Ok heres my wall of text b4 this gets locked for needless drama.
I like the idea mentioned below of walling off compilations. Curse volume is also large enough I think that between dl stats & voting record the good compilations can get some kind of special rating and thus a separate section so they don't have to drown in the icky ones.
And now to belabor the obvious:
1) There are actual compilation Authors that communicate with you, report bugs, ask for features etc. I am happy to help them when I can.
2) Then there are the untouchables as detailed below. After reading the eloquent Phanx posts I am going to add such a clause as well, except no right of cloning or renaming because thats how I roll. Besides, I dislike the stupid support issues with them due to obsolete versions being in them.
3) If I leave wow, thats when a succession occurs. Meanwhile I do not trust anyone to do a decent job of renaming a mod so there is no collision. I have already had to deal with enough instances of people copying and pasting code verbatim and once it becomes obsolete it errors out because it overwrites the newer stuff. Neither do I want confusion about who is doing what with a mod. Is this onerous? No. Just write a competing mod from scratch if you have to. I have essentially done this every few patches as Blizzard completely changes something. It is not hard.
4) Please take the silly law questions elsewhere. We are programmers and really do not care to debate such nonsense. I recommend GrokLaw. They will disabuse you of your legal ignorance or indulge your legal trivia fetish.
5) Why copyright your mod? Well it helps prevent what happenned a few years ago when a batch of people basically took a bunch of mods, lightly rewrote them, added some glue and some of their own stuff and started selling this to guilds for money.
6) Why control its distribution? There are sites out there that basically take your mod and distribute it while making money in the process without giving you anything whatsoever in return. I like to have the ability to control this, even if I don't have the resources to police it beyond the occasional post in the forums pointing out such bad behaviour. Just so this is not misconstrued: wowace provides libraries and tons of dev support, curse is doing hosting & stuff, same for wowinterface. I have no idea what the Korean and Chinese sites are doing but they provide localization and sometimes bug reports, fixes or even code. These are the good guys.
Note that for the libs I created from scratch or compiled from other peoples work the opposite applies: libs are common resources, and the more widely shared the better. I contacted all discoverable sources of such code and made them aware of what I was doing and got input from them in many cases as well as crediting them etc. I even make clear that I have no intention or desire to "own" such code and most definitely want it out there being maintained by everybody.
You know, I actually had a good deal to contribute, I had my replies planned out, but after reading the last few pages in this topic, I feel I'll just say this:
Drama warning.
I love a lively debate, but this is starting to resemble a downright mud sling fest. So continue down the road, and this topic will be locked for sure.
PS: Kaelten just considered locking the forum for a few minutes to inform everyone of their potential needs for Prozac. I would have said valium for some folks though ;)
I'd also like to know the answer to this. I don't want my addons included in any kind of compilations, premade UIs, guild packs, or whatever else you want to call them, whether it's manually packaged by the uploader, or dynamically packaged by the site. If you like my addon, and want to share it with other people, give them a link to the download page.
Lol what?
You MAY NOT include this addon in compilations or otherwise redistribute
it without the express prior consent of its author.
You MAY freely distribute modified or derivitave versions of this addon,
provided that the name of your version does not include the name of this
addon or its author.
So, i can simply rename your Phaxchat to SChat and distribute as i see fit, but I can't use it as it is currently ?
Perhaps you should look into a less.. confusing license? like GPL (2.0 not hateful 3.0)
I'm confused. If addons in a compilation are linked to the same downloads that people are using to download the addons individually then supporting addons in compilations is no different than supporting addons downloaded outside of them. They are the same files, just downloaded slightly differently. The same support issues apply, no? I trying to see the difference in supporting one or the other, other than volume.
^- this , in reference to Phanx you can download but not distribute un-official license.
If phanx is worried about providing support for UI comp authors that change his code, he should be using the GPL instead, which is a real license. the GPL would cover any of his issues and if i take his code and make a pay-for closed source addon out of it, he can actually have legal precedence over me to remove his code or open source mine.
Something he has no right to do with his existing code license.
^- this , in reference to Phanx you can download but not distribute un-official license.
If phanx is worried about providing support for UI comp authors that change her code, she should be using the GPL instead, which is a real license. the GPL would cover any of her issues and if i take her code and make a pay-for closed source addon out of it, she can actually have legal precedence over me to remove her code or open source mine.
Something she has no right to do with her existing code license.
So, i can simply rename your Phaxchat to SChat and distribute as i see fit, but I can't use it as it is currently ?
If you really want to, then yes, you can. And then you are responsible for updating it for API changes, answering user questions, and all other aspects of development, distribution, and support.
Perhaps you should look into a less.. confusing license? like GPL (2.0 not hateful 3.0)
It's only confusing because you're not taking it at face value. Stop trying to read things into it that it doesn't say, and you'll find it's very, very simple.
If phanx is worried about providing support for UI comp authors that change his code, he should be using the GPL instead, which is a real license. the GPL would cover any of his issues and if i take his code and make a pay-for closed source addon out of it, he can actually have legal precedence over me to remove his code or open source mine.
My license is just as "real" as the GPL, and any court of law must give my license terms just as much respect as they give a popular license like the GPL. However, the situation you describe would never arise, because my code is not open source, and because, as discussed above, my license absolutely grants you the right to take my code and make a pay-for addon out of it.
Something he has no right to do with his existing code license.
Again, you're absolutely right. If you take my code, and make a pay-for addon out of it, I have no legal ground to stand on to ask you to change it. This is completely intentional, and is completely covered by my license.
My license basically boils down to this: "do whatever you want, as long as I don't have to deal with it".
I propose an Ace lib that UI pack-compilators can integrate into their pack to easily include their savedvariables files.
The library would then apply the variables once, perhaps call some "refresh"-methods on the addons in the pack. After the first application the addon remembers not to do it again unless specifically requested.
I have an idea. Let's NOT do compilations. If people are too lazy or ill informed to create their own UI, they probably shouldn't bother with it in the first place. :p
I propose an Ace lib that UI pack-compilators can integrate into their pack to easily include their savedvariables files.
The library would then apply the variables once, perhaps call some "refresh"-methods on the addons in the pack. After the first application the addon remembers not to do it again unless specifically requested.
I have an idea. Let's NOT do compilations. If people are too lazy or ill informed to create their own UI, they probably shouldn't bother with it in the first place. :p
I started with discord compilations. I learned a lot just by downloading and messing around with them. I learned even more by using and messing around with Tapestry/Savantido's and Duke's UI compilations.
I don't think I'm lazy or ill informed since I used other people's compilations to learn how to do my own. You might, but that's fine!
P.S. My background isn't programming, nor computers, I'm simply a dirty rotten user who knows enough about computers to do damage ;D
edit: I use filefront to link to my UI's (when asked). It was a lot of questions of (zomg how do I do this?!) from level 1's logging into my server. I have to say, everyone was extremely polite and nice when asking.
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I like the idea mentioned below of walling off compilations. Curse volume is also large enough I think that between dl stats & voting record the good compilations can get some kind of special rating and thus a separate section so they don't have to drown in the icky ones.
And now to belabor the obvious:
1) There are actual compilation Authors that communicate with you, report bugs, ask for features etc. I am happy to help them when I can.
2) Then there are the untouchables as detailed below. After reading the eloquent Phanx posts I am going to add such a clause as well, except no right of cloning or renaming because thats how I roll. Besides, I dislike the stupid support issues with them due to obsolete versions being in them.
3) If I leave wow, thats when a succession occurs. Meanwhile I do not trust anyone to do a decent job of renaming a mod so there is no collision. I have already had to deal with enough instances of people copying and pasting code verbatim and once it becomes obsolete it errors out because it overwrites the newer stuff. Neither do I want confusion about who is doing what with a mod. Is this onerous? No. Just write a competing mod from scratch if you have to. I have essentially done this every few patches as Blizzard completely changes something. It is not hard.
4) Please take the silly law questions elsewhere. We are programmers and really do not care to debate such nonsense. I recommend GrokLaw. They will disabuse you of your legal ignorance or indulge your legal trivia fetish.
5) Why copyright your mod? Well it helps prevent what happenned a few years ago when a batch of people basically took a bunch of mods, lightly rewrote them, added some glue and some of their own stuff and started selling this to guilds for money.
6) Why control its distribution? There are sites out there that basically take your mod and distribute it while making money in the process without giving you anything whatsoever in return. I like to have the ability to control this, even if I don't have the resources to police it beyond the occasional post in the forums pointing out such bad behaviour. Just so this is not misconstrued: wowace provides libraries and tons of dev support, curse is doing hosting & stuff, same for wowinterface. I have no idea what the Korean and Chinese sites are doing but they provide localization and sometimes bug reports, fixes or even code. These are the good guys.
Note that for the libs I created from scratch or compiled from other peoples work the opposite applies: libs are common resources, and the more widely shared the better. I contacted all discoverable sources of such code and made them aware of what I was doing and got input from them in many cases as well as crediting them etc. I even make clear that I have no intention or desire to "own" such code and most definitely want it out there being maintained by everybody.
The End.
Drama warning.
I love a lively debate, but this is starting to resemble a downright mud sling fest. So continue down the road, and this topic will be locked for sure.
PS: Kaelten just considered locking the forum for a few minutes to inform everyone of their potential needs for Prozac. I would have said valium for some folks though ;)
Lol what?
So, i can simply rename your Phaxchat to SChat and distribute as i see fit, but I can't use it as it is currently ?
Perhaps you should look into a less.. confusing license? like GPL (2.0 not hateful 3.0)
^- this , in reference to Phanx you can download but not distribute un-official license.
If phanx is worried about providing support for UI comp authors that change his code, he should be using the GPL instead, which is a real license. the GPL would cover any of his issues and if i take his code and make a pay-for closed source addon out of it, he can actually have legal precedence over me to remove his code or open source mine.
Something he has no right to do with his existing code license.
Fixed ;)
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Curse Premiumno, it means that if you rename it, change the code enough to look and feel different then you can redistribute it
If you really want to, then yes, you can. And then you are responsible for updating it for API changes, answering user questions, and all other aspects of development, distribution, and support.
It's only confusing because you're not taking it at face value. Stop trying to read things into it that it doesn't say, and you'll find it's very, very simple.
My license is just as "real" as the GPL, and any court of law must give my license terms just as much respect as they give a popular license like the GPL. However, the situation you describe would never arise, because my code is not open source, and because, as discussed above, my license absolutely grants you the right to take my code and make a pay-for addon out of it.
Again, you're absolutely right. If you take my code, and make a pay-for addon out of it, I have no legal ground to stand on to ask you to change it. This is completely intentional, and is completely covered by my license.
My license basically boils down to this: "do whatever you want, as long as I don't have to deal with it".
No, it means exactly what it says, and what he described. As long as its name and source code do not include "PhanxChat" or "Phanx", he's good to go.
Now I know why you guys were making such a fuss, though. You were all acting like women and failing to take things at face value! :p
The library would then apply the variables once, perhaps call some "refresh"-methods on the addons in the pack. After the first application the addon remembers not to do it again unless specifically requested.
AceUIPack-3.0 anyone?
I wish back the time where no one was releasing any compilations.. oh wait, did they exist?
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Curse Premiumbut but but that sounds like a good idea!
I started with discord compilations. I learned a lot just by downloading and messing around with them. I learned even more by using and messing around with Tapestry/Savantido's and Duke's UI compilations.
I don't think I'm lazy or ill informed since I used other people's compilations to learn how to do my own. You might, but that's fine!
P.S. My background isn't programming, nor computers, I'm simply a dirty rotten user who knows enough about computers to do damage ;D
edit: I use filefront to link to my UI's (when asked). It was a lot of questions of (zomg how do I do this?!) from level 1's logging into my server. I have to say, everyone was extremely polite and nice when asking.