A Minetest Defense League?

[Dokimi]

Exploiting the Minetest community should be like eating bees. How do we best achieve this?


(I am refering to things like this Making a list of Minetest forks for Android and iOS, and commercial companies that violate our open source license, etc. These activities freeload on what we do here. They think free means "free to exploit". The threat of consequences is needed to put an end to this behaviour. Let it be known: You don't F#$% with Minetest!)

[texmex]

Though the sentiment is understandable, what we do here is by license ”free to exploit”, publish and make money off of.

Very few of those forks publish back their code commits which is of course a breach of the license, but would it really make a difference? Most of them are just mod salad with stolen Minecraft textures therefore containing zero valuable contributions.

The main reason they’re always more popular and/or discoverable is because they have more content and features out of the box then the real Minetest client.

[Festus1965]

The main reason they’re always more popular and/or discoverable is because they have more content and features out of the box then the real Minetest client.

Do THEY have any own servers ?
Or are they just so successful as using ours, our spent money ?

I am in the defensive League I guess, changed server to 5.0.0, block special names well known for other clients, and have own domain minetest.one, what is pointing back to minetest.net to make it better ranked.

What more ?
* advertising on my car ?
* spreading brochures to all kids in school ?
* using advertise plates here in Chiang Mai (they area about 10*5 meter) and ... pay haha

[Hume2]

I have an idea. If I stole the features from an illegal fork and distributed them under a free license, the maintainers of the illegal work couldn't blame me. If they did, I could blame them for stealing stuff from Minetest and they would have much bigger problems because they actually have salary.

I feel somehow that it's too dangerous though.

[runs]

I think it exists an exorbitant attack to forks, here. People claiming for a ban of players in their servers.

Well, if those games do not comply with the license of Minetest, is simple: denounce it! In Google Play are very spitty about these things.

And do not go crazy. If they meet the license, let them coexist with Minetest, using all the servers. It's the right thing to do.

In my case my game is accordingly with the license, I publish the code, and contribute here with my modifications. So I demand that my players be treated with dignity.

PS: Well, I really don't give a shit about my players, my game is free, but I had to say it anyway. :-D

[Mantar]

If they don't comply with the license, contact the FSF, they often help projects defend their copyrights.

[Festus1965]

... If they meet the license, let them coexist with Minetest, using all the servers. It's the right thing to do.
...
PS: Well, I really don't give a shit about my players, my game is free, but I had to say it anyway. :-D

As long this not original minetest cloned are
* respecting also my server rules, and not undergoing it by several options like acting distance, etc, and
* they are not making money with something on my own payed free server
maybe yes,
everything else need to be banned!

[ShadMOrdre]

I'm with Hume2 on this one.

If they do not contribute code back to the community, whatever code can be scrapped up should be published here under WTFPL, or any other "public domain" license. And then advertise said code to their user base. Any server op who is willing can willfully post the truth about any misleading clients, such as the pay to play clients. If you use opensource, and violate the license under which you get to use opensource, well.... tsk tsk tsk SHAME ON YOU. You deserve whatever happens. If you are a legit user, well, then help out, or quit the whining!

Are you really stealing from a thief? No!

[Mantar]

I think that kind of action may reflect poorly if it ever came to court.

[Calinou]

If they don't comply with the license, contact the FSF, they often help projects defend their copyrights.

The FSF doesn't own copyright on anything in Minetest, so they cannot enforce the license by themselves. They can only give advice on how to enforce the license, and most core Minetest developers already know how to do that. The main way is to send DMCA requests to platforms like Google Play, which is a time-consuming process when you have to do it often.

[Festus1965]

I just was watching the posts and the one with 13 near same apps ?

So can we flood the Android Google play games area with legal real copies for Minetest ?

Similar to his 13 ones, just some diff name, I would look to make a source for every language here in SouthEast Asia and offering them Thailand Minetest, Laos Minetest, etc. and as the code is different then, just the local language ... haha its an own program.

Also how to make the until now one minetest offere there more popular ? How they are sorted ? Maybe also make every week or dev step another offer, as much, and div sources, and flooding the folder ?

I have no my measurements of my pick up back window, to ask how expensive to do a ad on there ... 100 to 120 cm, by 40 cm up . so the symbol, the name and "Game" mhhh

[ShadMOrdre]

A simple DCMA takedown notice to Google, from the devs, notifying Google of the license infringement of the offending apps. Google is as responsible as Napster in propagating illegal, copyright protected software.

It is that simple. There is nothing to this. Google, being a US registered corporation, is legally obligated to enforce this. Just as they are for any other illegal content.

I think that kind of action may reflect poorly if it ever came to court.

If telling people the truth cannot stand up in court, then we all have problems. If I have created something, and it is used in a way that I have not licensed, I have every obligation to inform users of the offending package, if I care anything about my creation. This stands in court every day off the week. What ya gonna do, tell the judge that the original creator is telling people that he created something, and that this act causes you, the thief, harm? LOLOLOL.....

Honestly, we have every right to interpret the law, and to act according to our lawful interpretation of said law. This includes the right to defend my property.

I'd still vote for the DCMA to Google. Threaten them, that they are in violation. Sue me Google, reread the paragraphs above. Google would be insane to sue a content creator for issuing a DCMA notice. However, I have the right to sue Google for their distribution of illegal software.

Since I'm not hired by anyone to represent them as an attorney, I refuse to give the acronymn, since I also have the right to discuss the law.

[Festus1965]

A simple DCMA takedown notice to Google, from the devs, notifying Google of the license infringement of the offending apps.

That should be one person here, have good knowledge about this license problems,
and/or maybe natural speak English, or preparing a form, and how to get sure that a game there is violating ...
and/or maybe a report form to report new apps, and a page about what apps was reported and current standing/result
... to avoid to often request about, and if that is reported ...

[Mantar]

Calinou: You're just repeating what I said - the FSF will help people who want to defend their copyrights. I did not say "they'll go to court in your stead because they own your copyrights" or whatever strange thing it is you seem to have read in my post.

ShadMOrdre: By "that kind of action" I mean taking their stuff and saying "hey, you stole from me first!" Courts frown on that kind of behavior, and it generally ends up costing you later if you ever take things to court.

[runs]

I'm not telling about go to a courthouse but denouncing in the distribution platforms.

What I find outrageous is banning players who don't play "pure" Minetest. Or attack forks for the sole reason that they're not Minetest. Minetest allows that: forks.

The example of OpenOffice and LibreOffice is remarkable. The son devoured the father.

PS: The majority of forks are only Minetets with mods, so they are legal.

It's called Open Source for good and for bad. :-/

[Festus1965]

What to fight against then in the League ?

A legal licensed copy of Minetest with other mods ... is even separating the community and the "band" name Minetest ... as I even think sometime there are some programing guys included that belong to here ...
what even does a legal client copy with other mods really make sense of ?

To fight against for me mean as soon:
* wrong license declaration
* the client used to make money (advertising) on not there own servers, like I asked, do they have own servers ?
* the client overgrowing the rules of our servers with distance of acting, fly, no-clip, fast, etc.

So for the fight we need to declare fist clear facts on each copy (legal, wrong license, adverb / other money making, cheating by ignoring server rules) to find out which one to fight against, and how to do it (report google app, strengthen and/our server-software to detect and block cheats)

And if we get a "wiki" about how to check, sure I will go on to blame some of them -

and also before we continue discussing about all this here:
just now: Players: 206/570 Servers: 247/257
and first 10 servers have already 55% of all gamer ...
and 12 of this gamer are 3 digit ending, 4 are 2 digit ending ...
as long this cloned apps have access to our servers, every other "fight" is useless.

This is a reason also why I let my kids stay in game without time limit and hunger - as keep server top 3 and block as much wrong apps as possible. If I had more PCs I would like to to 2 more servers with each 15-20 gamer to do better in this direction ...

[ShadMOrdre]

runs,

This is not about forks that honor the license. They are valid and legitimate.

This about only those "forks" that are dishonest, that take the freely available open source code, and redistribute that code outside their rights as determined by the license agreement that they accept upon use of the source code. Those that profit from the work of others, who are dishonest about "their" product, hiding the true nature of the product (ie, not disclosing that this is a freely available open source product for the purpose of duping Playstore customers into paying them) and who are most likely distributing malware in their hacked products.

Honest users of open source software provide links to the Minetest project, or at least leave links intact, which is a condition of the license.

Selling a fork within the terms of the license is not the crime here.

Selling a fork, without honoring the terms of the license is software piracy, and a prosecutable crime in many jurisdictions.

[DrFrankenstone]

and have own domain minetest.one, what is pointing back to minetest.net to make it better ranked.

I hadn't considered that. The landing page of minetest.land didn't have any link to http://www.minetest.net... now it does.

[Festus1965]

just I wanted to check at minetest.net what header and keywords are used ... I don't see them in there

so what we wanna take for linking each other ? (Head)

Code: Select all

<meta name="description" content="Minetest ...1">
<meta name="keywords" content="Minetest, open source voxel game, free, block, game, ...">

and what as title in links, as I remember that both was used in google ranking (but my experience is years ago, had my privat and a helping page against winning letters most top 1-3)

Code: Select all

 <a href="https://www.minetest.net/" title="Minetest - free Block Game" target="_new">Minetest.net</a>

here the title and the link-text are used

(I put at me also the minetest.land in... round linking was always good. Even could do it from every subdomain ... will do next for .net for sure)

edit: 04.03.2019
* started translate for thai Minetest Thai Translate
* found even a Chinese Minetest page minetest.cn
* and got so far Thai Copy running to test how th.minetest.one
* and after that is possible la, my and vn will follow then