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Valve: Steam’d PenguinsValve: Steam’d PenguinsPosted Jul 18, 2012 17:57 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)In reply to: Valve: Steam’d Penguins by josh Parent article: Valve: Steam’d Penguins
You don't see a lot of open-source novels, either. For that matter, there's a community of people writing top-quality-for-the-genre games who generally release them for free, and they mostly don't release source to games, although they release source to libraries they wrote for games. (This being interactive fiction, where the modern authors have in many ways surpassed what Infocom did in their day.) There's a large extent to which not releasing the source for a game is motivated by the desire to avoid spoiling surprises or giving away the ending or the secrets.
I wouldn't be surprised if, in the future, we had top-quality open-source game engines, as well as vast libraries of art assets that may be freely used and tweaked in various ways, but games were generally not open source. (And I wouldn't be surprised if the engine/art/game architecture ended up being designed intentionally to make the game obviously not subject to engine or art license requirements, much as RMS's email is not subject to Emacs's license requirements.)
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Valve: Steam’d Penguins Posted Jul 18, 2012 19:45 UTC (Wed) by jedidiah (guest, #20319) [Link]
ALL novels are open source. I think you are getting your terms and concepts confused.
Valve: Steam’d Penguins Posted Jul 18, 2012 20:02 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
no, most novels are not open source
you almost never get the text in a format that is modifable (even e-books frequenly come with DRM and/or in .pdf), let alone in it's "preferred format" for changes
it's just about unheard of for you to be given permission to redistribute the text, let along permission to modify and then redistribute the text, even if you have the text in a form you can edit.
"open source" does not just mean that you can see the contents.
Valve: Steam’d Penguins Posted Jul 18, 2012 23:17 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]
If you don't like how Harry Potter ends, how do you go about changing it? Even if the novel you'd like to change is "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" (released under a Creative Commons license), you aren't allowed to, because it's (quite reasonably) the "by-nd-nc" version. In general, if you want to modify any piece of fiction, you're required to write something new from scratch (perhaps relying on the reader's knowledge of the original text, but never including that text). Of course, this is not a big Free Software issue, because it's hard to imagine someone having a pressing need for Harry-Potter-with-a-different-ending, whereas Linux-where-my-device-works is a common need. Even though there's a open-source-style need for Harry-Potter-but-it-fits-in-my-pocket, that's a qualitatively different sort of grant of rights than the GPL or BSD license applied directly to a novel would be.
Valve: Steam’d Penguins Posted Jul 19, 2012 7:25 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] you're required to write something new from scratch (perhaps relying on the reader's knowledge of the original text, but never including that text). Note that if you overtly rely on the other text, e.g. by having your characters or plot be based on that of the other, you will still be creating a derivative work of the first. In which case the copyright holder of the first work will have a copyright over the derived work.
Valve: Steam’d Penguins Posted Jul 19, 2012 11:18 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
> it's hard to imagine someone having a pressing need for Harry-Potter-with-a-different-ending
It's hard to imagine a need, but it's not hard to imagine: enter fan fiction, where I assure you "Harry-Potter-with-a-different-ending" has been done many times. In all cases, however, it's an author's original work, even though the plot and characters are thoroughly "inspired by" the original.
Legally I'm not sure where fan fiction falls. Use of the characters without permission probably gets you in trouble, as does use of the title names, and it's almost always going to be derivative.
Valve: Steam’d Penguins Posted Jul 19, 2012 20:15 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]
That was what I meant by my "writing it from scratch" note; you can write a new ending, or you can rewrite the whole story, but you can't just change the ending and include the rest of the book by itself. (In fact, for high school assignments, I ended up writing a "lost section" for The Sound and the Fury and a total rewrite of The Cask of Amontillado, but I obviously didn't turn in a complete copy of The Sound and the Fury, normal but for the addition of a section in the middle somewhere, and I didn't include any of Poe's original text, even the quoted dialog.)
IIRC, the characters and titles are considered separate works from the novels themselves, and authors have certain rights with respect to characters they created; Harry Potter fan fiction wouldn't be derivative of the book series if it didn't use any of the text, but would be derivative of the fictional universe. I haven't looked into the particular rules, but they're probably somewhat murkier and certainly different (since "fair use" is going to be an entirely different set of things).
Valve: Steam’d Penguins Posted Jul 20, 2012 19:42 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Fan fiction can actually be a major problem for the author ...
For example, Terry Pratchett quite openly says on the fan forums he frequents, "NO fan fiction". It's not that he's against it per se, but he is (quite rightly) nervous that someone will post fan-fic, and then he'll use it because he doesn't remember reading it and thinks he made it up - or, more likely - that he'll use a similar plot and get accused of stealing the fan-fic story.
So the forum moderators and posters basically have a choice - ban fan-fic and welcome the author, or allow fan-fic and drive the author away.
Terry doesn't particular care which way a forum goes, but he does care that forums he frequents abide by his rules.
Cheers,
Valve: Steam’d Penguins Posted Jul 21, 2012 10:51 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> Legally I'm not sure where fan fiction falls.
Legally, every fan fiction is a derivative work- meaning it can only be created with the original work's author permission. The rules' words are something like "a transformation of the original work or a work that uses its characters, settings or general mise-en-scene." IIRC
Valve: Steam’d Penguins Posted Jul 19, 2012 10:35 UTC (Thu) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848) [Link]
> I wouldn't be surprised if, in the future, we had top-quality open-source
> game engines, as well as vast libraries of art assets that may be freely > used and tweaked in various ways, but games were generally not open > source.
I actually wouldn't mind this as an outcome, really. For example ScummVM and the various interactive fiction interpreters all treat the games this way, and the end result is pretty great. Good quality games, no worries about lack of source for what's executing on the PC (and great quality code,) and the actual 'game' itself *can* be hacked around if your care enough (though redistribution may be an issue, but generally I think I'm OK with the original author having some control over this.)
I've never been too sure about RMS' view of different classes of works being treated differently by the copyright system, but perhaps this is an example of where it makes some sense. But yes, I remain unsure, and am certainly sway-able.
Valve: Steam’d Penguins Posted Jul 19, 2012 20:46 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]
It seems to me like RMS's feelings are described in the Free Software Definition, where he lays out what the freedoms are for. It seems critical to me that the purpose of software is functionality, rather than artistic merit (or entertainment). As you move away from functional works towards works for art's sake, the freedoms make less sense, although there is middle ground like art assets, whose purpose may be "to give the appearance of wood" (i.e., a functional aspect of the effect of the work they are in) or may be artistic on their own. But, for most of the reasons that RMS has talked about for GPL-style licensing, the goals don't make sense when you're talking about Zork or Monkey Island and you've separately taken care of the "I can't play it on a modern computer" issues.
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