Content Licensing

[JWPlatt]

I've seen the first draft from one person who took the time so far to write one. I haven't seen any further work on that by any other contributor - just this forum discussion, and forum discussions won't get the document finished. I don't have the answers for you. I'm not trying to bluff my way out of anything. I'll be clear. It's up to you, but I'll contribute too at some point and we'll all sign and take it to Cyan because unanimous and together is the only way it's going to work. I'm waiting on you, and you, and you folks to find the answers and be satisfied with them for yourselves. If you want me to edit, revise and write it and give you all your answers, fine, I can, but it might not be what you want. I'm not going to try to guess what's on your mind or talk you into what I think. I'd probably get it wrong. But just to say again, the "answers" right now are only what come from the question of what are the problems, what do you want - not the solutions.

[Deledrius]

But just to say again, the "answers" right now are only what come from the question of what are the problems, what do you want - not the solutions.

Okay, but we can't provide solutions packaged up in a bow without hearing from Cyan first. The proposal presents the problem, and how we want to address it. It's up to Cyan to say whether that's a definite yes, a definite no, or a yes under the condition [something] at which point we can find licensing terms that fit that [something]. I'd love to have a complete A to Z. It's what I set out to write. Then I realized that it would be impossible. Unless of course we just want to inundate them with all possible solutions and say "pick one", which hardly seems efficient nor likely to succeed if they are as time-deficient as one can assume.

[JWPlatt]

First, we don't need Cyan to tell us our concerns and what we want. We've done plenty of that on our own over the years. We just need to recap as concisely as possible (right - no a to z choices, especially since we're not offering solutions yet) our problems to lead into what we want. Second, I still wouldn't call it a proposal.

[Nadnerb]

First, we don't need Cyan to tell us our concerns and what we want. We've done plenty of that on our own over the years.

Quite so, we know what we want. We want to modify and distribute Uru content in order to improve it. We can, and have, done that on our own. However, there is the issue of doing so being illegal. Cyan is the only entity that can rectify this. Therefore, their input is required. The purpose of this proposal for lack of a better word, is to see if they would be interested in allowing this activity given clear evidence that it is beneficial to Uru in a very specific, tangible way, and provided that an obvious solution is suggested. Truly, this is not strictly neccessary, but it seems that an effort to gain the goodwill or even explicit approval of Cyan by actually bringing this topic to their attention would go a long way in assuaging the potential fears of future shard operators, as well as opening the way for Cyan to actually take advantage of these improvements by incorporating them into their product. (Which, admittedly, they aren't selling anymore, but if it continues to show signs of improving over time, it may keep enough people interested to continue donating towards it's continued survival.)

forum discussions won't get the document finished.

Forum discussions are what we have. Do you suggest a better mode of communication? I'm sure we're all open to suggestions.

I haven't seen any further work on that by any other contributor

I would first dispute this by saying that criticism has been raised in this topic which has resulted in Deledrius making changes to his original draft. The modification history is visible here. Second, I would ask, exactly how many people need to have direct input into this process before you consider the result valid? Does the total number of people who have had an impact on it need to be explicitly recorded somewhere, or is it enough that the original creator revise his work based on others input, such as, say, a forum discussion?

Second, I still wouldn't call it a proposal.

Once again, the dismissal without providing a reason. This is getting old. What's "License Suggestions" if not proposing a possible solution to a problem?

[Mac_Fife]

I agree we probably shouldn't be trying to offer solutions on the first contact on this (well, it's not really the first contact, but you know what I mean). Stating the problem is the key thing. And for those reasons we need avoid referring this as a "proposal"; possibly an "enquiry" or "request".

Thinking about it a little, I think Cyan are already aware of the desire of shard operators to redistribute the core content so maybe that use case doesn't need to be pitched to them so much: Deledrius' description of the localization might be more of a revelation to Cyan (at least to those less involved with the innards of Uru).

I've transcribed the entirety of the material in the gist that Deledrius started into an orphan wiki page here (no offence, but I just find it a whole lot easier to read): http://wiki.openuru.org/index.php?title ... _Proposals (and yeah, I've used the word "proposals" in the page title, but it's just a scratchpad page anyway for folks to chisel at As time goes by I thought we might use the same page to flesh out further enquiries).

What we probably need to do is wrap up the enquiry with the questions, something like: What hinderances can Cyan foresee to meeting the requests? What might the community be able to do to help overcome those?

I'm less concerned with what's in the technical description just now. One comment I might make (in general) is to avoid trying to suggest that anything might be "a benefit to Cyan" when talking about MOUL - Maybe better to talk about "benefit to MOULa" or "to the community". The logic here is that from a business perspective "Cyan" gains nothing from Open Source or MOULa; it's all more a personal gratification for the folks involved, if you see what I mean.

[Nadnerb]

We need access to the source files for all GUI

I think it could be made a little more obvious in the summary (for people who only read the summary) that "source files" is referring to the max files containing GUIs, seeing as we already have a distribution license for all of the client source.

I also agree that it would make more sense to refer to the "benefits" of this proposal as relating to Uru, although, as I pointed out earlier, continuing to improve the public facing version of Uru (MOULa) could conceivably have the benefit of Cyan ending up with enough donation flow to provide their own content improvements.

As for the reasons modifying the PRPs is inferior, it could also be added that it would make it difficult or impossible for Cyan to merge any of these localization changes back into MOULa due to their build process. Also "aside from the obvious" is not really necessary, and there may or may not be any obvious problems with this to whoever ends up reading this section of the document.

[Mac_Fife]

... continuing to improve the public facing version of Uru (MOULa) could conceivably have the benefit of Cyan ending up with enough donation flow to provide their own content improvements.

Hmm... I know what you mean, but at the risk of digressing from the topic here: When MOULa was set up Cyan went to some effort to ensure that the donation funding was only used to support MOULa. That meant it's entirely separately accounted. So when MOULa wants/needs work done, it contracts Cyan (or more likely, individuals who happen to be Cyan employees) to do that work. The significance is that if Cyan's creditors ever come chasing for money they won't be able to show that the donation money is a Cyan asset and lay claim on it. So again, it's the benefit of MOULa not Cyan per se.

But the rest of your points, yes, I'd tend to agree with those.

[Hoikas]

I think I would agree with Mac on this point, even without the example he gives. If I'm Cyan (Disclaimer: I am obviously not Cyan.), and I'm reading a proposal that talks about the work I do for product I'm not selling benefiting me, I would either be greatly amused or marvel at how stupid the idea sounds. After all, something that doesn't bring in cash is likely not beneficial to them right now. Of course, such a statement could have the unintended effect of causing said proposal to be taken less seriously. People tend to do that when they read things that they think are stupid.

[Marten]

JW: It is very frustrating to have someone knock down a piece of work with a vague response equivalent to "No, I don't like it, come back to me with something better." Please, suggest some specific edits, ask pertinent questions, or give a template for what you're expecting. Constructive criticism needs to be constructive.

Mac: I like your questions and suggestions. Those are helpful. They gives clarity to how the proposal can be improved.

Nadnerb: Some people prefer working on a wiki, others prefer working on a forum. There were repeated direct and indirect hints to put a copy on the wiki which you and others ignored. It took Mac's initiative to put the thing on there. While I disagree with JW's particular claim that "forum discussions won't get the document finished," it really does help to have a consistent place that reviewers can go to see the "working copy" rather than paging through the discussion. Another benefit? Instead of posting what you want done to the document and waiting for Deledrius or someone else to re-post with edits, you can go make the changes yourself and then tell everyone about it here!

[OHB]

Of all things URU-related, localization and accessibility and the nearest and dearest to my heart. Unfortunately, I'm not involved with CWE and I'm not fully versed in the current processes in place. Whatever they are: on the face of it, it just looks too complicated and daunting.

But, this is one area that I may be able to help. So, here's my State of the GULP Union:

GULP is the ULP replacement: now with 100% more G! http://rel.to/gulp
Last night, it went live and it's looking good.
Just since it went live, there have been over 2500 actions on the site.

URU Live Project Statistics (choose the guest login if you don't have your own)

As of this writing, 90+ people have contributed 25,000+ translations in 25+ languages.
The translations include:
* Everything from the LOC files
* Everything from the Python files
* Everything from the Vault (Sharper's journal extra bit)
* Most of the Audio (transcribed and translated Zandi and Yeesha speeches)

Still to add:
* Text from images (such as the fishtank instructions)
* Other things (for example, replacement for the support text [old has GameTap stuff in there still])


From my perspective, here's all of the things that are needed in an ideal world:

* Permission to make, edit and distribute LOC files.
* Beyond just the English, there are the translations done for German, French, Spanish and Italian which are either a) missing content or b) bad translations.
* Then there's the Polish translation. I'm not even sure who owns that translation. If Cyan doesn't, who was it licensed to and can we use/update it?
* Permission to edit the PRPs to [insert mumbo jumbo about moving translations out of Python] and replace images with text with new images.
* Original artwork for images with text. (fishtank instructions) so we can make new ones.
* Pre-P2F fonts. (I've got most of the fonts, we needs the last couple)
* Code changes to allow display of TTF instead of P2F, supporting Unicode.
* Things I didn't think of.

All that's just off the top of my head. To do the entire thing, it's an enormous task.

It seems to be that either ya'll ask for everything now, or go step by step making it clear that there will be more requests in the future. If you go step by step, I'd suggest the following:

1. Get the license needed for the LOC files and request whatever else is needed to allow language-switching. If you get that, you can immediately have full support for English, Spanish, French, Swedish, German, Portuguese, Dutch, English UK, Finnish, and Italian, and you can have near-complete support for Romanian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian and Czech. (All using existing P2Fs)

Right there is a big accomplishment. HUGE. You'll instantly be ahead of the translators. The added bonus is we might be able to use that accomplishment to get others involved. Dangle the carrot, so to speak.

Certainly, audio, images with text, and text not already stored in the LOC files will be mostly English only...but still...very cool...

Then you've got a choice. You either need to add unicode support or change the code so everything uses the LOC files instead of hard-coded things, Python, Vault, etc. We can decided what's more important: supporting Chinese or getting the other languages completely integrated?

I'd probably suggest the latter.


I realize that this post isn't the most relevant post...and it goes a little beyond content licensing. But, as I said at the beginning, of all URU things, this is the one that means the most to me and the one I'm the most knowledgeable about. Perhaps this post helps in some way. At the very least, I hope anyone reading this who didn't fully appreciate the magnitude of the task now has a better idea about it. I really do believe that the greater localization of URU will be part of the key to URU's future success. And I'm not just saying that as a colossal egomaniac.

If I can be of any further use or disruption, please don't hesitate to call.


P.S. Updated http://wiki.openuru.org/index.php?title ... _Proposals with the current name/url for GULP.