C.Brutail wrote:

SC0RP wrote:

C.Brutail wrote: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?

[RBI]Karl Ranseier wrote: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)

Ilaith wrote:

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.

SC0RP wrote: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.

cortez wrote: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.

Urcscumug wrote:contact EFF.

Yes, or SFLC.

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

Ilaith wrote:

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?

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.)

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.

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__

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.

tundramagi wrote:

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.

Mirio wrote:

Ilaith wrote:

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.

So we could use this name too right? at least in EU.

We never said you guys have to change the name. We refer to it as GPL Nexuiz 100% for context in conversation. We are changing this on the main web-site now but it takes a while to do changes to our web-site because it is done through a web-firm. The icon for the web-site redirect is being moved to the top right corner of the page and will resize with the web-site, being changed to "Original Nexuiz for PC". I don't know when this will be updated but i imagine sometime next week.

SC0RP wrote:

C.Brutail wrote: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.

I'm not that big of a pussy to have someone fight my fights for me. I may request people to help me talk to people - but I will do it with them and not send in a spy.

I'm not that big of a pussy to have someone fight my fights for me. I may request people to help me talk to people - but I will do it with them and not send in a spy.

Ok seems like you really need help with public relations. Let me rephrase that for you:

Code: Select all

"As Urcscumug has already told you he is not connected to Illfonic in any way. We're sorry if we have given you the impression that we are trying to infiltrate the community, I can assure you that we would never even think of anything like that. Currently I am the only Illfonic operative posting on the forums and I'll  be sure to announce when others will join us. Regards /Kendhrin"

One of the problems we're facing is communication. It's a flaw that exists on BOTH sides of the discussion. Let's try fixing that.

BS, why should he reply that way? Why should he appologise for that paranoid cryout?
The way he reacted is totally sane, I'd do the same.

I know feelings are very bad towards Illfonic and Kedhrin, but I ask everybody just to calm down before hitting any fucking letter on the keyboard, and posting it to the forum.
Do I have to remind everybody, that this is still the Nexuiz forum, and while the board is very heated, PROPER MODERATION IS STILL AT PLACE?
Do me a favor pls and don't post aggressive bullshit around, so I can read the forums the way I used to, so I can read a post because I'm interested in it, and not because I have to fear somebody has posted something utterely aggressive!

Thank you.

BS, why should he reply that way? Why should he appologise for that paranoid cryout?
The way he reacted is totally sane, I'd do the same.

While the reaction might appear sane to you, in my opinion it is rather rude. For a company that is going to have/has customers public relations are important. Good Public relations usually don't equal being rude. It's also interesting you would consider doing the same in regard to the rest of what you posted.

I know feelings are very bad towards Illfonic and Kedhrin, but I ask everybody just to calm down before hitting any fucking letter on the keyboard, and posting it to the forum.
Do I have to remind everybody, that this is still the Nexuiz forum, and while the board is very heated, PROPER MODERATION IS STILL AT PLACE?
Do me a favor pls and don't post aggressive bullshit around, so I can read the forums the way I used to, so I can read a post because I'm interested in it, and not because I have to fear somebody has posted something utterely aggressive!

Does this apply to moderators aswell? Because quite honestly that was very aggressively written (I highlighted some words that were really unnecessary). If I'd have the time I would rephrase that aswell.

In my opinion this just proves my point:

One of the problems we're facing is communication. It's a flaw that exists on BOTH sides of the discussion. Let's try fixing that.

Much has been said about the issue, so I'll try to keep it short. There are three possible plans to consider:


Plan A:
1. Move the project out of AlienTrap.
2. Change the name.
3. Establish a new project infrastructure.
4. Do the Slashdot dance.
5. PROFIT!

Advantages of plan A:
1. If we want to remain a FOSS project, we shouldn't allow any pro-money, anti-freedom entity to control or influence our future. AlienTrap has shown itself to be such an entity (as opposed to a non-profit maintenance organization that most of us thought it was). Refusing to stay under its hood is The Right Thing to do.
2. Publicity generated at step 4 can alleviate the damage that we will suffer due to the name change.
3. We can use this opportunity to improve the development process. E.g. make the project more open for new developers.
4. The proud feeling of doing The Right Thing will surely improve morale.

Disadvantages of plan A:
1. Three members of the Nexuiz project, which are affiliated with IllFonic, will suffer publicity damage. It is also possible that IllFonic, seeing all the bad publicity, will halt the project, which would harm these members' earnings and perhaps carrier.
2. Most likely, IllFonic will feel upset about this course of events and decline to release any of its work on FeeNex for use in FreeNex.
3. It is likely that LordHavoc and morfar will be lost to the community as contributors.

Side note: There is a slight chance that everyone, including IllFonic, will agree for this to happen, if we promise to avoid generating negative publicity (in other words, cancel step #4). That would eliminate all disadvantages, at the cost of advantage #2. It is, however, unclear, how much do "we" really control the amount of negative publicity.



Plan B:
1. Force IllFonic/Vermeulen to do the 50/50 division of the website.
2. Bargain as much as we can out of IllFonic and accept the few bones they throw at us as a compensation of the damage.
3. Change the name.
4. ???

Advantages of Plan B:
1. Backports of FeeNex's features into FreeNex.
2. LH and morfar remain grateful contributors.
3. Commercial employment opportunities for additional developers. (However FeeNex is probably going to fail, so I wouldn't hold my breath.)

Disadvantages of Plan B:
1. Open Source/Free Software project becomes Open Source/Shareware (BTW, have you seen our cool PS3 version?).
2. Despite the name change, FreeNex will still appear to be a lame version of FeeNex. What a casual gamer will think: "If a company releases two versions of the same project, with one of them being free and another commercial, which game is better? Ugh, I see: FreeNex is deprecated."
3. Persistent rage among many community members and negative publicity for caving in. (Yup, paperclips is right, it will still reach Slashdot.)
4. Chance of fork by those irresponsible GPL commie freaks.
5. Unclear long-term effects. Loss of name recognition and competition from the neighboring FeeNex can destroy the project.



Plan C:
1. Don't change the name.
2. ???
3. OMG PONIES!

Ilaith wrote:
While the reaction might appear sane to you, in my opinion it is rather rude. For a company that is going to have/has customers public relations are important. Good Public relations usually don't equal being rude. It's also interesting you would consider doing the same in regard to the rest of what you posted.

...

Does this apply to moderators aswell? Because quite honestly that was very aggressively written (I highlighted some words that were really unnecessary). If I'd have the time I would rephrase that aswell.

In my opinion this just proves my point:

One of the problems we're facing is communication. It's a flaw that exists on BOTH sides of the discussion. Let's try fixing that.

Well, in my point of view I'd rather talk to somebody who talks to me in a natural way, expressing all his feelings, than in an elitist, formal way.
And yes, this applies to moderators like me aswell, but like I've said above, I'd rather talk in my natural way, thank you.
You can read back all my posts, just to find out how much time I'm enraged by stupidity (good luck for that, I'm a pretty much relaxed poster... oh yeah, I know somebody will come up with the IRC log from yesterday, or when that guy has shown up to email a professor )
But thank you for correcting me.

a_grue wrote:Much has been said about the issue, so I'll try to keep it short. There are three possible plans to consider:

...

Plan C:
1. Don't change the name.
2. ???
3. OMG PONIES!

Isn't that like... doing nothing? In which case, plans A and B can still be put in motion, so there's really A and B, not A, B and C. I'm overthinking it, right? :P

Isn't that like... doing nothing? In which case, plans A and B can still be put in motion, so there's really A and B, not A, B and C. I'm overthinking it, right?

I think doing nothing and just let things happen should qualify as an alternative aswell, even though I'm not particularly fond of it.

parasti wrote:

a_grue wrote:Much has been said about the issue, so I'll try to keep it short. There are three possible plans to consider:

...

Plan C:
1. Don't change the name.
2. ???
3. OMG PONIES!

Isn't that like... doing nothing? In which case, plans A and B can still be put in motion, so there's really A and B, not A, B and C. I'm overthinking it, right?

Delay is tantamount to death. (C) Peter I, a tzar of Russia

Kedhrin wrote:We never said you guys have to change the name. We refer to it as GPL Nexuiz 100% for context in conversation. We are changing this on the main web-site now but it takes a while to do changes to our web-site because it is done through a web-firm. The icon for the web-site redirect is being moved to the top right corner of the page and will resize with the web-site, being changed to "Original Nexuiz for PC". I don't know when this will be updated but i imagine sometime next week.

Thanks. "Original Nexuiz for PC" at the right cornor is good!

I won't be replying as much for the next few days as we are gearing up for GDC and I need to be focused on production work. We also just had this happen last night in cased you missed it ( http://shogungamer.com/news/illfonic-de ... lice-error ). Right now I'm swamped, so it may take me a while to respond to you.

Thanks

Kedhrin wrote:The icon for the web-site redirect is being moved to the top right corner of the page and will resize with the web-site, being changed to "Original Nexuiz for PC". I don't know when this will be updated but i imagine sometime next week.

This is cool.. thanks.

Kedhrin wrote:

SC0RP wrote:

C.Brutail wrote: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.

I'm not that big of a pussy to have someone fight my fights for me. I may request people to help me talk to people - but I will do it with them and not send in a spy.

Thats good to hear. We dont stand for no underhand shit here. I have nothing against you or your company in-fact I bigged you up in my previous posts.

After reading the post responses I will apologize for hinting that Urcscumug may of posted what he wrote at possibly your request. What was said needed to be said, either way.

Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge Urcscumug

Kedhrin wrote:I won't be replying as much for the next few days as we are gearing up for GDC and I need to be focused on production work. We also just had this happen last night in cased you missed it ( http://shogungamer.com/news/illfonic-de ... lice-error ). Right now I'm swamped, so it may take me a while to respond to you.

Thanks

HEADLINES!

..."game production company IllFonic were working on the top secret, soon to be smash Nexuiz! which is so hot, game company rivals sent in a team of armed police to try to gain insight into the project"...

or hopefully not...

..."the war between the new console and GPL PC versions of Nexuiz rages on. The bitter GPL Nexuiz developers sent in armed police to try to stop the production of IllFonic's console version"...

Only in America ay

Unbelievable!

Ilaith wrote:Ok seems like you really need help with public relations. Let me rephrase that for you:

Code: Select all

"As Urcscumug has already told you he is not connected to Illfonic in any way. We're sorry if we have given you the impression that we are trying to infiltrate the community, I can assure you that we would never even think of anything like that. Currently I am the only Illfonic operative posting on the forums and I'll  be sure to announce when others will join us. Regards /Kendhrin"

Posting like that is exactly one of the main things that got us so pissed off to begin with. Simply posting like actual humans (like he did when he said he wasn't a pussy that needed spies) on this forum would seriously help communications.

Posting like that is exactly one of the main things that got us so pissed off to begin with.

I don't agree at all, but I see no point in convincing you so I'll just have to RESPECT your opinion.

Simply posting like actual humans (like he did when he said he wasn't a pussy that needed spies) on this forum would seriously help communications.

Where I come from what he posted would've never qualified as a mature input to a discussion.

Interesting. The screenshots of the game that I have seen look pretty cool, but surely someone would have gone "oh shit, guys look at this there is already a large community with the name nexuiz and it has quite a following" or was it even researched at all? Was the name nexuiz even put into google as a test?

Obviously trying to argue that either games change their name is a lost cause which is why I hope the 'Nexuiz: a battle of the galaxies' or what ever someone posted is implemented

Oh my, I completely missed this, I was so confused when I went to nexuiz.com today, hehe.

But man, sorry to say this, but I can't believe how you guys have been so fucking rude to Kedhrin. I'm amazed he's still here after all this trash talk. I'm not saying I disagree with the frustration, but rather that this frustration is directed at the wrong person. 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.

As far as I can tell, he did nothing wrong and he doesn't even NEED to explain himself at all - yet he is here trying his best to explain the situation. Obviously he wants to things to be civilized, but he did hint at Lee Vermeulen a few times, I guess he was too subtle for people to understand. I see things have calmed down, but he should get more respect than that just for keeping up with the hate and insults that have been thrown at him.

With that said, personally I agree that not changing the name was/is a bad move. It makes no sense at all to me. I don't understand how this could be a good marketing move for them. The nexuiz community is not that big, I doubt they're going to get a lot of players from here, but I could be wrong. I know that I don't own a console and do not plan to get one and I can't even imagine playing a FPS with a gamepad. That, and the confusion it creates between the 2 versions. So, new game for new people - a new name would make sense. Too late now, but I'm curious to know the reason behind this choice, so far I have not seen an explanation that makes sense.

Or wait, maybe all this confusion WAS planned ahead, if the situation makes the news everywhere, then "Nexuiz" will not be know as the name of game, but known to be a war between a corporation and a OSS community that lasted for years, making the news everywhere in the world. Hey, bad publicity is still publicity!

Anyway, I'm very curious to see where this is all going. Other than the confusion with the name, I don't see how this could be a bad thing. Having decided on using "Nexuiz" as name, they're pretty much stuck into being mentioned from basing it off a free GPL game. It'll definitely make people curious about the original version and make them have a look.

I do however hope Div0 and other devs will get compensated for the work they did, that should be everyone's main concern IMO.

Yeah Nifrek people have been very rude and horrible to Kedhrin, I honestly could never be this hostile and I'm the queen of hostility usually.

I've said it elsewhere I'll say it again.

This is a positive towards open source and businesses. If you don't want names used they should be licensed correctly.

If it's a game I'll play it. Agreed I'm not a mapper, I'm not a modder however should that exclude me from a forum that deals in a game I play?

A lot of people don't even care about the developments, they are just annoyed at not being able to play the new version of the game so the mission becomes to stop it happening. I'll happily trash a Wii console since I don't have one and I'm envious of anyone who gets to play Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles.

So while a lot of people may have decent reasons quite a few are just jumping on the bandwagon due to envy. I don't classify a name as a good enough reason sorry. This could easily just be referred to opennex, or as the nexuiz.com site says PC GPL Nexuiz, or even how about the PC version uses the correct spelling, it now that it has a reason to change.

Arguing over a name is just.... You know, what if every kid with the same name argued over it in school?

I would understand if your work was being stolen without credit, your work was being reused and being sold. But this isn't the case, absolutely no harm is being done in a name. If thats the case then half the world should be in riot mode.

Just be positive about it, contribute to ideas, make the Nexuiz name a success, it only benefits absolutely everyone long term. To be honest, the same faces everyday I see on the PC version, isn't it about time you did something to make this game lively again? This development gives you a vantage point to make the PC version bigger. There you go, you are the community go and make that happen. Post on forums dealing with the new version, point them to the PC version, they will be interested in a tryout anyway.

I swear people only thing negative, and then they insult people.