Drizzle and "rogue" shards

Tweek · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 12:11 am **Posts:** 2633

Well Paradox wrote a splended blog post about this called What We Do.......oh wait...

Tai'lahr · **Posted:** Sun Dec 27, 2009 5:03 pm

Hey, look, my name was mentioned in this blog post What We Do... by Paradox....

Apologies for participating in the derailing of this thread. *Points finger at Tweek for starting it.*

EthanEver · **Posted:** Sun Dec 27, 2009 5:33 pm

Oh, we're all reading it at the same time? :lol:

Anyhow, I'm glad Paradox wrote his blog and I'm glad I read it. I have a better understanding now.
Uh, wel... in my case understanding is a big word.

Nalates · **Posted:** Mon Dec 28, 2009 6:20 am

kaelisebonrai wrote:

Another side note, is EULAs are generally not enforcable by law.

Sorry for the short post, but, its late, but felt that really did need addressing.

I'm not sure what generally means in this case. In the US an EULA is mostly enforceable. Often some parts of it cannot be enforced. Also as it falls in civil rather then criminal law, damages have to be suffered and shown/proven.

Some thought that Shrink-Wrap Licenses could not be binding or enforced. But just like any other written agreement, they can be enforced by a civil court order, law. REFERENCE

Considering how the tools for building Uru ages came to be it is easy to argue about what is and is not a violation of EULA and copyright law in their creation. The debate is moot until someone can show actual damages. With open source promised it is even more academic. Only the use of Cyan content, i.e., meshes, textures, sounds, the python scripts for things like the ovens and pods, character and place names and story actually have any possibility for causing damage to Cyan's rights. They have indicated they will NOT release or allow use of that content except under a specific license. Will the FCAL be replaced? Changed? Kept?

As Paradox points out in his blog post, many creating ages are spinning off stories and ages with little if any relation to Uru. Devokan is an example of a Myst-Uru style build and play being done by Uru fans in SL. They have RP that relates some of their characters to older time frames related to the D'ni era and Myst games. Most of that is setup in the age intro info one finds when entering Devokan. Myst and Cyan are acknowledged but Cyan's stuff is not used. Those we think of as age builders in the MOUL line can do similar things and not step on Cyan's rights, which has been my point.

Others already have Myst-Uru style builds in the OSGrid and its relatives. Now that RealXtend and OSGrid are working together to bring real meshes (not SL's fakey sculpties) to both RealXtend and OSGrid it would be possible to put Cyan and fan content in those grids. The physics in OSGrid suck, IMO. While the scripting change from MOUL to a grid presents problems RealXtend has a version of Python in use. With meshes and Python coming to SL servers and the Havok physics it is getting easier to port content from a Myst style age to the new grids.

A year ago such a port was an overwhelming idea to many. But the changes coming to the grids in 2010 are making it easier. Blue Mars' huge areas and Sims-On-Demand's ridiculously low hosting costs, people may start porting.

Also, there is the issue of co-operative building. One either learns Maya, 3DMax or Blender and builds an age. For those not into that level of 3D modeling there is the primitive shape modeling of SL and the OS grids. When RealXtend’s modrex rendering is working and adopted both groups can work together. Provided people can get over their attachments to how they think things are supposed to be. I think cooperative building is ideal. 3D modelers and texture artists can add impressive things and quality to the appearance. The primitive-shape modelers can build the simper stuff. Faster builds and more people can help.

ddb174 · **Joined:** Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:27 pm **Posts:** 167

Quote:

Without a license from Cyan, distribution of Ages, even with absolutely no Cyan content, via story or physical IP, was not allowed.

This is incorrect; just because a company doesn't like something and perhaps even says "you cannot do that", doesn't mean it's true. People must stop thinking that they are somehow lesser entities than corporations. There's too much legal BS in this thread to try to correct everything, but: disassembling does not imply copyright infringement even when used to reproduce functionality (the Chinese Wall thing merely helps to show in court that there is no way you could have copied anything.) EULAs are effective as disclaimers, which helps protect the company from some kinds of retaliatory lawsuits, but they are not really much more.

I think many people just have a vague notion in their head of "property", and don't understand that the law doesn't treat any of these things as property. There are particular bodies of law that deal with copyright, trademarks, patents, etc, but the law really doesn't act the way most people here seem to think it does :P Once again, just because some corporation tells you you cannot do something... guess what? There's no consequence for them lying about this, so they freely lie all the time.[/quote]

Nalates · **Posted:** Mon Dec 28, 2009 9:15 pm

Several posts in this thread are loaded with presuppositions. There are nuances in the writing that many miss and I’m often unsure exactly what was meant.

When ‘Age’ is written with a capital ‘A’ does that mean a Cyan Age? If so then ChloeRhodes’ statement is mostly correct in my understanding. If an age is fan created, we have a whole different animal and the statement is inaccurate. If one presupposes ages can only be used with Cyan content, there is more merit to the idea but it has so many contingencies there are no clear answers. But, fan ages can be stand alone.

It is possible to build and play an age without the writer having to resort to the use of Cyan IP. They can give their age to whoever they choose.

Are software programs and computer games property? We consider them so and law in many ways treats them as if they are. But, ddb174 is right in that all the IP things are treated differently than physical property. Theft of real property is considered criminal. Its theft removes it from your use and control. Theft of intellectual property is considered differently and is a matter of civil law. Theft of IP does not remove it from your use, it usually only conflicts with your use of it. Theft of an idea is much harder to prove. Law tends to avoid the problem and deal with whether damages were inflicted by use of a copyrighted, trademarked or patented intellectual property.

Ddb174’s point that people and companies can write overly restrictive and unenforceable EULA’s is also true. There is no penalty for overstating one’s position. Writing in everything one would like to enforce gives them the chance to argue those points in court, if it comes to that. The thing is an EULA is an agreement, shrink-wrap or otherwise. Agreements that are not overly one sided are enforceable in court and may as well be law.

Much of how we respect, or not, an agreement we have made is a matter of who we are and how we respect others. How we decide is often a measure of how we balance our desires and morals/ethics.

Tweek · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 12:11 am **Posts:** 2633

Nalates wrote:

When ‘Age’ is written with a capital ‘A’ does that mean a Cyan Age? If so then ChloeRhodes’ statement is mostly correct in my understanding. If an age is fan created, we have a whole different animal and the statement is inaccurate. If one presupposes ages can only be used with Cyan content, there is more merit to the idea but it has so many contingencies there are no clear answers. But, fan ages can be stand alone.

Age means Age, be it Cyan, fan, D'ni, Ronay etc etc.

terms regarding the Art are capitalized Write instead of write, Book instead of book, Art instead of art, Link instead of link etc, etc.

Marein · **Posted:** Tue Dec 29, 2009 1:36 am

I personally capitalize 'Age' when it's about "bookworlds", and use regular 'age' in any other instance. That's to say, I do so when I need to make the distinction. If I don't have to, I'll always use miniscules. I also don't capitalize the other examples Tweek gave, though I'd like to confirm that the capitalization has nothing to do with who created the Age

mszv · **Joined:** Wed May 10, 2006 5:28 am **Posts:** 2266

I always enjoy threads where we talk about this stuff because I learn something, including how complicated the whole topic is. I'm so glad we get to have this discussion.

Whilyam · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 1:04 am **Posts:** 4134

Like Tweek, I (at least try to) capitalize "age" when I am talking about a book-world. I don't tend to capitalize the other words (with the exception of "The Art").

MustardJeep · **Posted:** Tue Jan 05, 2010 7:54 pm

Paradox's blog post left me with some very mixed feelings.

It's a great bit of history, but it can't help but illustrate how Fans doing technical support/work on Uru have always been neglected in a odd way. :roll:

Still if someone does the leg work for Cyan getting a fan server up (legit not hacked) I'm sure it will get the same bemused approval/tactfully ignored treatment of all the other "Approved" fan projects.

Chogon said

Quote:

Cyan Worlds has *not* given any permission for the Drizzle program to the creator(s) of Drizzle or anyone using it or any derivative work of Drizzle. Also, we have not given permission to any shards that uses Drizzle derived data.
And we have not given any form of sanction to any shard outside of Cyan Worlds' control.

Drizzle was never the way, but I remain hopeful for the person that gets a shard up inside Cyan's rules.

Whilyam · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 1:04 am **Posts:** 4134

Actually, it seems Drizzle is the way. Short of building an in-game Age-downloading/finding service, an external Age manager is the most effective way of allowing people control over what Ages they see in the game.

Dhelayan · **Posted:** Wed Jan 06, 2010 9:57 pm

Quote:

Drizzle was never the way, but I remain hopeful for the person that gets a shard up inside Cyan's rules.

I have to agree with Whilyam, Drizzle is the way, its a great tool for Downloading Fan Ages and install them. Also, if Cyan would tell us how to setup a shard inside of Cyans rules, or what theyre Rules might be, i think a lot of people will make one. I'm also waiting for Cyan on doing something like this...

MustardJeep · **Posted:** Thu Jan 07, 2010 2:18 am

I don't dispute that drizzle is "the way" for Uru:CC. It is a slick hack and a logical growth from the existing managers but I say it is not "the way" for a multiplayer uru because of the behavior of it's author. the worst of the gow still shows cyan more respect then Dustin did during his initial release of drizzle and the games cyan has shown they don't wantto acknowledge as "open" to a fan community.

that said.......

drizzle and pyprp together are the next logical step towards the plugin fans will need to support a online uru. but that will take something the fan community hasn't shown yet.

Paradox · **Posted:** Thu Jan 07, 2010 2:33 am

MustardJeep wrote:

drizzle and pyprp together are the next logical step towards the plugin fans will need to support a online uru. but that will take something the fan community hasn't shown yet.

Discussions among PyPRP developers suggest that a new plugin will be designed for Blender 2.5/2.6, which will be based on libPlasma. Hence, it will automatically have export support for all Plasma versions, including UU, PotS, and MOUL.

Drizzle and "rogue" shards

Who is online