Do Cathedrals actually exist?

[Gruffydd]

I think part of the problem is there are a lot of people who would like to use assets cathedral-style and not very many who make new assets and are willing to give away that work to the public domain. If more cathedral modders contributed resources there might actually be a vibrant cathedral community, enough so that reluctant authors might even see the results and change their minds. But as it is, I really don't see all that much created by the cathedral community. At least, not in Bethesda mods on Nexus, which is what I'm most familiar with.

Am I just missing some vast library of cathedral works somewhere?

[LeelooMinai]

I think as well, thereâs a difference when we see an authors open general permission because they will go inactive. Itâs not that they think, ahhh, cathedral is so good. Itâs just they know they canât give permission anymore, so they open it up. See Fair skin and Mature skin.

 

 

Using assets from others and creating your own stuff isnât black and white and it isnât an easy thing. Maybe there lies the issue. People wanna simplify something that is complex and actually canât be simplified.

 

For example I use assets from all kinds of people, open permission and where I have to ask. Because I am allowed by both parties to use the assets I can create something amazing. Means thou I canât use open permission. I have to lock my work and can only use either the dependency system or people need to pm me, and tell me exactly what they wanna use, so I can either redirect them to the author or tell them, this is open permission, you need to credit this or that person. Or use THEIR assets not mine.

 

Itâs gets even more complicated in my case, because I use merged assets. Means a skin texture file can include several different artists. Myself included as I do some stuff myself.

 

Therefore using only cathedral assets can restrict creativity, too. And doesnât mean it opens up creativity. It only means as well new stuff canât go in all kind of directions. In a way itâs as well static.

 

All in all, modding means to honor the authors you use the assets from. Because you wouldnât be able to create your mod without them. And there is the issue. It isnât cathedral vs parlor. Itâs the lack of appreciation for someone elseâs hard work.

 

Because at the end of the day, people in the âparlorâ system often just end up there, because people were not fair, either pretend the assets they used are their own, used them without even crediting, used assets without being humble about it. What brings us back to the biggest issue - cathedral might work in an utopian world. Or it might have once worked as mods were hosted on platforms that werenât businesses.

 

Embedding cathedral on nexus is like having communism with an all controlling political party with one leader who has all the power. It simply doesnât work with the people involved.

 

And itâs not directly cathedral that is the issue, itâs the world and itâs people itâs embedded in.

 

You can turn and twist it, in the end you shouldnât belittling the frustration and hurt of people who got abused by said system and tell them suck it up for the greater good of everyone. Because those people are part of the group as well, excluding them and telling them they doesnât matter defeats the point of the greater good Anyways. As it then falls apart being just another construction that just benefits again a certain group - and not everyone. Which is the sentiment behind cathedral after all. But in the end itâs just another construction that pretends to be cathedral, but in reality itâs again - the strongest wins.

[LeelooMinai]

Because let's take Cathedral Concept Majestic Mountains as an example. There is still the ONE requirement, the ONE thing that the author asks for. Honor me and my content by crediting me. "This is enough HONOR" for me.

 

 

But exactly this bare minimum gets violated already so often. Or the credits of other artists are just really small and barely visible on a mod description. Which is sad as well.

 

So in the end Cathedral would probably work, if even this bare minimum wouldnt get trampled on already so often. Parlor often is a way for Mod Authors as well to get an oversight. And in the end its a way, that others can inform you, hey, your mod got used without permission, or without credit.

 

Again, if everyone would be humble and appreciative, Cathedral would be an amazing system that works for all, everyone is on the same level. Nobody gets left behind, treated badly. But thats not the case. And as long as this isn't the case, Cathedral is a nice idea, but not more than that. An idea, an ideology.

[Arthmoor]

Honestly I think nearly everyone is misusing the terms in the sense that Wrye intended for them to be read. Plus I don't think very many people have actually read his words from his own fingers, so for the benefit of those who have not: https://wryemusings.com/Cathedral%20vs.%20Parlor.html

 

He was attempting to draw an understandable analogy between "closed source" and a form of "open source", but what he was basically after was "open licensing", or "FOSS" (Free and open-source software) in the terminology used in open source circles.

 

What most of the militant proponents of it today do isn't to advocate for that sort of thing, they advocate for basically no copyright whatsoever. FOSS or Cathedral or Parlor or whatever you want to call it all boils down to licensing. You can't license without the copyright, but most "Cathedral" supporters these days really mean to be advocating Richard Stallman's position of "All information wants to be free" and he is vehemently anti-copyright.

[DoctaSax]

Paradoxically, you can only license your stuff to be freely used by acknowledging copyright and claiming your own first in order to share it with others. Which is why even staunch FOSS proponents don't simply go around saying copyright doesn't exist or should be ignored. That seems to only happen in more amateuristic circles like the modding community, with the current result that 'cathedralism' as a term is completely corrupted by years of mis-use. I'd suggest using a phrase like 'Libre modding' to capture the original intent and leaving the rest by the wayside.

[ScytheBearer]

The problem with Wyre's original work is that he oversells the glories of Cathedral and undersells the benefits of parlor.

I will not speak for the world, but for myself, and I want to control how my mods are used. I do not want my work associated with some of the more dark or shady mods. For example, I do not want my assets picked up and used in something by LL (a brothel, instead of a cathedral). Not because I am opposed to the work those folks do, but because I do not want my name or work tied to it. In Wyre's terms, I do not want my stained glass reflections illuminating some lusty bouncing buttocks.

[sunshinenbrick]

They strike me as ideologies and are somewhat rare to find in their purest forms. I would concur on the comments that cathedral pretty much includes all free and open resources/assets/mods that are licensed and contain licensing that allows them to be shared and used - to what degree makes cathedral anything but uniform across the board! Which is where I often find the controversy around the two can get... interesting. If cathedral is at one end then parlour being at the other suggests the 'most parlour-like' would be essentially a completely proprietary piece of work that does not include or use licences that forbid further restrictions being implemented and thus also forbids any use outside that of an 'end-user'. i.e. a 'parlour' mod might still contain resources or assets that are part of the 'cathedral', and likewise a 'cathedral' mod might contain elements that the author may wish to keep proprietary.

 

Where things can quickly get murky is the concept of parlour mods for Bethesda games (and most other games) exists alongside the 'cathedral' of the Bethesda licensing framework, and while a mod may contain a large amount of independent and original work, they operate in this sort of walled garden where authors are consequentially restricted in how they can commercially package and benefit from their 'finished product'. Problems often arise when people fail to appreciate or acknowledge these nuances and for example claim things like 'if it is a Bethesda mod it makes it a free for all' etc... (well except that this seems technically true for Bethesda themselves and they often incorporate concepts from mods).

 

Thinking about truly 'parlour mods' I would say some tools and managers may fall into this category, or perhaps injectors and shaders like ENB... or something that is essentially independent. However most such freeware or shareware likely still use or implement licensed scripts and libraries and thus are ill-advised to (and legally shouldn't) be used in any unsolicited commercial capacity or put behind any kind of paywall. Which is what makes the recent move by the site here all the more intriguing as it seems to enforce a sort of one-sided cathedral/parlour model on masse - including huge amounts of content that likely consists of a complete mish mash of stuff that would take a considerable amount of resources to sift through thoroughly enough so as to ensure you are not falling foul of a superseding licence anywhere (like with Nintendo, Adobe or Microsoft, for example).

[Arthmoor]

The problem with Wyre's original work is that he oversells the glories of Cathedral and undersells the benefits of parlor.

 

I will not speak for the world, but for myself, and I want to control how my mods are used. I do not want my work associated with some of the more dark or shady mods. For example, I do not want my assets picked up and used in something by LL (a brothel, instead of a cathedral). Not because I am opposed to the work those folks do, but because I do not want my name or work tied to it. In Wyre's terms, I do not want my stained glass reflections illuminating some lusty bouncing buttocks.

He oversold the Cathedral position because it's the position he supported. That was basically the whole point of why he wrote that essay.

 

He ALSO made it quite clear to anyone paying attention that a migration to a more open ecosysytem had to happen through voluntary action, not heavy handed forced initiatives by hosts or other modders. It was then, is now, and will always be up to the creator of a mod to decide how open they want it to be.

[ScytheBearer]

 

The problem with Wyre's original work is that he oversells the glories of Cathedral and undersells the benefits of parlor.

 

I will not speak for the world, but for myself, and I want to control how my mods are used. I do not want my work associated with some of the more dark or shady mods. For example, I do not want my assets picked up and used in something by LL (a brothel, instead of a cathedral). Not because I am opposed to the work those folks do, but because I do not want my name or work tied to it. In Wyre's terms, I do not want my stained glass reflections illuminating some lusty bouncing buttocks.

He oversold the Cathedral position because it's the position he supported. That was basically the whole point of why he wrote that essay.

 

He ALSO made it quite clear to anyone paying attention that a migration to a more open ecosysytem had to happen through voluntary action, not heavy handed forced initiatives by hosts or other modders. It was then, is now, and will always be up to the creator of a mod to decide how open they want it to be.

 

 

He even says as much. " ...the Cathedral view creates a much larger, more enduring and more perfected body of work – and for that reason, I prefer it". And that's my point. His bias causes him to exaggerate the benefits of cathedral while completely ignoring it's faults. What he calls a "perfected body of work" runs the risk of being a bland homogeneous gray amorphous mass of sameness. Innovation slows as people use and reuse the same assets to produce perfection from their perspective. The few completely original works get rewritten, torqued and twisted to the point that the vision of the original author disappears in a host of ancillary and unrelated customizations.

 

I like Wyre and I know not if he is still with us. Wyre is a visionary, and a thinker. However, his Cathedral will never be build while it is dependent on the vagaries of human beings. Wyre's cathedral presupposes that everyone is working towards the same "perfected body of work" and that they agree on what that '"perfected body of work" looks like. From my perspective, Wyre's Cathedral only works when everyone is working on the same Cathedral, and not thousands of little hovels they imagine to be cathedrals.

 

As for how Wyre gets his cathedral built ... as I said earlier, I do not care. Continue on with unstructured growth and simply propagate what exists, precious little. Try to force it, and I (and I suspect a great many others) will simply close the parlor doors and wave the enforcers away with a single finger.

[MarchinBunny]

I am pretty big on the cathedral view, mainly because I entirely agree with Wrye. However, I think it's honestly a bit of a fantasy, one of those kinds of things that is too good to be true, idealistic. I find the main reason it would never actually work is because it practically requires everyone to be on the same page in terms of usage. The simple truth is most people like to keep things they make under their control, at least as much as they legally can.

The reason I never understood the whole "I want to maintain control over my mod" sort of thing is because I don't see a whole lot of benefit that comes out of that. It makes sense when money is involved and a copyright needs to be maintained, but when there isn't any money involved ... you would think the only thing that is important at that point is just receiving credit. But there have been a lot of people in the past who take away their creations ... and to be honest ... I don't get it. There are very few cases where I would see the need to remove something or require a certain level of control that I shared freely.

Keep in mind, I am talking modding specifically where mods are free. I don't think the cathedral view would work when you start putting monetization into the equation because then it's a huge benefit to maintain more of that control.

Now personally, I don't think Wrye's view is exaggerated by bias. In fact, we actually have a pretty good baseline for the idea of the cathedral view and how well it works, because the largest one that exists is the human race itself or the world. It may not seem that way when thinking about it at a micro scale, where everyone tries to maintain control, but when you start looking at things at a macro scale, the larger picture ... you realize almost everything that exists today is built upon past contributions by those who came before. Basically control becomes less relevant at a larger scale since humans don't exactly have an infinite amount of life and so they at some point have no choice in the matter. Even the copyright system has that timer. And the reason it exists is for the very reason that we want to be able to build upon other's creations at least eventually.

The only reason it doesn't work at a micro scale is money. When someone creates something, they want it to be able to be theirs and theirs alone for the purpose of being able to earn something from it. Which brings me back to mods, you can't really earn money from them, so I think the cathedral view would work perfectly if people were willing to give it a chance. But we already know most are not willing and never will be. That's life ... all well.

Edit: Leeloominai pointed out something important that I felt I should bring up. They pointed out that credit is often not given even in cases where people are fairly open with their works but just ask for credit. And I can for sure see why that can dissuade someone from seeing the cathedral view as doable. However, I think if it were to really be brought up and was discussed among those who may have used the work without credit or done it an unnoticeable way, I am fairly sure it can be worked out. At least, I don't see a reason it couldn't be. If they are unwilling to make an effort, then at that point I would say report them. As long as the site also views things in this way and wants to maintain things, it should work to fix that.