Posts by Enzer

^^^
I'm pretty sure that most companies would be pretty angry with people who wrote malicious code into addons for their paid product. When I say it hurts the userbase, I mean it hurts Mojang's paying customers.

Quote from CrafterOfMines57

That is not how it works, at all. It works by checking the file path for mentions of tekkit, technic, Tekkit, or Technic, not for FTB, please check your facts before making wild accusations.

I like to keep my mechanical mods partitioned in a folder called technic, as in technical. How I have my MC installed should not be punished by a mod developer.

Hey Greg, may want to clean up your code a bit, your little DRM detection likes to go off even if the minecraft directory is renamed anything but FTB.

2012-11-26 18:33:31 [INFO] [STDERR] Hello, Gregorius Techneticies here,
2012-11-26 18:33:31 [INFO] [STDERR] I see you obviously use Tekkit, but this Mod wont load, until Kakermix asks me PERSONALLY for the inclusion of my Mod. So bug HIM for it.
2012-11-26 18:33:31 [INFO] [STDERR] P.S. I would've corrupted all your Savefiles like SirSengir, but i didnt for Publicity reasons.

Note that this was in the error log even when I was not using Technic/Tekkit. Good job, hope that the new license agreement has a bit included in it about making threats to Mojang's user base.

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"The first laws, and only laws that have been
tested, dealing with "Intellectual Property" were created to protect
the consumer. The most common example is the Rolex watch. These laws made sure
that if someone bought a watch and it was labeled a Rolex, then that person
could be reasonably sure that was was indeed a Rolex. It didn't matter if
someone else made a watch that looked similar, and had similar functionality.
As long as it didn't call itself a Rolex everything was fine.

Copyright is automatic, there is no need to make
a declaration to claim copyright. It is granted at the time and place of
creation. All of these mashed up copyright/licensing things you see throughout
the MC modding forums are worthless. Copyright exists for one purpose and that
purpose is to protect the producer from anyone claiming his works for
themselves and profiting from them. There exists in the realm of copyright
consumers rights including things such as Fair Use. As long as the consumer did
not break the two major rules there was no infraction.

Now, this wasn't enough for certain industries
and they started licensing their products. As in, you don't actually own this
product but we let you use it under restricted conditions. But, licensing is
tricky. This is because it enters in to the realm of contract law. It must be
an agreement between both parties, and it must be non binding. What that means
is that consumer must be exposed to the agreement, given the choice of agreeing
or disagreeing, the contract can not overly restrict the consumer, and both
parties must have a way to end the contract. (This explanation is horribly
oversimplified. Contract Law takes years of brain wracking study to to even
become moderately proficient.) If you notice, nothing in the modding community
comes even close to approaching these requirements.

Now, lets get to actually trying to sue. In all
but very rare commercial cases in specific domains, copyright cases are
strictly left to civil court, and not criminal court. The whole idea of
copyright violations being theft have been time and time again rejected by the
courts. Anything you see claiming otherwise is propaganda, and is likely
supported by some large industry that wants to infringe on the rights of
consumers even more. Now, since we are dealing with civil courts which deal
with damages...well, I think you can see the issue here since no one charges to
use their mods."

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"Copyright protection extends to all the
copyrightable expression embodied in the computer program. Copyright protection
is not available for ideas, program logic, algorithms, systems, methods,
concepts, or layouts."

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I quote the Minecraft ToS ( http://www.minecraft.net/terms

"Do not distribute anything we've made. This
includes, but not limited to, the client or the server software for the game.
This also includes modified versions of anything we've made."

I further quote it:

"If you've bought the game, you may play
around with it and modify it. We'd appreciate it if you didn't use this for
griefing, though, and remember not to distribute the changes. "

This is probably what you were referring to:

"Any tools you write for the game from
scratch belongs to you. You're free to do whatever you want with screenshots
and videos of the game, but don't just rip art resources and pass them around,
that's no fun. Plugins for the game also belong to you and you can do whatever
you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money. We reserve the
final say regarding what constitutes a tool/plugin and what doesn't. "

THAT DOES NOT MEAN MODS. That means completely
independent plugins that don't use any of Minecraft's code at all. Things like
MCEdit, which independently edit Minecraft's world saves. NOT MODS.

Let us be perfectly and finally clear about this
with no more dodging around the point:

According to the Terms of Service CURRENTLY ON
MINECRAFT.NET, all mods are a violation of Minecraft's license. That means
Buildcraft, that means Forestry, that means Optifine, that means any fucking
thing that even uses a single reobfuscated function call into the Minecraft
source. Every altered base class. Every RECIPE. EVERYTHING.

Nobody owns anything.

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Saying that Technic has stolen anything is silly. If a case was brought up in civil court as by definition of the case, it would not be held in criminal court. The case would most likely be thrown out just for the legal grey area that is ownership of minecraft mods, however it would probably be thrown out faster since the mod developer would have to prove damages were done and since Technic does not accept donations nor makes money off of the mod pack and instead directs people to donate to the mod authors as well as make no claims of ownership of the mod. There are no damages to the Mod Developer, there is no case.

What all arguments come down to is based in opinion, whether you think what Technic does is wrong or right, and you cannot sue someone for opinions. The technic crew has their opinions on what they do, some people agree, even some mod developers agree, others do not and most of the time is because the MC Forums community has laid out so much disinformation about the above rights that they have created echo chamber of thinking errors, people begin to think that this disinformation is correct and when you combine misinformed users with strong patriotism towards mod developers with a few trouble starters blaring horns about false accusations of mod developers being wronged... Things just get out of control. Hell even in the most recent example of this Cheap Shot was supporting the Mod Author and his decision in his thread and still his posts were deleted because of how bad of an echo chamber it has become.

Everyone really just needs to calm down about everything. You don't like Technic? That is fine, no one is forcing you to use it, no one is forcing you to read threads about it, just don't click on anything Technic related and its like its not even there. The Mod Developers are big boys, they don't need an army of fanatic fans speaking for them, if they don't want their mod in the pack, they only have to ask and everything can be kept in private so that no flame wars leak out into the forums disrupting normal chat.

Quote from BrodaciousCoyote

Like Forge? There has been attempts at making compatibility, they are the things Flowerchild and Space Toad are raging against specifically and cited as the reason they're making their own. They aren't gods of compatibility. Eloraam has been doing this for a long time, creating compatibility between her mod, BC and IC2, for instance. And the claims she is copying, when so many of these ideas are rather obvious (Getting angry over manufacturing paper from the same plants? Getting angry over pipes? Pipes are a thing, they aren't some amazing idea that's never been tried before, humans have been using them for thousands of years.) It'd be like looking at someone making a mod that adds a new pickaxe and going, "YOU STOLE THAT FROM VANILLA!" I mean, it's a million times more convenient than Minefactory style conveyor belts, self-contained piping systems means nothing can interfere with the transportation of items. It's just reasoning. Basically what I'm saying is that they're not doing this in support of the community; it seems more like they're doing this in spite of community members. I mean, just look at the 180 from "This shouldn't be used with other mods" to "I made a compatibility mod with Buildcraft!".

Oh, I didn't even notice that FC dropped Forge, then yeah, that kind of makes his whole BTBC mod a bit of a stink. And is Space Toad raging against Forge? I haven't been paying attention to that drama, though I feel it is a shame that people have been making a fuss at Eloraam over how her mod has progressed, she is honestly one of the few level headed moderators I've seen and from the few short conversations I've had where she was answering some of my questions, is a very kind person.

Either way, yeah, I agree FC is kind of digging himself into a hole if hes making a stink about Forge and then shitting himself when hes getting a ton of complaints that his mod wont work with other Forge mods. Really funny because isn't Forge part of the crew working with Jeb on the official API? Will FC quit modding all together when Forge is an official part of Minecraft? No what, nevermind, I really do not want to talk about FC anymore.

Actually, looking at the "Better Then Buildcraft" mod, all it seems to be is a separate mod that allows you to have cross functionality between BTW and Buildcraft, which is great actually and proves a few of my points. It is good to see mods developers starting to think about providing compatibility between mods so that mod packs are not needed. I don't think it is a shame that Space Toad agreed to that, I think that people should have the right to make compatibility mods without authorization (put too many restrictions on the community and nothing will grow). I even understand why FC put BTBC as a separate mod, so as to cut down on code for BTW if you don't happen to play with BuildCraft, though I am a bit confused since I thought his stance was that he didn't want his mod having cross over interactions between others, so I am guessing that this is a temporary thing until his own mod's level of technology builds up to that point. I honestly don't have that much problem with BTW, I like the windmills and watermills and mechanical power is fun to play with, it is just that there is a lot of.. I guess I would call it bloat, that makes things a bit creepy and is not something I would wish to have my younger siblings play around with, I also really do not like the author, but that is neither here nor there.

Quote from MagusUnion

While valid point indeed, it's not something the other side is either going to feel bad about, nor care to give merit to. I'm glad someone else brought this up, but I'll anticipate that it'll quickly be shot down by the other side...

Or not, I do agree that if a mod author asks for a mod to be pulled from a pack it should be. I am pretty sure that the YogBox has been pretty good on this of late, Technic on the other hand, well, that is another story, but they did remove BetterThanWolves. Honestly the group working on Technic should really have their developers make alternative version of still "illegal" mods so that these issues are no longer there, there are not that many mods left on the list that have authors who don't wish to be included anymore.

Quote from MagusUnion

With it's design of what mods should be like... That's the point you people are trying hardest to dodge. Mod packs limit which mods can be installed into a .jar due to forced configurations of said mods. Not everyone wants the same configuration that you are promoting, and you are trying your hardest to not acknowledged this.

THAT is a big reason to not use mod packs: because if a mod is not picked up by a 'famous mod pack', chances are great that said developer does not gain fame for his work. Hell, even one of your own said he was tired of working on his add-on/standalone mod because he has remained unknown for three months. I can easily say that it was due to being lumped into a clusterfuck of other material for users to siphon thru, and literally was lost in the content you provide.

So if Techinc becomes the primary download source for players who want mods, how long do you think it'll take users to forget about Alba, Spacetoad, Eloraam, and the rest of the Forge team? (assuming you care, of course)

Going to assume you are referring to Power Crystals whose primary reason for leaving the modding community is that the dude is no longer unemployed and has a stable job now and would like to actually interact with people in what little spare time he has instead of crunching away at code. If he was leaving because he thought that Technic was making him fade away, I really do not think he would let Technic have the source code to keep his mod up to date and available to the community.

I'm not sure I understand your other point though. Before technic, if you wanted to get the mods running that are in that pack you would have to do a bunch of bullshit mucking around with Block ID errors and class file incompatibility. Technic has made it so that this isn't even an issue any more. Yes Technic only allows for a few mods to work together, and I get your point there, but for the most part, the majority of the mods out there do not work together. This is not a fault of the authors, but more of Mojang having waited so long to work on a mod API when they've known they have had a growing modding community on their hands. Honestly I could have kept NPCs out of the game until after they hired their AI programmer and instead had Mojang work on an API sooner.

Now, mod packs are not making this situation worse, rather they are a somewhat clumsy answer to the limit put on the modding community by Mojang's lack of support. It is unreasonable to ask all modders to make sure that their mods work nice and clean with others, in fact I would say that it is almost impossible. So because of the fact that Mojang has not been supporting the modding community we have an issue where there are a lot of awesome mods and some of them seem just right to work with each other, but because of technical limitations, they do not. So do you just tell the community to go shove off and deal with choosing one mod or the other? Or do you start looking for other answers. Currently what we have are people compiling mod packs, yes they are limited in scope, but for the same reason why it is impractical to ask mod authors to make 100% open compatible mods. These mod packs allow users to select numerous mods that they would normally would only be able to use one or so at a time. This allows multiple developers to be exposed to the public at once and you cannot tell me that the mod pack is stealing away attention from the developers when the mod pack authors refuse to take credit and keep pointing back at the original creators of the mods (even if certain mod pack authors could use better PR and be a bit nicer when dealing the community ).

So now we are coming to a situation where there are a few really good mod packs that covers several ways to play Minecraft modded (example would be the YogBox tailoring towards RPG Adventure style gameplay while Technic tailors to those who enjoy tech trees, industrious building and mega projects. Basically your survival adventurer and your builder). Some mod authors have been very cautious about this, which is an odd situation I've only seen in the Minecraft community (I used to develop mods for Morrowind and dabbled shortly in Oblivion) and I kind of blame this on the Curse forums having decided to force mod authors to include templates of VERY poorly written "copyrights" with their mods especially when the whole current legality of Minecraft Modding is in this shaky grey zone. So because of this we have Mod Developers who have grown to be, I would almost say, over protective of their mods and are cautious with this new change to Minecraft Modding called mod packs. However, as time has gone by those same developers are slowly realizing this is a good thing, as other people are doing the work for them for making compatibilities between other mods (giving them more time to work on making more content for their mods!) and they are learning from it. We have developers starting to talk to each other and from this we had the community as a whole going "Hey, you know what? Mod compatibility is an issue, Mojang IS dragging their feet on fixing this issue, what else can we do to make it so that the users of our mods can enjoy any mod they please without worry of having Minecraft breaking on us." And with that we have seen such things as Forge beginning to be be developed.

The other thing that mod packs have allowed, and this a very recent thing, is SMP playability. Yes some mods do come with a SMP version, but usually the mod works with only itself installed on a server. Then there is the issue when you ask a mod developer if they will make their mod SMP playable they usually respond with "maybe, don't expect it anytime soon" and more often than not with just plain "no" because it does require a lot of extra codding, now ask those developers who said they would make SMP version if they would make it Bukkit as well and that is almost always met with No. With Tekkit we have a great list of mods that have been not only made SMP capable, but have been converted to Bukkit, have been compiled into a ready to launch Server set up that will pretty much run on any OS under the sun and thanks to the awesome folks working on Spout, an incredible client launcher.

So yes, I think that mod packs are a great thing, no I do not think it is hurting mod developers, and no I do not think it is anything to get twisted over because this is just the community reacting to fill the holes Mojang has made until they can get their shit together. And isn't that what most of modding is about? Filling in the missing parts you feel a game has? Come a month of so after the release of the official mod API you will see mod packs less and less often, though probably never fully disappear. That is because packs like Technic are more than just a quick and easy install of a collection of mods, they also contain tweaks and minor mods that would not exist if not for the pack so that the mods included more seamlessly work together and projects like Tekkit will probably stay around so that we can provide some of the amazing SSP mods to Bukkit SMP servers.

In short I guess, don't hate the mod pack, hate the poor planning from Mojang that made the need for such compatibility work around needed in the first place.

Quote from MagusUnion

But that also means that you believe in hard work, critical thinking, and self sufficiency. I'm pretty sure that these are concepts that the Technic Pack doesn't support...

Oh for Pete's sake, MagusUnion will you please give it a rest? Things have been pretty civil until you and a few others posted. I do not know why you are carrying this burning cross. Yes I agree that KakerMix should have gotten permissions from all the mod users, but honestly (as has been explained by CheapShot), the mod pack got out of his hands rather fast and if you really don't believe this then please, check the somethingawful archives and follow KakerMix's original posts about what would later become Technic.

Even if you do not agree with KakerMix's methods, Technic has done a lot of good for the community getting modders to work together, getting others to think about how the future of minecraft modding can be changed to allow easier compatibility between mods, producing mod authors who would not have made their mods had it not been for technic and with the realese of "Tekkit" for the first time some major mods have been converted into a fully functional SMP Bukkit package.

Those who still choose not to use Technic, I am not telling you to use it, or to like it, but please do yourselves a favor and just let it go. Every day Technic grows bigger, draws more attention, and pushes the community to achieve greater and greater things. However, no amount of screaming and crying is going to make it go away and honestly, regardless that KakerMix was wrong in not getting mod permission (again, see CheapShot's earlier post), removing Technic would probably be worse off for the modders currently involved.

I guess what I am saying, white knights of the internet, please stand down in this if you cannot do anything but pointlessly bicker or try to fan this into a flame war.

Also, I am going to have to agree with BrodaciousCoyote over all this "GOONS!!!!" crap I've been seeing on the different forums grumbling about Technic. SA is home to some 160,000 registered users. Not all of them view the game's subforum and certainly not all of them play minecraft let alone EVE or have even heard about Goonswarm. Yes SA carries about it a stigma of being a bunch of asshats, wont argue with you there, but so does Reddit and the various Chans and the minecraft forums themselves. The entirety of SA is not out to get you and in fact, the majority of the users are rather nice chaps (hell, look at donations and charities SA goes into). Please stop grasping at anything you can to dig your hatred into. If Technic came from 4chan you'd be screaming about anonymous, if it came from Reddit.. well, you'd be screaming about whatever they refer to themselves as. In short, it is getting old.