Nexus permissions rules (Compilation Patch)

[CloakedFigure]

I think this is the crux of the matter. It's a corner case, but a significant one. Absent of some bug fix uber-modder like Quarn (who we were very, very lucky to have), it makes sense that the resources of the community can be easily pooled with regards to an unofficial patch, and also unofficial patch patches, such as with the the once-existing FWE Unofficial Patch Patch and with FOOK. FOOK for NV has actually merged many of the fixes from the Compilation Patch into the latest version - lucky for them I got most of the permissions - xporc mentioned to me he intended to do this so there's no problem there as far as I'm concerned. The current policy is directly in the way of such patches being easily produced, maybe because we have been spoilt by Quarn's patches and therefore have never had to have a tailored policy regarding this before.

 

Woooooh, discovering this topic waaay too late, but what is described here is simply not true.

 

FOOK for NV, until now, has been having almost 99% of its esp content made by the FOOK team. That I and JustinOther personnaly made. Some people here may remember the Day 1 release with a handful of typos fixed, that later led to much, much more fixes, that I wrote down while discovering them in-game and fixing them of my own. What happened is that Zenball's patch merged those fixes without asking the FOOK team if it's okay, and only asked for the rights of it at a later point. Thankfully, the FOOK team is very open about sharing its work, and permission was given, with two points though :

* the mention that the FOOK team would fix with their own work some fixes already happening in the community patch.

* that FOOK will keep being updated by the FOOK team and that we couldnt afford to waste time, wait or help in any big way Zenball with his work. Working on FOOK is already tons of work as it is!

 

Hope that cleared the situation. And FOOK didnt really merged anything for its next version ...

 

 

 

I made the point over on Bethesda forums that I was making a compilation patch for myself, I was using the new Fook and that Fook had made a lot of the old bug fixes obsolete. Now someone could make the case that the Fook team stole those bug fixes and declared it there own work. As looking at the older bugfixes in FNVedit and the ones done by latest version of Fook they are identical. Obviously thats ridiculous as anyone with simple knowledge of the geck could look at the exact same bug and come up with the exact same fix. Which is what clearly happened with Fook.

 

No one is suggesting that people who do extensive work shouldn't be credited and protected. If someone fixes a bug in the game using scripts of there own making and such of course that work should have protection. The problem is for tiny bug fixes that once found take literally a minute worth of work in the Geck.

 

 

CloakedFigure hits horse corpse with a bat.

Horse Corpse takes 0 damage as it is already dead.

CloakedFigure hits horse corpse with bat again.

[Dark0ne]

Small bug fixes that require just a couple of code changes aren't going to be followed up because almost anyone can do them very quickly. Crediting the original fixer, if possible, would be all that would be necessary. Asset changes such as fixes to animations, meshes and textures, or elaborate changes to the scripting of the game that is beyond changing simple binary 0 or 1 flags and such are slightly different and would probably be looked at if the author of the original file asked us to look in to it.

 

As it is if the new permission system was available on New Vegas Nexus from the start then this probably could have been largely avoided.

[Philosophiac]

I know I'm a latecomer to this, too, but I feel very strongly about it.

 

 

I saw, the other day, a modder who created a 'copy' of ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa... put in a .rar file with a copy of Quarn's installation manual... and provided the user with an alternate set of instructions for avoiding the crashes being caused by Fallout: New Vegas whenever ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa was the first file in the list of .bsa's.

 

While this is technically against the rules, what with having released the files... it really should -not- be.

 

Why? Because the .bsa of that file, ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa, is nothing! It's a dummy! It's blank! The 'mod' is clearly a bugfix, and is well-known to be the community-standard method of allowing the overwriting of vanilla meshes and textures. But according to the rules, this would be theft! A bannable offense, even! Without this mod, a goodly number of folks would have not been able to even START Fallout: New Vegas... and within minutes of the file going up, it was being reported and spammed with people calling it a theft of the original work.

 

-edit- I didn't explain this very clearly. His mod's file site provided the means to -alter- the files included, by renaming them, in such a fashion as to allow the user to bypass the problem created with the latest PC patch for New Vegas

 

I'm sorry... but I do -not- believe that people who fix bugs in the vanilla game have the right to monopolize them. It's wrong! It's a hindrance to the community, forcing us each to go out and make our own 300+ hour bugfix super-patches... while meanwhile the folks who found each one of these bugs and fixed them is getting 100-something endorsements for work which we all have to do again, in order to make our game -playable-.

 

Where in all the promise of Modders rights does this fall?

 

When do the rights of individuals get superseded by the rights of the community? Never? Is this community so bloated and egotistical that nobody can erase a couple semi-colons from a script without copyrighting it and demanding praise and adulation to use it? And what if you don't praise them, and instead do it yourself? How do you defend yourself when someone comes along and says: "That's mine! You stole it?"

 

These questions keep coming up... and for the most part I see people -agreeing- to them... but some folks seem to be hell-bent on ignoring the point and running back to the 'modders have rights' argument. And it just, quite frankly, doesn't apply when your mod is trivial.

 

I'm sorry to say it... but there really does come a point where you have to draw the line... and I think bugfixes need to be it.

 

If you want to give someone the sole rights to their version of a Nuclear Dog Launcher... that's fine... let them have it. If someone builds a town, and someone comes along and creates a patch to fix some conflict they had with it... that's fine... give them the rights to request permission to change or alter their mod. But when you post something that is a BUGFIX... a fix of something which is not your own, something which is Bethesda's... then you ought to forfeit those rights. You ought to be contributing that fix -knowing- that you are putting your work out there for free... and without the promise of praise... because it will make the game work as it was intended to for the entire community.

 

If you're not prepared to make that commitment... then hell, stand back and let someone else.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think crediting the modder is important. Discoverer's of fixes ought to get a suitable reward. But once that fix has been discovered, it ought to be community property... and the discoverer ought to be damn pleased that it's got his name attached to it as the one who originally contributed it.

 

Otherwise, all we're going to end up with is a war over 1's and 0's... we'll have 1000 hours of work ripped down off the site because someone claimed that the global variables in so-and-so's patch was stolen from my 'blah-blah-bugfix'.

 

Who does that help?

 

Who does that benefit?

[CloakedFigure]

Small bug fixes that require just a couple of code changes aren't going to be followed up because almost anyone can do them very quickly. Crediting the original fixer, if possible, would be all that would be necessary. Asset changes such as fixes to animations, meshes and textures, or elaborate changes to the scripting of the game that is beyond changing simple binary 0 or 1 flags and such are slightly different and would probably be looked at if the author of the original file asked us to look in to it.

 

As it is if the new permission system was available on New Vegas Nexus from the start then this probably could have been largely avoided.

 

 

Sounds very reasonable to me.

[Philosophiac]

Small bug fixes that require just a couple of code changes aren't going to be followed up because almost anyone can do them very quickly. Crediting the original fixer, if possible, would be all that would be necessary. Asset changes such as fixes to animations, meshes and textures, or elaborate changes to the scripting of the game that is beyond changing simple binary 0 or 1 flags and such are slightly different and would probably be looked at if the author of the original file asked us to look in to it.

 

As it is if the new permission system was available on New Vegas Nexus from the start then this probably could have been largely avoided.

 

 

Sounds very reasonable to me.

 

 

Ah! Indeed. And after my longwinded post... now I feel a bit bad, because I think I totally missed a page of text in there. T_T I have no idea what point the conversation is at now, and most go back to re-read.

[CloakedFigure]

I know I'm a latecomer to this, too, but I feel very strongly about it.

 

 

I saw, the other day, a modder who created a 'copy' of ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa... put in a .rar file with a copy of Quarn's installation manual... and provided the user with an alternate set of instructions for avoiding the crashes being caused by Fallout: New Vegas whenever ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa was the first file in the list of .bsa's.

 

While this is technically against the rules, what with having released the files... it really should -not- be.

 

Why? Because the .bsa of that file, ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa, is nothing! It's a dummy! It's blank! The 'mod' is clearly a bugfix, and is well-known to be the community-standard method of allowing the overwriting of vanilla meshes and textures. But according to the rules, this would be theft! A bannable offense, even! Without this mod, a goodly number of folks would have not been able to even START Fallout: New Vegas... and within minutes of the file going up, it was being reported and spammed with people calling it a theft of the original work.

 

-edit- I didn't explain this very clearly. His mod's file site provided the means to -alter- the files included, by renaming them, in such a fashion as to allow the user to bypass the problem created with the latest PC patch for New Vegas

 

I'm sorry... but I do -not- believe that people who fix bugs in the vanilla game have the right to monopolize them. It's wrong! It's a hindrance to the community, forcing us each to go out and make our own 300+ hour bugfix super-patches... while meanwhile the folks who found each one of these bugs and fixed them is getting 100-something endorsements for work which we all have to do again, in order to make our game -playable-.

 

Where in all the promise of Modders rights does this fall?

 

When do the rights of individuals get superseded by the rights of the community? Never? Is this community so bloated and egotistical that nobody can erase a couple semi-colons from a script without copyrighting it and demanding praise and adulation to use it? And what if you don't praise them, and instead do it yourself? How do you defend yourself when someone comes along and says: "That's mine! You stole it?"

 

These questions keep coming up... and for the most part I see people -agreeing- to them... but some folks seem to be hell-bent on ignoring the point and running back to the 'modders have rights' argument. And it just, quite frankly, doesn't apply when your mod is trivial.

 

I'm sorry to say it... but there really does come a point where you have to draw the line... and I think bugfixes need to be it.

 

If you want to give someone the sole rights to their version of a Nuclear Dog Launcher... that's fine... let them have it. If someone builds a town, and someone comes along and creates a patch to fix some conflict they had with it... that's fine... give them the rights to request permission to change or alter their mod. But when you post something that is a BUGFIX... a fix of something which is not your own, something which is Bethesda's... then you ought to forfeit those rights. You ought to be contributing that fix -knowing- that you are putting your work out there for free... and without the promise of praise... because it will make the game work as it was intended to for the entire community.

 

If you're not prepared to make that commitment... then hell, stand back and let someone else.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think crediting the modder is important. Discoverer's of fixes ought to get a suitable reward. But once that fix has been discovered, it ought to be community property... and the discoverer ought to be damn pleased that it's got his name attached to it as the one who originally contributed it.

 

Otherwise, all we're going to end up with is a war over 1's and 0's... we'll have 1000 hours of work ripped down off the site because someone claimed that the global variables in so-and-so's patch was stolen from my 'blah-blah-bugfix'.

 

Who does that help?

 

Who does that benefit?

 

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/147141/january-07-2008/applause

 

In this clip picture yourself as Colbert and me as the audience!

[Philosophiac]

-snip-

 

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/147141/january-07-2008/applause

 

In this clip picture yourself as Colbert and me as the audience!

 

 

Haha! Thanks... I'm glad you appreciated my little rant there... I really do feel like it's an important thing to discuss.

 

I have never uploaded a mod. Not once. Not because I don't want to share... but because my concern is for the content of it. I don't want to release -my- subpar work to the community. And if I did... I sure as hell wouldn't deny anyone who wanted to make it better the rights to do so. When I finally do something -worth- putting out there for people to experience and play with and enjoy, I'll release it.

 

And then it'll be everyone's. Because that's what modding is -supposed- to be about.

 

Somewhere along the way, with all the kudos and endorsements, folks lost sight of this.

 

Maybe it's because all the uploading sites that are popular these days allow people to endorse mods, or rate them, or vote them 'File of the Month'.

 

But when did modding stop being about making the game better... and become some kind of a contest for Top 100?

 

 

I'm not one of those people, so I guess I just don't get it, but it's absolutely crazymaking that people would try to claim they have the rights to the variable ALPHADOGCHANNELx09b. But apparently, now, people will... and I just can't wrap my head around it.

[Zenball]

Small bug fixes that require just a couple of code changes aren't going to be followed up because almost anyone can do them very quickly. Crediting the original fixer, if possible, would be all that would be necessary. Asset changes such as fixes to animations, meshes and textures, or elaborate changes to the scripting of the game that is beyond changing simple binary 0 or 1 flags and such are slightly different and would probably be looked at if the author of the original file asked us to look in to it.

 

As it is if the new permission system was available on New Vegas Nexus from the start then this probably could have been largely avoided.

 

I think this needs to be clarified as there is a new upload of the community patch and this is directly relevant to the uploader. As far as I understand it, the following now applies:

 

Fixes that change a variable or two in a script or data set do not need permission - and credit would be nice but is not necessary.

 

Fixes that elaborately alter scripts may need permission (which strikes me as a bit fuzzy - would this not require the compiler to examine and compare scripts to determine if a script change is 'elaborate' or not?).

 

Asset changes may need permission (though I imagine not things like correcting a texture path - which again requires anybody wanting to use fixed assets to examine and compare the original asset and determine the extent of the change and whether permission is necessary).

 

Unfortunately, this approach still does not save time. You might as well just ask permission rather than examine and determine for yourself if you need to ask permission or not. And I'm sorry, anyone who uploads a fix and then goes out of their way to protect it and get in the way of other people using it does not deserve the protection.

 

The only thing this gets over is tiny bug fixes. Which is a start at least. I do still think we need a bug fix category, and that the bug fix category should mean permission is never necessary. I have yet to hear a good argument against this idea, and I've even seen the idea independently proposed on other forums.

 

edit: @xporc, sorry for the misunderstanding about the merge, didn't mean to misrepresent you in any way - only you said to me not to be surprised if the next version of FOOK integrated some community patch fixes, so I assumed you had done :)

[Dark0ne]

It's going to have to do for now as I don't have the time to dabble in to the site code for this.

[Zenball]

It's going to have to do for now as I don't have the time to dabble in to the site code for this.

 

Really? Even just adding a new 'bugfix' category as an interim measure? You know, to show a bit of good will ;)