What do we know about pofig's (tree) content?
(1) Pofig's license allows redistribution of his assets.
(2) N3V will not remove items from the Download Station unless the original creator requests it.
(3) Pofig has left the Trainz community and will not request removal of his assets uploaded to the DLS under other usernames.
OK so, technically, I could upload all of his trees under my KUID to the DLS to be used and enjoyed by the community (well, those with TS10 and TS12)? And, because pofig would never ask for them to be removed, they would stay there in perpetuity and no action would be taken against me?
This is an interesting moral dilemma - a bit like finding a £50 note in the street and wondering whether to pocket it or take it to a police station.
What would people do?
Paul
I'd keep well out of it!
1. This need clarifying once and for all, for the benefit of those who cannot bother to read licenses properly. Legally you can't upload his trees to the DLS as they could be used commercially. Yes I know thats extremely unlikely now as T:ANE can't use them anyway however N3V is still a commercial enterprise.
Pofigs licence if you look it up, link available from the license button on his assets in CM, is Creative Commons
none of which permit commercial use, that's the problem with people uploading them to the DLS there is no restriction in people distributing them by other means but must conform to the original license.
Copy of license here
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
They won't be of any use in T:ANE anyway it's physically impossible to use v5 trees with a v6 engine and there is no easy fix, IDV have no backwards compatibility as they revise the algorithms with every new version so the original source is required to be modified and recompiled, got that from IDV creators of SpeedTree.
Unless pofig changes the license which fairly obviously won't happen they can't legally go on the DLS. Failure by N3V to take any action for blatantly obvious clones of pofigs assets doesn't make it open house on breaking license conditions. Pretty sure nearly all of them are now available from various sites now for those who haven't got them, I have hundreds of the things!
2. Not a lot we can do about that, it's up to pofig. As I understand it he thinks that reporting them all the first couple of times was sufficient. However if someone is daft enough to state that they are going to upload pofigs trees on N3V's forum I'm pretty sure they would get jumped on from a great height! As happened to someone who announced they could supply no longer available Payware. He doesn't need to create a list for proof, just link to the post of intent ;o)
3. Not left but still active, just not creating any trees, last seen April 4th 2015 and he does very occasionally put up screenshots, more likely he will be found on Russian Trainz sites. He never was a prolific poster on here.
Seriously, I think T:ANE is likely to reduce the requirement for his trees, afraid it's time to move on and hope for some decent stuff from those creators who have SpeedTree 6 Licences, think we have at least 3 possibly 4.
To add, I'll say this now, if anything ever happens to me I'm quite happy for people to distribute modify or fix my stuff with the one restriction, NO FACES ON LOCOMOTIVES.