New Version Checker Mod

[ljfa]

I would, however, like to ask you to stop acting like it's the end of the world because I made one concession.

Point taken. I have the feeling that my posts make me look like a dick who tries to prescribe how others should license their works. I'm just expressing my concerns with restrictions like these. Unfortunately your concession crosses the line between free and proprietary.

I'm not sure what I should think of your proposal, but it still is not free because "you may not put it behind a paywall". I'm being a bit blunt here but for a more pratical concern: If you have a server that charges an entry fee and gives you the link to the modpack when you joined the server, you have a paywall as well.

Also: "This license may change at any time for any reason" - which means you could retroactively revoke all permissions from somone even if they follow the license.

(PS: the license doesn't actually grant the right do distribute, I guess you forgot to mention that)

EDIT: Okay, I see that stuff happened between me writing this and me posting. Ljfa, this will not turn proprietary. It's possible to take care of this issue without that.

I understand proprietary software as the negation of Free Software (or Open Source). So unfortunately it will if you use your or Squid's license.

Now if you guys want me to stop ranting about this then please say so. I've already had a fairly nasty discussion with jakimfett about that matter.

 

[trajing]

I'm not sure what I should think of your proposal, but it still is not free because "you may not put it behind a paywall".

By that logic, GPL isn't free (btw, from now on I'm calling it libre because I prefer that terminology - otherwise, it's hard to distinguish between free and Free). GPL disallows things using that library to be commercial software.
In addition, what I linked wasn't a suggestion for this - it's both a draft and it's going to be purely for me. It won't end up being meant for mods, either. I write code outside of MC.

 

[ljfa]

By that logic, GPL isn't free (btw, from now on I'm calling it libre because I prefer that terminology - otherwise, it's hard to distinguish between free and Free). GPL disallows things using that library to be commercial software.

You might be confusing commercial with proprietary. It is in fact okay to charge for copies of GPL'd software.

 

[trajing]

You might be confusing commercial with proprietary. It is in fact okay to charge for copies of GPL'd software.

...I must be confusing something else with GPL. One second.

 

[TomeWyrm]

Licensing is a lawyer concept. Lawyers make simple stuff REALLY complicated.

That being said, @ljfa is reasonably correct for a common/working definition for libre. GPL is also a copyLEFT license. Heck a lot of the Creative Commons licenses aren't libre except for the type of stuff you can usually get away with under Fair Use.

There aren't any well-known software licenses both requiring credit and stopping commercial use, except Squid Attribution Non-commercial License 1.0.0 is a well-known license

CC-By-NC If Creative Commons isn't well known... I'm scared.

Incidentally I'm pretty sure @ljfa is aiming for something a lot closer to what CC calls a "Free Culture" license (http://creativecommons.org/freeworks ). Not that there's anything wrong with a non-commercial clause, I tend to use licenses with NC clauses myself. It rubs me the wrong way to have other people profit off of my work. But I can see the point of a framework/api/library having a NonCom being detrimental under certain worldviews.

More onto the CF integration topic: Has Jaded (or anyone working on the MC Curse stuff) gotten back to a project member about an exposed incrementing integer so the only decent centralized mod repository we have can be integrated?

 

[Strikingwolf]

More onto the CF integration topic: Has Jaded (or anyone working on the MC Curse stuff) gotten back to a project member about an exposed incrementing integer so the only decent centralized mod repository we have can be integrated?

Nope

 

[TomeWyrm]

Ugh, bloody lawyers. It should be applicable to software. I blame some stupid jurisdictional rule somewhere.

 

[ljfa]

Ugh, bloody lawyers. It should be applicable to software. I blame some stupid jurisdictional rule somewhere.

It is applicable, but not recommended by CC themselves:
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Commons_license_for_software.3F

 

[jordsta95]

Guys, as much as I like a good argument, could we keep this thread on track of the mod that is being developed, and then talk about all the copyright issues later, which I am sure will be ironed out soon enough.
I came here to see how this mod was getting along and the last 2 pages have all been to do with licenses and copyright, etc.

 

[SynfulChaot]

I actually had a couple odd thoughts come up in conversation with Reika a day or few ago.

1. Would it be within the scope of this mod to be a version checker for Curse-hosted modpacks as well as mods?
2. If so, could the nature of mod update notifications change to be less ... prominent if the modpack is at it's newest version?

 

[trajing]

I actually had a couple odd thoughts come up in conversation with Reika a day or few ago.

1. Would it be within the scope of this mod to be a version checker for Curse-hosted modpacks as well as mods?
2. If so, could the nature of mod update notifications change to be less ... prominent if the modpack is at it's newest version?

I'll discuss with some of the pack makers in the PT about this.

 

[TomeWyrm]

That makes sense, it doesn't deal with the software specific problems. Sometimes legalese is almost more like a programming language than a living language... except it's all about interpretation of the specific meanings so it's the worst of both worlds.

I really don't understand how lawyers can deal with that, but am glad they do.

Edit:

Aren't all the non-critical, non-severe warnings out on the title screen anyway? I mean... it's hard to make it less obtrusive there, and the point of flagging an update critical/severe is making sure people know about it.

I get where you're coming from though. Seeing the update notifications on the Resonant Rise pack I'm playing was... obnoxious when I booted it up (I still hate chat notifications more than anything else).

I'm still in the process of updating All The Mods (hardlinks allowing me to exploit the curse client without having to actually build the pack there are FUN. I'm hoping that ATL/MultiMC/whatever get curse integration sometime... having to hack around is a pain), and I'm going through and finding all the options so that any which DID get turned off will be turned on, unless the author was silly (like Nether Eye, it currently reports a 1.8 update for 1.7.10). Because the more places I have checking for updates, the better updated I'm going to be.

 

[Strikingwolf]

Okay, time for some updates haha on this...

So far we have implemented the following features:

• API, consists of an interface with three methods (getRemote, getName, getLocal) and some utility methods for retrieving local and remote data (will be expanded upon with more utility methods)
• Chat messages for critical updates on world load if config is enabled for it (default is false)
• Main menu button with number of updates and severity of updates (None = normal, ! = severe, and !! = critical)
• If there are severe updates available the gui from above will be invoked with slightly different text

Planned:

• Closable Marquee for critical updates in-game
• More utility methods for retrieving data
• Curse integration if a technical version is added

The mod is now usable for both devs and users; however, I will be waiting to build and make a guide for devs until later...that may be when the marquee is ready, but I may release sooner.

 

[Strikingwolf]

Okay, time for some updates haha on this...

So far we have implemented the following features:

• API, consists of an interface with three methods (getRemote, getName, getLocal) and some utility methods for retrieving local and remote data (will be expanded upon with more utility methods)
• Chat messages for critical updates on world load if config is enabled for it (default is false)
• Main menu button with number of updates and severity of updates (None = normal, ! = severe, and !! = critical)
• If there are severe updates available the gui from above will be invoked with slightly different text

Planned:

• Closable Marquee for critical updates in-game
• More utility methods for retrieving data
• Curse integration if a technical version is added

The mod is now usable for both devs and users; however, I will be waiting to build and make a guide for devs until later...that may be when the marquee is ready, but I may release sooner.

Credits to @CoolSquid for some GUI and Web code

 

[trajing]

I'm going to start working on the webapp tommorow, and post updates on that on this thread.

 

[Strikingwolf]

Added/replaced some more useful things.

Features:

• Replaced the different symbols for normal/severe/critical with colors (white/yellow/red) (Thanks @CoolSquid for the idea)
• Added copy-to-clipboard if the desktop is not supported (Thanks for the idea Squid...again )
• Added op-only for multiplayer chat messages (and planned for marquee)

API:

• Some javadocs to explain the methods to be implemented
• Direct registration of IUpdateables is now available, although not required as UpToDate will search the mods list

Code:

• Refactored for more encapsulation
• Optimized imports
• Made my life easier with a datatype for a FetchedUpdateable list that also stores the normal, severe, and criticals

 

[TomeWyrm]

You should probably have a configuration option to revert to "colorblind" mode and return to the symbols as well. White/Yellow/Red would be distinguishable for quite a few forms of color-blindness, but not all

 

[Strikingwolf]

You should probably have a configuration option to revert to "colorblind" mode and return to the symbols as well. White/Yellow/Red would be distinguishable for quite a few forms of color-blindness, but not all

Will do, but tomorrow, anime awaits

 

[Strikingwolf]

Colorblind was added, currently trying to do some marquee type stuff. Thinking a click to continue would be easiest to implement, and have no chance of interfering with other mods. Just got to figure out how to display the screen for the updates button on login.

 

[portablejim]

@ljfa Parsing HTML intelligently is a huge pain.

It seems you may be parsing HTML wrong (unless you are referencing using an parser library). If it is a valid XML, use an XML parser. If it is not XML (or may not be XML) but just HTML (or some broken variant thereof) use jsoup (Java port of python-based Beautiful Soup)