claudekennilol wrote:Is OpenMW a different game? If this issue were critical, OpenMW would already be banned from being talked about in the official forums, as the OpenMW team is doing fundamentally the same thing Morrowoblivion -- porting the game to a new engine. The key difference is that OpenMW is open source, and not mixing assets between Bethesda games, which was the fundamental problem with Morroblivion.
I can't answer this. I don't think Bethesda has any actual legal standing (this is my own opinion and I'm no lawyer, I'm just basing it off of a conglomeration of legal stuff I've read/heard) against Morroblivion since they're not distributing any assets. Trying not to sound too negative here..Beth threw a big fit when Morroblivion first came out and banned discussion about on its forum and forced the Nexus to take it off. If you remember, they didn't lift the ban on conversing about it on their forums, but they did extend an apology and said they wouldn't intervene in third party modding sites (the nexus) like that again--'cause if they police one, then they have to police them all.
The only difference I can see regarding mw's assets between this and morroblivion is that one has Beth's permission to go ahead and the other does not (note that doesn't supersede that we still shouldn't make mods requiring vanilla assets that can't be used by vanilla morrowind). I don't see any difference between them (I don't know much about morroblivion other than than the initial happenings posted above--so there may be more to that I just don't know).
Not sure why legality is an issue that's being discussed... Bethesda is well aware of this project, they have been for some time. If they ever thought it would infringe on some sort of copyright they could/would have acted a long time ago. Hell, Gstaff responded himself when asked about formulas irrc and said that, while they're fine with what OpenMW is doing, they can't help us directly. Sounds good to me.
SquireNed wrote:That's exactly OpenMW's legal status. It's also why OpenMW mods that include vanilla Morrowind content can be a little risky.
A little risky for whom? Surely not for OpenMW. I mean, I could hypothetically create a mod that introduces child porn into the game somehow. That wouldn't make suddenly make OpenMW illegal.
Mistahtokyo wrote:Not sure why legality is an issue that's being discussed... Bethesda is well aware of this project, they have been for some time. If they ever thought it would infringe on some sort of copyright they could/would have acted a long time ago. Hell, Gstaff responded himself when asked about formulas irrc and said that, while they're fine with what OpenMW is doing, they can't help us directly. Sounds good to me.
for clarity, the legallity being discussed is not whether openmw is legal, but it is about whether openmw mods would be allowed to distribute morrowind assets.
The conclusion is that Beth gives an implicint license to redistribute when it is to be used as part of the "morrowind game." people are debating whether openmw is a "morrowind game." The conclusion appears to be that it would be safest (for the mod owner and the site distributing the mod) to not include original morrowind assets, but Beth hasn't shown a hostile front in the past so they may not take a hostile stance. And if they did take a hostile stance, it would probably first be a C&D letter - which is annoying but easy to comply with (or fight if you'd like).
SquireNed wrote:That's exactly OpenMW's legal status. It's also why OpenMW mods that include vanilla Morrowind content can be a little risky.
A little risky for whom? Surely not for OpenMW. I mean, I could hypothetically create a mod that introduces child porn into the game somehow. That wouldn't make suddenly make OpenMW illegal.
They are only risky for the modder. Potentially end-users could get in a little bit of trouble as well, but typically it's the modder/distributor who would be the one getting in trouble.
SquireNed wrote:That's exactly OpenMW's legal status. It's also why OpenMW mods that include vanilla Morrowind content can be a little risky.
A little risky for whom? Surely not for OpenMW. I mean, I could hypothetically create a mod that introduces child porn into the game somehow. That wouldn't make suddenly make OpenMW illegal.
They are only risky for the modder. Potentially end-users could get in a little bit of trouble as well, but typically it's the modder/distributor who would be the one getting in trouble.
Exactly. So why then are we talking about these risks? It's not like they are relevant to us.
If that is an issue, why not then make a page on the wiki on modders rights? About what modders legally can and cannot do? About what Bethesda allows and what it doesn't? About how to license your mods? Things like that?
Legal liability. I don't want to go to court because someone got their buttocks sued off because of my advice. Especially considering that I studied copyright law with someone whose personal convictions call for a much more limited copyright law, and I probably picked up a little bit of that (not that my long-time love of FOSS has helped that any), and I'm not a full-fledged lawyer (the only law class I've taken is copyright law).
Also, "modder's rights" are basically a misnomer. From a strictly legal standpoint anything made with OpenCS should be considered to be a copyright violation if it includes any vanilla Morrowind content; the implicit licensing of the original CS cannot be applied to a third-party one, even if it is simply analogous.
I'm all for giving licensing breakdowns, but I don't think we should say "feel free to do this" or "don't worry about this", and I don't want to create something overly cautionary. For us to give any solid information, we'd have to ask Bethesda and put their exact words up.
SquireNed wrote:Legal liability. I don't want to go to court because someone got their buttocks sued off because of my advice. Especially considering that I studied copyright law with someone whose personal convictions call for a much more limited copyright law, and I probably picked up a little bit of that (not that my long-time love of FOSS has helped that any), and I'm not a full-fledged lawyer (the only law class I've taken is copyright law).
Also, "modder's rights" are basically a misnomer. From a strictly legal standpoint anything made with OpenCS should be considered to be a copyright violation if it includes any vanilla Morrowind content; the implicit licensing of the original CS cannot be applied to a third-party one, even if it is simply analogous.
I'm all for giving licensing breakdowns, but I don't think we should say "feel free to do this" or "don't worry about this", and I don't want to create something overly cautionary. For us to give any solid information, we'd have to ask Bethesda and put their exact words up.
If you are giving advice that could potentially get you in trouble, why would you be giving it to begin with? Really, the simplest way way is to simply say that anyone who follows your advice is on their own blah blah blah.