Questions regarding UAM

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Re: Questions regarding UAM

Postby Korovev » Sat Apr 22, 2017 12:45 pm

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TrapperDave wrote:DI distributes the MOUL ages, the modified KI and various modified files including binaries. All the ABM/ToDni/Pots/MOUL ages are available for free today.

GOG and Steam disagree: the ABM/ToDni/Pots Ages are not available for free. MO:ULa’s Ages are free, but they are not the same (try swapping the data files and see if they work). It is not at all a complex matter.

Alright, Deep Island shares the Offline KI, which includes some files from Uru:CC.
Can you play Uru:CC with only the DI uru.exe? No, you can’t.
Can you play Uru:CC with only the UAM installer? Yes, you can (I still haven’t seen anyone denying it), and this is the problem you don’t (want to) understand.

Does Dustin have a licence to share the whole game for free? Almost certainly no, because Cyan is still selling Uru:CC through GOG and Steam, and allowing the UAM shard to share those files for free would likely mean to give up (among other things) the selling rights for that game.

Cyan wrote:Like any good neighbor we are more than happy to share our stuff with you... as long as you don’t go making money off of it for heaven’s sake!

Someone who is playing on the UAM shard without owning a copy of Uru:CC is playing for free a game that comes with a price tag, which means one less copy of Uru:CC bought from Cyan, i.e. a pirated (=stolen) copy.

If Dustin were to change the UAM server so that it worked like Deep Island, i.e. asking for the data files but not letting people download any/all of them, then we would no longer have a problem with that shard (or at least not on the legal side).

TrapperDave wrote:Now I was very curious as to what is going on here with an old war? So I began researching

My first post in this thread has all the relevant links: this and this, for example (Hoikas and Diafero, sorry for bringing those up once again). If you read about certain accusations, consider who is actually working on improving the client and bringing fan Ages to MO:ULa.


I’m not blaming Dulcamara or anyone else, I’m just pointing out the consequences of people’s choices.
Play on the hassle-free UAM, side with Dustin, “have fun” and possibly alienate Cyan, right when fan Ages on MO:ULa started to become more than just a possibility. I think Cyan will try anything to avoid getting to that point, but promoting UAM does not help.
Alternatively, stick with Deep Island, side with the GoW, wait for Diafero to be more free to look into install issues, and support the people who are actually working for the future of Uru, if you care about it.
There might be some room in the middle, but not much.


Sirius wrote:As the MOUL topic shows, there are just those who are aware that UAM is illegal, and those who aren't. But if you warn them they understand that they should avoid it.

Will they? Or will they just not care as long as it’s convenient?
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Re: Questions regarding UAM

Postby Korovev » Sat Apr 22, 2017 12:54 pm

Sirius wrote:Now, RAD Game Tools could have simply filed a complaint against Cyan directly and dragged them to tribunal (Cyan would have lost the trial). But they went the amicable way and warned them that they should make the file disappear as fast as possible. Why ? Because it was a smallish single file which wasn't very useful on its own, and Cyan didn't try to open-source the whole proprietary code.

RAD Game Tools also possibly did have the means to drag Cyan in tribunal. Cyan might not have the resources to do so with UAM, and/or might lose (these kind of trials are not always a sure win).
Cyan not acting against UAM doesn’t imply supporting it; DI however does have (at least indirect) approval.



Edit: By the way, I don’t see how an installer can be easer than adding one file to a pristine Uru:CC folder. For the record, I recently attempted to make a client from scratch, on WIndows 10 (using the Steam version, on top of that); no problems at all, I didn’t even have to launch it as administrator.
I suppose most of those who can’t play on Deep Island have the “Fetching player” issue, but that doesn’t seem to depend on the shard.
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Re: Questions regarding UAM

Postby TrapperDave » Sat Apr 22, 2017 1:58 pm

Korovev wrote: Can you play Uru:CC with only the UAM installer? Yes, you can (I still haven’t seen anyone denying it), and this is the problem you don’t (want to) understand


Ohh Yes I do want to understand it all :)
Seems like we are beating our heads against a brick wall without the wall having the complete answers for me?
I do know URU-CC is still for sale on GOG & Steam.
However Cyan has been to UAM shard and knows it exists and Cyan employee's have played on the shard.
UAM has been there for years and is still up. It seems to me a simple letter from Cyan legal counsel to the UAM shard notifying whomever would be enough to scare them into taking the shard down.
Without extensive litigation it would be taken care of rather quickly? This is another reason I question if a license of some sorts might exist with Cyan. GOG and Steam would be a separate issue.
This is why I'm trying to find out if such a license exists ? So all shards are illegal ... ehh ? That is an interesting point !
I am not trying to support one shard over another shard ! The shards have some great fan content that is improving all the time, the shard server is just a means to view them all.
It is useless to try and guess about this and that until I receive official facts from the appropriate parties.
I like and support Deep Island and appreciate all that the GoW has contributed !
I was very surprised myself that UAM still existed and that the majority of other players go there ! I have only been back a short month to see it myself.
Now I will wait patiently for official answers to inquires I have made.
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Re: Questions regarding UAM

Postby Sirius » Sat Apr 22, 2017 4:33 pm

Oh, come on, let's keep the topic civil folks. No need to start yet another heated debate.

Korovev wrote:If Dustin were to change the UAM server so that it worked like Deep Island, i.e. asking for the data files but not letting people download any/all of them, then we would no longer have a problem with that shard (or at least not on the legal side).
TrapperDave wrote:It seems to me a simple letter from Cyan legal counsel to the UAM shard notifying whomever would be enough to scare them into taking the shard down.

Ifs, ifs, ifs... Dustin didn't change or put down his server when he was around, there is little chance he would do it now since he doesn't apparently care. An email from Cyan might convince him to take time to work around it, but other people will have a hard time convincing him since that would be giving credit to Hoikas/Diafero and he would probably hate that.
As for Cyan, they don't have the time to bother with this stuff and I'm starting to think they know even less than we do about the whole history of UAM and how legal it is. They probably decided it's "complicated stuff" and should rather mindlessly delete any reference to it until they have a good reason to dig in it (and good headache medicine).

The thing is, UAM stands and will stand for years to come. Asking [Cyan to ask] Dustin to take it down is futile IMO because it will take the right person with the right words and the right timing to catch Dustin the right day when he is in the right mood so he might consider the issue. At worse, you'll only revive his hate for the GoW and he'll think it's ironic to just let it stand to piss us off (and that costs him nothing).


Now, if you agree, I propose we stop bringing up the name of someone who left YEARS AGO. Besides, it's clear Dustin isn't actively doing anything besides occasionally helping people who don't bother him with such old matters, and he doesn't actively do anything good or bad against the GoW or Cyan anyway. Yes, his actions have far-reaching consequences, but he isn't aware of this and probably doesn't care much about it.
We resumed fighting over an ages old topic without even needing him to trigger us, which is ridiculous and embarrassing. If I were Dustin reading this, I'd probably be having a good laugh. Or be in serious need of morale support.
Anger will only make people even more bitter than they already are, like Karkadann rightly said. And people here are already bitter enough about the subject. This only ends up with people like Dulcamara, AndyLegate or myself (just to name a few) wanting to give up - this is not a good thing.

What we can do however, is speak calmly about the issues and try to find solutions to it, rather than relive the whole history again.

The fact is, people are still using UAM. TrapperDave attempts to bring them to use DI, which is overall quite good since it has more Ages, since Cyan is mostly okay with it, and since it can be temporarily suspended by Diafero in case of major emergency (Cyan suddenly deciding they'd rather not have it, or Ubisoft suddenly deciding they care about little old Uru).

The problem is DI doesn't work out-of-the-box for everyone. Yes, in 95% of cases, it works flawlessly, which makes it difficult to troubleshoot the issue. I even used it on a non-Steam boxed French version of the game and it worked (although I had the game language set to English which might improve compatibility with DI). But if people report problems with it, then there IS a problem with it. It might just be a very silly problem like a wrongly named file or something, but it's still a valid problem, which means it's more important than petty squabbles about reconstructing history.



Now, quote time...


Korovev wrote:
Sirius wrote:Now, RAD Game Tools could have simply filed a complaint against Cyan directly and dragged them to tribunal (Cyan would have lost the trial). But they went the amicable way and warned them that they should make the file disappear as fast as possible. Why ? Because it was a smallish single file which wasn't very useful on its own, and Cyan didn't try to open-source the whole proprietary code.

RAD Game Tools also possibly did have the means to drag Cyan in tribunal. Cyan might not have the resources to do so with UAM, and/or might lose (these kind of trials are not always a sure win).
Cyan not acting against UAM doesn’t imply supporting it;

Indeed. Cyan is not going to drag anyone to tribunal because it's costly, annoying and long - they can't afford it. Ubisoft could, but it's unlikely they care (but then who can say for sure).
However, Cyan could lose interest in Uru, or decide those pesky fans are too annoying to work on the Intangible and Gateway projects, etc. That's what we should watch out for.

Either way, warning people that Cyan might not approve it is doable. A trickier issue is...

Korovev wrote:
Sirius wrote:As the MOUL topic shows, there are just those who are aware that UAM is illegal, and those who aren't. But if you warn them they understand that they should avoid it.

Will they? Or will they just not care as long as it’s convenient?
[/quote]
(Like I said, when I wrote that I forgot about the Facebook posts that praised UAM even after the warning.)
But to this I can only say, "hence the need to make DI more convenient than UAM is".
DI already has more Ages. All that might be required is to solve installation bugs.
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Re: Questions regarding UAM

Postby Karkadann » Sat Apr 22, 2017 5:09 pm

Drawing attention to the legalities involved here actually increases the chances of someone taking legal action.
Perhaps it would be best to agree to disagree before its to late?!?!?!

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Re: Questions regarding UAM

Postby Tsar Hoikas » Sat Apr 22, 2017 5:19 pm

Sirius wrote:As for Cyan, they don't have the time to bother with this stuff and I'm starting to think they know even less than we do about the whole history of UAM and how legal it is. They probably decided it's "complicated stuff" and should rather mindlessly delete any reference to it until they have a good reason to dig in it (and good headache medicine).


I think it's simpler than what you're proposing. I'm under the impression that Cyan sees any PotS based shard as illicit, including DI. Mentions of DI probably don't get erased from the MOULa forum because they don't generate much if any controversy. This is a result of the care taken to not step all over Cyan's IP rights, IMO. If the UAM Shard shout out in the event thread didn't produce such a vocal response, I expect it would still be there.
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Re: Questions regarding UAM

Postby TrapperDave » Sat Apr 22, 2017 6:05 pm

Karkadann wrote: Drawing attention ............ Perhaps it would be best to agree to disagree before its to late?!?!?!

Now this might be the most wise thing to do ! Please stop talking about it and drawing attention to it all ? I for one just posted a simple little event on the MOULa forum, never expecting all of this ... ahhhh.
"If's ... grey's ... doubts" are just stirring a troubled pot :) I wish the MOULa thread never had brought all this controversy out like it did for Cyan to see ! The Event thread is still there sitting quiet.
Now it continues here and not solving a anything ! I think we should quietly move in positive optimistic directions. So I'm stopping and letting it rest now. It is what it is and has been putting along for years with no problems.
I don't think Cyan wants to see all this trouble that perhaps maybe we are creating ?
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Re: Questions regarding UAM

Postby Tsar Hoikas » Sat Apr 22, 2017 7:37 pm

So, in your approximation, we should not have an open discussion about a subject as important as this? As of yet, I have seen nothing here to cause me concern from a moderation perspective. The topic remains open.
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Re: Questions regarding UAM

Postby Deledrius » Sat Apr 22, 2017 10:24 pm

TrapperDave wrote:Now this might be the most wise thing to do ! Please stop talking about it and drawing attention to it all ?

No. It's wrong. When you see a wrong, the correct response is not to ignore it and hope we'll all just decide to be okay with it.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke


Look, this whole thing is insulting. It's insulting to Cyan. They've made the game available for free (of cost), and that's not good enough. They've even made the source code for the engine free (of use). They've looked the other way for Deep Island, likely because its admins take great care to minimize the amount of impact it has and the infringement it requires. None of this is apparently good enough.

It's insulting to us running Gehn, too. We at the GoW have to bend through all kinds of contortions making the patcher and the game behave in ways it's really not designed to do just to minimize the amount of work for players to get started without infringing on Cyan's rights to their content. We could make it really, really easy if we didn't care. We could host the entire game on our server, as the UAM shard is doing, and just serve it up. If we did that, our players would find it much easier to play, just like on the UAM shard. Certain types of crashes would vanish overnight. The client would run better under Wine. But we'd be hurting Cyan, and we'd likely be hurting the players in the long run as Cyan would have a solid legal basis to shut us down. Instead we work to mitigate all these little bugs brought about by being good citizens.

So when someone else comes along that doesn't care, and appears to make things easier for people by breaking those rules, and they get praise for it? It's insulting. It's ignorant, yes, but that only lasts until you're informed why the UAM shard is doing something wrong. If at that point you try to dig in your heels and excuse your behavior you're spitting on every party who's worked for the last decade to be good stewards for this game. You no longer have ignorance as an excuse. You can no longer use the UAM shard in good conscience.


Seriously, this is very simple: UAM Shard is infringing on the rights of Cyan to control of their property, and anyone using it after being told this is admitting that they're more concerned with their own convenience than that legal truth.


One could certainly debate the moral question of intellectual property laws (I know I have, and do). One could also debate the value of a moral obligation to Cyan and the good faith they've shown over the years (and continue to do so) as well as fans such as diafero and Hoikas who have worked hard to make the game, and the Ages made by fans, as widely available as possible in as safe and responsible manner as possible; I'd deeply question anyone who would dismiss that history.

This is why people are upset. As long as people continue to encourage use of and defend the UAM shard, they will continue to be upset. Not talking about the problem won't make it go away, and in fact allows it to fester and worsen. The only people who should want this topic to be ignored are people who want to be able to continue using it and not be confronted with the ethics of doing so. Anyone who cares about Uru, about MOULa, about DI and Gehn (and the other legit shards), and about Fan-created Ages, would steer clear of the UAM shard and would actively discourage anyone else from using it or submitting their content to it.

It's too bad that your event got caught up in this, TrapperDave, and Dulcamara's Age as well, since the underlying problem is not your fault. It's a good reminder that asking questions and doing research is a good idea. Given what I've seen of the level of discourse and knowledge on the Facebook group, I would suggest discounting it as a source of information as a general rule.
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Re: Questions regarding UAM

Postby Doobes » Sun Apr 23, 2017 5:06 am

Deledrius wrote:Given what I've seen of the level of discourse and knowledge on the Facebook group, I would suggest discounting it as a source of information as a general rule.


That's Facebook for ya. Thank the Maker we're not talking politics. :P

Pretty much agree with everything in Deledrius' previous post. Using the UAM shard while it lets you download those particular files for free is illegal and is a slap to the face of those trying their best to work within the sometimes strict guidelines put into place. It may be "easier" for some, but presumably, my commute would be "easier" if I used the shoulder to pass everyone and just ran every red light on my way to work. Quicker? Absolutely. Legal? Of course not.

It's all about maintaining a balance with Cyan. They give us some leeway as far as open source shards, and in turn, we do our best to comply with their wishes...which includes following their guidelines for distribution of their files.

And as far as this debate heating up again, it probably wouldn't have happened had the shard not resurfaced and gained some notoriety on social networking sites. It should be discussed every time to educate those who are not familiar with the situation, IMHO.
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