IP Mothball

ItemfinderDeluxe · 07/22/08 18:07

Firstly, in case you don't read the legal gibberish at the back of your game manuals, this is Oni's "Intellectal Property Ownership" Statement.

Owner retains all right, title, and interest to this SOFTWARE and the accompanying manual(s), packaging and other written materials (collectively, the ACCOMPANYING MATERIALS), including, but not limited to, all copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, trade names, propietary rights, patents, titles, computer codes, audiovisual effects, themes, characters, character names, stories, dialog, settings, artwork, sound effects, musical works, and moral rights. The SOFTWARE and ACCOMPANYING MATERIALS are protected by United States copyright law and applicable copyright laws and treaties throughout the World. All rights are reserved. The SOFTWARE and ACCOMPANYING MATERIALS may not be copied or reproduced in any manner or medium, in whole or part, without prior legal consent from Owner. Any persons copying or reproducing all or any portion of the SOFTWARE or ACCOMPANYING MATERIALS, in any manner or medium, will be willfully violating the copyright laws and may be subject to civil or criminal penalties. The SOFTWRE and ACCOMPANYING MATERIALS may not be sold, rented, loaned, or otherwise transferred to any other individual or entity.

In short (or for those who ignored it completely):

1. 'Owner' = Take 2.
2. They own everything, from the little particles produced when you hit someone to the concept of someone trying to destroy the world by poisoning it with the Government's processors.
3. You try and muck around with Oni, and they MAY decide to stomp on you like a bug.

Now, it seems we have some idea of where we are going with our next move. If we go with EdT's 2-prong plan, we will need to prioritise our projects. My 3-point suggestion is below, but I may have missed any number of points.

1. The GUI-based OniTools is a good plan, and following that is maybe to try and finish 7AE. If both projects are feasible, and a few people can form a group to work on those, then we might be able to aim for a joint release.
2. Trying to draw members in to the community is primarily limited to the forum. Maybe we could expand somewhat to other video sites besides Youtube. Since Google bought Youtube, people have left the site in favour of other ones like Veoh, Dailymotion, and such. If we could start groups on each (we could just repost some of our older vids if need be) we can try to attract some more fans who didn't know of the forum.
3. Skrylar's approach may require a few more people to help with approaching Take 2. It might be easier to approach them if we had a serious plan in mind, but of course I don't know what such a plan could entail. A few people might join up with him to help with getting some answers.

Gumby · 07/23/08 01:07

Ack. People are reminding me about my laziness. I'll start back on the GUI tomorrow (today, whatever)

Also, I am told that Oni is written in C, not C++...

Last edited by Gumby (07/23/08 02:07)

Iritscen · 07/23/08 11:07

ItemfinderDeluxe wrote:

In short (or for those who ignored it completely):
1. 'Owner' = Take 2.
2. They own everything, from the little particles produced when you hit someone to the concept of someone trying to destroy the world by poisoning it with the Government's processors.
3. You try and muck around with Oni, and they MAY decide to stomp on you like a bug.

You are probably directing this mostly at me (or maybe it's my imagination) so I will respond by simply saying that approaching Take Two to get the IP is a nice idea but I am not holding my breath (no offense Skrylar) because they have demonstrated to me by their inaction so far that they hardly even know that they own Oni. Since this is the case, they are unlikely to even notice our Edition. The Edition is "just" a glorified mod, and we've been modding Oni for years (well, not me, personally, but the collective "we").

Seriously, I know some people imagine that a corporation's lawyers spend all day prowling the Internet looking for someone to sue for infringement, but the truth is, they only notice the big stuff. YouTube is a popular target right now, for instance, for takedown notices, but that's because it's freakin' yuge. I seriously doubt they would notice us, or care if they did. As important as this is to us, we're not even a blip on their radar. (And once again, I ask, what are they going to do to us if they do decide that we're infringing on something that matters to them?)

Finally, I just want to say that I agree with point 2 in your 3-point plan. Maybe we should wait until we have more footage of Edition stuff before posting on other video sites, though. Which should be soon, right? (See thread about the trailer in the Edition forum.)

ItemfinderDeluxe · 07/23/08 20:07

Don't worry. I wasn't aiming it at you specifically. Rather, that's the Lawyer aspect of my brain kicking in - I'm studying Law at Uni, and of all things I've got Intellectual Property Law as a subject .

And Oni is in C. I believe C++ was done up in 2002, but don't quote me on that. I do know it was after Oni though. Still, there's little difference between the two.

Iritscen · 07/23/08 21:07

Don't worry. I wasn't aiming it at you specifically. Rather, that's the Lawyer aspect of my brain kicking in - I'm studying Law at Uni, and of all things I've got Intellectual Property Law as a subject .

Oh, cool. I took a couple law classes, but we didn't spend a lot of time on IP Law. I enjoyed the classes, even though it felt like a non sequitur for me because I was majoring in Accounting (I know, law is important to accounting, but only in limited ways).

And Oni is in C. I believe C++ was done up in 2002, but don't quote me on that. I do know it was after Oni though. Still, there's little difference between the two.

Well, C++ came about in the 80s, (or '79, according to Wikipedia). It's been standardized a couple of times, most recently in '03 (again, thanks, Wikipedia). Maybe that's what you were thinking of. So they could have coded Oni in C++, even though they didn't, from what I understand. And some people would say there's a lot of difference between the two because C is procedural and C++ adds object-oriented concepts to C. I don't want to sound like a nitpicker, it's just that I've been avidly studying C and C++ in the last few months to become a real programmer.

Skrylar · 07/23/08 22:07

Objective-C for the win!

Sadly, the only real use of ObjC these days is the Mac programming community. It's perfectly viable for other operating systems but the only OpenStep implementations are Cocoa and GNUstep (which isn't even a fair comparison to Cocoa).

Iritscen · 07/23/08 22:07

Yeah, I totally agree. After studying C++, I can see how much more elegant Cocoa/Obj-C is. But don't forget, there's an up-and-coming non-Mac platform that uses Obj-C... the iPhone!

Skrylar · 07/23/08 22:07

The iPhone runs a flawed version of OS X. It's been retooled for a phone (and apparently to satisfy AT&T's lust for user lock-out).

Another language I'm actually rather fond of is Dylan, which was supposed to have been Apple's new language. They were designing it for the Newton and to take over for OS 9 apps and it's supposed to be very toolchain friendly, but they couldn't get it done in time for the Newton launch so they just shoveled it completely. Gwydion Dylan is okay but it's missing a full standard library.

Skrylar · 07/24/08 16:07

I went ahead and updated the support ticket to check in and make sure it wasn't shelved, I haven't heard anything back from that so if they're still silent after a day I'll phone them up and check up on it.

-Skry

Skrylar · 08/09/08 23:08

Loser poked me to see if I was still alive, and I still am. They forwarded me to a contact site but it's only got a physical address or a phone number, I haven't got around to calling them up yet.

Still Alive,
Skry

Oni Central Forum

#26 07/22/08 18:07

Re: IP Mothball

#27 07/23/08 01:07

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#28 07/23/08 11:07

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#29 07/23/08 20:07

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