Better idea. Make a solid case for fair use of the canon so everyone can get the FL sequel they want without having to worry about the copyright issues. This was completed today. Openlancer is moving ahead as is.


-Burn

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"-Plato

Oh, so you plan on continuing the story? I've only been following Openlancer loosely, I thought you just wanted to replicate and improve on FL's style of gameplay.

OK, given that it would be far too expensive to buy the rights, and improbable that M$ would give it over to freeware- simply because of petitions asking for a FL2- and yes, I DID sign the bloody thing- how do we gain access to the storyline rights?

Followed this closely, before and lately - and, BTW, glad to see that both Megaburn and Blackhole are on the same page now ( at least kinda sorta in a way) because I feel that this IS the way this is gonna be solved.

Seems like here's the Question: Do you go after the canon, or do you try to connect to the FL storyline without infringement? Either way, there's going to be problems,at least by going after it by way of the continuing storyline. The M$ gods are gonna want their 'Fair Cut' even though the community does all the work, and simply because they own the rights to it. And if you set up a 'competing' storyline( even if it tries to exclude a FL basis whatsoever) then you're faced with the task of proving it under the law that you are not utilizing a previous existing work for gain or profit.

I would submit that setting it up under a ' not for profit ' clause might be the way to go - I'm not any kind of Lawyer, but I would think that this could be checked for plausability

Fred,
We're doing both, connecting to FL's storyline by continuing the story and minimizing infringement by not recreating Sirius. Mods can operate under the radar more than Openlancer as a whole, so they can port what ever they want from FL or any other sci-fi canon.

There is no “fair cut”, so thats not a concern. I haven't updated the license yet and probably won't for a while, but when this is finally released it will contain clauses barring any and all methods of making profit with Openlancer. This is a non-commercial project and we need to enforce that if at all possible. This includes MP servers charging players for access.

I'm not a lawyer either but I know we have a solid case. Fair use doctrine allows us to deter a lawsuit and gives us a solid defense if we are sued. It is not a license and cannot prevent a lawsuit. The major factor here is the “all important” fourth “check” of the fair use doctrine, its a measure of the effect of our work on the market value of the Lancers Canon. Freelancer is going off the market and without continuing work to maintain a market presence the canon will decline in market value rapidly over time. In all likelihood this means our work will have a positive effect. The hard part is proving that BUT we do not bare the burden of proof here, proving it just strengthens our case and makes a lawsuit all the more unlikely. The burden of proof is on Microsoft to show that we are causing adverse harm to the market value of the canon.

The community has tried to contact MS before and theres no reason to believe contacting them now would have any effect at all. They ignore us, thats not likely to change. So we're going ahead without permission or notice. If they finally take notice of our work and send out a cease & desist notice then we'll reply with our fair use claim, and basically state our case as if it were going to court. From there we'll ask for permission to continue as is and ask if they would like any changes make to the game to improve the canon's market value. That could help to further officially legitimatize our contribution to the canon. I'll also give them a brief on the middleware licensing situation so that if they decide they want to sell Openlancer they'll know how much it would cost to get the commercial licensing together.

If MS is unreasonable then we can take it to court. That won't be cheap and will only work if we can find a lawyer willing to help (for free). If we win the fair use case, which we probably will, then we can continue as is. If we lose then thats it, game over. We could salvage much of the work and start a new project with a new canon but Openlancer would probably need to be dissolved.

Alternatively, if MS is unreasonable then we'll need to remove all infringing content from the game. This means developing a completely new canon, with a new history. That should keep us out of court.

The OL storyline picks up after the hypergate network is reactivated at the end of the FL SP campaign. The hypergate in the dyson's sphere isn't stable enough to allow ships or even probes to travel through safely. A group of sleeper ships is sent out on a ten year trip to setup a station to stabilize the gate and build a small minimally self sufficient colony. What happens next is will being worked on.

Single player is two part, building up the colonies and fighting with “Dark Fleet” (Nomads). This parallels to WWII games, it charts a single characters path from before the war to where their role in the war is over.

Multiplayer is a massive war between the colonies and Dark Fleet. Its totally dynamic and allows for free form game play. Characters can start just about anywhere and do just about anything. The ultimate goal is to prevent Dark Fleet from taking over the entire game world. The war can be “disabled” to allow for other scenarios with mods or MP server owners to pit different human factions against each other - or just free form game play like FL MP.


-Burn

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"-Plato

I left the openlancer project, so "on the same page" isn't a very good description.

Blackhole,
You're still posting on the OL forum, offering some suggestions, and obviously thinking about the project. As I've said a number of times now, you are welcome to continue working on it and come and go as you please.

As far as I'm concerned everyone in the community has, or soon will have, an interest in Openlancer. It needs to become a community effort. I'm trying to push the development team away from static titles. Project admins, moderators, and some development team positions will remain static out of necessity. Beyond that the only difference between a community member and a development team member is having their name in the credits for specific contributions.

You can continue working on this in any capacity you want and you don't need to prefix every suggestion with “I'm not on the development team anymore but...”.


-Burn

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"-Plato

HI, i was just wondering, what would happen if M$ went bankrupt???(in relashonship with the copywrite).

@ Blackhole ~ i have read the majority of your posts on TLR and I think you should stop "“I'm not on the development team anymore but...”" because it is obvious that you dont want to drop OL and all your doing is being anti-social.
Come back and have FUN, stop getting anoyed when people say "thats unreli..." etc leave that to MB. Ever leave OL and never talk about it or be part of OL, even if it is only part time, and forget whatever it is that stopped you from coming to OL anyway. HAve you ever noticed what Findly does, he just types this

"Please read the Rules and Regs before posting. When in doubt, Search the Forums to find it out.
Looking for a mod or ship, check in Here
You have entered a "Flame Free" area, please extinguish all lights and secure all combustibles, Thanks!
Have you been to the Welcome to The Lancers Reactor Yet?
Portalive TS Server IP: 128.39.88.122 (TLR)"

I bet he has go that saved on his PC somewhere and Copy/pastes it.

---

NuttyProSci-Fi3000: HI, i was just wondering, what would happen if M$ went bankrupt???(in relashonship with the copywrite).

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Good Question, But also Incredibly hard to Answer, Copyright Laws have been made into such a nightmare that it'd probably take 100 Lawyers 50+ years to figure that one out...

Edited by - Zedicus on 7/1/2006 4:36:26 PM

Bankruptcy makes no difference, other than they would have less money to wage a legal battle. If MS actually went out of business without selling the IP to someone else then it would become abandonware. The copyright would still be in effect but there would no one with the legal authority to enforce it. This doesn't happen very often. Most of the time other companies or even employees will buy the company's property before it goes out of business, including the IP. Finding out who owns the IP in a situation like that is damn near impossible.


-Burn

I just thought of a Possable thing to look into in regards of making our own Fl2, FreeDOS is essentaly Identical to the old MSDOS but yet is turned a blind eye to.

Perhaps we should look into that in more detail?

It might give us some tips...

If you mean copyright wise, that doesn't help. I don't know the exact details of FreeDOS but I think its based on the OS functionality not being copyrightable, just the actual source code is copyrighted (and some of the text, graphics, logos, etc). Its similar to ReactOS, an open source remake of WinNT. In both cases the OS has roughly the same functionality but the source code was developed from scratch.

FreeDOS might also be related to how MS stole DOS from the guy who made PCDOS. If that guy authorized the use of PC DOS source code then FreeDOS would be legal and MS would have no way to stop it. This doesn't help us either. DA created FL and sold/transfered the IP to MS. There is no dispute over the FL IP ownership.

Fan fiction as fair use is an untested legal defense. Most companies leave it alone and the few that do take action against people always settle out of court. In most cases companies also try to side step the fan fiction fair use claim by focusing on some extremely small point. These big companies really do not want to see a legal standard set for fan fiction as being fair use.


-Burn

What i'm mainly getting at with FereeDOS is the fact that MS has (Like with FL) Abandoned DOS, so we might be able to glean some Information from that, that might go in our Favor.

I am not sure if most of you have noticed, but the Freelancer graphic engine is the best space engine created untill now. You cannot fly in any kind of space debris and feel surrounded in other games, you cannot explore vast & detailed sectors in any other game. Simply put, they arent as big or pretty.

The only thing you could do to top it is bump the poly count, add some new light effects (give stars dinamic glows etc), more detailed cockpits and some textures.

The rest would just be atention to gameplay. You need the games code and from there work on, not a new engine, AI, netcode and sound.

Zedicus,
DOS is still used as the Windows command line interface. It hasn't been abandoned but rather integrated into another product. DOS has been abandoned as a standalone product since theres virtually no market for DOS by itself. FL is still on the market and still has some market value, albeit small. There is no comparison with DOS.

Fury3 is an example of a game MS has completely abandoned and come 08 there will be a solid comparison there.


Cervantes,
Theres nothing remarkable about FL's graphics engine, maybe when it was released but not now. The game engine as a whole does have some attractive features that, if we had the source code now, would make it well worth upgrading. Without the source our only option is to create a new game, thats exactly what Openlancer is doing. If we can get the FL source in 08 then it might still be worth updating but that depends on what happens with Openlancer and any other games come on the market.


-Burn