BD2K3 hacks again

Discussion about Rocks'n'Diamonds, Boulder Dash, Supaplex, Emerald Mine and any other BD hybrid.

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Alan
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BD2K3 hacks again

Post by Alan »

I see someone else has taken BD2K3's graphics for another of their BD clones....

http://members.lycos.nl/johannismeijer/

This is worse than "BeeDee Dash" as he's used Rockford, and not even bothered to change them or credit me. :roll: Still, I'm flattered in a weird kind of way.

He's called it Boulderdash 2004.......good name! ;-) (then again, he looks like he's used gamemaker and it is 2 years old after all). He's also made another game that uses the penguin and dark yamyam from BD2K3 to.

I wish RND used some sort of data pack to stop this kind of plagiarism
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bojster
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Post by bojster »

That's an interesting question, actually... are the levelsets distributed with RnD or available as an expansion automatically covered by some licence? RnD is covered by GNU GPL, so in theory every derivative work also has to bear this licence. But are levelsets derivatives of RnD? I would say yes, but IANAL. As for BD2K3, the readme.txt does not explicitly state any licence, so it's either GPL (if it automatically inherits RnD's licensing) or – by definition – copyrighted to you. In either case, the guy is breaking the law not crediting you for the graphics (and in case of GPL that's all he would have to do). Maybe he's one of these who mistake 'free' with 'public domain'.
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Post by Tomi »

Programs are derivatives of libraries they use (AFAIK), so IMO levelsets should similarly be derivatives of RnD.
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Holger
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Post by Holger »

Alan:
> I see someone else has taken BD2K3's graphics for another of their BD
> clones....

Wow, that's tough... Using a few graphics (like in the "Pengo" game on that site) is one thing, but taking *all* graphics from BD2K3 is another story...

In my -- humble and very personal -- opinion, this is a question which is hard to answer. I do the same with R'n'D and some classic games -- just compare the R'n'D graphics with the EM graphics. Changing the resolution from 16x16 to 32x32 is just a technical thing. But I indeed see a difference between cloning and plagiarism, although the border may be vague.

And yes, an important point is if you give credits to the original author or if you give the impression that some work by others is your own work. (And yes, the credits page in R'n'D to all the classic authors came very, very late in 3.2.0... :-o )

Another point is if you are cloning or re-creating an old classic, or if you use stuff of a game that is "still alive" (actively supported). That's (for example) a major reason why there is not much support in R'n'D for 100% Diamond Caves levels, as this game is still actively developed (although I have to admit that I have also "cloned" some elements from an early version of that game in R'n'D, with similar graphics).

As you can see, I'm also not that "innocent" here... :-o ;-)

But then: There is no bigger praise than plagiarism -- the author of that "Boulderdash 2004" just wasn't able to find any better BD style graphics anywhere else, and at least at this point he was right. ;-)

> I wish RND used some sort of data pack to stop this kind of plagiarism

Well, this is practically impossible for an open-source game. If you have the source code, it's just trivial to add some code to save the (unpacked) artwork. With the SDL version, this is really trivial (although your suggestion would still be quite a barrier for most people).

Just think of Diamond Caves, which does just that (not having ready-to-use artwork), but somebody here on the forum (Darkon, was that you? :-) ) ripped off the artwork from screenshots (even animations) anyway... So you can't really stop it if people really like your artwork... ;-)

bojster:
> That's an interesting question, actually... are the levelsets distributed
> with RnD or available as an expansion automatically covered by some
> licence? RnD is covered by GNU GPL, so in theory every derivative work
> also has to bear this licence. But are levelsets derivatives of RnD?

Tomi:
> Programs are derivatives of libraries they use (AFAIK), so IMO levelsets
> should similarly be derivatives of RnD.

I'm 100%, definitive, positively, convinced of the following: Custom artwork and custom level sets are absolutely the property of their respective creators, and it has nothing to do with the license that R'n'D might use or not use -- the copyright of the BD2K3 levels, graphics, sounds and music is Alan's, regardless if R'n'D is released under a permissive license like the GNU GPL or any other license.

Just think of eBooks (those funny, electronic, PDA style devices that you can use to read text on it and that nobody uses ;-) ): If I write a book that you can read on your eBook, why the heck should I lose the copyright to my book just because the creator of your eBook device is crazy enough to give those devices away for free? And you surely still have all your rights on your self-created Microsoft Office documents if Microsoft should decide to release the next version of their office suite under the GNU GPL!

The enhanced R'n'D versions by HerzAusGold are indeed derivative work in the sense of the GPL, so they share the same license as R'n'D itself. But this is really not true for level sets and artwork created for (or even with) R'n'D, as long as they don't contain R'n'D source code, which is unlikely. ;-)

So if you cannot find any explicit license for R'n'D sets, you can safely assume that they are fully copyrighted by their authors. If you want to use some stuff of them for your own projects, you should therefore ask them for permission. (In this case: Alan.)

(BTW: R'n'D is also still copyrighted by me! There are just a number of explicit rights that I give to you, which are stated in detail in the GNU GPL.)
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Alan
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Post by Alan »

As for BD2K3, the readme.txt does not explicitly state any licence, so it's either GPL (if it automatically inherits RnD's licensing) or – by definition – copyrighted to you. In either case, the guy is breaking the law not crediting you for the graphics (and in case of GPL that's all he would have to do).
I think Holger has mentioned about the GPL before, and I don't think I have any rights.
Maybe he's one of these who mistake 'free' with 'public domain'.
Yeah, even though the extent of the ripping was more than the other guy, it actually bothers me less..... It looks like it's just some kid making a game with gamemaker, but the other guy(s) claimed the graphics where theirs because they tweaked them a bit :twisted:

*edit*

And Holger just posted the above when I posted mine ;-)
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Holger
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Post by Holger »

> I think Holger has mentioned about the GPL before, and I don't think
> I have any rights.

That's wrong! As you probably already read in my last post, you have *all* the rights of your work!

I just took the liberty to release your work on my site! :-)

So, you could perfectly force me to remove it from there, but many people would be very angry then! ;-) ;-) ;-)
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bojster
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Post by bojster »

Alan wrote:
As for BD2K3, the readme.txt does not explicitly state any licence, so it's either GPL (if it automatically inherits RnD's licensing) or – by definition – copyrighted to you. In either case, the guy is breaking the law not crediting you for the graphics (and in case of GPL that's all he would have to do).
I think Holger has mentioned about the GPL before, and I don't think I have any rights.
That's not quite correct. You are granted a full copyright by the law and you can release some rights if you wish (for example using GPL or some Creative Commons licence). The fact that there's no copyright note in the readme, but the author of the artwork is known means that the work is under a copyright and belongs to that author.

Another thing if the author was unknown – I believe that in that case a lack of copyright note would mean that the work is in public domain. But even then it would be a bold assumption, since the author might come up any moment and rightfully demand royalties! (Yeah, copyright laws make it the lawyers' world...)
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