What about the poor people with TOO MUCH talent?

Excellent idea! I think the general forum community would definately appreciate the abridged version... although I did hear that someone was thinking of publishing a cliff notes version - and that may mess with their business model somewhat..

As for having enough.. well you can never have 'enough' of me -- there is never enough to go round! But hey - I heard someone had had enough of 'uber'.. pity that.. I rather like the way it rolls off the tongue 'Feted Inner Uber Alles' ta -dada-da-da -dum de dum...

I honestly thought you'd have better than that for me... Perhaps it's just delusions of adequacy after all... Once you get off the broken record 'F.I.C! Techie Wiki Bolshevistic Fuck You Hedonism' you really don't have that much to offer, not even by way of humorous retort....

Siggy.

The winner...

What ate who where ?

All those 'softwares' are used exactly as they first appear in nature. They are vey professional tools. Nobody complains about Apache's 'interface', or Qmail or Postfix's 'interface'. They shift most of the email on the Internet. I would advise you don't make the point that free software is unprofessional and needs patching up, because the whole of the Internet runs on free software, NOT patched up, and your point is ridiculous.

No, your point is ridiculous, because it's main purpose is to lord it over me with some arcane tekkie knowledge and prove that you are cooler than thou, not to impart actual knowledge.

And I didn't make my point about ALL free software, duh, duh, duh.

Go back and read what I wrote AGAIN. I wrote about one software I happened to follow called CUTE-FTP made by a Russian originally, then improved upon. When Buster started in about all these other examples, I already elaborated that I used this as an example of how one software, which was OK but had a crappy interface, i.e. it wasn't user friendly (whatever its technical proficiency) it was improved upon and packaged and got better, as an example of why people who make free things have to be willing to a) let others pay them at some point and license their creation to improve upon it or b) really give it away to the public domain.

It's not a discussion about freeware and whether it is good or bad, it's a discussion of one example of a good, CUTE-FTP, which happened to be free (it could have been an example of an umbrella that opened more easily than other umbrellas) and which happened to get better with improvement once it stopped being free, and became sold.

And I also challenged this notion that these softwares like Yahoo are EXACTLY as they first appeared. And by that I mean their packaging, distribution, and their "look," the way they are used by users, not the way they are made by geeks. Knowing how the first thing a geek does is take whatever thing he has made and immediately release v.2 on top of v.1 and then pretty soon v.16.b(3)(2), I would say it is fairly safe to assume that Yahoo and all these other vaunted unterpinnings of the Internet have been through MANY versions since they "first appeared in nature". Oh, get off it.

What is it with you people? Could you get over yourselves? Your precious Internet is just a common carrier. So? It's not special, and neither are you.

'scuse me? Lots of people complain. But they use it anyway because the "interface" is not all that important. You can tell the interface isn't too important because people use these things even though some of them have crappy interfaces.

This is just another case of the free market figuring out what's important.

Buster

What is it with you people who say things like, "What is it with you people?"

Yikes. Where did THIS come from? Where was I ranting at you? Were there ANY personal attacks in my post? Or just stuff you decided to take personally despite my own intentions?

And this is another time you've chosen to simply write my opinion off as insensible because you don't like what you ASSUME is my personal politics. Frankly, if you can't see what a person is actually saying, because of your prejudicial conclusions as to what you ASSUME they are likely to say, then you're ill-equipped for any discussion and should be disregarded until you've gained a bit more experience and maturity.

Or is that what you've been ranting about all along?

Look. If a person makes something, and then decides that he should charge $L-- for it, you do not have any right to repackage it and resell it as your own for $L-- + $L--.

If he wants to exercise absolute control over how his WORK is used, he has that right. In some cases, he may even feel a RESPONSIBILITY to maintain control over his WORK. But – in the US – it is his COPYright. You cannot COPY it – to sell or not – without permission. And his permission to copy and distribute is NOT permission to copy, SELL, and distribute. That’s a different purpose. It requires a different permission from the person who has the RIGHT to COPY – the copyright holder.

The only difference in your example above, is the difference between "sold" and "free". I still insist that there is absolutely no difference except on the price tag. "Free" is just another price point!

If I change from Free to charging $L1, does that change your approach to it? Is there a particular price that DOES make a difference?



[And, in case my writing style, or thinking style, or vocabulary, or sig make you think I'm disparaging you as a person, let me comfort you. While I may take issues with your beliefs or assumptions or logic, I feel no bond close enough to you that would lead me to expend the effort to attack you as a person. Don't really know you that well, don't really care that much.

Though, as I said before, there is something oddly familiar about you. Or – if you pardon my levity – something familiarly odd ]

Yeah, you don't get it.




Look yourself. Read my posts. Read my lips. Where did I say that a person shouldn't change his mind and decide he DOES want to charge money??? Huh? I just got done saying that people who create stuff SHOULD CHARGE MONEY. I encourage him or her to change his mind, and start asking me especially to pay them lots of money if I happen to come up and say, hey, I have a better idea for distributing your wares or making them more efficient. This is how normal, non-socialist, non-utopian real worlds function.

Why you are lecturing me in all caps about copyright? We're not talking about copyright. We're talking about people who put their items out for free WITH COPY ON THEM. Who do not ask for a COPYRIGHT becuase you can COPY THEM. COPY THEM.

Get it? That's different. If they put a copyright on their creation and put no mod no copy no resell, well, God bless them except the resell is just anal-retentive and they should get over themselves. But we've already passed that discussion.

I honestly don't understand what part of LET IT GO you all don't understand.

eltee got it right away. Put free stuff that you want to be celebrated for making for free into the public domain, so your kewl free thing can be improved on by the huge influx of newbies with ideas in this game.

If you make it free and copyiable but then insist on grabbing hold of the hand of anyone who wants to distribute it or PAY YOU to sell it (not sell it without your permission, since you have copyright), then you inhibit the free economy.

Feted creators often put $1 on their item so they can have the thrill of seeing how it is distributed in-world and at least earn back a little texture upload fee. They don't get to see how it is distributed if they just leave it on "copy" with no record of a transaction -- the game doesn't tell you when an item is copied that you created.

But my point is, get over yourself, charge for it normally, $25 for a texture, $50 for a table, whatever, then you get to see how it is distributed, you can copyright it so it is not copied, or license it to be resold. That's how normal situations work! And if you are all convulsed in your spirit of soi-disant public-mindedness, then let it go, and don't get all huffy when someone recolors your object.

I'm tired of the word "kewl".

The basic point of contention here is a misunderstanding of the 'license'

People who give away free things set to no copy/no mod are of course wholly protected... think of those like cellphones, jus cause your carrier gave you a free cellphone doesn't mean you can reprogram it with your own operating system. Its 'free' because it didn't cost anything... Unless you do lock copy/mod you are NOT giving this when you give away 'free' items.

The next level down from there would be the GPL or the basic 'open source' license... in the case of open source, its 'free' for limited uses, the creator gives you a *LIMITED* license to do things with it. You cannot resell it, or do other things like that... you can modify it though, if you re-relase those modifications under the same license (aka open source). This is *NOT* 'free' it is actually licensed as a copyright, and there is nothing 'noble' about it its just another way of distributing code. The 'permissions' on the object would be open, aka the code is viewable and the object itself is copyable.. but the actual intellectual property license is CLOSED

The only copyright free 'license' is the public domain. Things in the public domain belong to everybody equally.. and NO ONE has any rights to them. If you want to sell the public domain fireworks launcher i made, go right ahead, its not *MINE* its the public domain's now. Obviously these objects would be completely open permissions (if you want to explicitly do this so no one mistakes your intentions, add a (pd) tag to the objects name manually, or make note of it in the scripts or descriptions, etc

The mistake people are making is they are giving away goodies, open permissions, and THINKING more like GPL/open source... but not actually *DECLARING* so (either with a notecard in the object, a header in the script, or a manually added (GPL) tag after the objects name....

if you do not add that gpl license notice, like it or not what you are giving away is basically going to go into the public domain. or at least there is no way for person X to know you are *not* releasing it into the public domain.


Basically if you want to give away free 'open source' things *SAY SO*, at that point you DO have actual rights to it still, and you can probably get the lindens to remove the objects as you have a RL license you can refer to that LL can just nod and go yes he is selling your GPL code, *delete*.

At the same time, get into the habit of actually releasing true free open code as public domain, and making a note of it with the (pd) tag.. this lets new players know that they are free to do whatever the heck they want with it and might begin to let them know without the tag, mebbe its not supposed to be public after all.

Nice. This wins my informal quote of the month contest. Dead-on correct. Someone scripts a way for an avi to bend over and fart; and they think they are Thomas F'ing Edison.

Normal situations? So you want everybody to be Normal in a gravity-exempt puppet world where everybody you meet is a counterfeit?



I, for one, reserve the right to get all huffy when someone recolors my object. In fact I'll get all huffy over whatever I want. I won't be the only huffy person around, that's for sure. There are even people who get all huffy about other people getting all huffy. So let me have my fun.

What part of "I am not happy unless I'm making a scene" don't you get?

oops, sorry, you get THAT part

Buster

who? what are you talking about? I gotta say.. all this just reeks of jealousy. Find your niche, do your own thing, and you will find happiness.

I'll see your "kewl" and raise you a "soi-disant."

INCOMING!!! it's gonna be a 2000 worder.

Boy, you are a snippy little puppy today. Why are you so defensive? And this from someone who - just a few posts ago - was all "I said it for the sake of discussion" and all "discussion is so great"! (Ok, paraphased that stuff a bit

I didn’t say you didn’t say they should char… oh whatever. You’re clearly not reading what I wrote, so never mind my clarifications. I can’t clarify what you insist you know before you read it.

For those who ARE listening, I was trying to see if you felt is was any different for me to charge 50 bucks and say “don’t copy or resell or distribute my stuff” than if I charged ONE buck and said “don’t copy or resell or distribute my stuff”. I was just curious. Forget about it.





Well, actually, *I* AM talking about copyright – even if you think you aren’t. I think it’s reasonable to assume that an item that’s marked Free, and has Copy turned on, is saying “I hereby agree to charge $L0 and allow you to make a copy of my work.” It’s also reasonable to assume he has not told you that you can use it in a commercial product.

I have the right to determine who gets to copy my stuff. And I can say “yes” to people who give me money, or even people who DON’T give me money. And I get to say “no” – if I like – to people who are going to use it in ways I don’t like. And you can be unhappy about it, but if you complain over and over and over, it gets to be a bit rankling. If I decide that only people who pay exactly zero, or one, or two or 500 dollars get to have a copy, and that the purchaser is only receiving a single user license to use the item for non-commercial purposes, then why does this hinder free market competition?

I do not buy your assumption that a free object – even a really GOOD free object – shorts out competition. I wouldn’t be paying hard currency for Second Life if that were the case. Whatever happens to that free item – whether or not you get to redistribute, whatever the price point – it has very little impact on the economy. There will eventually be a competitor. Most likely a successful competitor. The only economy it really affects is your personal economy if you refuse to compete – or are incapable of competing.

As for the CAPS, get over it. I have habits I picked up in the usenet days, when italics and boldface weren’t options for emphasis. If it offends you, you might want to think about WHY it offends you. Let me know then. I may very well decide to care.

I won’t even respond to the “lecturing” crack.






First, I understand “let it go” quite thoroughly. I have taken it under advisement and will let you know if I actually decide to let it go. Perhaps I won’t, I’m crazy that way – making my own mind up and stuff.

Second, I absolutely disagree that retaining my rights to limit distribution of my work inhibits the economy. If anything, it limits my marketing to only those people who know of it, don’t mind taking a chance that it’s worth what it’s priced, and agree to my terms about redistribution. That should leave LOTS of room for a competitor – I would think.

You haven’t demonstrated that the people who take the free item, and the people who would pay you for your incorporation of that item, are the same audience. I believe there is very little overlap.






Frankly, I don’t give things away. I used to. I had a glossary for new folks that actually took me and a few other people some work to accomplish. It was – at that time – pretty cutting edge scripting to a new person like me to have the book (a lovey texture from Candie Apple) listen for a word and respond with a definition (a tidy script by Kohne). They agreed to let me use their work to create free copies of the book. They did not agree to have me sell it. I don’t mind that because I did not see a legitimate market for that product in the same market where I was giving it away. Now, I don’t distribute it at all. And guess what: I don’t thing the econmy ever felt a thing.

Now, I sell photographs. You can buy one. You can’t redistribute them – no matter how much you pay. If you want to, you need to see me and talk about it. And you know what? I may just decide to give one away for free and STILL not allow redistribution for sale. I can do this.

And it would have no appreciable effect on the economy over the long term.

End of lecture.

I left him an anger management retreat package brochure in his inventory.

If this is just a case of people not marking their stuff with a proper notice, then I have no real sympathy for them. (Still, I do believe it would be wrong to assume that it’s in the public domain.) Even so, I didn’t get the idea that this was what the Prof was complaining about. He was – I think – complaining that my refusing to allow him to license my material for resale was causing injury to the economy.

Perhaps he had multiple issues. If so, I certainly wasn’t intending on speaking to more than one or two.

Kathy, I think part of the problem is that SL Law is not spelled out on these matters. The "intellectual property rights management" features of SL are crude and not well defined. They are one-word checkboxes.

Because the checkboxes aren't definitively mapped onto real-world common practice, there is legitimate debate about what they ought to mean. RL is full of gray areas, and lawyers who make a living pretending there are stark boundaries between black and white.

It is clear from the TOS and press statements that Linden intends for RL intellectual property and copyright law to apply in-world to resident-created content. I think Linden is to be congratulated on this, and I also think that it will lead SL to a great future. It is genius to provide incentives to residents to invent entertainment value for other residents! (I don't see Leninism, I see rampant capitalism. So there's an "Old Boy Network", so what? Like such things don't exist in RL.)

Because "Copyable" is not fully defined in all its nuances, we argue about what it means. I think (as much as I hate to say this) that Prok is right in one regard. Within SL, you don't have any way to express anything beyond "Copyable" and "Not Copyable". Marking something "Copyable" should not be perceived as "Copyable BUT". If you care what somebody does with it, then don't make it Copyable -- distribute it some other way.

Because RL intellectual property and copyright law DOES apply to SL content, authors who want to control what people are allowed to do with their work DO have that right. I think that marking something "Copyable”, however, must be regarded by everybody to be relinquishing part of those rights. Copyable is Copyable. (I don't LIKE this. But given the limited tools we have, what else could it mean?)

Buster

well the discussion has meandered around back an forth some, but at its heart it really seems to be about people releasing code openly... and thinking its 'open source' a-la gpl, so that they have a right to complain when someone sells it...

and/or prof complaining about their attitudes in regards to this...

basically people giving things away are assuming they hold a 'license' to it as the creator of the object, and the people who are gettin them and reselling them are making no such assumptions (and honestly they shouldn't be expected to)

everyone has stuff they won't sell... i have a huge number of darn cool, but ultimately potentially 'disruptive' particle effects i like to have fun with, on my land with my friends.. but i won't give it out cause if used in welcome, it would just be a huge mess. That doesn really damage anything, its my right to not release things to people, at all, if i do not think they will be used properly

this is exactly why i advocate referencing RL licenses *EXPLICITLY* within either your code, or better yet in ()'s after an object name (like the actual in game 'license settings' look)...

sure there isn't a 'GPL' checkbox... but if you name your object as 'Buster's cool thing (GPL), anyone who recieves it will see that the 'license' it is released under, is the GPL (having a notecard inside it, or a lilttle text in the desctiption field can make things even more clear cut)

basically if you release anything in SL with 'open' permissions (aka mod/copy/transfer) there is nothing stopping you, and several good reasons encouraging you, to release it with the following tags added in:

(GPL) aka 'gnu' protected license aka what we commonly refer to as open source code, stuff people can see and use but not resell, and must release mods back to the community if they redistribute it

(CC) or (CC-'XYZ') aka creative commons license(s) that apply... these are less restrictive than the GPL, and give the creator more power to say what the user can and can not do with the objects explicitly (see creativecommons.org)

(pd) aka public domain... you as the creator give up ALL rights to the obejct/code contained within, it belongs to the world of second life now, and every single person in it, for better or worse


note: all of these basic licenses WOULD actually be applicable to objects that are in-game set open permissions... they just aide people (and LL in disputes) determine what the creators intent was, when releasing said object

Great idea. I don't think that works, though, because many residents have no idea what "GPL" means. It owuld have to be a checkbox with a definition.

In effect, that's an honor system amongst the tech elite -- exactly the kind of thing that Prok rails against. If you want to control Copyable items, you need something that applies to the Prok's of the world too, not just the geeks who know what "GPL" means.

I don't expect Linden to go there. What a can of worms.

Buster

eltee,

I like the idea of using the Creative Commons as a common practice in Second Life (Obviously you could do whatever you like, of course) And I use a Creative Commons license on my own photoblog. It essentially says you may copy my material all you like, but you can't modify them or use them commercially, and you have to keep my name attached.

Still I don't know a lot about it. Do you think it would be sufficient to decribe the rights reserved as I did just above and then include a URL to the Creative Commond website for a deeper explanation?

Again, my own legal understanding is that if I created the material, even if it's in a copyable form (like a magazine article or mp3?), I do not give up any rights even if I neglect to attach a copyright banner - let alone forgetting to list specific rights reserved.

I do, however, intend to puzzle out an efficient way to mark my material.