leave or not to leave this and the question

[PilzAdam]

Real freedom is when you can choose not to be free. Everything else is just another ideology telling people what is "best" for them.

Im talking about freedom for the majority of people, not freedom for the individual.

[VanessaE]

Real freedom also includes the community's ability to adopt "free, open source licenses only!" as a rule.

[onpon4]

Real freedom is when you can choose not to be free. Everything else is just another ideology telling people what is "best" for them.

Releasing something as nonfree is not choosing not to be free; it's choosing for others not to be free. Whether something is free depends on who is using it; to the author of a nonfree program, that program is free because he/she has access to the source code and the freedom to modify and redistribute verbatim and modified versions of the program. It's only everyone else who doesn't.

In any case, this forum refusing to endorse nonfree mods doesn't take away mod developers' "freedom" (power) to make their mods nonfree. They can post it somewhere else.

[tinoesroho]

Licenses suck.

I released my mods as WTFPL because, to tell the truth, they suck. Now, if I'd written a complete transformation... I might not want to release it under a permissive license (such as WTFPL. GPL is not permissive). I'd love to simply release it as careware (like it? Donate to _x_) or something that I can invoke to take it down if I ever decided to do so.

Which is why I probably wouldn't care to share anything big. I'd just run it on a server, and never bother to upload (especially if it's under development).

I think, however, that anything considered for core should be released under the GPL license. This IS an open source game, after all! At least GPL or CC-BY-SA.

But mods? Meh, anything'll do. If I come across a good mod, I'd be willing to donate even if I couldn't reupload it or modifications.

[PilzAdam]

I think, however, that anything considered for core should be released under the GPL license. This IS an open source game, after all! At least GPL or CC-BY-SA.

The core is licensed under LGPL, GPL is not compatible with it.

[tinoesroho]

The LGPL requires any and all modifications to be uploaded, no? Cue the flood of slightly modified /minetest/default/init.lua here. :-(

[mauvebic]

You can elect to have as many rules as you like, it basically amounts to a CoC for forum usage. They still have to find their own file, image and sometimes web hosting (not getting easier), and maintain some semblance of documentation. If they're not getting any fun out of it, i dont think they'll give a flying monkey about your collective rights, nothings forcing them to keep hosting anything. Nor is it implied anywhere that they can't update their works, or re-license. You do what you have to do, it's your forum, but the rules aren't binding on what they do outside the forums, which is basically a placeholder. Its a little funny to see threads pulled/closed for minor infractions, but when someone decides they're ending distribution, they won't pull 'em, as if to make a point. If you don't have your own copy by now then yeah it sucks but you probably didn't care that much about it in the first place and its just another cause celebre for oss/copyleft advocacy.

Besides it's hard to assert collective rights when you can't even establish jurisdiction, with files being hosted all over the world. It's my understanding that in france they don't even have copyright/copyleft, they have authors' rights, part of which is non-transferable (ask VLC how that's working out for them). So good luck figuring out if you actually can hijack something after it's been pulled.

I think this would be a lot healthier if you could let things die and applied your energies to coming up with better replacements - your chance to do it the 'right' way - instead of reacting immaturely to a situation you already think is immature, and perpetuating it for days if not weeks while drawing others to chose sides.

[onpon4]

The LGPL requires any and all modifications to be uploaded, no? Cue the flood of slightly modified /minetest/default/init.lua here. :-(

No. The LGPL (and the GPL) requires that if you distribute copies, you must include either the source code or an offer for the source code with your distribution. Requiring people to publish their modified versions would make the program nonfree.

The core is licensed under LGPL, GPL is not compatible with it.

We're talking about mods, right? Minetest doesn't link to mods, which is the only situation that would require compatibility with the GPL. If anything, mods might link to Minetest. Nothing about the LGPL prevents GPL'ed programs from linking to LGPL'ed libraries; in fact, the whole purpose of the LGPL is to allow any program of any license to link to the library licensed under the LGPL.

Even if that weren't the case, however, the GPL and LGPL are compatible. The LGPL allows distribution under the GPL in section 2.

[Casimir]

the community

[PilzAdam]

You can elect to have as many rules as you like, it basically amounts to a CoC for forum usage. They still have to find their own file, image and sometimes web hosting (not getting easier), and maintain some semblance of documentation. If they're not getting any fun out of it, i dont think they'll give a flying monkey about your collective rights, nothings forcing them to keep hosting anything. Nor is it implied anywhere that they can't update their works, or re-license. You do what you have to do, it's your forum, but the rules aren't binding on what they do outside the forums, which is basically a placeholder. Its a little funny to see threads pulled/closed for minor infractions, but when someone decides they're ending distribution, they won't pull 'em, as if to make a point. If you don't have your own copy by now then yeah it sucks but you probably didn't care that much about it in the first place and its just another cause celebre for oss/copyleft advocacy.

Nobody forces anyone to upload anything.

The LGPL requires any and all modifications to be uploaded, no? Cue the flood of slightly modified /minetest/default/init.lua here. :-(

No. Only if you upload it you have to upload the source code too. You do that anyway if you make mods, since Lua mods are not compiled.

The core is licensed under LGPL, GPL is not compatible with it.

We're talking about mods, right? Minetest doesn't link to mods, which is the only situation that would require compatibility with the GPL. If anything, mods might link to Minetest. Nothing about the LGPL prevents GPL'ed programs from linking to LGPL'ed libraries; in fact, the whole purpose of the LGPL is to allow any program of any license to link to the library licensed under the LGPL.

Yes, we do talk about mods here. But tinoesroho said

anything considered for core should be released under the GPL license

and I just wanted to correct him.

[onpon4]

Ah, whoops, I didn't see that part.

[prestidigitator]

Please also try to understand the core developers a bit.... [T]hey're most likely having at least some fun (while working hard for almost no thanks that arrives at their destination!) - and then there comes an optimistic new developer with code that's diffrent from what they planned/expected, does not stick entirely to (probably not completely published, rather unofficial) coding style, that demands time to check out code which does not cover the current focus of intrest of the core developer (he's working on another problem - or - even worse - on the same one in a diffrent manner) - Intruder alert! Shields up!

Does that entitle the dev to be nasty? Is it supported by the dev spending as much time and effort belittling potential contributors as it would take them to understand and either merge changes or provide CONSTRUCTIVE feedback? I don't buy that argument, nor will anyone who has been on the receiving end here. If the core dev team is really going to be so closed-minded and unaccepting that's fine, but they should NOT claim to have a community-based project ("open source" fine, but not "community-based"), nor should they encourage people to create pull requests, nor should they discourage people from forking the project instead.

[PilzAdam]

Please also try to understand the core developers a bit.... [T]hey're most likely having at least some fun (while working hard for almost no thanks that arrives at their destination!) - and then there comes an optimistic new developer with code that's diffrent from what they planned/expected, does not stick entirely to (probably not completely published, rather unofficial) coding style, that demands time to check out code which does not cover the current focus of intrest of the core developer (he's working on another problem - or - even worse - on the same one in a diffrent manner) - Intruder alert! Shields up!

Does that entitle the dev to be nasty? Is it supported by the dev spending as much time and effort belittling potential contributors as it would take them to understand and either merge changes or provide CONSTRUCTIVE feedback? I don't buy that argument, nor will anyone who has been on the receiving end here. If the core dev team is really going to be so closed-minded and unaccepting that's fine, but they should NOT claim to have a community-based project ("open source" fine, but not "community-based"), nor should they encourage people to create pull requests, nor should they discourage people from forking the project instead.

We never said that the project is community based.
And we dont discourage people from forking it, we even tell them to do so if they dont agree with us.
We also do merge a lot of pull requests.

All your criticism seems like you are just angry that your pull request wasnt merged. The reason for that was that you changed the complete noise code to a complete different system.
Pull requests are welcome, but such huge changes should be discussed before opening a pull request out of a sudden.

[shaneroach]

FWIW,

Open Source cannot survive if people publish under open source then change it back to closed source. Further, from a legal standpoint you don't get to tell people something can be used one way, wait for them to start using it, then change the way it is used. Unless of course you are a massive organization who can afford the army of lawyers necessary to mark time until you can get a law changed or a judgement in your favor.

Bottom line, it is pretty snarky to do work on something that is open source, taking the benefit of all of the work people have left available to you, then try to renege and "take back" your work by changing your licensing expectations.

The more those of you complaining about the way this place is run talk, the less appealing you sound to my ears.

[mauvebic]

We never said that the project is community based.

Go to minetest.net > Development > Blog, you'll find:


Community-based or community-made, is there a semantic difference?

And we dont discourage people from forking it, we even tell them to do so if they dont agree with us.
We also do merge a lot of pull requests.

I don't think i have to describe what most of the pull requests are - nothing earth-shattering - a lot of fixes and adjustments. It's when an outsider comes along with anything bigger that problems arise.

All your criticism seems like you are just angry that your pull request wasnt merged.

If only it had ended there.

The reason for that was that you changed the complete noise code to a complete different system.
Pull requests are welcome, but such huge changes should be discussed before opening a pull request out of a sudden.

I was under the impression he did have the go-ahead from c55 to work on it.

[onpon4]

We never said that the project is community based.

Go to minetest.net > Development > Blog, you'll find:


Community-based or community-made, is there a semantic difference?

Yes, I think so. "Community-made" just describes it as a project developed by a community of volunteers (i.e. the community is the volunteering developers other than c55). "Community based", the way it was implied here, describes a project that is developed for a community; it suggests that that community, which is not the developers, is making major decisions. I'm not aware of any project that is developed like that, and for a good reason: huge masses of people tend to be extremely bad and sloppy designers, mostly because most people just aren't very good at design, but also because making the design democratic would result in the design being very random.

Though to be honest, I wouldn't have chosen "community based" to describe that. It's kind of confusing. "Democratic" is a far less confusing word to use. Minetest development is not democratic, but oligarchic, perhaps.

[mauvebic]

FWIW,

Open Source cannot survive if people publish under open source then change it back to closed source. Further, from a legal standpoint you don't get to tell people something can be used one way, wait for them to start using it, then change the way it is used. Unless of course you are a massive organization who can afford the army of lawyers necessary to mark time until you can get a law changed or a judgement in your favor.

You've obviously never heard of the of the Sony PS/Other OS debacle. And yes, works can be re-licensed, that's why they're licenses and not deeds.

If opensource has to pressure devs into releasing opensource, then i'd say it's already on the decline. Sharing's a lot more fun when it's voluntary, peer pressure is just lame.

Ultimately this community could save itself a whole lot of frustration about people switching between licenses if they just let devs and users decide for themselves how much freedom they need. No one's forcing anyone to download proprietary mods.

[shaneroach]

FWIW,

Open Source cannot survive if people publish under open source then change it back to closed source. Further, from a legal standpoint you don't get to tell people something can be used one way, wait for them to start using it, then change the way it is used. Unless of course you are a massive organization who can afford the army of lawyers necessary to mark time until you can get a law changed or a judgement in your favor.

You've obviously never heard of the of the Sony PS/Other blahblah

No, I just added the bit about being a huge organization with a ton of lawyers because I had never before heard of large organization using money and muscle to screw people over.

You want something proprietary? Write it.

Stop guilt tripping people more generous than you.

[mauvebic]

Though to be honest, I wouldn't have chosen "community based" to describe that. It's kind of confusing. "Democratic" is a far less confusing word to use. Minetest development is not democratic, but oligarchic, perhaps.

I guess the choice of name is what's confusing.

You want something proprietary? Write it.
Stop guilt tripping people more generous than you.

Uhm, ive written a few things. Why else would i argue for individual authors?

[onpon4]

Ultimately this community could save itself a whole lot of frustration about people switching between licenses if they just let devs and users decide for themselves how much freedom they need. No one's forcing anyone to download proprietary mods.

Nothing about Minetest forces mods to be free. All that was brought up here was a policy to only put free mods on the Mod Releases forum. That doesn't stop people from creating proprietary mods (which, again, takes away only others' freedom, not the developer's as you seem to be implying). We're not even talking about censorship, here; from what I can understand, nonfree mods posted in Modding General would stay there. All you need to do if you want those oh so precious nonfree mods is go to Modding General. It is good that mod developers who make their mods free are rewarded with the better visibility they get when their topics get moved to Mod Releases.

In addition, moving a mod to Mod Releases is essentially an endorsement of that mod. Endorsing something which goes against your philosophy (in this case, going against "open source" because the mod is proprietary) makes no sense.

[PilzAdam]

The reason for that was that you changed the complete noise code to a complete different system.
Pull requests are welcome, but such huge changes should be discussed before opening a pull request out of a sudden.

I was under the impression he did have the go-ahead from c55 to work on it.

Yes, he talked to c55 about the different noises, but (from what I read) he never mentioned that he wanted to restructure the whole thing.

[Ragnar]

I am pretty certain that this is the best open source game for building things out of nodes there is...

yet

[shaneroach]

You want something proprietary? Write it.
Stop guilt tripping people more generous than you.

Uhm, ive written a few things. Why else would i argue for individual authors?

Stop guilt tripping people more generous than you.

Good grief, can you not manage to maintain your attention for the course of two complete sentences?
No one is stopping you from writing proprietary mods and keeping them for your own, personal profit. We just prefer to hear more about the generous people who allow their mods (and core code, for that matter) to be open to the public.

Stop guilt tripping people who grant a more generous license to their work than you do.

[mauvebic]

You want something proprietary? Write it.
Stop guilt tripping people more generous than you.

Uhm, ive written a few things. Why else would i argue for individual authors?

Stop guilt tripping people more generous than you.

Good grief, can you not manage to maintain your attention for the course of two complete sentences?
No one is stopping you from writing proprietary mods and keeping them for your own, personal profit. We just prefer to hear more about the generous people who allow their mods (and core code, for that matter) to be open to the public.

Stop guilt tripping people who grant a more generous license to their work than you do.

More or less the same as your last post, and it makes about as much sense. Isn't the whole point of your bitching that people do switch between copyleft and copyright? or am i not understanding something.

[mauvebic]

Ultimately this community could save itself a whole lot of frustration about people switching between licenses if they just let devs and users decide for themselves how much freedom they need. No one's forcing anyone to download proprietary mods.

Nothing about Minetest forces mods to be free. All that was brought up here was a policy to only put free mods on the Mod Releases forum. That doesn't stop people from creating proprietary mods (which, again, takes away only others' freedom, not the developer's as you seem to be implying). We're not even talking about censorship, here; from what I can understand, nonfree mods posted in Modding General would stay there. All you need to do if you want those oh so precious nonfree mods is go to Modding General. It is good that mod developers who make their mods free are rewarded with the better visibility they get when their topics get moved to Mod Releases.

In addition, moving a mod to Mod Releases is essentially an endorsement of that mod. Endorsing something which goes against your philosophy (in this case, going against "open source" because the mod is proprietary) makes no sense.

If that's how they wanna work that's fine, just keep in mind people are allowed to change their minds. Switching *to* opensource is easy, switching away from it is a little tougher. Though Releases is like a one-way ticket, if you want to remove your own stuff you have to fight with the moderators and in most cases, ultimately blank the post/pull the hosts and get yourself banned, because heaven forbid, someone should change their mind :p

Right now the frustration seems to be that the rule is having the opposite intended effect (more people are trashing their work). For that you can either blame the rule itself, or the people who aren't zealotous enough to take it seriously.

[onpon4]

If that's how they wanna work that's fine, just keep in mind people are allowed to change their minds. Switching *to* opensource is easy, switching away from it is a little tougher.

In order for a license to be a free software or open source license, it needs to be permanent and irreversible. All the developer can do is stop using the license in future releases; the copies of the program already in other people's hands are still legally under the license. Software which grants you the four freedoms today but has a provision that the freedoms can be taken away from you by the author tomorrow is not actually free; you are still under control of the copyright holder in that case.

Right now the frustration seems to be that the rule is having the opposite intended effect (more people are trashing their work). For that you can either blame the rule itself, or the people who aren't zealotous enough to take it seriously.

What are you talking about? People "trash their work" because they're immature, not because of that rule. Besides, them choosing to "trash their work" doesn't affect anyone; someone else can just re-upload the mod and continue developing it as long as it's free.

On the other hand, if that rule wasn't in place and as a result we saw a bunch of people releasing mods without any license at all, when they childishly blank their topics or otherwise "trash their work", it would be illegal to re-upload it; the mod would just be lost forever.

[mauvebic]

In order for a license to be a free software or open source license, it needs to be permanent and irreversible. All the developer can do is stop using the license in future releases; the copies of the program already in other people's hands are still legally under the license. Software which grants you the four freedoms today but has a provision that the freedoms can be taken away from you by the author tomorrow is not actually free; you are still under control of the copyright holder in that case.

Apparently you could revoke a license (?) - in fact, they added the word 'irrevocable' to the GPLv3. So unless the mods are GPLv3, you'd be bang out of luck.

What are you talking about? People "trash their work" because they're immature, not because of that rule. Besides, them choosing to "trash their work" doesn't affect anyone; someone else can just re-upload the mod and continue developing it as long as it's free.

People trash their work because they get fed up. And people like you who defend the process but haven't tried to do half of what they've accomplished don't have a clue what its about.

On the other hand, if that rule wasn't in place and as a result we saw a bunch of people releasing mods without any license at all, when they childishly blank their topics or otherwise "trash their work", it would be illegal to re-upload it; the mod would just be lost forever.

I think the more immature ones would lose interest and the more independent ones could get on in peace. but that's just conjecture.

[onpon4]

Apparently you can revoke a license - in fact, it happened enough that they added the word 'irrevocable' to the GPLv3. So unless the mods are GPLv3, you're bang out of luck.

Can you please stop pretending that you're a legal expert because you see something you don't understand? And stop making absurd assertions that you have no legitimate reason to believe are true?

Legal documents don't just cease to have meaning because someone doesn't feel like it should apply anymore. If you give everyone broad permission to do whatever they want with your work, the implication is forever, not "until I change my mind". For it to be "until I change my mind", you have to write that explicitly. If that wasn't the case, corporations would be able to screw each other over left and right: corporation X pulls the license it gave to corporation Y to use work Z in work A, then sues corporation Y for infringing copyright by distributing work A.

People trash their work because they get fed up. And people like you who defend the process but haven't tried to do half of what they've accomplished don't have a clue what its about.

People trash their work because they get fed up with the direction Minetest is being developed in, so they decide to leave, but they're not OK with just leaving like any mature person would do in that situation; they start blanking their topics because they're immature.

Notice: these people aren't leaving because they can't have their proprietary mods on the releases forum. Can you please stop pretending that they are?

Also, why are you asserting that they have accomplished more than twice as much as I have without knowing what I have accomplished just because they developed a mod? I haven't tried developing a mod, but I've seen the Lua scripts; they're tiny. That doesn't make a mod contribution worthless, but if you had done some searching about me, you would see that I've already written a few full games and other programs, albeit simple ones, and that I'm currently involved in the development of a replacement for Game Maker, in particular entirely responsible for the game engine it uses, and that's almost ready for a release. I don't think I've done that much, but I'm rather offended if you think all that has accomplished less than half of what some Minetest mod accomplished. Not that it matters how much I've accomplished, anyway.

[tinoesroho]

The old stereotype of neckbeards in a basement fist-fighting over licenses suddenly rings true.

... Really, what's the matter, people? You're free to develop proprietary (and "gratis") mods. You're free to develop "libre" mods. One is not free, however to demand that all "libre" copies of software get pulled. Same with gratis. You can, however, choose to stop distributing gratis software. Or you can decide your contributions on a "libre" project you manage will now be proprietary- as of the next release. But previous releases stay "libre".

Jeez, louise peoples.

[qznc]

If you release something under an Free Software licence, there is no taking back. Once I have take it, I have the freedom to republish it. You might publish the next version under a different (proprietary) licence, but that does not affect the earlier stuff.

The fact that people can blank their posts has no legal effect. It is rather unfortunate, that this is even possible. Using a forum to publish software is weird.