GNU Licensing and Bias behavior on Mc-Market.

[Driftay]

Hello everyone, today I am here to talk about GNU Licensing and How insanely bias the website can be when it comes to said licensing.

How did this start?
So I received a warning for, "[Warning] Offering/Selling Item/Service Without Right" upon releasing SaberFactions on Mc-Market. Now I am not going to lie. I was highly pissed off when I was notified I received the warning even though it was later waved off. I will explain why I am still pissed off and irritated about it and I'll go on to explain about how bias Mc-Market is.

Now, with that being said, you cannot Sell something that isn't open sourced under GNU. You simply cannot do it. If it's allowed on Mc-Market I shall start doing the same thing. You can sell it however if the project is open-sourced.

Prime Examples of these would be:

- FactionsUltimate
- StellarFactions
- All these spigot that are "top tier"

This is not to throw shade at ANYONE lets get this very clear. I have the atmost respect for all developers in this community, I'm just trying to protect myself and other developers who experience this. Now take note, the Staff member who gave me the warning was fairly new and this is not to throw shade at him either. This is just a prime example of how things are handled on here.

So for example, FactionsUltimate, You sell the jar for 20$ I think it is, but sell the source for 50?

How that is even relatively legal being under GNU is beyond me, but somehow it is still allowed to be sold on Mc-Market.

I followed all the guidelines to releasing my own factions plugin, minus selling it. I made it open-source, made it free, and still offer support for it. So why can I be warned, but somehow others cannot? I just want a good explanation of the thought process of half of the threads that go up.

If you take a clean look at the plugins directory it is practically leak city. (People claiming they own code such as Anti-Cheats, Spigots, HCF Cores, and Practice Cores.)

I'm just confused as to why I'm being told I can't upload my factions plugin or make a premium version of it when I clearly see other people doing so. All the proof to my warning being voided and the clear construction of my plugin being 100% mine will be provided in the threads pictures.

Feel Free to leave opinions and other banter below, as I am curious to see what you guys think. Personally I think "Rules are Rules" so you must follow them. At the end of the day some plugin developers have a goal. Make money. As I'm sure that is a goal for everyone. But why take a project that you know you will be illegally distributing and why make it premium without open sourcing it as stated in the GNU licensing agreement.

Thanks for reading my rant, Driftay

Note: I did not add the staff members name, as I do not want to do anything with their rep. I like the staff on here, but if you are going to do this to one you need to do it to all.

Proof Below.

 

[Ghast]

Definitely something that will need to be debated in the future.

 

[Ghast]

Or right now, because it's probably a bigger issue than half the other things going on in this site.
I think Majored normally does his job right as a resource moderator, but this is a bit of a grey area and has been for a while.

Pretty sure there's the following to deal with inb4:

• Major Account conflict: shall MCM go full legit?
• Reputations: What is deemed to be an invalid reputation and should external users be allowed to report other's reputations.
• Exit-Scamming: What can be done to prevent such?
• Leaking: When will the API be implemented as promised a month+ ago?

 

[Kuzni]

Or right now, because it's probably a bigger issue than half the other things going on in this site.
I think Majored normally does his job right as a resource moderator, but this is a bit of a grey area and has been for a while.

You've been registered for 17 days?

 

[Kuzni]

Not really relevant, but alright.

You said it's been a gray area for a WHILE. Is 17 days a while or?

 

[Rmar]

To piggyback on licensing and ownership issues: I also find it quite interesting that you can verify ownership of a resource by having a screenshot of random directories in any IDE. It's really not proving anything other than you know how to create classes in your IDE or you know how to decompile a jar and open it in an IDE.

 

[Harry]

I think Majored normally does his job right as a resource moderator, but this is a bit of a grey area and has been for a while.

It wasn't myself that issued the warning points this was in regards to, but thanks for the kind words.

Driftay In your specific situation, it looks like SavageFactions has been GNU licensed since at least August of last year, so it simply looks to be a mistake by the moderator, which was corrected. I'm unsure why there was talk about GitHub forking rights; maybe I'm missing context to the situation, but to me, that doesn't seem relevant (considering the GNU license).

My personal understanding was that as soon as you violate the licence agreement, the granted redistribution rights are void, and the user would be open to a rule 5.4 warning.

I'll bring this up with the rest of the team so we can clarify our stance (or inform myself if I'm incorrect) and look to moderate this consistently.

 

[Niteburn]

Yeah I always wondered how MCM allowed users to sell spigot forks when even Spigot was having legal issues.

 

[Harry]

Yeah I always wondered how MCM allowed users to sell spigot forks when even Spigot was having legal issues.

That's a bit of a different situation, and our stance on that is outlined within the redistribution rights wiki:

Bukkit is licensed under the GNU GPL, however, CraftBukkit, which is a derivative work (implementation) of Bukkit, is under the the GNU LGPL. CraftBukkit's LGPL is thus incompatible, since it attempts to be a less restrictive license. Going a step further, CraftBukkit is a reverse engineered copy of Mojang's proprietary server software, a "Modded version of the game" as defined by Mojang, and thus, their less restrictive GPL is also incompatible, since it attempts to permit commercial usage which Mojang’s EULA explicitly forbids of modded versions of their game.

Whether you are building your plugins with Bukkit or Craftbukkit, you will be using the same API, and since no court proceedings have set any legal presidents upholding the validity of any of these conflicting licenses, their interpretation is largely are out of our hands.

Whereas with projects such as SavageFactions, there's no disputing it's GNU licensed, so we should be expected to uphold it.

 

[Driftay]

That's a bit of a different situation, and our stance on that is outlined within the redistribution rights wiki:


Whereas with projects such as SavageFactions, there's no disputing it's GNU licensed, so we should be expected to uphold it.

How is this possible when SavageFactions is forked from FactionsUUID?

Even though it doesnt state so on github neither my github, it still is forked from FactionsUUID which is underlined in GNU

Like look at my thread and FactionsUltimates, it seems like everyone knows Savage is forked from FactionsUUID but the staff.

 

[Harry]

How is this possible when SavageFactions is forked from FactionsUUID?

Even though it doesnt state so on github neither my github, it still is forked from FactionsUUID which is underlined in GNU

I'm not sure what you're quite asking.

SavageFactions is indeed a fork of FactionsUUID and that is stated on SavageFaction's GitHub repository. Since FactionsUUID is also licensed under GNU, SavageFactions is free to license there's under GNU as well (based on the license conditions).

The redistribution rights wiki quote was specifically in reference to Spigot/similar forks. For plugins such as SavageFactions/FactionsUUID, their GNU license should be properly enforced.

 

[Ghast]

I'm not sure what you're quite asking.

SavageFactions is indeed a fork of FactionsUUID and that is stated on SavageFaction's GitHub repository. Since FactionsUUID is also licensed under GNU, SavageFactions is free to license there's under GNU as well (based on the license conditions).

The redistribution rights wiki quote was specifically in reference to Spigot/similar forks. For plugins such as SavageFactions/FactionsUUID, their GNU license should be properly enforced.

However the same can be said about Bukkit, making all Spigots and forks of such also under GNU.

 

[Harry]

However the same can be said about Bukkit, making all Spigots and forks of such also under GNU.

Not exactally, since both plugins are enforcing the same GNU license, so there's no confusion in regards to what conditions should be followed when making derivative works.

Problems arise when different organisations/authors attempt to enforce different, less restrictive licenses over their derivative works. These are the situations, such as Spigot/similar forks, that we cannot interpret or enforce, hence the redistribution rights Wiki quote.

 

[Driftay]

I'm not sure what you're quite asking.

SavageFactions is indeed a fork of FactionsUUID and that is stated on SavageFaction's GitHub repository. Since FactionsUUID is also licensed under GNU, SavageFactions is free to license there's under GNU as well (based on the license conditions).

The redistribution rights wiki quote was specifically in reference to Spigot/similar forks. For plugins such as SavageFactions/FactionsUUID, their GNU license should be properly enforced.

Ok so you can fork something and remove the license? Looking at the GNU license it sticks with all propriety code from the originating source.

 

[Harry]

Ok so you can fork something and remove the license? Looking at the GNU license it sticks with all propriety code from the originating source.

It depends on what license is chosen, but for GNU licenses, this is not the case in regards to being able to strip away the license*.

GNU licenses (or at least the GNU license used by SavageFactions) requires all derivative works to be licensed under GNU as well, so you wouldn't be able to fork a project and just strip away the license.

 

[Driftay]

It depends on what license is chosen, but for GNU licenses, this is not the case in regards to being able to strip away the license*.

GNU licenses (or at least the GNU license used by SavageFactions) requires all derivative works to be licensed under GNU as well, so you wouldn't be able to fork a project and just strip away the license.

So how are these spigots and factions plugins still up and for sale ?

 

[Harry]

So how are these spigots and factions plugins still up and for sale ?

I've already attempted to explain that:

Problems arise when different organisations/authors attempt to enforce different, less restrictive licenses over their derivative works. These are the situations, such as Spigot/similar forks, that we cannot interpret or enforce, hence the redistribution rights Wiki quote.

Spoiler: Redistribution Rights Wiki

Bukkit is licensed under the GNU GPL, however, CraftBukkit, which is a derivative work (implementation) of Bukkit, is under the the GNU LGPL. CraftBukkit's LGPL is thus incompatible, since it attempts to be a less restrictive license. Going a step further, CraftBukkit is a reverse engineered copy of Mojang's proprietary server software, a "Modded version of the game" as defined by Mojang, and thus, their less restrictive GPL is also incompatible, since it attempts to permit commercial usage which Mojang’s EULA explicitly forbids of modded versions of their game.

Whether you are building your plugins with Bukkit or Craftbukkit, you will be using the same API, and since no court proceedings have set any legal presidents upholding the validity of any of these conflicting licenses, their interpretation is largely are out of our hands.

As both SavageFactions and FactionsUUID are licensed under the same GNU license, there's nothing to interpret or dispute. Any derivative works of these projects must also be licensed under GNU, as per the license conditions.