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05/13/14, 03:43 PM   #21
Ark
 
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This is one of the oldest problems in the history of developing.
Where is the line between inspired and copy?

I'm very pragmatic with this. I think everyone dislikes to be copied. Even more when there is money involved (is the bread of our family as developers)
But when its about a hobby...there is really a need to defend our work to the extreme?
When I develop an open source, I think about doing it for the sake of everyone. Because if I did it only for me, I'll not release it
So, if I do it for everyone, why not let others change and twist it so they can use ir as base to do their ideas?
....Let the best work prevail.

But, yeah, the minimum is to recognize the original autor. From there I think you cannot really get upset about it
You can think it like this: maybe your work (your ui in this case) is so good that maybe you could work with an library to ease the use of this kind of menu
When people start copying your work its because that kind of work was needed. Its a response to a need. Maybe they could try to do their own ui, but some people just don't want to, or just don't know how.

Everyone can learn and improve form others (fork). And you can improve from others too (maybe they could do some trick here and there that you can add to your own original code).

When everyone can see the guts of your work, and use it, its not a good idea to go anything but open source. They will copy it likewise, and you will get mad about it. It not worth it
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05/14/14, 01:04 AM   #22
DonutEnigma
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So I went public domain expressly to avoid any of these issues. Also because I don't care after I eventually quit ESO, so I wanted to make my stuff as open as possible. That makes me cool right? Well the people that actually care about their hobby are just as cool and just as entitled to do whatever they want with their code. It is their code after all. If writing a book is copyrightable, then code is as well. It's really the same thing. There's no grey area about it in my opinion.

So here's how copyright works in a nutshell. Anything you put down on paper, or a file, or whatnot is automatically protected by you, for you, against anyone else. Therefore, if a license is not included with an addon it is not "assumed to be MIT license". It is actually assumed to be copyrighted. All rights reserved by author. Etc. You, the evil copying jerk, can't just take it and do what you please with it. There are two cases here: wholesale copying, which seems to be what the thief did here, and derivative works, which is similar in that you start with wholesale copying and make some tweaks (be they large or small). Either way, thief is wrong and original author is right.

-----

Originally Posted by hNipster View Post
Personally, my position on add-ons as simple as these is to keep 'em open-source, MIT style. I mean, it's a community, put the code out there for everyone to use any way they wish.
Fine and dandy, you have an opinion. Not everyone shares that opinion. But great for you.

Originally Posted by hNipster View Post
As the person that wrote the mentioned add-on, without a license file or copyright notice of any type in the AI Research Grid add-on, I kind of assumed it was open source/MIT (there's not even an author listed in the manifest). I presumed MIT style licensing since so many of the other add-ons here use that style of license; thus free to do with what you will, since that's what open source is all about (and I would have included that copyright if it were there, but it wasn't so I went with a mention on the page).
What a mistake that was eh? Assuming somebody does something the way others do because others do it in a specific way. You know what they say about assuming right?

Originally Posted by hNipster View Post
Whether I agree with his viewpoint or not, it was my mistake not to follow up and confirm usage/licensing/what have you, which I apologized to the author for when he contacted me.
Damn straight. I probably would've sued you to oblivion if it were my code and if this were anything more than addon development.

Originally Posted by hNipster View Post
...and I don't really care to argue copyright on a hobby...
You have no argument to stand on. So there's no point in arguing your case here. Finally something I agree with you on.

----

And now I'm not so cool. Perhaps I'm a jerk, or just really invested in what I do. I may give some things away for free. But not everything.
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05/14/14, 06:35 AM   #23
Wobin
 
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Originally Posted by DonutEnigma View Post
You know what they say about assuming right?
It makes an ass of u and Ming?

Poor Ming =(

(Sorry, couldn't resist =P)
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05/14/14, 08:27 AM   #24
CatoTheElder
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Damn straight. I probably would've sued you to oblivion if it were my code and if this were anything more than addon development.
It'd be absolutely hilarious to watch you try.... again, can we get a /thead? I don't see anything positive coming out of this thread, and a whole lot of negative.

ingeniousclown - I try to be nice to people, but neither patience or rhetoric are my best attributes. I'm not here to endlessly argue in circles on topics that are years old, or take insults from those who don't like what I have to say.

I'm here to try to work together with others in an add-on development community, where we can all learn and improve ourselves, and our creations. I don't understand why people are here who don't want to help others. I don't understand a lot about people though, and I'm fine with that. I'm an IT engineer, not a therapist.
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05/14/14, 12:08 PM   #25
LilBudyWizer
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I would assume the TOS of this site covers the issue of the original poster and that the mod has been taken down. I don't really see an issue with copying code as long as you retask it, do something different with it. I would imagine the original poster has no issue with others generating a grid in basically the same manner, even outright copying his code as a base to start from. He likely went through many iteration before he came up with a way he was satisfied with. Copying his code saves a person the time and effort going through those iterations themselves, but he likely has no issue with that. It's using his work to compete directly with him that's his issue.

If your competitor is using you work then you can never do better than your competitor. I see no way to view that as a good thing. That's lose-lose. The only way to stop that is stop improving your own product to show they can't actually do the work, but that's a hollow victory. When they do something else with it then, to me, it's win-win. Perhaps it's a lost opportunity but even if so it's likely an opportunity you never would have pursued. Instead you have a useful product you and others can use instead of just something you woulda, shoulda, coulda, mighta done had you had the resources to do it.

There's certainly exceptions. You can release an product with the intent of it forming a foundation of an entire line of products. Allowing people take the technology exposed in that initial release to head you off at the pass does no one any good. It's a fine line though. Apple certainly benefits from all the accessory makers that jumped on the band wagon. That's no detrimental. Android pushing into higher pixel densities following their lead isn't a problem. Someone releasing an iPhone with LTE before Apple is a problem. They have legal protections against that, patents, trademarks, copyrights and such. You can't call something an iPhone, you can iOS on it, some of it is a bit excessive the part preventing you producing an iPhone, even a better than Apple's, isn't silly, it's essential. I think the same can apply to mods. Hey, we converted your mod a frame work and released mods adding these features while you working on adding those features, aren't you happy. Hell no. We didn't modify your code, just replaced a few functions after you load so we can use it as a framework. No, you might as well just pasted my code into your addon for all the difference it makes.
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05/14/14, 03:51 PM   #26
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Guys, I didn't mean to kick off something that would get this unpleasant.

I contacted nHipster to explain why I felt the situation is wrong and he agreed to pull his addon.

For reference, whilst the code doesn't contain specific license terms, there is a facility to check the license type on uploading to esoui. Not sure where this is visible on download though.
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05/14/14, 04:59 PM   #27
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So, today a new addon is published - StatsViewer. Since I'm myself the author of a similar addon, of course I download it to see how he's done his code - perhaps I can learn a new trick or two.

Eyeing through the code I soon realize it looks awfully similar, not to my code, but to another stats addon, ShowMyStats.

So I download ShowMyStats and do a diff; care to guess the results?

Now I don't know if the two authors have been in contact, nor do I know if the author of ShowMyStats care, but to me that is a bit too much of a copy-paste job to not have at least some sort of acknowledgement on it.
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05/14/14, 05:25 PM   #28
Xrystal
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Originally Posted by stjobe View Post
So, today a new addon is published - StatsViewer. Since I'm myself the author of a similar addon, of course I download it to see how he's done his code - perhaps I can learn a new trick or two.

Eyeing through the code I soon realize it looks awfully similar, not to my code, but to another stats addon, ShowMyStats.

So I download ShowMyStats and do a diff; care to guess the results?

Now I don't know if the two authors have been in contact, nor do I know if the author of ShowMyStats care, but to me that is a bit too much of a copy-paste job to not have at least some sort of acknowledgement on it.
Maybe not. Looking at both those codes and I could type a whole new addon of a similar vein, if I'd had the idea, and have it almost look the same. I would have ordered the layout of my control functions very similarly (not visually maybe - which these are not), and I would have an update routine to update the values. I would have a control name similarly name AddonName_SpecificTypeName_ControlType etc. It's pretty standard. And the rest for the most part are standard functions which of course you can't change.

Coincidence, quite a possibility. Malicious, maybe not. My suggestion: Instead of bringing it into the public eye and posting on the addon's page, maybe you could have been discreet and messaged one of them to find out whether either had a problem with it.
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05/15/14, 12:00 AM   #29
stjobe
 
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Originally Posted by Xrystal View Post
Maybe not. Looking at both those codes and I could type a whole new addon of a similar vein, if I'd had the idea, and have it almost look the same. I would have ordered the layout of my control functions very similarly (not visually maybe - which these are not), and I would have an update routine to update the values. I would have a control name similarly name AddonName_SpecificTypeName_ControlType etc. It's pretty standard. And the rest for the most part are standard functions which of course you can't change.
Do a diff. Large parts of the code are identical, character for character, line for line. It's the same code with minor edits.

Originally Posted by Xrystal View Post
Coincidence, quite a possibility. Malicious, maybe not.
Malicious I don't know; it might be plain old ignorance, but it sure isn't coincidence.

Last edited by stjobe : 05/15/14 at 12:02 AM.
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05/15/14, 12:00 PM   #30
Sephiroth018
 
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Originally Posted by stjobe View Post
So, today a new addon is published - StatsViewer. Since I'm myself the author of a similar addon, of course I download it to see how he's done his code - perhaps I can learn a new trick or two.

Eyeing through the code I soon realize it looks awfully similar, not to my code, but to another stats addon, ShowMyStats.

So I download ShowMyStats and do a diff; care to guess the results?

Now I don't know if the two authors have been in contact, nor do I know if the author of ShowMyStats care, but to me that is a bit too much of a copy-paste job to not have at least some sort of acknowledgement on it.
So instead of contacting the authors you post it here without really knowing anything?
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05/19/14, 05:40 PM   #31
Vuelhering
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Originally Posted by Sephiroth018 View Post
So instead of contacting the authors you post it here without really knowing anything?
To be fair, he posted exactly what he knew: running it through diff showed minimal differences.

It looks like it was straightforward, not misleading, and completely true.

The result might cause drama, but there are two common ways of causing drama:
  1. someone pointing out something that might be wrong, and giving all the relevant details.
  2. someone implying someone else did something wrong, when it's not even established that anything wrong occurred, especially using misleading details, loaded words, wrong definitions, or comparing to irrelevant situations.

This clearly is in camp #1, and I have no problem with that.
It's the difference from being a whistleblower, and being Glenn Beck.
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05/20/14, 01:45 PM   #32
katkat42
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Originally Posted by Vuelhering View Post
The result might cause drama, but there are two common ways of causing drama:
  1. someone pointing out something that might be wrong, and giving all the relevant details.
  2. someone implying someone else did something wrong, when it's not even established that anything wrong occurred, especially using misleading details, loaded words, wrong definitions, or comparing to irrelevant situations.
I will say that in my experience, more drama by far results from someone trying to do #1, and somebody else assuming they were trying to do #2.

On a second read-through, that might not be the most graceful way to say it, but given the subject is interpersonal drama, I think I'll leave it.
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ESOUI » Developer Discussions » General Authoring Discussion » Add-on code - the grey line of "based on"

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