So doing a patch that only fixes obvious bugs would be considered modification of the original esp, and therefore is as wrong as any kind of modification?

Just trying to clarify since it sounds like your mod falls under the category of what's been debated the most here, I'm just curious if something that's purely a bug fix patch would be considered in the same way.

Also I just realized http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36953. I guess the proper thing to do would be to take that down, huh? Unless there's some way to reach Qarl. Though I did edit the textures that came with Detailed Terrain. I wonder if he got permission!

For me I'd never ever edit someone else's .esp with bug fixes and upload it anywhere without their permission. That's not the same as what I'm doing, but I'd still consider it that if I don't get an answer I can't edit it. If you do make every effort, but still don't get an answer, and upload it anyway, does that give you a right to call it your own mod and allow other people to change the .esp?? If you've done it, surely that means anyone else can do it?? Which will lead to bad places. It might lead to good places too, but the point is it can lead to bad places. Not touching the original authors work doesn't lead to a bad place. And what if the author re-appears to find 4 or 5 different versions of his work floating around. Now that may not cause offense, but it can be troublesome enough if he decides to take up his own mod again that it might even put him off ever doing so. But if you left it alone, he's never going to come back, see no-one has touched his mod, and then storm off because of that. So it's trying to justify the potential gain to the community of a bug fix/edit against the potential loss of the original author is he decides to re-appear.

Thanks, that's pretty much exactly what I figured the issue would be, even in the bug fix-only case.

Anyway now I have to struggle with making myself remove my extremely niche set of textures from tesnexus.

Damn this ethics!

I'm not a lawyer, so I cannot answer that question. It's still a violation of one's rights, which could probably be argued as intrinsically damaging, or something.


The difference is that assuming they don't care brings with it a gross violation of their rights and assuming they do care doesn't. That's the difference.


Not just modders, but everybody, but yes, I am bringing up the law for the purpose of comparison.


I agree that the community handles things well, but I believe that the reason for this is because we take it so seriously when it is questioned.


EDIT: Missed that we'd gone to a new page.

I don't think the fact of a mod being "objectively wrong" has much relevance here.

However, on patches, there is a major difference between a patch and an update: the former does not involve redistributing another's work. Your patch is entirely your own work, and merely depends on theirs. In that case, I don't see a problem with that. In fact, I would support (and have in the past) a modder who wrote a patch for a mod, even if the original modder got angry about it.


OK, this I'm not following: how do you mean?

Depends whether or not whatever mod you changed said you could upload edits. If it's QTP3, just check the read-me. If you've actually re-uploaded an edited version of a texture from QTP without permision (either in the read-me or from the author) then it's probably best to remove it. But, you can always try and make your own texture based off the vanilla resources to the standard of QTP and change the color that way. I think creating something from scratch in the theme of something else is considered ok.

Always. You can't copyright things like that. That's why there are so many blatantly-derivative movies out there, why all competing programs have more-or-less the same features, etc. etc.

I wish I had more time to put more into this post, but real life calls and I fear the thread will be locked by the time I get back.

Proposal: Create a Guild of Caretakers :hugs:

Their goal would be to pool resources in the following areas:

1. Attempts to contact original modders.
2. Create standards by what is acceptable to alter.
3. Pool efforts into fixing and testing.
and most importantly ...
4. Police each other - such that if the original modder returns they work to remove the offending mod if that is the wish.
5. Limit and control distribution.

Purpose:
So often this is portrayed as a thief in the night - a scoundrel.

I already know the answers to come from the legal eagle/tooothless tiger set (new favorite term), but what if we could actually have a conversation that is not fear driven. I can't help but think that the proponents of the draconian school are actually concerned that no standards or limits or controls will let the barbarians in. What if it becomes institutional instead? With you (those most concerned) at the helm?

See you all later tonight.

P.S. these are just ideas I'm throwing at the wall, no one has died yet.

Possibly, but it might be an idea to ask TESNexus/PES/TES Alliance that when Skyrim comes out, they subtlety remind the mod maker that it would be nice if they could all state re-usage permissions etc. whenever they upload a mod. This way a lot of the headache about 'you can't change old mods because back then people didn't think it was necessary to state they don't want them changed etc' would be mostly prevented.

But it's all still assumption. No? Assume is assume. You either assume they do or assume they don't care. It's still assumption no matter how you color it.


I don't think that's the only reason. I think it's mostly a great deal of respect towards one another and having personal ethics. I think a great number of modders I've seen release mods actually don't take it seriously, especially when they say "do whatever you want with this," in their readmes. And I personally feel that a lot of people don't bother even putting that in. I'm not saying that gives anyone the right to use it anyway they see fit, but I really don't think they bother with it because they don't really care. The ones that do care tend to explicitly state it.


TESNexus already pushes for authors to put a time clause in their readmes in case someone does abandon their mods.

I just mean in the sense that software, and specifically what modders produce, isn't the same as an entity like Mickey Mouse. You can't call Mickey Mouse flawed in any objective way, whereas a mod with an obvious bug does indeed have an objective flaw. I think it's issues like these that make it kind of iffy to directly apply copyright law and capitalist philosophy to the debate about mod authors' rights. But then if you read the following few posts of mine you'll see I agreed this doesn't really change how one's work should be treated, heh.


I pretty much just took the textures Detailed Terrain installs, which are the QTP3 textures edited to make use of alpha channels, and messed with hue/saturation/brightness. I'm probably violating two different mod authors' rights

That would be the ideal solution. Having the modder state in the Readme his wishes. I think this was suggested before (possibly several times.) in threads similar in nature to this one. What we have is two schools of thought on the issue, those that don't care/are flattered by someone redistributing their work, and those that DO care/are offended by, the same action. I seriously doubt either side will ever convince the other as to whom is 'right' and whom is not..... but, at this point, 99% of the download sites err on the side of caution, and in favor of 'modders rights' to their own work. There is no overall authority to say one way or the other which practice is to take precedence, aside from the admins/staff of the download sites. Beth would be in a good legal position for such a position... however, they are conspicuous by their absence on EITHER side of the argument. So, they are basically a non-player.

The problem is that in order for such a thing to work, you'd need to get the entire community to agree to it, and that's preposterously unlikely.

1. The community doesn't all come to this forum. Even if you managed to convince the communities here, on PES, and on Nexus, there's probably a huge number of modders who would not be aware. You'd actually have to include some form of uploader agreement on the mod sites that gives this group permission to function as intended, and that is very unlikely to happen. Moreover, I guarantee that more than a few modders will not be happy about this, which is really likely to ruin things.

If you succeeded here, you do have some hope, but this step seems hopeless to me. This would change the status quo, and if you're really successful, people would be aware enough of it that those who care would put something in their readme. I just don't see this as likely to happen. But this community cannot simply decide this by consensus. Modders still have to explicitly agree to it, which means some sort of disclaimer about it before the Upload button. You're not likely to get that.

2. Developing those guidelines and finding people to man this is going to be really, really hard. See the Wiki for how well this community handles communal projects.

3. It's almost guaranteed to end in strife. Someone, somewhere, is going to be unaware of this situation, and be offended.

4. It's not going to legitimately affect any old mods, only mods uploaded after the disclaimers above are put in place. There's absolutely nothing we can do about currently abandoned mods without making illicit assumptions about how those modders feel about their rights.



You stated that "one is just as wrong as the other." This is inaccurate. Both are assumptions, but one assumption violates the rights of the modder, and the other does not. Thus, one assumption is safe, and the other is not. One can safely assume that someone wants their rights respected. One cannot safely assume that someone does not want their rights respected. Ever.


I agree with this; I should have said "one of the reasons".


"Many", "tend to", etc. — yes. But as you say, that doesn't give you any rights. That may be the case but you cannot assume it.


Thank goodness, and a welcome change. That's what we need most, really; if every modder did that, then this wouldn't come up and Psymon's impossible Guild of Caretakers wouldn't even need consideration.

It's not whether or not each one is an assumption that's the problem. It is what results from each assumption. Yes, they are both assumptions. But if you assume no-one cares, and some-one ends up caring, then that person may get hurt/angry etc. On the other hand, if you assume everyone cares unless explicitly stated otherwise, then no-one can get angry/upset etc. So, at least in my opinion, it's assume everyone cares, in order to avoid potentially upsetting some people.

This, except the issue isn't "upsetting people", it's "violating their rights", which is a whole lot more serious.

Which wiki? For the CS? Now I'm worried my future plans to be a prolific mod author won't be as easy as I thought

EDIT: I'm going to guess yes since I just clicked on three Did You Know articles, checked the edit history, and saw names I recognized from the forums here in the edit history of each article making up a large fraction of the editors. Not enough people! Unless there were other issues getting along or something you're referring to?

This would solve the problem when Skyrim comes out and it is not too difficult for these sites to implement. In fact they could make it a necessary box to fill while the modder is filling in the mod details, ready to upload the file. That way there is simply no excuse for not stating wishes regarding usage.

However, for the masses of Oblivion files the best way to go forward is on the basis that if there are no usage rights stated in the readme or description, then the mod cannot be modified, reuploaded, fixed...whatever.

That's definitely a better way of putting it. I was having a hard time finding the right word there.

If I do say so myself... the Wiki is pretty good. Not as good as it could be, but pretty good.

Unfortunately, the only reason it is "pretty good" is because of the enormous amount of material Bethesda gave us to start with, and the super-human efforts of only a few handfuls of people. I'd say the number of people with more than a dozen edits is probably less than a hundred. Those who have contributed to more than one article is a similarly small number of people. The Wiki was intended as a community effort, but it never really was, more the effort of the few who bothered.

It's a good idea and we have added this feature to our hosting section on TES Alliance. :foodndrink:

Just now, in response to me?? That would be awesome . If not and it's a recent addition, props to you!

It's still assumption.... You can't change that. Has nothing to do with rights or not. You can't correctly assume what anyone intends, and that's the basis of what I'm talking about. Assumption is wrong period, whether it violates rights or not. I'm going to go over and beat that dead horse now. :toughninja:

I understand what you all are saying, and although I don't agree with it, it's still assumption. And is probably the safest way to look at things. Sort of the lesser of two evils?

But you have to assume. What other option is there? None that I can see. So it's best to go with the safest assumption, the one that has the least chance of violating someone's rights.

If we don't assume anything, what would even happen?? It would cause a mind explosion.

Imagine if all the responses to this thread were "Don't assume anything, as you can't correctly assume what anyone intends." That doesn't answer the question of whether or not the OP can edit a mod/release a patch etc. It would just be an endless thread of not making any assumptions, without agreeing on anything, apart from stating something quite arbitrary.

EDIT: Yes, that's what we are getting at, the lesser of two evils.

I love the fact that I tried to close this conversation and failed I hate seeing fighting in a community like this

I'll end it....

Pure hard facts...there is no permission stated, therefore there is no permission. The non existance of permission, means that it does not exist. It has no existance in reality. We can ponder it's existance, we can speculate on whether it truley exists, some even swear they have seen it, but the fact is that if no one can get a hold of the author, then it's existance can not be proven and therefore there is simply no proof of it's existance and it does not exist. Therefore leave the mod alone.

It is one of the Universe's greatest mysteries. :blink:

It's not really fighting. Just a community strengthening debate