Rogean and Nilbog are Breaking the Law!

[Whale biologist]

Originally Posted by Jibartik [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

bro the young lawyer is way off about this.

you cannot make mods of nintendo games go find me some roms right now.

The only reason any mod can exist is out of good faith.

ALTTP randomizer, FF6 T-Edition, Radical Dreamers?

[starkind]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Seriously, I'm in favor of the devs keeping details private here. I've said as much in many posts prior to this.

But I'm MORE in favor of respecting the law and the wishes of developers whose code you use. This is what I do for a living, and if someone ripped off my work I'd be pissed. If they don't have an agreement with the EQEmulator people, and they use EQEmulator code, that's what R&N are doing.

Yeah except just saying so or not so and ignoring the facts or making up your own doesn't make it so which is exactly the agenda for this thread.

Tbh. The reality is that the world needs a game in the same veign as brads vision before the pixel lust. Muddflation. Raiders. And hardcore addicts ruined it with expansion after expansion. A new game without the terrible troubled redundant writing that plagues everquest. Without the triteness, political correctness and populism of wow and its clones. Done by hobbyists and homebrew table top gamers not interested in a massive return on investment or population growth. A game meant to show case a world. And challenge its inhabitants.

Oroborousing and attacking p99 and Rogean so you can just continue to clone and copy asexually doesn't achieve any of that. And just degrades the DNA of EQs greatness.

[Shac]

contra was a sick nintendo game for gameboy anyone play that 1? link illegal copyrighted games here, so I can play that one

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by Whale biologist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

ALTTP randomizer, FF6 T-Edition, Radical Dreamers?

I think people are getting confused about emulators, mods, etc. Making a counterstrike mod with all custom assets, code, etc. would not be illegal, for example. You couldn't SELL the mod for money, because that would be using the game's IP to sell your own stuff, but you could release the mod for free. Those examples you mentioned are mods that are free, and they do not include the original game, so there is no issue.

The problem with something like an Everquest emulator is Everquest is a "games as a service" style game. This changes the way the IP holder looks at emulators. This is because an active emulated server is basically "stealing" potential customers away from their business, because another entity has provided a free version of their game.

That is why the P99 dev team should be heavily praised for maintaining a good relationship with the Everquest IP holders, and making sure they were not making a profit off of the game. That is why they stick solely to donations intended to keep the server hardware going, and they ban RMT. Honestly P99 is practically a miracle.

EDIT: This is why I was saying it's a weird area to begin with when it comes to the EQEMU. Yes, the EQEMU code by itself is made by the EQEMU dev's (to my knowledge), but it is currently being used in P99 for emulating a "games as a service" game. So I am honestly not sure how the EQEMU dev's could bring a legal case (and make money) without also entangling themselves in the Everquest IP side. As I said before, if someone simply took the EQEMU code and used it for something not related to Everquest, then the EQEMU dev's could potentially go after them, as it doesn't involve Everquest anymore. However, even then I am not 100% sure how the law works with a server emulator, as the EQEMU code is basically a reconstruction of the Everquest server code using packet sniffing. So technically the EQEMU code is being developed based on someone else's code, which is not open source. That is where it gets really weird.

[starkind]

I was thinking of doing a cool homebrew Gameboy style steam game in the veign of 1 EQ class and its epic cosmological journey from giant rats to planar riff Raffery for starter funds. Worried I'd get bought out or leepfrogged if toooo successful tho.

Would be pretty cool tho ��

[Jibartik]

If I draw mickey mouse with a dick on it Disney can force me to take it down.

[Vivitron]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No, I don't mean by re-creating an old game ... I mean by making modifications to the EQ Emulator source code, and not publishing those modifications.

Backstory: Project 1999 (AFAIK) is based off the EQ Emulator project, https://github.com/EQEmu/Server. As you can see at that link, that project has chosen the (absolutely terrible) GPL3 license to open source their code: https://github.com/EQEmu/Server/blob/master/LICENSE

That (again, terrible) license ... well I won't quote its legalese, but if you look at a summary of it on https://tldrlegal.com/license/gnu-ge...ense-v3-(gpl-3), you'll see:



In other words, unless P99 has ripped literally every last line of EQ Emulator code out ... because EQ Emulator picked Richard Stallman's (awful) GPL3 as their license ... P99 is legally required to publish their modifications to the EQ Emulator software.

Two important notes: 1) I am not a lawyer, just a copyright law hobbyist, and 2) the GPL does not in any way cover the database; they have no obligation to open source that.

But still ... thoughts?

P.S. For what it's worth I'm not a fan of this: I'd like to keep the game's secrets ... secret. But the GPL3 is, by design, unforgiving. If you use GPL3 source code in any way, even on a server, you are legally obligated to share modifications to that code (unlike the much saner GPL2).

You're confusing the GPL V3 with the AGPL. If you google the differences between these three licenses you'll see that tldrlegal botched its summary of the GPL V3.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Vivitron [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You're confusing the GPL V3 with the AGPL. If you google the differences between these three licenses you'll see that tldrlegal botched its summary of the GPL V3.

Yeah, actually I've been googling (and talking to an eq emu dev) and realized I made that mistake. I'd been told that GPL3 was toxic even to server apps (and that we needed to avoid it on the job ... for a server app), but now I have no idea why. Only AGPL closes the "server loophole".

I offer my sincere apologies for inadvertently slandering Rogean and Nilbog with my poor young lawyering. I clearly should have done more research first. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I am of course very thankful for everything they do here ... but even more so that they put up with idiots like me. Again, I'm very sorry for my poor judgment.

[Aussie]

I'll bite - I think alot of people in this thread need a history lesson.

P99 was formed well before the EQEmulator Project was published to Github, or the project was licensed to GPL3.

The code was originally distributed via eqemulator.net under creative commons.

[Shac]

yeah but which creative commons?