Author Topic: Nathan withdrew Interhack from sourceforge  (Read 18668 times)

DaBeowulf

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Nathan withdrew Interhack from sourceforge
« on: February 14, 2015, 06:49:56 PM »
Hi,

allegedly due to potential copyright / license issues.
And all else that is said is
"Rogue Element is coming to you in 2015."

Even the RTOR.pdf has been taken down.

I do not know what to make of this.

If you have what I assume to be the latest version (ihack-2.1.43) I would be interested to hear from you.
I might actually have it myself already, still have to check some systems to see if it is on there.

Krice

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Re: Nathan withdrew Interhack from sourceforge
« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2015, 10:48:59 PM »
What is Interhack or Rogue Element. Don't keep us in this excitement.

mushroom patch

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Re: Nathan withdrew Interhack from sourceforge
« Reply #2 on: February 16, 2015, 12:26:48 AM »
If it's under something like the GPL, the license, once you have code licensed under it, is irrevocable. You can just post it on github or whatever if someone thinks they can force you to take it down, they'll have to let you know about it. In this way, you can either learn who's causing trouble (probably no one) or make the code available to all again.

I'm amazed anything people use is still on sourceforge, though I guess there you at least get the praise of an army of spam bots.

chooseusername

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Re: Nathan withdrew Interhack from sourceforge
« Reply #3 on: February 17, 2015, 09:48:52 PM »
A long time ago when this happened to a project I was interested in, I was able to find a slow updating mirror.  There was a tarball.sourceforge,net or something, and you could go to it, or one of it's mirrors, and find a snapshot of the last repo as of the night before or something.  Might still be a possibility, if you know the filename.

DamianBentley

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Re: Nathan withdrew Interhack from sourceforge
« Reply #4 on: February 28, 2015, 03:15:06 AM »
It was taken down because the Interhack code breached copyright of some other code that was included in Interhack many eons ago.

I have spent the last 6-9 months working hard on Rogue Element RPG - the follow-on from Interhack. In fact in the next few days I hope to be releasing a project on KickStarter.com to raise initial funding to get the servers online in a few months time. Rogue Element take Interhack several steps further...

* Fully independent turn based multiplayer. This means no waiting for other players to move. It is not real time. You move when you want, other players move when they want.

* Multi-lingual support. There is still a fair bit of work to do, but the game has been designed so you can play along side other players with different languages, and yet still read the messages in your native language.

and finally...

* A 3D interface. This has really been developed in the last three weeks, and is progressing rapidly. Unfortunately I can not release too many images at this stage as I borrowed the 3D models from a variety of sources and need to replace with my own models.

You can find some screenshots from Rogue Element RPG on https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rogue-Element-RPG/443112972508604

There will be a small fee to play and the 2D curses interface will be free to download. The 3D graphical version will be a small once off fee to download.

darwin

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Re: Nathan withdrew Interhack from sourceforge
« Reply #5 on: May 24, 2017, 09:59:31 AM »
[...]allegedly due to potential copyright / license issues.
[...]Even the RTOR.pdf has been taken down.
[...]I do not know what to make of this[...]

Neither do I.  As prose was also withdrawn (unlikely for copyright) there seems more to the story.

If it's under something like the GPL, the license, once you have code licensed under it, is irrevocable. You can just post it on github or whatever if someone thinks they can force you to take it down, they'll have to let you know about it. In this way, you can either learn who's causing trouble (probably no one) or make the code available to all again [...]

Exactly; people will want to fork, whether legal in their country or just ones that would host code (some developing countries seem to not care at all, but even Sweden's FTP.SUNet.se hosts PernAngband code, but Pern copyright holders can do nothing... only in countries that follow USA.)

It was taken down because the Interhack code breached copyright of some other code that was included in Interhack many eons ago[...]

The proper Free/Libre/Opensource Software (FLOSS) thing to do would be to state & remove that for another (pre-)alpha release, continue or encourage people to fork.  I want to fork it, just maybe don't have the time (but probably someone can eventually.)  However, for that to happen, it's best the full (detailed) truth comes out, responsibly: so the potential copyright issue isn't potentially forced on to others.

I wonder if ithe ‘issue’ was rereleasing (Net)Hack code under GPL2 rather than (Net)Hack's license, but maybe derivative works are same license... or (if not and/or you didn't want that, or if doesn't allow other-licensed files as InterHack's GPL2 does,) just all (Net)Hack code would need replacing.  If that's not it, maybe the real issue is you don't like FLOSS as much.  If so (though I disagree with the practice,) why not have a FLOSS version and a proprietary version with more details/content? (one can dual-license their own code... maybe even under both (Net)Hack's license and GPL)  Other major roguelikes do that, like ToME4 (FLOSS and commercial version with the same engine,) and ADOM, though proprietary, has freeware and pay-only versions, along with much other successful commercial & FLOSS software doing similar to ToME4 (having an ‘Opensource’ version and more advanced proprietary version with different license... then ‘Opensource’ programmers improve the ‘Opensource’ version and the company incorporates it into the proprietary version.)

I'm not rich, but a Free Software Foundation associate member and have donated up to $10 or $20 a time to FLOSS I like.  I avoid commercial software/games, though might make exception if a friend played, but would spend less on those, and (from my ethics) I'd feel guilty playtesting anything proprietary or something then I get free but others buy (plus, I couldn't see or try to improve code or report as many bugs.)  I'd rather have seen a donations/‘crowdsource’ project to revive InterHack, and/or encouraging people to fork it with copyrighted stuff removed.

I'm very sad to see InterHack end (for now,) as I spent a lot of (wasted) time compiling, trying it, finally making a SlackBuild so people could automatically build & install it in Slackware GNU/Linux (then other OS people copy/use or check SlackBuilds) with its quasi-official package build manager, and waiting years to see if there would be a stable release.  I'm still willing to do it if InterHack comes back, but not for a non-FLOSS game (though wouldn't care if game content/world files are copyrighted.)
« Last Edit: May 24, 2017, 10:05:42 AM by darwin »

Krice

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Re: Nathan withdrew Interhack from sourceforge
« Reply #6 on: May 24, 2017, 10:39:31 AM »
Why did this Interhack (whatever it is) used Nethack's source code? Why would anyone do something like that. You can put monkeys write random code and it will still be better than Nethack's source code.

darwin

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Re: Nathan withdrew Interhack from sourceforge
« Reply #7 on: May 24, 2017, 11:09:25 AM »
Why did this Interhack (whatever it is) used Nethack's source code? Why would anyone do something like that. You can put monkeys write random code and it will still be better than Nethack's source code.

Haha...  I'm not sure InterHack did (just was described as ‘multiplayer NetHack.’)  Now some people told me it wasn't actually based on NetHack.  Maybe it was based on one of the various different games called ‘Hack?’  I still have the second-to-last source code, and someone above might have the last.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2017, 11:32:47 AM by darwin »

mushroom patch

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Re: Nathan withdrew Interhack from sourceforge
« Reply #8 on: June 15, 2017, 05:39:53 PM »
When I first commented on this, I did not realize what interhack was. My guess is that it uses a non-free software networking library. Mangband and its derivatives do so to this day, to my continuing astonishment. From what I gathered a long time ago talking with developers of one of those derivatives, they did not really know how to do much with the networking code, which goes back to the late 90s, so the strategy was to continue flying under the radar even though reasonable alternatives surely exist by now.