Report stolen mods

[ptx0]

I assume they think the same that I do; it's not theft, no matter how many times you parrot yourself it's not going to make it true. I used the given exception in the license text for 'small bugfixes for compatibility', if they want to reword their license to make it more strict, that's fine, but the old version of LTNT is always going to be available under the previous license, and so will my 'fork'.

[Loewchen]

Can we have a response from Wube on this?

There is a very similar topic with a response: 73799.

[Oktokolo]

This thread looks like a misunderstanding of intent and license to me.

The MIT license is one of the smallest licenses out there. Reading it before using it, should be feasible:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

And someone forking some mods just to get them visible on the same page... Not the brightest move but i see no bad intent here and it will most likely not hurt the download counter of the original mods anyway.

P.S.:
I wonder why the game does not attract some real infringements and bad intended people. A game with an audience of that size normally has some bad people keeping the mods banning.
But in the case of Factorio, the only attracted bad behaviour seems to be fake complaints about non-existing bad behaviour...

[Deadlock989]

Can we have a response from Wube on this?

There is a very similar topic with a response: 73799.

So that's the last word, and the official way to report stolen mods and license breakers is to go to a forum on a different website and search hundreds of thousands of posts for an e-mail address. Gotcha.

[ptx0]

ah i just discovered I can transfer ownership to eduran. done. solved. everyone can GO home now.

[kirazy]

This thread looks like a misunderstanding of intent and license to me.

The MIT license is one of the smallest licenses out there. Reading it before using it, should be feasible:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

And someone forking some mods just to get them visible on the same page... Not the brightest move but i see no bad intent here and it will most likely not hurt the download counter of the original mods anyway.

P.S.:
I wonder why the game does not attract some real infringements and bad intended people. A game with an audience of that size normally has some bad people keeping the mods banning.
But in the case of Factorio, the only attracted bad behaviour seems to be fake complaints about non-existing bad behaviour...

You forgot the important part of the MIT license:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

At least in the original case, the license.md file was dropped.

[5thHorseman]

So that's the last word, and the official way to report stolen mods and license breakers is to go to a forum on a different website and search hundreds of thousands of posts for an e-mail address. Gotcha.

No, the official word is to email a support address at the company that hosts the mod portal.

The only problem here is that it's not stated on the mod portal itself. But then again the site's pretty spartan in general. Maybe it is there but I just couldn't find it.

[Oktokolo]

You forgot the important part of the MIT license:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

At least in the original case, the license.md file was dropped.

I indeed missed the second case. While the Loader_Redux fork contains the copyright notice in all its versions, the MoreLoaderRedux fork does not.
The latter case indeed is a violation of the license.

[Deadlock989]

So the situation is this.

- Modders can't delete their own mods. This means that even if someone makes an honest mistake and breaks the terms of another modder's license without intending to, that mod stays on the portal forever.

- You can, however, transfer a mod's ownership to someone else, without their consent or approval. So there is nothing to prevent you ripping off someone else's mod and then transferring ownership of it to them, making it look like they authored it themselves - while you invisibly remain a collaborator, able to upload further updates. The target of this parasitic behaviour may not even know that this is happening. But of course - see above - if they do find out what has happened, they can't delete that transferred mod, because you can't delete your own mods, even if you didn't author them but had them transferred to you without consent. This is actually happening today. Unbelievable.

- There is not even a mention on the portal of the support e-mail address mentioned in a buried, closed thread on a different website, let alone a "report this mod" button.

None of these things were necessarily a problem all by themselves, provided that you could trust everyone else who had access to the portal. Sadly, that's no longer the case.

[orzelek]

So the situation is this.

- Modders can't delete their own mods. This means that even if someone makes an honest mistake and breaks the terms of another modder's license without intending to, that mod stays on the portal forever.

- You can, however, transfer a mod's ownership to someone else, without their consent or approval. So there is nothing to prevent you ripping off someone else's mod and then transferring ownership of it to them, making it look like they authored it themselves - while you invisibly remain a collaborator, able to upload further updates. The target of this parasitic behaviour may not even know that this is happening. But of course - see above - if they do find out what has happened, they can't delete that transferred mod, because you can't delete your own mods, even if you didn't author them but had them transferred to you without consent. This is actually happening today. Unbelievable.

- There is not even a mention on the portal of the support e-mail address mentioned in a buried, closed thread on a different website, let alone a "report this mod" button.

None of these things were necessarily a problem all by themselves, provided that you could trust everyone else who had access to the portal. Sadly, that's no longer the case.

I'd consider the transfer of ownership without any involvment of target person that leaves you as collaborator really sketchy - that should be fixed on mod portal side.
This basically allows you to release any mod as anyone and pretend to be that person while distributing that mod.

[Klonan]

I'd consider the transfer of ownership without any involvment of target person that leaves you as collaborator really sketchy - that should be fixed on mod portal side.
This basically allows you to release any mod as anyone and pretend to be that person while distributing that mod.

Yea this is a right pickle, we will disable the ownership transfer ASAP until we can fix it.
I have also reverted the authorship change that ptx0 did, as it was bad mannered to say the least.

As for the core license issue,
I have reached out to the original author of the mod Eduran for his input,
If there isn't any response in a timely manner, I will consider some next steps, such as removing the offending mod from the mod portal

[Boeng01]

The target of this parasitic behaviour may not even know that this is happening. But of course - see above - if they do find out what has happened, they can't delete that transferred mod, because you can't delete your own mods, even if you didn't author them but had them transferred to you without consent. This is actually happening today. Unbelievable.

This is rediculous.

First you're arguing about him releasing an update to a mod, that surely a lot of players are looking for, under his own name (but under the original license of the original author). Now he changed this and gave ownership back to the original author - and you're arguing about that.

He is just helping keeping this mod alive. I cannot see any phishing for compliments here. The original author left, for whatever reason, and he stepped in to help. This should be rewarded, not punished.

As before mentioned in this thread - the more quality mods, the better. And i do absolutely respect anyone who's putting time and effort into modding, since all of you expand the factorio experience. Thanks for that.

This doesn't change by closing a thread and thereby ending a discussion @Optera

[the_burner]

I'd consider the transfer of ownership without any involvment of target person that leaves you as collaborator really sketchy - that should be fixed on mod portal side.
This basically allows you to release any mod as anyone and pretend to be that person while distributing that mod.

Yea this is a right pickle, we will disable the ownership transfer ASAP until we can fix it.
I have also reverted the authorship change that ptx0 did, as it was bad mannered to say the least.

As for the core license issue,
I have reached out to the original author of the mod Eduran for his input,
If there isn't any response in a timely manner, I will consider some next steps, such as removing the offending mod from the mod portal

Can you please clarify how the original license is violated? It explicitly allows compatibility changes
Thank you!

[ptx0]

I have also reverted the authorship change that ptx0 did, as it was bad mannered to say the least.

I don't understand; I am damned if I do and damned if I didn't?

I uploaded it as my name with my "ptx0's ...." prefixed because I wanted users to know to look for the original and find an official update if it were available.

I don't give a damn, I would have used the original "LTN Tracker" name but it was already taken by the original mod.

I didn't mean anything bad by moving the mod over to eduran's name. I figured this would appease the crowd who felt I was wrongly acquiring "recognition" for uploading their mod with my name attached to it. Now I am being called out for *this*.

and you didn't reach out to me personally before making this public post - one person who is obviously active and involved in this issue, but you did reach out to eduran.

there is no need to guess for eduran's desires, it is written clearly in his license, that i am allowed to make a modification for compatibility reasons. this is no longer in the updated Optera License, but we all know, license changes aren't retroactive unless it is stated within the license itself (ala CDDL 1.0).

[ptx0]

i should note there are several Angels' mods that required updates for .18 and even Seablock itself that I didn't update and post for .18 because their licenses specifically disallow this.

[Oktokolo]

I don't understand; I am damned if I do and damned if I didn't?

Uploading under another author's name without that author's explicit opermission is pretty obviously an act of impersonation. That is something almost nobody likes and doing stuff like that is almost everywhere considered ban-worthy.
Don't do that. It is never a viable strategy for evading copyright claims.

there is no need to guess for eduran's desires, it is written clearly in his license, that i am allowed to make a modification for compatibility reasons. this is no longer in the updated Optera License, but we all know, license changes aren't retroactive unless it is stated within the license itself (ala CDDL 1.0).

You included the GIT repository of your fork in your release (not sure, why anyone would ever do that, as it inflates ZIP size). I verified that last original author's commit has the same hash as in the official repository. That repository never saw any other license than the Optera license. The first release covered by that repository goes back to February 2019 (predating any release available in the mod portal today).
The repository, you included in your release clearly shows, that you based your changes on the latest version, wich obviously is licensed under the Optera license.
It also shows, that your changes are indeed the minimal set of name-changes and other minor adjustions to get the mod working with 0.18.
So don't try to defend yourself with old licenses, wich may or may not have been the license of some ancient version (yes, the author may release versions under different licenses), wich almost certainly would be a pain to make compatible with 0.18 anyway.
The current license indeed explicitly allows your changes:

Exceptions to the no modification rule include:
- Minor bug fixes/tweak for compatibility reasons, such as altering the dependencies line in info.json to force a load order in a modpack.

So stick to it. Don't make yourself look like a weasel by pulling licenses wich do not even apply. The license is on your side.

I have also reverted the authorship change that ptx0 did, as it was bad mannered to say the least.

Looks, like you missed one.

[ptx0]

So stick to it. Don't make yourself look like a weasel by pulling licenses wich do not even apply. The license is on your side.

I was talking about the one which you mentioned. the "current" Optera license has changed the wording. Any weasel-like references are on you.

[Oktokolo]

So stick to it. Don't make yourself look like a weasel by pulling licenses wich do not even apply. The license is on your side.

I was talking about the one which you mentioned. the "current" Optera license has changed the wording. Any weasel-like references are on you.

I am talking about the License in Eduran's repository. As your fork is based on the latest version, the license of the latest version is the license wich counts. That license is the version Eduran copied in february 2019. He did not update the license since then, so whether Optera later updated hers isn't relevant.

[konpeki]

Again here's the exception granted to specifically two files:

Exceptions to the no modification rule include:

- Minor bug fixes/tweak for compatibility reasons, such as altering the dependencies line in info.json to force a load order in a modpack.
- Config - Any config.lua file may be edited and freely redistributed by itself.

Where does it say in there that it is for those two files? It just mentions two files, but the wording does not state that it's specifically only for those two files. You just made up the "two files" part on the spot.
The

such as altering the dependencies line in info.json to force a load order in a modpack.

is literally just giving an example of how it could be used, it doesn't mean or state that it's the only way it could be used.
From all of this I think I understand that you probably intended to be only those two files, but in reality, I can't see how anyone would interpret that as such, if you were to try to dissect the exact meaning of the words/sentence.
As obviously you care so much about semantics, they're not in your favour? In my opinion.

Thank you ptx0 for supporting a great mod, that obviously many people use/care about, when nobody else does so and all of that for free.

[Deadlock989]

Yea this is a right pickle, we will disable the ownership transfer ASAP until we can fix it.
I have also reverted the authorship change that ptx0 did, as it was bad mannered to say the least.

It's still showing as Eduran. When in fact it was created and then implanted into Eduran's roster by the thief and parasite ptx0, who even bragged about doing it on the forum.

Oktokolo is right, almost anywhere else, this kind of behaviour would get you a ban.