Community Content Licensing

[Bidmaron]

Plus you have two significant issues; everything posted prior to that point in time would fall under the old license (because SW can't retroactively change a license on someone), and two could face difficult legal challenges if challenged because a poster could easily claim they were not aware of such a restriction and that would force SW to prove that the person knew....[/I]

LE, SW owns these forums. Just because someone posts something before the change doesn't mean its license can't change. SW can remove the content on their own if the author refuses to make the change willingly. After all, there are alternative places to post, as someone else already stated. There are other places to post, and the poster could reference that location on these forums.

I'm not trying to endorse any particular course of action, I'm just saying SW is within their rights to make a decision and enforce it, should they choose to do so.

[DM_BK]

I did find myself wondering how privacy terms can change at-will but forum TOS/licensing can't? Seemed fishy to me but I'm am not a legal expert.

[damned]

When you agree to an initial agreement it may allow the agreement to varied and may specify a process for varying the agreement.
For services that you continue to use they may vary the agreement and require you to accept the agreement to continue using the service.

You cant impose new restrictions on other peoples work unless you had an existing agreement with them that permits this already.

[Valarian]

Personally, code I develop for the community is just that and can be considered CC BY-SA. I've certainly learnt Lua and the Fantasy Grounds framework by looking at content from other developers, and adapting the code or the concept to suit the situation. My hope is that new developers can learn the same way, and that the community remains open.

That said, there could be a market for commercial extensions. A community store, with the same code protections as for the commercial store, could be an idea to suit this market. Encrypted and locked extensions would protect the developers who want to sell a novel concept or piece of code. This would add an administrative burden on Smiteworks to manage the community store and to verify the code on the store as safe to use.

Rulesets are a little more tricky to sell commercially unless there is agreement in place, as they are supporting a commercial game and the publisher of the game should get a say in whether it's okay for someone to make money from their game - even if there is no copyrighted content.

[deer_buster]

When you agree to an initial agreement it may allow the agreement to varied and may specify a process for varying the agreement.
For services that you continue to use they may vary the agreement and require you to accept the agreement to continue using the service.

You cant impose new restrictions on other peoples work unless you had an existing agreement with them that permits this already.

Hmmm, simplest way I can think of doing this is to drop support for all community extensions without a valid API key that requires a certain license with SW. Code can easily be ported over to this, and everyone starts and continues with the same license that is modifiable by SW at any time.

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

[LordEntrails]

Why would the community want such a restrictive way to contribute?

[DM_BK]

Hmmm, simplest way I can think of doing this is to drop support for all community extensions without a valid API key that requires a certain license with SW. Code can easily be ported over to this, and everyone starts and continues with the same license that is modifiable by SW at any time.

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

I like it! And also fairly common way it's done these days(not just in the VTT space).
Although the Roll20 policy of charging extra for API access was... less welcome.

[Bidmaron]

Why would the community want such a restrictive way to contribute?

LE people can still post a more liberal license externally and refer to them here. Dulux used to do that with github and a lot of folks are doing that now.
I hate having to go elsewhere but if SW wants to do this to try to protect their user base from another event like this (as we speak there is still no suitable substitute for locations, e.g.) it seems a reasonable compromise.

[LordEntrails]

LE people can still post a more liberal license externally and refer to them here. Dulux used to do that with github and a lot of folks are doing that now.
I hate having to go elsewhere but if SW wants to do this to try to protect their user base from another event like this (as we speak there is still no suitable substitute for locations, e.g.) it seems a reasonable compromise.

I took the suggestion that an API key would be required to make extensions would mean that such keys would be required and would only be made available to those that agreed to a specific license. Based on this statement;

is to drop support for all community extensions without a valid API key that requires a certain license with SW

That would mean that that 'split' distribution model as is currently the practice would not be relevant, because an extension would only work in FG if a specific API key was embedded in the extension. Which would mean those keys would have to be managed, and would have to be something that simply could not be copied and pasted from text file to text file. There are all sorts of problems / challenges with such a model that I won't bother going into.

Honestly I just don't see these events as so traumatic in the big picture. I'm sure they are quiet disappointing to those that have invested so heavily in the extensions that have been withdrawn, but how much does that differ from someone simple choosing not to maintain an extension anymore? (SmiteWorks certainly doesn't have the desire to maintain such or they would have incorporated into the base code.) IMO, the 'proprietaryness' of any code is not that big of a deal, look at how quickly 2 sound extensions have emerged, or a campaign/world/location extension. Once how to do something is developed, reproducing it is much easier.

I just don't think the benefits of trying to protect user by restricting community developers outweigh the negatives to the community.

[Bidmaron]

I misread what deer_buster was saying. I would absolutely be against that, and nothing MW has said leads me to believe he is contemplating anything so draconian. His posts have been along the lines of what is posted on these forums, which they are entitled to regulate (of course they could do the code thing too, but I don't believe the community would support that -- I certainly wouldn't).