IllFonic's Nexuiz

[qubodup]

@Blog-access-guys: With all respect to your NDAs, would you please be so kind to write a post of clarification, as much as your contracts allow, on your Blog?

Thanks..

[Lamoot]

If anything, he's the GOOD guy in all of this, he's been nothing but a gentleman. His company bought the stuff from Alientrap, so whoever takes decisions for Alientrap should be blamed for bad decisions that were taken.

This makes it sound like as if Illfonic and Khedrin are innocent passers-by and they just happened to stumble on all of this commotion. There are two parties involved in the deal and you can't say one bears all the responsibility and the other bears none. The agressive replies towards Illfonic are not justified, but neither to they affect how justified or unjustified Illfonic's acts are.

The fact is, there is a group of people, interests, invested efforts and time that go by the name Nexuiz. Suddenly a third party comes and says it will use that name and identity for its own purposes and that the rights to the name have been acquired without the consent of that group of people, interests etc. that bears that name. Sure it's legal through the Alientrap deal, but is such argument supposed to magicaly calm people down when a part of their identity has been taken away? "Legal, contract, already signed, NDA" all you want, but we all know we live in a world where legal doesn't necessarily mean moral or legitimate.

This is how the Nexuiz community feels right now and whether Illfonic likes it or not, this is what they got when they opened the Pandora's box. Claiming they didn't expect this is like saying "But I didn't know she was 16" and expecting you'd suddenly be free of all responsibility. You can't build good public and community relations on such a basis.

[Urcscumug]

I think it's most of all a miscommunication problem.

Apparently the name was not aquired so the FOSS project is free to use it (but beware of the case someone attempts to aquire a trademark for it). And the GPL'd code and data that was already published and distributed are still under the GPL and they will always be.

Illfonic is just doing a fork, and using the same name for it. Which is bad judgement in my oppinion as well as others', and we'll see how that plays out.

But nothing has been "stolen". Nothing has been taken from the community, so far. Other then perhaps their innocence.

[LordHavoc]

I think it's most of all a miscommunication problem.

That is my understanding as well, there are facts behind the miscommunications, but I think all involved are reaching logical connections and assumptions, eventually.

Apparently the name was not aquired so the FOSS project is free to use it (but beware of the case someone attempts to aquire a trademark for it). And the GPL'd code and data that was already published and distributed are still under the GPL and they will always be.

Any danger of someone trying to trademark the name has existed from the beginning, it is not new nor is it related to a particular course of action.

It is worth noting that Lee has rights to Nexuiz 1.0 and had acquired those rights before it was even decided that it would be GPL, IllFonic has rights to use Nexuiz 1.0 as basis for their game, so they can avoid all legal questions on the GPL code while still utilizing a large portion of what makes Nexuiz what it is.

[Rad Ished]

Urcscumug wrote:
But nothing has been "stolen". Nothing has been taken from the community, so far. Other then perhaps their innocence. :)
...
Troll

[michaelb]

I just now found out about this divisive decision, and it troubles me. I have contributed very little to Nexuiz, but am still rather saddened by this issue. I hope it can be resolved reasonably and that you guys will understand our contentions.

@IllFonic, Kedhrin
We're developers just like you guys, and take pride in our work too. The very little I contributed was to an open source game named Nexuiz, without the knowledge that the game branding -- without my particular content contributions -- was going to be re-applied to a commercial game without consent of all who were involved in the making of the Nexuiz brand. Remember, we didn't just contribute models. We contributed game decisions, community, and viral and word-of-mouth advertising for a game which we thought was going to remain "simple, fast, intense, and completely free". In one of your posts you mentioned that you hoped that we would join your community (this is paraphrased, I'm aware). To us, you must understand this seems very backward.

I'm not saying you don't sell software. I have a day job programming too. Just don't steal the Nexuiz name, and the intangible aspects of its reputation among open source gamers which cannot be covered by the GPL. The name "Nexuiz" doesn't have any relation to any part of the game that you are using (darkplaces, whatever game logic you are using, and so forth -- I do not know any more details), so there is no reason to keep that name precisely. The only reason that I can see is for the exact purpose of confusing your product with the community, or undermining the open source project's brand.

I'm sure this has all been said before, and probably in much better words than mine and from people closer to the project, but I just wanted to add another voice. Thanks.

[Urcscumug]

That is my understanding as well, there are facts behind the miscommunications, but I think all involved are reaching logical connections and assumptions, eventually.

Err, it would have been better if there was no need for assumptions. It doesn't do anybody any good, all this squirming around, letting people do their own guesswork.

And you happen to be one of the people in a position to clear things up. Some clear-cut answers would go a long way towards that.

IMO the most urgent question is: is the alientrap.org domain still willing to host the Nexuiz developer community, and for how long?

Any danger of someone trying to trademark the name has existed from the beginning, it is not new nor is it related to a particular course of action.

It is a danger inherent to most FOSS projects. However, that's not the main problem here.

The current confusion stems from the fact that Kedhrin has made it seem as if Alien Trap had some actual rights that were transferred to Illfonic. Have they or have they not?

I can understand Illfonic trying to secure such rights to the name. In fact, I had assumed they had them already, or have applied for them. Simply saying "we've decided to fork this project and we'll be calling the fork the same" doesn't make any sense. Not without exclusive rights to the name.

It is worth noting that Lee has rights to Nexuiz 1.0 and had acquired those rights before it was even decided that it would be GPL, IllFonic has rights to use Nexuiz 1.0 as basis for their game, so they can avoid all legal questions on the GPL code while still utilizing a large portion of what makes Nexuiz what it is.

The legality of this has been briefly questioned and any doubts have been put to rest since. Ok, Illfonic has a legal right to the code. Whether by full copyright transfer or a relicense, it's not our business.

But, again, that's not the issue. The issue is that a lot of people have been left under the impression that this means the GPL version would cease to exist.

That is obviously not the case, and it would help if it was made as clear as possible. As you can see (right in the above posts by Rad Ished and michaelb), even after several mentions of the fact that the community hasn't lost anything, there are still people who don't believe it, or don't understand it.

Fact is, the community could go right now and register nexiuz.org, or nexuiz.net, cut all ties with Alien Trap, and get on with their lives. But is this how you and Lee want it to end?

You may be busy and have your own life, and it's understandable if you don't want to get too involved. But at the very least you need to put some of the worries to rest.

A simple statement would do: "You can still use the name, you can still use the code and the data, you can still use the site and we'll assist you when you want to move."

[Rad Ished]

To me this seems to revolve around Illfonics purchase of the nexuiz.com address.
They bought this and they want to use it , any addition or change of this would render this thing they spent cash on worthless.
...
@Urcscumug,
I've read everything in this thread and all the others and I've got a pretty good understanding of what all the points of view are,
enough to see when someone is making pointlessly inflammatory remarks.

[michaelb]

But, again, that's not the issue. The issue is that a lot of people have been left under the impression that this means the GPL version would cease to exist. That is obviously not the case, and it would help if it was made as clear as possible. As you can see (right in the above posts by Rad Ished and michaelb), even after several mentions of the fact that the community hasn't lost anything, there are still people who don't believe it, or don't understand it.

I understand that the GPL version can continue to exist, and that there are (most likely) no license violations. I think the main problem people such as me have is the name. I, and many others, contributed to an open source game named Nexuiz. We enabled one of few instances of an open source game breaking into the mainstream. We did this under the implication that the game-named-Nexuiz would remain open source. The game-named-Nexuiz is no longer going to be open source.

The phonetics "Nexuiz" has no relation to the gameplay, engine, or any other elements of the game that may persist in the commercial Nexuiz. AFAIK, it's gibberish. Thus, any name is as good as any other name. This new game is looking very different, so actually it would be pretty reasonable to assume that they'd rename it. However, how its appearing to me, they are choosing to keep the name Nexuiz when in fact it is a completely different game just to cause this confusion and piggy-back on our publicity, which is why I am objecting. This name collision will both hurt the GPL version, and cause contributors to feel as though their work in promoting an identity was stolen from them. I really hope that is not what IllFonic is intending.

Thanks.

[Kay]

maybe call it Nexuiz Original or Classic Nexuiz or something like that, sounds good for me