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Japanese simutrans experimental: Simutrans VT

Started by prissi, April 12, 2012, 09:52:27 PM

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prissi

The link was the program greenling downloaded and distributed. Without consent of the author. I honor people not wanting to distribute their work without consent. It might be not 100% OpenSource, but it is 100% common sense.

I also have a copy. But then I have no intentions to distribute this.

Fabio

Quote from: prissi on November 13, 2012, 08:23:18 PMI also have a copy. But then I have no intentions to distribute this.

What impact would this have on you (or Dwachs, or any other dev team member) starting from that discontinued project's code in order to integrate part of its behavior in standard Simutrans? 

greenling

ters,fabio,prissi
That what in those movie pass want i have in Simutrans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJgoDfTHW9w
Please look those movie on.
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

Ters

Quote from: prissi on November 13, 2012, 08:23:18 PM
The link was the program greenling downloaded and distributed. Without consent of the author. I honor people not wanting to distribute their work without consent. It might be not 100% OpenSource, but it is 100% common sense.

I also have a copy. But then I have no intentions to distribute this.

Unfortunately, I can't agree without risking being accused of speaking with two tounges.

kierongreen

When someone distributes a patch there are two types of code in the file, references to existing code and new lines of code. While existing code will have the same licence as the original program, new code can have whatever licence the author wishes. If this prohibits or restricts distribution of the patch file then their wishes must be respected. However distribution of any compiled executable would then be prohibited by the artistic licence as the full source code would not be available.

Ters

So Simutrans VT was only ever distributed as a patch file, and never as a runable game?

That's probably something lawyers could fight a lot about. While it's not legal to distribute the modified work without complying with the license, it is legal to give instruction to each and everyone on how they can modify the work themselves. But is the patch file in itself a derivative work of the original work, or do the references to the original source fall in under fair use (which itself is a concept that might not exist everywhere)?

isidoro

@kierongreen:  that does not make sense to me.  Distributing a patch should be equivalent to distributing a derived work since there is a well-known procedure to get that derived work from the patch file.

Following your argument to the extreme, if I distribute a .zip file of the modified .exe, I am literally not giving the derived work, but a bunch of random bytes, but I think no judge will believe that passing the .zip through an unzip program before using it makes any difference.

It's true that the author of a derived work has rights over his work, but may be forced by the original license to do something.  Notably, copyleft licenses like GPL, force the author of the derived work not to restrict the rights to future users, modifiers, etc. (viral behavior)...



kierongreen

The Artistic Licence isn't copyleft for a start.

As Ters puts it, "it is legal to give instruction to each and everyone on how they can modify the work themselves". A patch file is just an automated way of giving instructions on how to modify the source code. That patch file may contain fragments of the simutrans source code, however these are only for locating the changes the patch will make.

Looking at the licence:
Quote3. You may otherwise modify your copy of this Package in any way, provided
that you insert a prominent notice in each changed file stating how and
when you changed that file, and provided that you do at least ONE of the
following:
...
    b) use the modified Package only within your corporation or organization.

    c) rename any non-standard executables so the names do not conflict
    with standard executables, which must also be provided, and provide
    a separate manual page for each non-standard executable that clearly
    documents how it differs from the Standard Version.
Now, I'm not sure how Simutrans VT was distributed, however if the developer only distributed it to a select few for comments then I think 3b) may apply. 3c) can also be said to apply as the name used is Simutrans VT. Now some conditions can be said to not have been totally fulfilled:
Supplying the standard version executable. A bit pointless if you are only distributing a patch.
Correct notices at beginning of files etc. Programmers generally aren't that great at documentation so it's not really that fair to use this argument unless someone is clearly doing this for a deliberate reason.
Quote
7. C or perl subroutines supplied by you and linked into this Package
shall not be considered part of this Package.
This part is the key - new C (and hence C++) routines added, which there are many in Simutrans VT do not count as part of simutrans. Therefore the guy can use whatever licence he wishes for them. You could maybe argue that individual lines of code added would have to be released under the same licence as simutrans, however he could refuse to licence new routines, making it impossible to compile.

Ters

In my understanding of the word linked, it means that the additions must be supplied after compilation, not into the source files through a patch before compilation. Point 7 seems to me to be about plugins.

sdog

Beside analysing the legal options the VT dev(s) have, perhaps it's worth to look into why it is not distributed?

Quote from: yoshi on November 11, 2012, 09:56:58 AM
VT developper stopped distributing VT, as VT has function to change the parameters written in PAK files and the he started thinking that this might violate the PAK author's rights. However, he also says that he never received such complaints.

Anyway he explicitly says that re-distribution of VT is banned. Please don't re-distribute VT.

If i understand Yoshi correctly, and this is the only reason, he might have stoped distribution out of legal concerns. Those are perhaps a bit overcautious. Loading a pakfile and using it with parameters not defined in it's dat part, or modifying it in-game are certainly not a violation of the pak authors copyright. Especially since the (implicitly given) non-distribution license clearly allowed the use in the game simutrans, that was the whole point of it. If the way pak-file parameters are used in game must not change, no change whatsoever in simutrans would be legal with old paksets.

Perhaps it would be good to communicate with the VT author and discuss this in more detail?

If i missunderstood Yoshi, and pak-files have to be altered before using them in VT, there is also a sollution, since we have open sourced paks. (this might or might not well enough known in the Japanese simutrans community)

Ters

I don't think there are any laws forbidding different interpretation of data (unless perhaps that data is some DRM stuff). Simutrans in a sense even changes the graphics when do player colors, which is probably OK since the altered graphics is not distributed.

prissi

I understood the author in that way that he does not want to redistribute simutrans VT. For whatever reason, one of them may be legal concerns. Might be also another way of saying "I moved one." It actually seemed to me rather this way.
Moreover, Simutrans VT cannot interpret newer paks after the stop of development, thus it is wise to stop floating such versions around anyway.

Please go the the japanese blog, read it or leave it as the author's decision. It happens from time to time that people leave the community.

Fabio

Of course people can leave the Community, it happened all the time (and from an artist point of view, Raven's retirement was one of the most painful).
Usually, though, if there was not a fight with the rest of the community, people "retiring" usually leave their products behind so that if any other in the community wants to take the legacy is entitled to do so.

sdog

Quote from: prissi on November 15, 2012, 09:42:09 AM
I understood the author in that way that he does not want to redistribute simutrans VT.
[...]
Please go the the japanese blog, read it or leave it as the author's decision. It happens from time to time that people leave the community.
You speak the language, it's better to rely on your judgement here. I mentioned only the previous post that was not consistent with this picture. Which of course might be a translation issue only.