IllFonic's Nexuiz

[SC0RP]

I'm pretty much doubt Urcscumug is form Illfonic, don't be paranoid.

I wasnt suggesting he was from IllFonic. Im thinking this guy has been instructed to tell us this information at the request of IllFonic.

http://identi.ca/urcscumug
http://tremulous.net/forum/index.php?ac ... =statPanel
End of story.

Thats does not really prove anything mate. He plays Tremulous, big deal! What does he do for a living? Legal advisor? Whatever, this is all irrelevant, what he wrote needed to be said either way.

The point that we publicly need to hear from Alientrap still stands. Does anyone agree with me on this?

[tChr]

Not long from now Joe Users are going to associate Nexuiz with the commercial version. Do you really think Joe User is going to notice the small button linking to the original project on the bottom of Nexuiz.com? No.

As I've said before.. The console game won't play on PC, the PC game won't play on console, so.. any link to the PC version should suffice. As long as (if) we keep the name as it is on the PC version , we may be pretty secure in that IllFonic has in it's own interest to make sure the free version looks as good as possible (the alternative would be to bury it, which must be very tempting to everyone with a commercial interest considering the nature og the current discussion)

[Urcscumug]

Alien Trap owns a trademark for "Nexuiz".

I've checked with both the United States Patent and Trademark Office and with The Trademarks and Designs Registration Office of the European Union. The name Nexuiz is not registered in any way. Meaning anyone can just go and take it.

Sorry about that. Everywhere I've looked I've seen "Nexuiz is a trademark of Alien Trap" so I naturally assumed they actually registered it, at least in the US. I'm also assuming that when Illfonic said "we've aquired the name" they have secured the legal rights, or started to.

If it is as you say, yes, it can get hairy. If you want to go on with taking back the name, contact EFF. I believe they deal with trademark issues as well. At the very least they can put you in touch with further legal counsel, perhaps for both US and EU. You can learn about what your actual options are.

Whoever you are, Im pretty certain you have been asked to tell us this information at the request of IllFonic.

I'm not affiliated with anybody, like I said, but since I have no way of proving that, the point is moot. And since you got past that and looked at what I said impartially, that's all that matters.

I wish the initial announcement had made things more clear. If they have said "Illfonic has forked Nexuiz, aquired the trademark, and Alien Trap will donate the site and forum back to the community and go their different ways"... I think it would have gone down much smoother (name issue aside).

I agree that they should have picked a different name. I'm not even sure what special commercial value they saw in it that can't be quickly replicated with money. But once they've settled on "Nexuiz", trademark competition is fierce and they have no choice but to actively protect it if they wanna keep the brand from being diluted.

that would fit to the last part he wrote

The part about being realistic? The part about good-will? Think of the worst case scenarios. The community and AT+Illfonic can do a lot of harm to each other. But do any of you want that? I'm hesitant to even name some of the many way this can still go terribly wrong, so as not to inflame spirits.

I'm still not sure why you think you got shafted. Illfonic's Nexuiz, for all intents and purposes, is a fork. The community loses nothing as far as the code and game data are concerned.

The standing issues are the name and the website+forum.

[paperclips]

contact EFF.

Yes, or SFLC.

Could some moderator fix this phpBB-code issue? Thanks.

[Irritant]

Alien Trap owns a trademark for "Nexuiz".

Not really. As already stated they've aquired partial right through use, this only applies to the US.

I've checked with both the United States Patent and Trademark Office and with The Trademarks and Designs Registration Office of the European Union. The name Nexuiz is not registered in any way. Meaning anyone can just go and take it.

There are some problems in the US law to prohibit this (although no matter what the law says, it's ALWAYS the side with the most money winning...) but this does not apply for the EU.

Is AlienTrap a registered cooperation or partnership? How is AlienTrap defined? On the website it is defined as a "group of developers on the internet". Did Vermuelen come up with the name, or did someone else?

[tundramagi]

antidote said:
You guys need to quit putting your proverbial heads in the sand about this. Yes Nexuiz has been licensed to IllFonic however you don't really have any legal say, the fact that Kedhrin has even put forth the effort to post this thread is proof of his desire to include the community in some way heck, he may even offer beta discs for people on this community to test, we don't know. Quit nurfing this guy for being considerate of your opinion and shut up about him "stealing" the Nexuiz name (which he DID NOT do) Also I'm sorry my first post as an actual member had to be negative toward the community but this needed to be said.

We are not gamers, consumers, etc. Most of us here are mappers, modelers, and programmers. Stop insulting us by talking to us as if we are gamers or consumers. We are producers, your elitism insults us. Be elite on a gamers forum (this is not one).

Most of the pure-gamers are on the game servers, not in this forum.

Kedhrin said:
This thread was hijacked about complaints about us taking the name, which should have been brought to me in private or on another thread - not blasted on a thread where people will look to it for information on what we are doing. THIS is why it was locked. It is not a censorship issue. If I wanted to censor you, I would've just deleted the thread. I can be a complete dick and flex my muscle but I'm not going to do that, that is not our company lifestyle. People are insulting us on our own areas as well. We do not delete these things. We are professionals.

From my experiance, the people who use this forum are not gamers/consumers. They are content and code producers. To be a "dick" is what one does on consumer forums. This is not such a forum. Usually this forum url is given out when someone expresses interest in contributing code or media to the game. The people on this forum do the same work that you do, the only diffrence is the way they license it (GPL), and the quality (though morphed, oblivion, etc and all the mappers who have maps included in the official release have the same skills as your content creators, and the game-code programmers are the best in class (ex: Div0))

Kedhrin said:
We have many things planned for the community existing, including giving away some of our hard work on the source code - for free, crediting the original community in the credits (as supplied by the community) as well as Beta Invites and potentially free copies of the game. These are things I can talk about and want to talk about. As well as much much more, including features, how we work, what our work flow is etc.

Code would certainly be appreciated by members of this forum. Beta invites and such are best targeted at the gamers in the "nexuiz community". You should looks for them on the nexuiz game servers themselves. I don't know who the "big dog" players are however.

Could you please understand the diffrent audiances you are talking to? You're not talking to gamers here on this forum, rather you are talking to producers and programmers.

antidote said.
So? hundreds of people had already contributed to the old ET:QW project and guess what? it was all thrown away however they didn't moan and groan about it like this community they shrugged their shoulder's like grown ups and started another project (can't remember what it was)

"The diffrence between the mod community and the opensource community is that the opensource community knows what it's contributions are worth."

(D.E.S.)

[cortez]

what is alientrap? is one of the big mysteries at the moment

Urcscumug: Im sorry for accusing you of something. I simply missunderstood your post.

[tundramagi]

antidote said.
So? hundreds of people had already contributed to the old ET:QW project and guess what? it was all thrown away however they didn't moan and groan about it like this community they shrugged their shoulder's like grown ups and started another project (can't remember what it was)

After thinking about it, antidote, ... Your above antecedent about the mod community sorta reminds me of lda17h's line of reasoning:

17:50 < lda17h> mikee__: also it's the other way around, too
17:51 < lda17h> it's illegal for grown up women to have relationships with males that are not of age..
...
17:56 <mikee__> Though if my eye is poked out I may be able to poke out the eye of she who poked me, I do not want my eye poked out at all.
17:57 <lda17h> fuck you.. /ignore mikee__

[Ilaith]

Is AlienTrap a registered cooperation or partnership?

I doubt it. The Name "Alientrap" isn't registered in the US or EU. Remeber that it still may have some protection in the US (trademark through use), but not full trademark protection.

How is AlienTrap defined? On the website it is defined as a "group of developers on the internet". Did Vermuelen come up with the name, or did someone else?

Let me quote the irc channel:

[21:40] Ilaith: Vermeulen: What does "Alientrap" refer to?
[21:40] Vermeulen: I have been using the name Alientrap with every project I've done for the last 10 years
[21:41] Vermeulen: Including games for marketers I did about a year ago

This, and what is said on the website, is all we know. No way to determine if it's the truth or not.

[Shoe]

antidote said.
So? hundreds of people had already contributed to the old ET:QW project and guess what? it was all thrown away however they didn't moan and groan about it like this community they shrugged their shoulder's like grown ups and started another project (can't remember what it was)

After thinking about it, antidote, ... Your above antecedent about the mod community sorta reminds me of lda17h's line of reasoning:

17:50 < lda17h> mikee__: also it's the other way around, too
17:51 < lda17h> it's illegal for grown up women to have relationships with males that are not of age..
...
17:56 <mikee__> Though if my eye is poked out I may be able to poke out the eye of she who poked me, I do not want my eye poked out at all.
17:57 <lda17h> fuck you.. /ignore mikee__

Jesus, you really want to prove Mikee's Law: Any debate involving MikeeUSA will inevitably degrade into him bringing out his batshit crazy misogynist viewpoints. I would type more, but my girlfriend wants me to help her with the laundry.