Compatibility with ARR-licensed mods

[Leganeski]

I wrote a Kopernicus patch to integrate the recently released Quack Pack (licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) into Whirligig World (mostly licensed All Rights Reserved). This was mainly for personal use (I have an existing Whirligig save and wanted to try out the new planets), but I was hoping to share it so that others could combine these planet packs as well.

I would prefer not to have excessively unrealistic orbits, so my patch puts Quack Pack's planet Cind into a 5:4 resonance with Whirligig's planet Shol by multiplying the semimajor axes of the Quack Pack orbits by a constant value (roughly 1.8). However, to get the resonance right, this number depends on Shol's exact orbital period, which as a part of Whirligig World's Kopernicus configs seems to fall under its ARR license.

(The patch is just this and a few lines setting Cind's orbital eccentricity to zero in order to avoid an SOI collision with Shol, but I am confident that that part of it is perfectly legal to share.)

My patch and the numbers in it are only meaningful when both planet packs are installed, so I don't personally see any problems that could arise from it being publicly available. However, that's not how the law works. Would sharing this patch violate copyright?

[Caerfinon]

8 minutes ago, Leganeski said:

Would sharing this patch violate copyright?

Perhaps ask the author if there are any objections to releasing your patch, and remove all doubt if permission is granted. 

[Stone Blue]

What Caerfinon said... I *always* seek permission, even tho stuff might be under an open license... dont *have* to, but i think its the *right* thing to do...

Generally, as long as you arent distributing exact or modified content, you're generally good to go.

Configs seem to be a gray area... With cfgs, theres only so many ways to skin a cat, so its highly likely two people could come up with almost exactly the same cfg, without ever having knowledge of someone else's config content.

Generally, patching cfgs seems Ok.... but you just have to make sure they dont create any conflicts for the original mod, and generally good practice to state in your thread/release, that any support for your stuff, should come to *you*, and *not* the original mod author.

Again, thats one reason why IMHO its good to contact the original dev, and ask, no matter what the license is.

Again, cfgs seem a gray area... I dont think *I*ve* ever seen any drama or issues with original mod devs raising a stink solely about cfgs, or patching...*unless* it ends up causing a big problem for them with people coming to *them* for support for your stuff, or big conflicts for their mod working with other mods.

Generally, its art, model & code assets you definately cant do anything with, under an ARR. These are what people put a lot of time and effort into, and that seems to mostly be what people want to protect.

But again, I makke all these statements under *generally*.... Again, with ARR, its DEFINATELY worth contacting the original dev for permission.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Stone Blue

[Poodmund]

12 hours ago, Leganeski said:

My patch and the numbers in it are only meaningful when both planet packs are installed, so I don't personally see any problems that could arise from it being publicly available. However, that's not how the law works. Would sharing this patch violate copyright?

No. It would also not violate any license. I think a clever way to go about it would be to just pull out the orbital period value of Shol directly when loading through MM to patch it. That way you're not altering/using/mixing etc. etc. anything from WW, you're just referencing a value from the MM config cache as its being built, only if WW is installed alongside Quack Pack. 

@Kopernicus:HAS[@Body[Cind]]:AFTER[WhirligigWorld]
{
    @Body[Cind]
    {
        @Orbit
        {
            @eccentricity = 0
            %period = #$@Kopernicus[*]:HAS[@Body[Shol]]/Body/Orbit/period$
		}
    }
}

Does that work?

Maybe just %period = #$/Body[Cind]/Orbit/period$ if that doesn't work.

As others have said, its gracious to inform the other person of what you're doing just so that they can recognise any issues that pop up in the future due to your integration of Quack Pack alongside WW.

EDIT: Did some testing and it doesn't work, but thats just because my MM-fu is not good enough... if some MM whizz could advise on the correct syntax I'm sure it could work.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Poodmund

[Leganeski]

On 10/25/2022 at 6:41 AM, Poodmund said:

to just pull out the orbital period value of Shol directly when loading through MM to patch it

I didn't know you could do that! I was planning to set the orbital SMA explicitly rather than the period so that the orbit line would be in the right place, but I could still do that in the way you described, just with more math. I'll try testing it the next time I have a chance.

Edit: It works! The syntax is

#$/Body[Shol]/Orbit/period$

or, more generally,

#$@Kopernicus/Body[Shol]/Orbit/period$

 

On 10/25/2022 at 6:41 AM, Poodmund said:

As others have said, its gracious to inform the other person of what you're doing just so that they can recognise any issues that pop up in the future due to your integration of Quack Pack alongside WW.

On 10/25/2022 at 4:17 AM, Stone Blue said:

generally good practice to state in your thread/release, that any support for your stuff, should come to *you*, and *not* the original mod author.

Absolutely! I was already planning to do both of these things when I released the patch.

Edited November 7, 2022 by Leganeski