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 | Re: The rights of scenario makers | |
| Posted By: Jorge | Date: 6/27/04 3:39 p.m. |
| In Response To: Re: The rights of scenario makers (Soliptic) : >[snip] It is a bit depressing to know that somebody has Trojan working perfectly in Aleph One/SDL yet I am not able to play it on my Windoz box because of some short-sighted decision. The least they could do is simply put a disclaimer saying that no support will be granted, use at your own risk, etc.etc. Heck, most of us know this is what we get anyways. The stance of the Trojan team goes against everything I have ever seen in the Marathon community, and everything that I always thought Bungie stood for as well. They released the freaking source-code for us, yet the Trojan team decides to withhold their scenario? Give me a break. BAD FORM! If somebody wishes to contact me and make available an AlephOne/Windows SDL version of Trojan, I would like to confirm its existance, on purely journalistic principles, to make sure that I can speak with full authority on this subject in the future. Second, regarding Forrest's question regarding distributing a stand-alone sceneraio... I will copy and paste a post I saved a while ago regarding this issue: BEGIN QUOTED MATERIAL Claude Errera (or as we call him here at the compound, Mr. Leader) sent us a very interesting e-mail which has also been posted to alt.games.marathon. This should please a lot of you scenario fellas. Good news for Marathon scenariomakers! There has been far too much "I think that might be illegal", or "That's definitely not gonna fly" with regard to upcoming Marathon scenarios that use older Marathon artwork in newer Marathon engines. (The M1 to Infinity project Raul Bonilla announced a few days ago is only the most publicized... there are others. :) ) I got tired of wondering who was right, so I went to the source (Bungie), and asked some very specific questions. (Mr. Bonilla's scenario was one of 3 specific examples I tried to clarify.) Matt Soell checked with Alex Seropian, and with Microsoft's legal department... and here's his answer: We're not worried (and neither is MS Legal; I checked) about copyright violation with this stuff since it's squarely targeted at people who are already fans of the game and probably bought their copies long ago. SO: As long as the two golden rules you mentioned (no money changes hands and all copyrighted Bungie content is explicitly denoted as such) are adhered to religiously, people who develop these types of projects (old Bungie game in a new Bungie skin) may distribute them with our approval. If they choose to distribute their revamped Bungie stuff with an Aleph One app, they must make clear that the GPL that covers the Aleph One app does NOT apply to the copyrighted Bungie content in the art/sound/map/etc. files. We're allowing people to use those copyrighted works because we're nice guys and so are they. The only way we'll get pissed and reverse ourselves on this would be if someone started selling something deriving from our copyrighted work, or claiming it as their own. This is very, very cool news. Again, for those who missed Matt's references, there are two requirements for using Bungie artwork in Marathon scenarios: - no money changes hands (this means no CD compilations, either) - Bungie is explicitly credited with copyrights in all documentation And don't forget that Aleph One warning, either. Documentation of copyright might seem trivial... but it's not. It only takes a sec to paste in the needed line in your readme (or to include the needed line all by itself if you're too lazy to write a readme)... do it. :) This should make life easier for anyone involved in making a Marathon scenario, as long as the above (very reasonable) rules are followed. Don't forget... Bungie now has the Microsoft legal team behemoth behind them... play nasty, and I bet they'll play nastier. END QUOTED MATERIAL | |
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