That's not what I said. I don't want either modders or users to be second-class.
I'm talking about the purge. Nekowulf, do you support the purge?
The purge you reference is the idea that by clarifying mojang's stance on what is and is not allowed it will drive modders away from the scene because they are no longer allowed to use the tactics they want to demand obedience from the user population. Tactics that I must repeat, are borderline if not blatantly illegal under US federal law.
There are modders who believe this guy had the right idea: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030617/1445203.shtml
I support modders rights to control the use of their work by the only legally acceptable means. By not releasing it publicly.
And if they cannot accept that, I support their right to leave.
Writing a modification and releasing it for public download does not give you right right to decide how other programs function on my property. At best you can have your modification not load, but it cannot interfere with the rest of the game to do that.
Requiring all download be through a service such as adfly is not legal as well, because it turns the download as a service to the download as a gated product you must pay (with eyeball time) to obtain.
And finally because modifications cannot be monetized, there are no damages to justify a civil lawsuit.
I would also like to point out any attempt to argue that "It allows anyone to steal my work and claim it as their own" is completely bogus. The EULA expressly forbids that by requiring the modification be your own work.
The main issue is modders who use malicious code to 'fight' other modders, players, or modpacks and in turn, the users got angry at this. The users called for "daddy" to help stop the fighting and they are, but in turn this has caused so many issues to just boil over.The main issues from what I seen that has caused this to show up is; The Forestry vs Tekkit, Greg vs Tekkit, and recently Railcraft. If the sources are true, railcraft apparently did this;
In 1.4.7, if:
Your username is madcock83, or
The path to the current directory contains "pluspluslauncher", or
The file "./mods/rei_minimap/216.172.99.198[26003].DIM0.points" exists and it is not Monday or Tuesday
Railcraft would:
Delete 1 in 8 recipes (selected randomly)
In a method called "pluckTheWeb", send a "securityViolation" IMC message to Forestry, BuildCraft|Core, Thaumcraft, and IC2.
Also, if either Forestry, IC2, or RedPowerCore did not match a signature hardcoded into Railcraft, it would exit the game without giving any indication why.If Railcraft did not match its own expected signature, it would do both.
source: http://www.reddit.co...chapter/ce5ymtoThis is the main issue here. Majong is trying to stop modders from doing this type of stuff. It has nothing to deal with being open source, closed source, distributing or other stuff. But when you put in your mod a thing that breaks minecraft since you dislike how some one else is using your mod, then are being a jerk and are hurting the users more then the other person.
The context for that was malicious mods breaking things on purpose right? If you create a mod, you publish it publicly to everyone you do not get to control who uses it, who uses it with what or who uses it without something (though dependencies should break this obviously). If you want to control that, do not make your mod publicly available. Obviously your code/assets are your intellectual property so someone just bluntly 'offering it' on another location other than the one you've decided it should be available from should fall under regular 'law' (and thus likely not being legal). This would stop no modpack making 'compatibility' for your mod and simply stating to people to get it from 'your location'. Are we still moving on?
The context was of mods breaking other mods,modpacks, or user worlds because of malicious intent. This whole thing has nothing to do with copyright, opensource/closedsource, or anything like that.We are basically in the same spot as before these changes, just with out a way to really enforce the rules you put on your mods for distributions.
The main issue is modders who use malicious code to 'fight' other modders, players, or modpacks and in turn, the users got angry at this. The users called for "daddy" to help stop the fighting and they are, but in turn this has caused so many issues to just boil over.The main issues from what I seen that has caused this to show up is; The Forestry vs Tekkit, Greg vs Tekkit, and recently Railcraft. If the sources are true, railcraft apparently did this;
This is the main issue here. Majong is trying to stop modders from doing this type of stuff. It has nothing to deal with being open source, closed source, distributing or other stuff. But when you put in your mod a thing that breaks minecraft since you dislike how some one else is using your mod, then are being a jerk and are hurting the users more then the other person.
I've been reading this whole thread since page one and I finally allowed myself to comment, just because of this post. This is the true issue that makes this community toxic. I've been part of the Skyrim modding community and every modder respected each other, and more importantly they respected their users. There were different channels to download mods from and several modders restricted on which channel to download from. Be it from Steam Workshop for small mods, Skyrim Nexus for bigger and more advanced mod to Lover's Lab for the more "questionable" material. And people respected that. Modders never said Xuser shouldn't use Ymod or Ymod shouldn't be played with Tmod, It was up to the user to use the mod as they saw fit.It would be nice if all mods in this community used this as their core rule:These "permissions" are taken from the Japanese page for the mod I'm hosting in these forums, and even if those "permissions" allowed me to redistribute it, I gave proper credit to the original creator and informed him my intentions before doing so, which he agreed to. I also put a direct link in my post as a matter of common sense and courtesy. I really hope this issue settles down because in the end it hurts us all both modders and players.
Edit: I've also noticed that every few months something pops up and all the community goes in an uproar...
FC vs Forge, FC vs Elo, Seng vs Tekkit, FC vs Forge, GT vs Diyo, and so on... If it were only a couple isolated instances it would be acceptable, but as it stands, all this drama and these conflicts are unacceptable!
Edit: I had a much larger post here regarding this issue, but I am going to replace it with clarification I got after the matter.
"User vs provider.
MCedit uses Pygame, it does not provide code to Pygame that would create the "down stream cascade" link necessitating handoff of rights.
Same with Bukkit and Worldpainter with GSON, SQLite, MySQL, SnakeYAML, and Install4J.
Remember, cascades go down, not up."
These projects all distribute compiled code of their libraries, as opposed to source code. If that's acceptable, then so is my dungeon-generating library: its compiled code would be distributed with the plugins/mods which use it, but I retain the rights to the library itself. Good for me.
That also debunks an earlier claim that "all Forge mods and Bukkit plugins derive from Forge/Bukkit, which in turn derive from Minecraft, and thus all of them are derived from Minecraft". Forge mods and Bukkit plugins don't include/provide Forge and Bukkit - they merely use it. They actually don't even contain the compiled code. At that point, the only thing that lets the argument "Mojang owns the rights to mods/plugins" stand is the "content available through Minecraft" part of the EULA.
That, in turn, leaves me asking how far "content available through Minecraft" goes. Is a private, in-house server plugin available through Minecraft if the server itself is publicly available? According to your quote, it doesn't apply to libraries used by mods - but the general consensus here is that it does apply to mods used by other mods (mod loaders and APIs)?
As for cascades going down and not up - I suppose cascade was a poor choice of word. There is an "up", however: it comes from systems like Forge making mods available to Minecraft when they otherwise would not be. The mod itself is not available through Minecraft until Forge acts as the bridge, just as my dungeon library would not be available until connected via a mod/plugin. The "up" which propagates is not copyright or derivation, but rather the obligations described in the EULA: if all dependencies do not comply with the EULA, the content as a whole cannot comply. And that (combined with the "all content must be your own work" clause) is what puts MCedit, Bukkit, and WorldPainter in the gray area.
Anyways, as you suggested before your edit (at least, I think it was you), I've sent an e-mail to Customer Support regarding Mojang's meaning of "content" and interpretation of what the EULA means for projects making use of libraries. Given Grum's recent posts on Reddit, however, it would appear that the entire "Content" section has nothing to do with mods and tools at all, and the EULA thus has zero consequence on libraries and copyright.
I'm sorry, but you cannot infringe on my protected right to free speech to spread the information Mojang has presented.
Free speech is a liberty, not a claim right. It protects you from having others stifle your speech; it does not actually require anybody to listen. Sorry to be blunt, but implying Stratagerm's words interfere with your own right to free speech is absurd: he's well within his own right to free speech to say he doesn't want to hear something from you. Nothing personal; I just hate it when people try to use "right to free speech" as an obligation in internet arguments like that.
Again, you are asking if I approve of something behind a term with no concrete meaning that could change at a later date. In your own words, please ask me what scenario I support and I will answer this.
So even though you've posted extensively in this thread in support of lukeb28, I can't ask you using lukeb28's words? lukeb28 said about some (unspecified) modders "They feel too entitled and have to be knocked from their high horse." Do you agree with that?
Your refusal to answer is destroying your credibility even further.
The community seems to be losing sight of what I have started our path on. We are getting caught on petty things like open source or closed source, weather sub programs count as a mod, and EULA being unclear. These are not the issue we are facing.
The main issue is the toxicity of the modded community. It needs to be purged.
It's not anyone's task to clarify Mojang's stance but Mojang itself.
I would also like to point out any attempt to argue that "It allows anyone to steal my work and claim it as their own" is completely bogus. The EULA expressly forbids that by requiring the modification be your own work.
Agreed. Mojang has said this repeatedly over the years.
Others may steal your code and republish it without a thought to the legal consequences as there are none. They may copy sections, decompile it, and do whatever they wish with it. It is no longer yours.
I'll say again that I've thought and blogged for years now that Mojang needed to address modder conduct and provide more guidance to the community to prevent abuses by modders. Unethical modders took advantage of the situation to do things that harmed users.
The reason I'm being so hard on people here is that the exact same thing is being done, but this time by users against modders—exploiting the power vacuum that results from Mojang's hands-off treatment of modding. Instead of demanding that Mojang clarify it's fuzzy position on modding, lukeb28 and others took it upon themselves to provide their own interpretation of it in support their own goals which include stealing code from modders and knocking them from their high horses.
"You are ignoring the part where I say the Minecraft EULA can be arguably invalid."
My god would you listen to yourself...ALL laws are be "arguably invalid." Look at the crater of binnie babies he hide 30 million dollars from the IRS then donated 4 million to a "charity" and then the judge commented him saying that he was a good person. The list goes on and on...
"minecraft forums rules "trumps" mojangs EULA"
Yeah because your "rules" carry more weight then the International laws...*rolls eyes*
"You don't destroy a community to save it. "
Tell that to doctors...you need to google chemotherapy.
Sorry to be blunt, but implying Stratagerm's words interfere with your own right to free speech is absurd: he's well within his own right to free speech to say he doesn't want to hear something from you. Nothing personal; I just hate it when people try to use "right to free speech" as an obligation in internet arguments like that.
Then he shouldn't read/listen. Common sense dictates that if you don't like something, avoid it.
People like me who feel that it's a ham-handed way to deal with the issue.
Why is that? Because it causes conflict with people who either misunderstand or exercise dubious practices with their mods? Mojang is flexing their legal muscle to keep crap like malware and dicking over the end user out of the modding community. This isn't so much as using different interpretations of the EULA to hand tie modder's and belittle their IP as much as it is modders such as cpw and users like yourself thinking there is some kind of middle ground to be had with people who think that "minecraft forums rules 'trumps' mojangs EULA" and that there is a great purge or revolt.
People like me who feel that it's a ham-handed way to deal with the issue.
So even though you've posted extensively in this thread in support of lukeb28, I can't ask you using lukeb28's words? lukeb28 said about some (unspecified) modders "They feel too entitled and have to be knocked from their high horse." Do you agree with that?
Your refusal to answer is destroying your credibility even further.
No, I simply feel that you want me to agree with something that may be later used against me because people like to twist words. The mere fact that you wont ask me plainly in your own words if I agree to something instead of constantly referring to "the purge" leads me to believe this. Call me paranoid, but I will not be lead to have my words taken out of context in the future. I've made very clear where I stand and what course I support, I am for a less toxic community, nothing more. My credibility is not hurt by whether or not I fully agree with everything lukeb28 says because I have been giving my own personal thoughts and opinions on the matter.
When I asked Azanor about it his reply was, its not about adfly its about principle, I've been burned in the past so I just dont allow it. The issue with this attitude is people like myself who are perfectly happy to not only ask for permission but promote your mod to thousands of people are screwed out of the opportunity.
Here's what people don't seem to understand, or (more likely) are willfully ignoring. It doesn't matter, legally, what he thinks, says, or does. "Azanor" - I'm now using him as a hypothetical here - cannot tell you how you use his mod. Or, rather, he can, but it holds no legal sway.
It seems that the only way to sufficiently prove this to these people is to demonstrate it in court. Hence, I would like to try an experiment: Let me make a modpack consisting only of the most notoriously protected mods. Then let me post this modpack here, along with my full name, location and personal e-mail address where you can request my home address for legal communications.
Because this isn't a matter of manufacturing a "cause celebre," but only determining legal rights, I'll even sweeten the deal for you: I'll personally take credit for creating every single mod in the pack, in order to lose the sympathy factor from the other people defending the EULA, and I'll also require that the pack be downloaded through Adfly for the same reason, as well as to reduce my legal standing.
Then, to quote Trey Parker and Marshall Mathers: "Sue me." Send me a cease-and-desist letter in the mail, and I'll post a Youtube video wherein I physically defile said letter in various ways.
Seriously. If you doubt that mod-makers cannot legally dictate how their mod is used, let's do it. Let's set some legal precedent so there's no more inane squabbling about which individual really speaks for Mojang's intentions, or whether Mr. Marc actually has the authority to say exactly the same thing I am saying here. Let me put my money where your mouth is.
I'm not interested in being a sympathetic defendant here. (I use the word "sympathetic" to mean someone who receives sympathy, not someone who demonstrates it.) I'm only interested in demonstrating that a modder's only recourse for misuse or misappropriation of their creation is shaming the people who do so, not in legal recourse. In order for said shame and ostracism to function properly. the modders must be sympathetic and they will not be sympathetic as long as they believe they can dictate how their mods are used and who they are used by.
I doubt Curse will let me do this. But if people can think of another avenue for me to do this publicly, suggest it. I'm serious about this.
Honestly, it'll be a miracle if a single one of these "pro-modders" (lol) actually reads through this post, tries to see where I'm coming from, and also doesn't just assume that, for some reason, I hate modders. I love modders. I open Chrome just to use the adfly link for mods because no matter how many plugins I disable, I cannot use adfly with Firefox. This isn't about my opinion or my attitude towards modders, this is about the fact of the law and the fact of the law is that modders cannot set legal terms for how their work is used or who it is used by. They can only determine how their work is used through the support of the community, but they will not have the unconditional support of the community as long as they believe it is unnecessary and in some cases detrimental to their bottom line.
Just throwing this out there, but I'm almost positive that a modder has the right to prevent their mod from being used in mod-packs if they really want to. The only condition they are required to follow in doing so if to ensure that the means of preventing the use of the mod doesn't fall under the definition of "Malicious". Shutting down the game if the mod is in a modpack? Probably not a bright idea (although arguably still an option). Having your mod disable itself, and only itself, if it's in a modpack? There's no problem with that and it definitely falls within the author's rights to do so.
I think modders should have the right to say who can use their work (and even how) [becoming a modder changed my viewpoint on this topic]. I don't know how this derived work works - as others wrote, how can a resouce pack or mod textures which are not based on Minecraft art can be considered derived work? This way Mojang could claim any (block) texture 16x16 pixels (and its multiples), or not? Even though my mods have source code available, I don't believe it's correct to force anybody to go open source with their work (I know EULA doesn't force this, but some people here are suggesting it).
This actually sparks a good argument on whether or not Mojang would have the rights to a texture if it was put in a resource pack.
I am no stranger to game programming, and have released several games with everything in it original work and copyrighted. This includes quite a large quantity of 16x, 32x, 64x, and 256x textures (all falling under the copyrights of my games). Now here's the question: If I were to release a resource-pack with a majority of these textures from my game being the textures for the resource-pack, and I have all of it copyrighted, do I still own it or does Minecraft? After all, the EULA states that Mojang has the rights to it. On the other hand, my valid and standing copyrights for those images state that only I have the rights to those images unless I permit someone the use of it otherwise. Just because I made it available for use to the public doesn't strip me of my rights for them as it still falls under the Fair Use of the copyright. Same being said for my game, my game is public, but that doesn't mean someone can just take the images and claim them as their own as that would still infringe upon the copyrights. So, who would win in a court case? More than likely me, because regardless of the EULA I still have a standing copyright on those textures. Just because those textures are also being used in a resource-pack doesn't make a difference.
Update:
Interesting link (which can be found here) I just discovered that could put an end to at least most if not all of the things being argued here.
Which side of this debate is actually toxic? Modders, because they are against inclusion in mod packs... or the people arguing that they are toxic? I mean, I totally agree on the fact that trying to mod malicious code into the game is a bad idea; there are other ways to do it. At the most extreme, I'd use a mechanism to detect whether or not a specific distribution of a mod is unauthorized, and if it is, I'd simply not load my mod. Hence the mod simply wouldn't work. Trying to destroy the game or disable crucial functions in it is a completely different story - that's trying to ruin the experience you'd get from running other mods, and that's malware. It should be frowned upon.
But who is really to blame? If it wasn't for the people redistributing the mods, this wouldn't ever have happened. If everyone actually respected content owners' copyright, everyone would be perfectly fine. The problem here is that mod pack creators refuse to respect the property of the modders whose mods they choose to include. And now the community is reacting because the modders are trying to regain what is theirs by license.
It seems as thus big parts of the mod-using community doesn't care a bit about how mod developers should actually also have rights. I've also taken notice that very many of those who argue modders should have to release their mods in the public domain have never actually developed a really big mod themselves. They don't 100% know what they're talking about. Remember - we're volunteers, not slaves.
Another noteworthy thing to add is the fact that you're twisting the terms put forth in the Minecraft EULA. Marc has put forth very vague statements that mods should be in public domain etc. Meanwhile, Grum and Ryan have both said that he is wrong. The license also says opposite of what he claims. This Reddit thread from a little back (http://www.reddit.com/r/feedthebeast/comments/1w63mm/to_all_the_mod_makers_who_are_retiring/cezevcs) clearly have words from Grum where he explains that everything Marc said was wrong. Go check yourself. And guess who people look at for advice and reference? Marc. You ignore evidence that Minecraft's EULA is right and point to false information as proof.
I'm not saying this applies to everyone in here. But there are quite some I can apply this to. What I'm saying is; respect the modders. If you don't understand why, then go learn java, and spend hundreds/thousands of hours on making a mod. Most likely, you'll just say that you won't bother to do so. And that's the point. Why should we bother? Make your own mod, only then can you license it to the public domain.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I AM NOT YOUR PERSONAL MINECRAFT MOD SUPPORT AGENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT PM ME ABOUT PROBLEMATIC MODS THAT ARE NOT MINE. If you're having trouble/crashes with a mod, you'll have better luck resolving it in this forum section than PMing me. If you already made a topic, be patient about responses. If you have troubles with anything non-Minecraft related on your PC, I might be able to help, though, but no promises. Even though I could wish to be, I'm not a wizard.
Then he ++ed a comment by Mikeemoo which among other things said "…Mojang do NOT have any say in distribution of mods, nor do they attempt to" and linked to Slowpoke's comment referenced above.
Marc's response there is wrong, simple. He probably didn't look up that piece in the context where it sat in, glanced at it and answered it. It doesn't actually matter.
'Content' in that section are the worlds you play in, nothing more, nothing less.
Imagine how boring the game would be if you couldn't actually place blocks or interact with the world because Minecraft itself wouldn't be able to change it. Servers would be rather boring too if the MinecraftServer wouldn't be able to distribute a world to other players.
Can we now please move on?
[1st edit] Note that the above tweet is Enzer's question to Marc from last December. Enzer, Grum is saying you were given incorrect information by Mojang staff. Your opinion on Mojang's policy is more understandable now that we know you were misled.
[2nd edit] Oh, Enzer, you're the EnDeLe interacting with Grum on reddit so you already know what he said.
The context for that was malicious mods breaking things on purpose right?
If you create a mod, you publish it publicly to everyone you do not get to control who uses it, who uses it with what or who uses it without something (though dependencies should break this obviously).
If you want to control that, do not make your mod publicly available.
Obviously your code/assets are your intellectual property so someone just bluntly 'offering it' on another location other than the one you've decided it should be available from should fall under regular 'law' (and thus likely not being legal).
This would stop no modpack making 'compatibility' for your mod and simply stating to people to get it from 'your location'.
Are we still moving on?
[2nd edit]
Takeaways:
1. Avoid Twitter for complex issues—it's too terse.
2. Mojang staff are not infallible (like all of us).
Slightly off topic, but I found this hilarious. Mostly because it made me picture the modder Binnie throwing a bunch of failed bees into a crater.
On topic, my own personal view as a user is that I have no respect for many of the modders in this community. Not because they don't do hard work, but because for some I have just been an afterthought. I never had any of the negative consequences of the "DRM" affect my own worlds, but plenty of users did, and while it may be tacky for users to not understand the thousands of hours of modders work that they don't appreciate, it's downright criminal to destroy millions of hours of users work and then laugh about it and never even apologize to those affected who did not deserve that treatment. And even then, I would be willing to just say it's the bad modder themselves, but the community then goes and rallies behind those modders and say they are completrely justified in what they are doing. This is why many modders have no respect from me and many others at all. \
If modders have problems with modpackmakers, leave it with them not the users, and if a modder wishes to retain my respect they should never support passive-aggressive attacks against the player where they do not belong. Keep issues private and just let me play and I will respect you just fine. Hell, until now, I've just been playing the game and staying out of all of this, I don't make modpacks, don't understand the first point about coding and understand the hard work that goes into it and can even understand why some modders may believe the deserver financial compensation for their work (even if I don't agree with that idea:P). But I would just like it if I could continue playing the game without worry of a crash or other issues simply because of one or two uppity modders that don't understand how to properly channel their frustration. And I would be more comfortable in that belief if modders and the community wouldn't start going off on users who might complain about legitimate issues like a mod intentionally crashes or manipulates data outside of the code of there own mod. When this happens there are still plenty of people who leap to the defense of these authors, though it has dwindled into just a few concentrated groups of them and not as much as it used to be.
Of course, I won't come to lukes defense either. The way he phrases things and portrays himself is extremely prickish and he needs to tone down the rhetoric before we need to rename him a politician as opposed to a user. Seriously luke, turn down the vitreol. Not every modder that disaggrees with you is going to instantly crash your game because they don't like you. You are the other side of the problem by not accepting others for who they are. Nobody needs to be purged, just reminded that there are boundaries they are not supposed to cross. We are not getting rid of modders or forcing anyone to stop modding, we are just reminding them that there are still rules and they need to abide by them. If they don't and don't listen, report them to Mojang who are legally able to do something about it.
As a user, you should not be taking this matter into you own honds, you should put it in the hands where it belongs. Especially since if someone isn't listening to you, becoming petulant and childish is only going to hurt your case. And hurt the rest of the community as well. You are neither Mojang, the justice system, the forum owner, or a politician(at least, I hope not or I may be in for some trouble now). Your power as a voice is only as a voice, and not as a rule or law or anything more than, well, just your opinion man. The same as it is for modders. And yes, when you quote an employee and then start trying interperet it, it becomes your opinion. You are not the employee themselves, so outside of there own words completely and specifically, anything you further add is not there own. Nuance and definition change from person to person, and as that old childhood standard of telephone shows, we humans are quite capable of mistaking even the simplest things in hilarious ways.
Meh, that may be waayy too many words about a silly little game of blocks that I enjoy, but if you will please forgive me as I just neede to vent a little. Anyways, back to the slap fight.
Just throwing this out there, but I'm almost positive that a modder has the right to prevent their mod from being used in mod-packs if they really want to. The only condition they are required to follow in doing so if to ensure that the means of preventing the use of the mod doesn't fall under the definition of "Malicious". Shutting down the game if the mod is in a modpack? Probably not a bright idea (although arguably still an option). Having your mod disable itself, and only itself, if it's in a modpack? There's no problem with that and it definitely falls within the author's rights to do so.
See, I am ok if they would just have their mod be disabled (and only their mod) if it goes against their wishes. However the whole crashing Minecraft, deleting recipies, exploding items, or other stuff like that is just too far. There are ways to do this with out being malicious.
Same for SimCity 4 mods... Mega packs had a .txt file with all credits and that was it, same for Age of Empires, Stronghold, Populous, and many other games in the past.
There is no precedent to my knowledge regarding this position by modders. The first mods started popping up in the early 80's and said modders created it and released it completely to the public. Let it e said that the vast majority, if not 98% of modders in the past were adults already. I don't know if age has to be one of the criteria for this entitlement attitude but it seems to be. Many of the minecraft modders right now albeit talented tend to be low in the maturity area. By no means I am targeting anyone in particular. It is just my perception of the community in general.
I am not a mod author but a lot of people in my thread think I am and treat me as one most of the time. And I have NEVER had an issue with any of the end-users.
Edit: A little bit of history.
The first 2 mods ever created in history were for Missile Command and for Pac-Man
See, I am ok if they would just have their mod be disabled (and only their mod) if it goes against their wishes. However the whole crashing Minecraft, deleting recipies, exploding items, or other stuff like that is just too far. There are ways to do this with out being malicious.
I 100% agree with you on this matter. I see no reason why one would feel the need to do something so maliciously when they have the means to accomplish their goal with less work and less consequences. Regardless though, people should really read up on what Stratagerm said. The EULA has just been misunderstood, there really isn't a point in this retaining this argument anymore.
Enzer had a dialog with Grum earlier today on reddit. As a result we found out that Marc gave the wrong answer to the question Enzer asked on Twitter in December which helped trigger this whole thing.
I'm not going to gloat about people who were misled by Marc's statement.
Instead I'll point out the most important way I was right:
Blame Mojang, not modders. It's healthier for the community.
For years now my policy when modding controversies have arisen has been, "When in doubt, blame Mojang."
This proved true again today. Marc publicly misinformed someone in December. People make mistakes, he shouldn't be fired for it as he tweeted that some have suggested.
Marc is given guidelines and material approved by Mojang in order to answer questions to customer's questions regarding Mojang, its products and its policies. If there is anything Marc does not have material on, it is part of his job to get an answer from those approved to give such information and then relay it to us.
There aren't any guidelines or material. We don't have a script to read from. I have the EULA like you guys do, and I can always send an email to someone if I have a question. I answered a question based on my knowledge, and Grum has now said that I was incorrect and "content" may not cover mods. I defer to him on this, and apologize if I've upset anyone.
I would also like to add that the questions have come in fast and furious, and while I've answered a number of things correctly, the issue became so convoluted that it almost immediately became difficult to track. There is clearly a history of baggage and drama, and almost anything will set off a flurry of related and unrelated arguments, some that people have been having for years. I've even got modders telling me that people are using my words incorrectly, for their own agendas. So, at this point, if someone has a question about the EULA, they can email support. If we don't have a definitive answer, we'll pass the email along. I want to be as precise as possible, and Twitter (and in many cases, MCF) is not the most appropriate means for this.
There aren't any guidelines or material. We don't have a script to read from. I have the EULA like you guys do, and I can always send an email to someone if I have a question. I answered a question based on my knowledge, and Grum has now said that I was incorrect and "content" may not cover mods. I defer to him on this, and apologize if I've upset anyone.
I would also like to add that the questions have come in fast and furious, and while I've answered a number of things correctly, the issue became so convoluted that it almost immediately became difficult to track. There is clearly a history of baggage and drama, and almost anything will set off a flurry of related and unrelated arguments, some that people have been having for years. I've even got modders telling me that people are using my words incorrectly, for their own agendas. So, at this point, if someone has a question about the EULA, they can email support. If we don't have a definitive answer, we'll pass the email along. I want to be as precise as possible, and Twitter (and in many cases, MCF) is not the most appropriate means for this.
May I please get a clarification of this clarification of your clarification of a clarification?
Are modders allowed to:
1: Dictate where users are allowed to obtain their mod from, including force an adfly download?
2: Dictate who can and cannot use their mod via various forms of digital rights management (DRM) code?
3: Collect information on users by having their mods check in with a certral server, ranging from a simple "check this file online for an updated list" that by default will log IP addresses to recording MC user names?
4: Dictate which mods can and cannot be used in an install alongside their mod?
5: Interfere with the function of minecraft and/or the users computer based on install directory or logged in user?
6: Dictate who can and cannot re-implement features present in their existing mod in a new mod?
The purge you reference is the idea that by clarifying mojang's stance on what is and is not allowed it will drive modders away from the scene because they are no longer allowed to use the tactics they want to demand obedience from the user population. Tactics that I must repeat, are borderline if not blatantly illegal under US federal law.
There are modders who believe this guy had the right idea: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030617/1445203.shtml
I support modders rights to control the use of their work by the only legally acceptable means. By not releasing it publicly.
And if they cannot accept that, I support their right to leave.
Writing a modification and releasing it for public download does not give you right right to decide how other programs function on my property. At best you can have your modification not load, but it cannot interfere with the rest of the game to do that.
Requiring all download be through a service such as adfly is not legal as well, because it turns the download as a service to the download as a gated product you must pay (with eyeball time) to obtain.
And finally because modifications cannot be monetized, there are no damages to justify a civil lawsuit.
I would also like to point out any attempt to argue that "It allows anyone to steal my work and claim it as their own" is completely bogus. The EULA expressly forbids that by requiring the modification be your own work.
EDITand finally, _grum finishes this whole conversation here.http://www.reddit.co...etiring/cezevcs
The context was of mods breaking other mods,modpacks, or user worlds because of malicious intent. This whole thing has nothing to do with copyright, opensource/closedsource, or anything like that.We are basically in the same spot as before these changes, just with out a way to really enforce the rules you put on your mods for distributions.
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Curse PremiumI've been reading this whole thread since page one and I finally allowed myself to comment, just because of this post. This is the true issue that makes this community toxic. I've been part of the Skyrim modding community and every modder respected each other, and more importantly they respected their users. There were different channels to download mods from and several modders restricted on which channel to download from. Be it from Steam Workshop for small mods, Skyrim Nexus for bigger and more advanced mod to Lover's Lab for the more "questionable" material. And people respected that. Modders never said Xuser shouldn't use Ymod or Ymod shouldn't be played with Tmod, It was up to the user to use the mod as they saw fit.It would be nice if all mods in this community used this as their core rule:
Edit: I've also noticed that every few months something pops up and all the community goes in an uproar...
FC vs Forge, FC vs Elo, Seng vs Tekkit, FC vs Forge, GT vs Diyo, and so on... If it were only a couple isolated instances it would be acceptable, but as it stands, all this drama and these conflicts are unacceptable!
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Curse PremiumThese projects all distribute compiled code of their libraries, as opposed to source code. If that's acceptable, then so is my dungeon-generating library: its compiled code would be distributed with the plugins/mods which use it, but I retain the rights to the library itself. Good for me.
That also debunks an earlier claim that "all Forge mods and Bukkit plugins derive from Forge/Bukkit, which in turn derive from Minecraft, and thus all of them are derived from Minecraft". Forge mods and Bukkit plugins don't include/provide Forge and Bukkit - they merely use it. They actually don't even contain the compiled code. At that point, the only thing that lets the argument "Mojang owns the rights to mods/plugins" stand is the "content available through Minecraft" part of the EULA.
That, in turn, leaves me asking how far "content available through Minecraft" goes. Is a private, in-house server plugin available through Minecraft if the server itself is publicly available? According to your quote, it doesn't apply to libraries used by mods - but the general consensus here is that it does apply to mods used by other mods (mod loaders and APIs)?
As for cascades going down and not up - I suppose cascade was a poor choice of word. There is an "up", however: it comes from systems like Forge making mods available to Minecraft when they otherwise would not be. The mod itself is not available through Minecraft until Forge acts as the bridge, just as my dungeon library would not be available until connected via a mod/plugin. The "up" which propagates is not copyright or derivation, but rather the obligations described in the EULA: if all dependencies do not comply with the EULA, the content as a whole cannot comply. And that (combined with the "all content must be your own work" clause) is what puts MCedit, Bukkit, and WorldPainter in the gray area.
Anyways, as you suggested before your edit (at least, I think it was you), I've sent an e-mail to Customer Support regarding Mojang's meaning of "content" and interpretation of what the EULA means for projects making use of libraries. Given Grum's recent posts on Reddit, however, it would appear that the entire "Content" section has nothing to do with mods and tools at all, and the EULA thus has zero consequence on libraries and copyright.
Free speech is a liberty, not a claim right. It protects you from having others stifle your speech; it does not actually require anybody to listen. Sorry to be blunt, but implying Stratagerm's words interfere with your own right to free speech is absurd: he's well within his own right to free speech to say he doesn't want to hear something from you. Nothing personal; I just hate it when people try to use "right to free speech" as an obligation in internet arguments like that.
People like me who feel that it's a ham-handed way to deal with the issue.
So even though you've posted extensively in this thread in support of lukeb28, I can't ask you using lukeb28's words? lukeb28 said about some (unspecified) modders "They feel too entitled and have to be knocked from their high horse." Do you agree with that?
Your refusal to answer is destroying your credibility even further.
Wrong. lukeb28 himself said that the EULA was a side issue:
It's not anyone's task to clarify Mojang's stance but Mojang itself.
Agreed. Mojang has said this repeatedly over the years.
But note what lukeb28 said in the OP:
I'll say again that I've thought and blogged for years now that Mojang needed to address modder conduct and provide more guidance to the community to prevent abuses by modders. Unethical modders took advantage of the situation to do things that harmed users.
The reason I'm being so hard on people here is that the exact same thing is being done, but this time by users against modders—exploiting the power vacuum that results from Mojang's hands-off treatment of modding. Instead of demanding that Mojang clarify it's fuzzy position on modding, lukeb28 and others took it upon themselves to provide their own interpretation of it in support their own goals which include stealing code from modders and knocking them from their high horses.
You don't destroy a community to save it.
Twitter: @Stratagerm
My god would you listen to yourself...ALL laws are be "arguably invalid." Look at the crater of binnie babies he hide 30 million dollars from the IRS then donated 4 million to a "charity" and then the judge commented him saying that he was a good person. The list goes on and on...
"minecraft forums rules "trumps" mojangs EULA"
Yeah because your "rules" carry more weight then the International laws...*rolls eyes*
"You don't destroy a community to save it. "
Tell that to doctors...you need to google chemotherapy.
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Curse PremiumThen he shouldn't read/listen. Common sense dictates that if you don't like something, avoid it.
Why is that? Because it causes conflict with people who either misunderstand or exercise dubious practices with their mods? Mojang is flexing their legal muscle to keep crap like malware and dicking over the end user out of the modding community. This isn't so much as using different interpretations of the EULA to hand tie modder's and belittle their IP as much as it is modders such as cpw and users like yourself thinking there is some kind of middle ground to be had with people who think that "minecraft forums rules 'trumps' mojangs EULA" and that there is a great purge or revolt.
No, I simply feel that you want me to agree with something that may be later used against me because people like to twist words. The mere fact that you wont ask me plainly in your own words if I agree to something instead of constantly referring to "the purge" leads me to believe this. Call me paranoid, but I will not be lead to have my words taken out of context in the future. I've made very clear where I stand and what course I support, I am for a less toxic community, nothing more. My credibility is not hurt by whether or not I fully agree with everything lukeb28 says because I have been giving my own personal thoughts and opinions on the matter.
Here's what people don't seem to understand, or (more likely) are willfully ignoring. It doesn't matter, legally, what he thinks, says, or does. "Azanor" - I'm now using him as a hypothetical here - cannot tell you how you use his mod. Or, rather, he can, but it holds no legal sway.
It seems that the only way to sufficiently prove this to these people is to demonstrate it in court. Hence, I would like to try an experiment: Let me make a modpack consisting only of the most notoriously protected mods. Then let me post this modpack here, along with my full name, location and personal e-mail address where you can request my home address for legal communications.
Because this isn't a matter of manufacturing a "cause celebre," but only determining legal rights, I'll even sweeten the deal for you: I'll personally take credit for creating every single mod in the pack, in order to lose the sympathy factor from the other people defending the EULA, and I'll also require that the pack be downloaded through Adfly for the same reason, as well as to reduce my legal standing.
Then, to quote Trey Parker and Marshall Mathers: "Sue me." Send me a cease-and-desist letter in the mail, and I'll post a Youtube video wherein I physically defile said letter in various ways.
Seriously. If you doubt that mod-makers cannot legally dictate how their mod is used, let's do it. Let's set some legal precedent so there's no more inane squabbling about which individual really speaks for Mojang's intentions, or whether Mr. Marc actually has the authority to say exactly the same thing I am saying here. Let me put my money where your mouth is.
I'm not interested in being a sympathetic defendant here. (I use the word "sympathetic" to mean someone who receives sympathy, not someone who demonstrates it.) I'm only interested in demonstrating that a modder's only recourse for misuse or misappropriation of their creation is shaming the people who do so, not in legal recourse. In order for said shame and ostracism to function properly. the modders must be sympathetic and they will not be sympathetic as long as they believe they can dictate how their mods are used and who they are used by.
I doubt Curse will let me do this. But if people can think of another avenue for me to do this publicly, suggest it. I'm serious about this.
Honestly, it'll be a miracle if a single one of these "pro-modders" (lol) actually reads through this post, tries to see where I'm coming from, and also doesn't just assume that, for some reason, I hate modders. I love modders. I open Chrome just to use the adfly link for mods because no matter how many plugins I disable, I cannot use adfly with Firefox. This isn't about my opinion or my attitude towards modders, this is about the fact of the law and the fact of the law is that modders cannot set legal terms for how their work is used or who it is used by. They can only determine how their work is used through the support of the community, but they will not have the unconditional support of the community as long as they believe it is unnecessary and in some cases detrimental to their bottom line.
Thank you and good day.
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Retired StaffThis actually sparks a good argument on whether or not Mojang would have the rights to a texture if it was put in a resource pack.
I am no stranger to game programming, and have released several games with everything in it original work and copyrighted. This includes quite a large quantity of 16x, 32x, 64x, and 256x textures (all falling under the copyrights of my games). Now here's the question: If I were to release a resource-pack with a majority of these textures from my game being the textures for the resource-pack, and I have all of it copyrighted, do I still own it or does Minecraft? After all, the EULA states that Mojang has the rights to it. On the other hand, my valid and standing copyrights for those images state that only I have the rights to those images unless I permit someone the use of it otherwise. Just because I made it available for use to the public doesn't strip me of my rights for them as it still falls under the Fair Use of the copyright. Same being said for my game, my game is public, but that doesn't mean someone can just take the images and claim them as their own as that would still infringe upon the copyrights. So, who would win in a court case? More than likely me, because regardless of the EULA I still have a standing copyright on those textures. Just because those textures are also being used in a resource-pack doesn't make a difference.
Update:
Interesting link (which can be found here) I just discovered that could put an end to at least most if not all of the things being argued here.
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Curse PremiumBut who is really to blame? If it wasn't for the people redistributing the mods, this wouldn't ever have happened. If everyone actually respected content owners' copyright, everyone would be perfectly fine. The problem here is that mod pack creators refuse to respect the property of the modders whose mods they choose to include. And now the community is reacting because the modders are trying to regain what is theirs by license.
It seems as thus big parts of the mod-using community doesn't care a bit about how mod developers should actually also have rights. I've also taken notice that very many of those who argue modders should have to release their mods in the public domain have never actually developed a really big mod themselves. They don't 100% know what they're talking about. Remember - we're volunteers, not slaves.
Another noteworthy thing to add is the fact that you're twisting the terms put forth in the Minecraft EULA. Marc has put forth very vague statements that mods should be in public domain etc. Meanwhile, Grum and Ryan have both said that he is wrong. The license also says opposite of what he claims. This Reddit thread from a little back (http://www.reddit.com/r/feedthebeast/comments/1w63mm/to_all_the_mod_makers_who_are_retiring/cezevcs) clearly have words from Grum where he explains that everything Marc said was wrong. Go check yourself. And guess who people look at for advice and reference? Marc. You ignore evidence that Minecraft's EULA is right and point to false information as proof.
I'm not saying this applies to everyone in here. But there are quite some I can apply this to. What I'm saying is; respect the modders. If you don't understand why, then go learn java, and spend hundreds/thousands of hours on making a mod. Most likely, you'll just say that you won't bother to do so. And that's the point. Why should we bother? Make your own mod, only then can you license it to the public domain.
I AM NOT YOUR PERSONAL MINECRAFT MOD SUPPORT AGENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT PM ME ABOUT PROBLEMATIC MODS THAT ARE NOT MINE. If you're having trouble/crashes with a mod, you'll have better luck resolving it in this forum section than PMing me. If you already made a topic, be patient about responses. If you have troubles with anything non-Minecraft related on your PC, I might be able to help, though, but no promises. Even though I could wish to be, I'm not a wizard.
First he ++ed a lengthy comment by Slowpoke which specifically addressed how people are misreading the EULA.
Then he ++ed a comment by Mikeemoo which among other things said "…Mojang do NOT have any say in distribution of mods, nor do they attempt to" and linked to Slowpoke's comment referenced above.
Then he made this comment:
Followed by this:
[1st edit] Note that the above tweet is Enzer's question to Marc from last December. Enzer, Grum is saying you were given incorrect information by Mojang staff. Your opinion on Mojang's policy is more understandable now that we know you were misled.
[2nd edit] Oh, Enzer, you're the EnDeLe interacting with Grum on reddit so you already know what he said.
And most recently the comment quoted by Eldur:
[2nd edit]
Takeaways:
1. Avoid Twitter for complex issues—it's too terse.
2. Mojang staff are not infallible (like all of us).
Twitter: @Stratagerm
Slightly off topic, but I found this hilarious. Mostly because it made me picture the modder Binnie throwing a bunch of failed bees into a crater.
On topic, my own personal view as a user is that I have no respect for many of the modders in this community. Not because they don't do hard work, but because for some I have just been an afterthought. I never had any of the negative consequences of the "DRM" affect my own worlds, but plenty of users did, and while it may be tacky for users to not understand the thousands of hours of modders work that they don't appreciate, it's downright criminal to destroy millions of hours of users work and then laugh about it and never even apologize to those affected who did not deserve that treatment. And even then, I would be willing to just say it's the bad modder themselves, but the community then goes and rallies behind those modders and say they are completrely justified in what they are doing. This is why many modders have no respect from me and many others at all. \
If modders have problems with modpackmakers, leave it with them not the users, and if a modder wishes to retain my respect they should never support passive-aggressive attacks against the player where they do not belong. Keep issues private and just let me play and I will respect you just fine. Hell, until now, I've just been playing the game and staying out of all of this, I don't make modpacks, don't understand the first point about coding and understand the hard work that goes into it and can even understand why some modders may believe the deserver financial compensation for their work (even if I don't agree with that idea:P). But I would just like it if I could continue playing the game without worry of a crash or other issues simply because of one or two uppity modders that don't understand how to properly channel their frustration. And I would be more comfortable in that belief if modders and the community wouldn't start going off on users who might complain about legitimate issues like a mod intentionally crashes or manipulates data outside of the code of there own mod. When this happens there are still plenty of people who leap to the defense of these authors, though it has dwindled into just a few concentrated groups of them and not as much as it used to be.
Of course, I won't come to lukes defense either. The way he phrases things and portrays himself is extremely prickish and he needs to tone down the rhetoric before we need to rename him a politician as opposed to a user. Seriously luke, turn down the vitreol. Not every modder that disaggrees with you is going to instantly crash your game because they don't like you. You are the other side of the problem by not accepting others for who they are. Nobody needs to be purged, just reminded that there are boundaries they are not supposed to cross. We are not getting rid of modders or forcing anyone to stop modding, we are just reminding them that there are still rules and they need to abide by them. If they don't and don't listen, report them to Mojang who are legally able to do something about it.
As a user, you should not be taking this matter into you own honds, you should put it in the hands where it belongs. Especially since if someone isn't listening to you, becoming petulant and childish is only going to hurt your case. And hurt the rest of the community as well. You are neither Mojang, the justice system, the forum owner, or a politician(at least, I hope not or I may be in for some trouble now). Your power as a voice is only as a voice, and not as a rule or law or anything more than, well, just your opinion man. The same as it is for modders. And yes, when you quote an employee and then start trying interperet it, it becomes your opinion. You are not the employee themselves, so outside of there own words completely and specifically, anything you further add is not there own. Nuance and definition change from person to person, and as that old childhood standard of telephone shows, we humans are quite capable of mistaking even the simplest things in hilarious ways.
Meh, that may be waayy too many words about a silly little game of blocks that I enjoy, but if you will please forgive me as I just neede to vent a little. Anyways, back to the slap fight.
See, I am ok if they would just have their mod be disabled (and only their mod) if it goes against their wishes. However the whole crashing Minecraft, deleting recipies, exploding items, or other stuff like that is just too far. There are ways to do this with out being malicious.
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Curse PremiumThere is no precedent to my knowledge regarding this position by modders. The first mods started popping up in the early 80's and said modders created it and released it completely to the public. Let it e said that the vast majority, if not 98% of modders in the past were adults already. I don't know if age has to be one of the criteria for this entitlement attitude but it seems to be. Many of the minecraft modders right now albeit talented tend to be low in the maturity area. By no means I am targeting anyone in particular. It is just my perception of the community in general.
I am not a mod author but a lot of people in my thread think I am and treat me as one most of the time. And I have NEVER had an issue with any of the end-users.
Edit: A little bit of history.
The first 2 mods ever created in history were for Missile Command and for Pac-Man
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Retired StaffI 100% agree with you on this matter. I see no reason why one would feel the need to do something so maliciously when they have the means to accomplish their goal with less work and less consequences. Regardless though, people should really read up on what Stratagerm said. The EULA has just been misunderstood, there really isn't a point in this retaining this argument anymore.
I'm not going to gloat about people who were misled by Marc's statement.
Instead I'll point out the most important way I was right:
For years now my policy when modding controversies have arisen has been, "When in doubt, blame Mojang."
This proved true again today. Marc publicly misinformed someone in December. People make mistakes, he shouldn't be fired for it as he tweeted that some have suggested.
Blame Mojang. It can take the heat.
Twitter: @Stratagerm
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MojangThere aren't any guidelines or material. We don't have a script to read from. I have the EULA like you guys do, and I can always send an email to someone if I have a question. I answered a question based on my knowledge, and Grum has now said that I was incorrect and "content" may not cover mods. I defer to him on this, and apologize if I've upset anyone.
I would also like to add that the questions have come in fast and furious, and while I've answered a number of things correctly, the issue became so convoluted that it almost immediately became difficult to track. There is clearly a history of baggage and drama, and almost anything will set off a flurry of related and unrelated arguments, some that people have been having for years. I've even got modders telling me that people are using my words incorrectly, for their own agendas. So, at this point, if someone has a question about the EULA, they can email support. If we don't have a definitive answer, we'll pass the email along. I want to be as precise as possible, and Twitter (and in many cases, MCF) is not the most appropriate means for this.
May I please get a clarification of this clarification of your clarification of a clarification?
Are modders allowed to:
1: Dictate where users are allowed to obtain their mod from, including force an adfly download?
2: Dictate who can and cannot use their mod via various forms of digital rights management (DRM) code?
3: Collect information on users by having their mods check in with a certral server, ranging from a simple "check this file online for an updated list" that by default will log IP addresses to recording MC user names?
4: Dictate which mods can and cannot be used in an install alongside their mod?
5: Interfere with the function of minecraft and/or the users computer based on install directory or logged in user?
6: Dictate who can and cannot re-implement features present in their existing mod in a new mod?