X-flight, Please read if you use or sell this script.

I have a alt there. And have snagged one out of a shop that looked like the Luna shops.
Will login to make sure, rightnow.

Back with some quick pictures.
http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=44038&sort=PictureID+desc
http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=44037&sort=PictureID+desc

Impressive.

I've seen the script many times but only the last one i think, i'm guessing it got leaked out as it has details that it gives permission to resell to non members with your permission but it must be set to no modify, so i presume many people have been giving this away like i have and they are now on help island because, its been available no mod for so long and has the disclaimer at the top that if people want to sell it for a price they have to ask your permission.

Unfortunately, you can't ask people to pay for something that you released without setting the no modify/no copy bits. SL doesn't have the ability to specify open-source but limited licensing. Asking for L$ now isn't a cool thing to do. You should have secured the source long ago. I've been in a similiar situation, and just had to chalk-up the loss of source code to open-source as a lesson.

What rights SL enforces and what rights you have are two different things. Even if SL doesn't enforce the GPL, the BSDL, or any other license you put on your code, you still legally have the same rights that you would under the same circumstances in the real world... which after all has even LESS ability to enforce the license built in to the local laws of physics.

It's entirely reasonable (even cool) to ask for L$, particularly from people who have looked at the source and seen the same message from Goodwill Epoch that I did... and proceeded to ignore it or, worse, remove it. Which some people did.

I don't expect that he'll get more than a token from the people who've been ignoring his clearly-stated wishes all this time, but he's got every right to ask for it. Hell, I think he's got class for just asking and not demanding it and AR-ing the people who neither pay nor cease distributing his code.

Arguing that he shouldn't even try and get repaid in the face of this kind of bold-faced abuse because his code had "escaped"... that really bothers me.

Right, but just asking for L$ after a long time of allowing the abuse to go on isn't cool. It's like a company putting out source code to something, not saying anything about it, get everyone to use it in their codebase, and then sneak in a "oh, pay me now for all of your product lines that use the code" kinda thing. Kinda reminds me of SCO.

The X-Flight has been around so long, and the original author gone for so long from SL, the source code became defacto open-source.

I'm no expert in the law, but I'd be willing to bet L$50 there's something in fair use laws for this exact problem.


And there's also a matter of enforcability, of which there would be very little in this case. A perfect example of this is the fact www.despair.com owns the frownie "" as a registered trademark. It's considered a generic term, and thus, moot.

My guess is the same case could and would be made here, creator's wishes or not. For example, I could not turn around tomorrow and force everyone with a copy of my prim mirror to pay me.

As evil and lucrative as the thought sounds...

You're assuming he knew about it. While there's a conceptual clock that starts ticking when you become aware of infringement (that's what cost Xerox their suit against Apple, remember), he has been away for a while, and he showed up not long after I started asking people to help me find out whether this script should have been used.

No, if someone had bought the rights to X-Flight from someone who had explicitly condoned the use, knowing it had been widely distributed, specifically for the sake of taking this kind of action, and then it turned out that they'd only bought the distribution rights, and they had claimed Cubey Terra's, Huns Valen's, and my scripts were all infringing, and then refused to provide any evidence of any of this... that would be maybe 1/10th as bad as what SCO did.

Open Source is not the same as Public Domain. Ask AT&T... they lost the ability to enforce their rights on the original UNIX code base NOT because it had become open source, but because they had violated Berkeley's license for the widely distributed source code Berkeley had donated.

Open Source is NOT public domain.

It may be effectively impossible to enforce your rights due to the Mickey Mouse Linden Economy, but hat doesn't mean those rights vanish nor that you shouldn't in good faith make an attempt to recoup some small part of their value.

You'd lose it. Fair use never applies to redistributing the whole of a work that is not in the public domain... and even if the work is found to have gone INTO the public domain, that doesn't remove the culpability of the people who caused that to happen. There may be some other legal issues that would prevent him enforcing his request that people cough up Lindens, and I agree that this request is probably not enforcable, but he is not being in any way unreasonable for requesting payment.

Completely different situation. You didn't distribute your prim mirror with a big "DO NOT DISTRIBUTE THIS SCRIPT" notice. You didn't distribute it ONLY to members of a small clearly defined group. You were not unaware that it was being distributed (in fact this message could be used as evidence of that).

wow!

I actually still use my old X-Flight pack, lol

Gosh, call me oldschool but i like it!

Sounds fair to me.


Good catch. You're absolutely right; I walked away from the PC thinking that'd be pointed out.


I suppose the breakdown is this: In Second Life, accountability really flies out the window. We've had script hackers get a slap on the wrist; freebie sellers and copyright infringers much the same. The DRM, as discussed before, doesn't work too well either. And the surge of free accounts more or less fuels this lack.

So this request for payment is not only ill-timed; it falls on mostly deaf ears. It's a classic example of the "lost once, lost everywhere" problem that brought DRM about in the first place.

If you don't check the "No Modify" checkbox in SL with your scripts, regardless of the text you put in the script, LL won't protect you. By putting your script out there as open-source, then claiming that you want everyone to pay you L$ now, years later, is wrong.

I'd like to point out again that at the time X-flight was originally distributed, SL had no built-in protections against copying or viewing of scripts. This script did however contain instructions about how it was to be used. Claiming that "it was not checked no-modify" is no justification.

I will be making recompense for my part in this, as it was me who brought so many into Kazenojin and handed out the script without worrying too much about the character of those who joined. I hope others who have profited from its use will consider doing the same.

This script was created before the No modify was available for non-group members. I wanted this script available to edit and view by group memebers only and the script was specifically notated as such in bothe script itself and the original accompanying notecards. Which means any use outside of which is a DIRECT violation of any fair use, open source, GPL, or other agreements. Just because it is widely used does not give it acceptance. that is a fallacy the same as saying "Everyone else has copied this movie, so its ok if I do it as well"

I'm not necessarily asking for monetary compensation by those that have used or sold it, but I want to prevent further distribution of the script. If you want to continue to distribute it, then pay me accordingly. Otherwise just use it for yourself and don't worry about it.

Hey Frans,
Yeah I checked on that yesterday and couldn't bring up a buy dialog so maybe they have it disabled for further review. I will check again in a little while when I log in.

Other people have adequately pointed out that this wasn't an option and he wasn't planning on releasing it as Open Source. He can't effectively demand payments for past sales, but he certainly has the right to ask for future payments! I think it's unreasonable to berate him for even asking. If anyone's still selling X-Flight based jet-packs, they should either pay him royalties or switch to one of the genuinely open-source alternatives.

I hope not.
Except that the AT&T-USL lawsuit and the Sveasoft case means that "open source" doesn't mean "public domain".

Mac OS X has an open source kernel. Don't tell me Apple's lost rights there. They're even using it to try and help tie the hands of patent abusers, which is a lovely twist.

Oh, and anyone shipping Franimation Overrider without shipping their own script and the object it's in MOD, even if they've modified the overrider and considers their modifications proprietary, is violating the GNU Public License. Write your own overrider if you want to make the whole object no-mod... but you don't actually need to make your whole AV or vehicle or other product MOD: you can put the overrider in a separate object if you want to use it with a no-mod avatar.

I fail to see what the AT&T-USL case law has to do with the "lost once, lost everywhere" problem. Even if it is a good precident example.

(Actually, I phrased it wrong. It's the "break-once-break-everywhere" problem)


Essentially, this is what we have with MP3s and the "long tail" debates. Once the stuff is out there, that's it. You might catch a few people, the law might say it's completely wrong, but there's really not much you can do.

And that's where DRM came in in the first place.




Now, let's cut back to this discussion. Goodwill, I have to agree with you on the statement "if you continue to sell it, please pay me" - as people (reading here) would be knowingly infringing. I myself have never seen the most recent iterations of X-flight, nor the original, so I couldn't tell you whether your license agreement is still in the "text."

Clearly this is a textbook example of once the thing was lost to your chain of friends, all hell breaks loose.




But what happens now?

The best way I think you could combat this problem is to release a superior product with the closest thing Second Life has to a binary - No Modify. While it may not get you original sales back, it would combat the problem by pushing your older script toward obsolescence. An ad campaign for "don't sell my shit" might help a little, too.


And that's really all you can do.

Eh, this thread is making me insanely curious as to how the X-flight script works now. I just can't hear about something like this without wanting to take it apart.

You will have to pay a royalty first to look inside, plus sign a non-disclosure agreement!

Hi Goodwill,

Though I somehow got my hands on a copy (where, I have not a clue), I think I only used it once and eventually tossed it down the trash. Was a bit heavy for my needs.

My main form of flight enhance was, at the time, an AnGrav (which I still have and use at times). But I wanted a separate Z enhance, which no one had, and ended up writing my own *very* simple script.

Though I had thought you had left for good, I still tried to do the 'right thing' and only used your script to understand how the basics of flight enhance worked (admittedly there are some bits I ended up adding since it does not 100% work as expected). Got to say it was a rather illuminating experience - trying at times too. I do have attributions and thank-yous for both the X-flight and AnGrav in my script (which is being given out as a simplified training tool for newcomers and teachers).

I make no money (to speak of really) from the L$1 sales - I'm also just tracking who's interested in my stuff - but if you are concerned about this please send me a PM and am happy to work something out. Everything I'm 'giving away' is all mod except trans, in recognition - and thanks - to your work. I also have plans to create a more full-featured one to also stay within a group, so your insight on this matter would be appreciated.

PS: I also ended up spending *way* too much time tweaking my own settings on the durn thing - since I wanted an enhance that by default did not look like one.

Much Appreciated,

Again, thank you for all the replies to this. I am very interested in people’s attitudes towards this script and the use thereof. I don't really need the L$ for past sales or those who actively use it, and if you notice I explicitly encourage people to go with other alternatives. I just went in world recently, I don't even use my own script now

I just want to ask that people no longer distribute it without consent. If you do want to use, distribute, or otherwise modify the script then please contact me. The reason I asked for L$ was to specifically discourage it and to acknowledge the intellectual property rights involved. I know that I'm not going to absolutely prevent it and I'm not going to make significant L$ from it, and I'm not going to pursue any administrative or legal recourse regarding this. It’s about as fruitless as CompuServe coming back from the grave and trying to prosecute the distribution and use of .gif again, a horribly out of date graphics format with much better alternatives.

In fact I would encourage those who want to use my script as a base or as inspiration, however I would like to be made aware of such. There are in fact people who have contacted me about my script that I have given explicit permission to use, modify, and experiment with it and I am asking for no payment from them because of this.

The rights that UCB CSRG was demanding was the right of attribution. AT&T/USL refused to attribute the code, then turned around and tried to keep CSRG from releasing THEIR OWN CODE. CSRG countersued, and got attribution and the right to release their own code.

So unless you regard releasing something in open source as being "broken" in the first place, the fact that something's open source doesn't mean you abandon all your rights to the code.

And what I was originally commenting on was not whether Goodwill should be compensated, but to object to the idea that even asking for compensation was wrong.

Asking for compensation when you leave SL for 2 years (i.e. allowing people to use your script, putting it out there, and just putting a flimsy note at the top of your script), out of the blue, smacks of abuses such as SCO vs. Linux. If you cared about your scource code being closed, then make it closed. If you share it with other people, then you get what you deserve. If LL didn't have the feature to protect your code back then, then tough lemons. That's the way it goes.

Should I just post a "Hey, if you use any of my code, now you need to pay me L$20k for every violation" for all of the scripts I put out there? Imagine the chaos if everyone did that.

I don't know if I count. I stopped reading the script after seeing the notice, but I have followed suggestions that people who I'm sure HAVE read the script have made... though we're talking about things like "use llSetForce for hover" and "do the llApplyImpulse from the control handler as well as on a timer" rather than actual code.

The main reason I went in to it in the first place was I got tired of hearing "Carbon Rod: All Go" over and over again at every telehub, and I know that's not your fault.

No, it smacks of CSRG versus USL. In that case the flimsy note was the one you'll find at the bottom of my Cyberflight script. Other people use the flimsy note you'll find at the beginning of Franimation Overrider. These "flimsy notes" get upheld in court... USL settled in CSRG's favor, many companies have changed their policies to comply eith the GPL.

Open Source works, and copyright notices in code have been considered legally binding since the Berne Convention (which the US joined in 1989), and are retroactively binding (USL's actions started in the mid '80s).

Unless the code was written more than 90 years ago, or by someone who died more than 70 years ago, a copyright notice in the source is binding on people who use it. That's the way it goes.

If you just use random software you find without looking at the copyright you can lose more than L$20k. USL gave up rights they had been claiming over software that had been selling for US$43,000 a copy in the '70s to settle with Berkeley. And if they hadn't, we wouldn't have Mac OS X.

Oh, and the fact that they did has been a valuable factor in the SCO-Linux suit.