Discussion about conversion mods.

Quote from Shadowclaimer

-esque implies in the manner of, not derived of. The Technic pack had an overarching theme, regardless of whether you agree with the pack doesn't mean the term doesn't fit. Any mod with machines, transportation systems, a power system, and that uses Forge fits under the technic-esque label. Implying I'm unknowledgeable solely on my usage of one vocabulary term is just.. ludicrous. A slang one at that even.

*shrugs*

My apologies if you took any personal insults from my statements. I have no intention of calling you, or anyone else 'unknowledgeable'. It's just that that single term reminded me of how ingrained perceptions are in the Minecraft community, and I lack sufficient tact or argumentative finesse to sway anyone to my point of view, especially when those with more forceful abilities has already given up half a page back.

Quote from Frantic Fanatic

My apologies if you took any personal insults from my statements. I have no intention of calling you, or anyone else 'unknowledgeable'. It's just that that single term reminded me of how ingrained perceptions are in the Minecraft community, and I lack sufficient tact or argumentative finesse to sway anyone to my point of view, especially when those with more forceful abilities has already given up half a page back.

Truthfully I lost my reason for arguing awhile back and it turned into me just rambling on like an old man, I'm easy to get riled up when I'm talking about something I think people highly misunderstand (IE: the internet vs anything) and especially pertaining to the rather.. lacking Minecraft community. Truthfully in my arguments I should've conceded more that I do understand where you guys were coming from, and I understand the rights and such, its just I think this was a very brash way to handle things on Elo's part. My argument devolved from there into a drooling mess of anti-Elo sentiment. For that I apologize.

Also damn "unknowledgeable" for not being a legit word.

Quote from Shadowclaimer

Well actually I like your final section a lot, and for that (even though you won't care) that's gained a ton of respect from me.

Actually, that's nice to hear. I may not care if someone doesn't like me or respect me - but I'd never dismiss those who do.

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I understand why you fight for her and I apologize if I've insulted you in such a way now at the very least.

And I likewise apologize if I've given offense. My issue is not, of course, with you - it's with the erosion of creative rights. I don't so much fight "for" Eloraam (though I respect her as a developer), but I'm strongly in favor of her right to govern the usage of her work.

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I'm just someone who believes the Minecraft community needs to stop trying to pigeonhole itself into specific domains BTW style. Forge was meant to encourage people to interbreed mods and create addons, not to split us apart, and its odd seeing one of Forge's chief founders being so against it.

I don't think that's what she's after - but she and I both know what happens when you submit to "design by committee". Heinlein once said that an elephant was "a mouse, built to government specifications". I can imagine the elephant that would result if Elo lets everyone do what they please with her mod. It's always wiser to err on the side of caution with such things, because once you let that animal out of the cage, it's next to impossible to put it back in.

Even though FC and I have had our disagreements, I've always respected his sovereign right to do as he pleases with his mod. It would be nice if everyone could benefit from some of his great ideas, but I can reasonably understand why the compromises he'd have to make would interfere with his creative vision. And FC and I have been able to put that animosity behind us and agree to disagree when necessary. I'm perfectly willing to do that here as well.

At least you are able to accept the validity of my reasons for standing behind Eloraam on this issue. That's a refreshing change in this thread.

Quote from Saul_Goode

It's not about her license. It's about what she feels threatens her. In this case there are some that think this might have been an imagined threat, and that Eloraam may have been a bit over-sensitive.

But the license is the means by which she protects her work. And protection, by definition, implies insulation from threat. So naturally she will enforce her license when she feels her work has been threatened.

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Eloraams work WOULD NOT have been harmed, except when layered in half-formed, hypothetical what-ifs.

That's not up to you or me to determine - that is solely subject to her evaluation.
To begin with, it would set a precedent that people don't even need to extend the proper courtesy of asking for permission to decompile the code and distribute an add-on to her work.
As I've stated above, this begins the erosion of the author's rights. One can hardly claim a moral high ground when one cannot even ask "May I, please?"
And when one does ask and is told "no", one should respect that - or forfeit their claim to have their own rights respected in return.

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It's not about her license, it's about IF she needed to object at all.

No, it's about why Immibis felt he didn't need to ask and why you cannot simply respect her right to control the use of her work.
As is the common theme in our previous debates, she doesn't owe anyone an explanation. She can do as she pleases for whatever reason, or no reason at all.

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Its my hope that you, her diehard fans, would realize she doesn't give a damn about you so you can waste your breath towards defending something that actually deserves it.

I guess this is the core part where the difference is located. I don't need someone to take care of me. I use the mods if I like them and I don't use them if I don't like them. I don't decide which mods I use based on the attidude of the modder. That's not of my concern.

Actually I don't see Imnibis complaining. Maybe they already sorted things out without us noticing. We also don't know why eloraam uses such restrictive rules, maybe because of another project using parts of RP, maybe because she has some bad memories about such things, who knows. And basically we are not defending her, but the rules she placed her. There might be people who think of Alblakas straight "no update requests"-policy as quite hard. But if you want to change such rules actually breaking them is the worst thing to do, because this just strengthens the position of those who put the rules in place.

If nobody would ask for update-requests alblaka would never have needed a rule against it. And it might be the same with eloraam.

Quote from Saul_Goode

Again... there are those that feel it was an imagined threat and that her license need not be invoked.

But she was not one of those people. Her license, her evaluation... her decision.

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Her motivation for objecting in this case were her future plans, code that she herself has not implemented. Work you have not yet done is not covered by copyright.

"redPower", "Blutricity", and the items used in the recipes ARE all covered by that copyright, regardless of what she has or has not yet done with it. So you clearly don't understand what a copyright protects.

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I am free to determine for myself. Opinion. Kinda the point- I object to Eloraams evaluation of this. Therefore, a thread is created.

Your determination is irrelevant, your opinion has no influence on her decision, your objection doesn't change what's happened... Therefore, a thread is meaningless.

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Where would modding be if Mojang had insisted on getting out of beta and with a proper API first?

Well, Immibis still wouldn't have his add-on, and you'd have to gripe about it to the people who actually care.

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Because he's a kid (no offense immibis) that got excited and made an honest mistake? He sat down to learn... he succeeded, and was proud of himself? He didn't intend to harm Eloraam, he simply fell afoul of a developer that is in contrast to the PRECEDENT set by the community around her.

It's not that he made a mistake - it's that he, and you, couldn't simply accept the resolution and let it drop. Unlike you, he took the matter to the RedPower thread. However, he handled it poorly and if anything was accomplished, it was only to make Eloraam MORE reluctant to let other people touch her mod. So, well done.

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I've not demanded Eloraam appear and account for herself. If that is what I wanted then I would take this to her.

No, you wanted to take to the soapbox and make yourself look important by standing up for an issue you admittedly don't even have a stake in. You took it upon yourself to create the thread before you even found out all the facts, and you've continually backpedalled and revised what it is you're here to talk about. At this point, you're just flapping your gums to people who don't care, about something you cannot change and don't honestly care to change anyhow. It's like listening to Al Sharpton.

Maybe, because we (Or at least me at this point) think your opinion, your "cry for justice" or w/e you want to call it, may send the wrong message about respect in the modding community. And just have called HeadHunter the "defender of eloraam public image" or "Decider of Appropriate", nobody has appointed you has the voice of the whole modding community, nor the defense lawyer of immibis to really have any interest in this disscusion, so as 2 people that really have little to do with the events that transpired a few weeks ago, both have the right to express your opinion about the matter and oppose each other arguments.

Quote from Saul_Goode

...why does this conversation bother you so much... nay- Why does my opinion bother you this much?

Because it's irrelevant. It accomplishes nothing, it changes nothing, you've said everything you're going to say and you just keep saying it again and again.

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Am I not free to discuss it with others?

You're not "discussing" it with anyone. You're carrying on. You've become that boring guy at the party who has one story and keeps telling it to everyone around him, oblivious to the fact that nobody cares.

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Something is clouding your reasoning because it seems that you keep making this about me and how pointless this is instead of showing that my opinion doesn't have merit.

You keep carrying on and on about something you cannot change, you've appointed yourself the speaker for the unwashed masses, and I'm the one whose reasoning is clouded?

When you started out, you acted like you were fighting for someone's rights (not that he asked you to) and made it sound like you wanted to change the system. Now, you say that's not what it's about.
I'd ask you again to tell me what you think it's really about now, but if I ask you twice I'll get three different answers.

You're starting to sound like a broken record. And it's the same record we heard last time around. I don't think anyone cares - but if they do, perhaps you could continue it with them in PMs.

There's nothing more to say on the topic, honestly. I think it's run its inevitable course.
But when I'm gone, Saul won't have anyone to talk to anymore...

Quote from Saul_Goode

Maybe not for you HeadHunter, but your interest was never discussion or the issue at hand, your interest here was to oppose me all along.

You have persisted with inflaming attacks against me when proving my opinion wrong has failed.

My opinion and views still stand, your opinion and views have resorted to 'accept the way things, you'll never change anything so just shut-up.' Your argument's have devolved into the use of demotivational posters... something that proves your opposing view not at all while strengthening mine that you have nothing left to challenge me with (when the topic is taken in context, that is).

Actually you haven't explained why modders should have the obligation to work for the greater good of the community? Why aren't they allowed just to do what they seems fitting for them?

Modders don't exist to please us. There purpose isn't to make us all happy. Most of them do this for fun. Some also use their mods as some kind of doorway for a full-job in this direction and some just entered a strange mood, created a small mod and now just feel a responsibility for improving it.

And it's somehow insolent to demand something from a modder who created the mod for free in the first place.

Quote from Saul_Goode

In the context of the conversation at hand- Immibis did no worse to Eloraam than she has done to Alblaka and SpaceToad.

Actually what had she done to spacetoad and alblaka? You are aware that she talked with spacetoad about tubes and pipes being similar, and they both agree that neither the pipes nor the tubes are core but required elements of the mod. She talked to alblaka later. BCs Building machines just need the tubes and a quarry without would be quite strange too. That's also the reason why RP doesn't have liquid tubes, since it doesn't need them. And of course all 3 mods need a power-system, I guess IC was the first, then came Buildcraft and then RP. But all 3 are so fundamentally different and also some kind of evolutional that they have there place.

Just look at the transportsystems:

Conveyor-Belts -> Pipes -> Tubes -> Logistic-Pipes -> Retrievers ...

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I view this the same as being born human. We, collectively as a race, agree for the good of the general community that it's not nice to kill people. We may not have officially agreed to those terms, but that won't stop the police from knocking if you go and kill someone.

Hmm... yeah, there is actually a law that makes it illegal to kill other humans. But there isn't any law that forces mod-developers to allow addons. And I think for the good of the modders, and hence the good of the mod, that a mod-developer should have as much control over his mod as possible... oh and actually the law agrees with this too. So if laws like the right to life are based on common agreements over the good of the community, than this should be true for every law, that is common around the world. One of this laws is the copyright-law which marks decompiling illegal if not for a small amount of purposes.

So yeah, the police will knock you in both cases... that's what laws are for.

So people decompiling her code to look how she pushes so much items in few IDs are actually people that use one of the exceptions in copyright-law. Doing this is legal. The other uses would be fixing errors if she isn't able to do it or making the mod compatible with your own software (which doesn't make much sense in the case of a mod), since all mods are technically compatible with each other, you only need to merge the baseclasses.

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Developers, in my view, make the same agreement- If you're going to be involved in the community then you have to be working for the community.

Oh... do I understand this correctly. If you plan to actually help the community by providing them with totally free content in the first place you actually also should agree to give away full control of your work?

Quote from Saul_Goode

Developers, in my view, make the same agreement- If you're going to be involved in the community then you have to be working for the community.

This is exactly what I spoke of when I talked about the attitude of entitlement. When I said "Alblaka doesn't owe you anything" (and now "Eloraam doesn't owe you anything either"), you act like that's not what it's about, but this statement makes it crystal clear.

You have an expectation that developers owe you something and that use of their work gives you the right to hold them accountable. We saw it in the previous thread, and now you've come right out and said it again.

It's one thing for me to say that the Emperor has no clothes - but now you've said it in your own words. How are you going to backpedal from this one?