is with Curse.  Curse predicates its own commitment to Squad based on an economic model of forcing mod downloaders to physically visit their website and be exposed to banner ads as their primary method of cost defrayment and profit generation.  This is reasonable, because mod cloud-storage is not free; mod hosting and listing and indexing is not free; and bandwidth for mod downloading is not free.  Indeed, anyone who knows or prefers CKAN understands that Curse is VERY CKAN-unfriendly, as CKAN is based on metadata files that presume the ability to remote-call and remote-download hosted mods -- Curse actually updated their software to affirmatively prevent CKAN from doing it's thing, specifically to ensure that mod downloaders were forcibly exposed to Curse's banner ads.  This is why CKAN management favored a mod that was hosted on KerbalStuff, Github, or some other miscellaneous hosting (such as Dropbox / OneDrive / GDrive / etc.)

I am unfamiliar as to the exact particulars of Squad's licensing, but I'm fairly certain that Curse's deal is one of exclusivity -- that any other mod-hosting site is prevented by licensing restrictions from adopting any for-profit model that would compete with Curse.

My Proposal: With someone else's help, I can act as point man in forming a non-profit corporation of some kind (my own jurisdiction of New York would offer several filing options for this, and other jurisdictions may offer different options, each with advantages and disadvantages.)  I can even serve as a member of a corporation's managing board.  I suggest we find a way to manage and navigate the existing licensing restrictions, or possibly even negotiate with Squad in good faith to allow some form of compromise solution, that would allow SpaceDock or some KerbalStuff-successor to operate and generate modest revenue from hosting and CKAN integration, not for the purpose of generating lasting profits, but for the exclusive purpose of strengthening the non-profit product so that it remains as available and robust as the technology could allow.  From actually offsetting the digital costs of webhosting and bandwidth, I foresee the possibility to manage a small cohort of otherwise-volunteer programmers and other mod hobbyists by actually offering them some sort of financial incentive to donate their time.  I'm not suggesting we hire someone full time with salary and benefits, but something that would make their late nights of sacrificed personal time worthwhile.

I can be reached by PM here, or by email directly at [email protected].  I get a lot of emails from other sources, so to make yours stand out, please indicate "KerbalStuff Successor" in the subject line.  I am convinced that there can exist a fully-legal, fully-compliant, self-sustaining solution to this issue, and I'd care to be a significant contributor to that effort.

Best,
David

Thanks for the offer. I have forwarded your offer to the team. for evaluation here: https://github.com/KSP-SpaceDock/SpaceDock-Project/issues/25

[TiktaalikDreaming]

27 minutes ago, starkline said:

Thanks for the info. Apologies if I was too blind to notice previous posts regarding this.

No worries.  This topic is getting officially too large to be bothered looking through the whole lot.  At least for lazy people like me.

[inigma]

After the polls closed, I am happy to announce that SpaceDock now adopted its official logo, designed by sharksharkco:

I have updated the OP, feel free to update your signatures if you want to use a logo for SpaceDock in them.

Edited February 22, 2016 by inigma

[politas]

3 hours ago, Yemo said:

But you could make the new name ARR, while leaving the contents at whatever license they were before...

It's about the contents of the mod, not the name. As an example, Ferram is pretty down on CKAN, and would rather it wasn't listed there. But FAR has something like 20 authors when you add in all the contributions. Ferram may be the main author, but he can't simply relicense FAR as ARR, because he didn't write it all, so he doesn't own it all. And plenty of mods are in the same situation. People in the forums offer up ModuleManager scripts or slightly tweaked models and scripts, and as soon as the original author includes any of those into their mod, it's stuck with the open source license they started with. That's the reality of open source licences, and it's their great strength, for everyone except the original author. 

[ferram4]

As someone who is currently being screwed over by open source licenses, I think it's kind of important to understand why I even selected them: I want there to be no problem working from what's there if I decide to quit.  I also don't want people who want to build off of it to be discouraged from doing so.

What I don't want to deal with is someone uploading an exact copy, that copy then becoming the go-to source for the mod, that copy becoming out of date as I continue development, but still being the popular source that everyone goes to (for some reason), resulting in greater support requests for no good reason.  Or for the upload having packaging errors.  Or for it to include large changes, but all the info points back to my thread so I'm getting support requests for someone else's stuff.

So, in terms of policy outside of what is strictly following licenses, how do you handle the above scenarios?  Will there ever be any policy outside of pure licenses that SpaceDock will follow, or will the response amount to no more than, "deal with it."?

[politas]

3 minutes ago, ferram4 said:

As someone who is currently being screwed over by open source licenses, I think it's kind of important to understand why I even selected them: I want there to be no problem working from what's there if I decide to quit.  I also don't want people who want to build off of it to be discouraged from doing so.

What I don't want to deal with is someone uploading an exact copy, that copy then becoming the go-to source for the mod, that copy becoming out of date as I continue development, but still being the popular source that everyone goes to (for some reason), resulting in greater support requests for no good reason.  Or for the upload having packaging errors.  Or for it to include large changes, but all the info points back to my thread so I'm getting support requests for someone else's stuff.

So, in terms of policy outside of what is strictly following licenses, how do you handle the above scenarios?  Will there ever be any policy outside of pure licenses that SpaceDock will follow, or will the response amount to no more than, "deal with it."?

It is very hard for Spacedock or CKAN to control where people ask for support. All either tool can provide is an assurance that someone pretending to be you will be restricted from doing so. Ferram, you put FAR under a GPL 3.0 license. If you didn't understand what you were doing when you did so, I'm sorry. But now, the other contributors also have rights that you granted them. I'm sorry that you feel you're being "screwed over" by the license you chose. I am only aware of one of the scenarios you mention actually happening (packaging errors), and it is something that CKAN makes every attempt to fix as soon as we are made aware of it (because CKAN contributors care about CKAN users).

[ferram4]

I am fully aware of the consequences in terms of following the license precisely and the negative consequences of it.  However, not all the negative consequences have to be tolerated, because the terms of use for a site can forbid those.  At this moment, there are no policies to handle behaviors that follow the license exactly but provide no actual benefit (and in some cases, harm) to users or modders, which is what I'm getting at, and based on the current discussion in here, it seems a lot like there won't be any at all.

[omelaw]

3 minutes ago, ferram4 said:

Or for it to include large changes, but all the info points back to my thread so I'm getting support requests for someone else's stuff.

I wonder trademarking name "ferram" can stop this happen.

2 hours ago, politas said:

It is very hard for Spacedock or CKAN to control where people ask for support. All either tool can provide is an assurance that someone pretending to be you will be restricted from doing so. Ferram, you put FAR under a GPL 3.0 license. If you didn't understand what you were doing when you did so, I'm sorry. But now, the other contributors also have rights that you granted them. I'm sorry that you feel you're being "screwed over" by the license you chose. I am only aware of one of the scenarios you mention actually happening (packaging errors), and it is something that CKAN makes every attempt to fix as soon as we are made aware of it (because CKAN contributors care about CKAN users).

I think he want to add a policy like "don't upload mod not made by you." into spacedock's. it won't stop posting it somewhere else, but it won't violate any licence by itself.

[birdog357]

3 hours ago, ferram4 said:

I am fully aware of the consequences in terms of following the license precisely and the negative consequences of it.  However, not all the negative consequences have to be tolerated, because the terms of use for a site can forbid those.  At this moment, there are no policies to handle behaviors that follow the license exactly but provide no actual benefit (and in some cases, harm) to users or modders, which is what I'm getting at, and based on the current discussion in here, it seems a lot like there won't be any at all.

There's a simple fix to your problem. Embrace CKAN, then you have control over the package that is referenced. I have something like 40 different mods installed and I do not want to spend all the time required to manually keep them upto date. CKAN is awesome in that respect. I really do not understand your beef with it.

[VITAS]

Personaly i understand your problems but from a site admin standpoint i have to act consistant and logicly.

So I would welcome it if you guys made a new thread to discuss mod licencensing problems.

If you come to a conclution on where the line should be drawn for removing mods you can tell me and also implement it.

Everyone is welcome to join us on IRC.esper.net #spacedock to help us out.

We can use every helping whos willing to make this the best site it can be.

Thank you foks.

 

[Redneck]

CKAN is awsome for auto updating mod dependent mods for the convieneice of its users. dont like CKAN? then start writing code so they arent mod dependent. its really that simple. choose your mod license carefully...no big deal