Rogean and Nilbog are Breaking the Law!

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's not about profiting, it's about code-sharing. The GPL says nothing about "if you don't make money you can ignore it".

How do you think the EQEMU guys would force P99 to comply with their license? They would have to take legal action (which costs money), and they would expect to receive compensation in return to cover the legal fees and any damages.

Unless the owners of EQEMU like losing money on pointless lawsuits, they would never take action.

The reason why making money is normally the biggest factor in this kind of legal situation is because when you sue the person who is illegally profiting off of your code, you can get the money they got in profits as damage compensation. You also punish them for breaking the license.

If the person breaking the license has no money, you will just end up wasting money on the lawsuit. When you are making money off of the code, you can be at least reasonably certain they still have some of it. Of course they may end up spending it all on cocaine and hookers, but that is a different story[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[TheConsortium]

ive sued someone myself and im not a lawyer... its just more boring than everquest

also stupid to do illegal things when you could prove you didn't do those things

and especially dumb to do it and piss of other nerds

[loramin]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

How do you think the EQEMU guys would force P99 to comply with their license? They would have to take legal action (which costs money), and they would expect to receive compensation in return to cover the legal fees and any damages.

Unless the owners of EQEMU like losing money on pointless lawsuits, they would never take action.

The reason why making money is normally the biggest factor in this kind of legal situation is because when you sue the person who is illegally profiting off of your code, you can get the money they got in profits as damage compensation. You also punish them for breaking the license.

If the person breaking the license has no money, you will just end up wasting money on the lawsuit. When you are making money off of the code, you can be at least reasonably certain they still have some of it. Of course they may end up spending it all on cocaine and hookers, but that is a different story[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

First off, I think you're massively underestimating the power of shame. For all we know R&N aren't doing any of this on purpose, they just never read the EQ Emulator license. I doubt that, but their position is obviously more nuanced, and simply having the rights holder ask them to fix their mistake may well be enough to make them remedy things.

But hypothetically speaking, if they truly were assholes who felt the rules don't apply to them, that they can freely use someone else's source code/work and ignore their legal obligation to share their commits afterward ... even after that rights holder asks them to correct the violation ... as I already mentioned there are organizations that provide free legal assistance.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

First off, I think you're massively underestimating the power of shame. For all we know R&N aren't doing any of this on purpose, they just never read the EQ Emulator license. Simply having the rights holder ask could well be enough to remedy things.

But hypothetically speaking, if they truly were assholes who felt the rules don't apply to them, that they can freely use someone else's source code/work and ignore their legal obligation to share their commits afterward ... even after that rights holder asks them to correct the violation ... as I already mentioned there are organizations that provide free legal assistance.

I am not underestimating the power of shame. The problem is you seem to assume people just sue other people to shame them. In MOST cases, legal suites involving intellectual property come down to illegally generating profits off of someone else's work, or causing a loss in profits due to the illegal generation of competition by copying your intellectual property.

Sure, there may be assholes out there that like to sue people for pleasure, at the cost of legal fees and time, but that is not normal.

Big companies (like the owners of the Everquest IP) could go after EQEMU even if they are not making money because they are illegally using their code/IP, and that is taking away players that could be playing on the live servers. That is a case where the owners of the Everquest IP are fine with losing money on the lawsuit because the number of players NOT playing the Daybreak servers is costing them a good chunk of money. By shutting down EQEMU, they discourage other people from making another EQEMU, and ideally get the players back into their servers, thus making up for the loss in profit.

The EQEMU dev's have literally nothing to gain from suing P99 because nobody is making money here. The P99 dev's are not even claiming the EQEMU code is their own. There is nothing to fix via legal action.

[Homesteaded]

My understanding is the code they received initially is not recognizable after altering it to p99 needs.

So the code they have now isn’t from emu. I’m sure they’ve given credit to that community. This whole premise is strange and stinks of extreme boredom.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The EQEMU dev's have literally nothing to gain from suing P99.

Only the one thing they asked for in exchange for their code: P99's commits.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Homesteaded [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

My understanding is the code they received initially is not recognizable after altering it to p99 needs.

So the code they have now isn’t from emu. I’m sure they’ve given credit to that community. This whole premise is strange and stinks of extreme boredom.

Again, if they've truly eliminated all EQ Emulator code from their server, they're in the clear (although maybe it's a little gray if they originally used EQ Emulator code).

My understanding, and the basis of this thread ... which (again) Nilbog could pop in and correct at any moment ... was that P99 is still an EQ Emulator project. In programming terms it's a "fork" of the original project.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Only the one thing they asked for in exchange for their code: P99's commits.

You simply do not understand the purpose of these licenses. They are not explicitly demanding other peoples code, you are taking the sentence too literally.

If you use open source code under a GPL3 license and re-distribute it for free, giving the proper credit to the creators, you will NEVER be sued. Period.

The reason for this license is to discourage people from taking the code, claiming it as their own, and using it in a product that makes money.

If you want to make money off of an open source project, the GPL3 license comes into play to keep you honest by showing you are using their code, and allowing other people to use it.

[Shac]

so we all agree p99 shouldn't share code to honor the license or that they don't have to because the license means nothing?

[loramin]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You simply do not understand the purpose of these licenses. They are not explicitly demanding other peoples code, you are taking the sentence too literally.

If you use open source code under a GPL3 license and re-distribute it for free, giving the proper credit to the creators, you will NEVER be sued. Period.

The reason for this license is to discourage people from taking the code, claiming it as their own, and using it in a product that makes money.

If you want to make money off of an open source project, the GPL3 license comes into play to keep you honest by showing you are using their code, and allowing other people to use it.

I agree that in practice it'd be far less likely for anyone to pursue any legal action when there's no money involved ... but, again, P99 receives donations.

Also (again), there's lots of ways things can play out that don't require lawsuits.