Slowpoke (Feed the Beast creator) on the Technic pack

[Mooseman9]

It is essentially impossible to make everyone happy... When Technic become entire legitimate and people still attack it, I think it would simply be best to pay noooo attention to them if their claims or hatred as no legitimacy itself. I was never one for double standards. >_>

I also agree with you on the fact that senseless anger needs to stop. All the forestry dispute has made me do is question the fact if forestry would truly be worth all the pain of installing it manually into something else. Which in turn only hurts the modder who has, I guarantee, poured his blood, sweat and tears into it.

I know that you can never make everyone happy, as there are always the people who will go out of their way to hate something for the sake of hating it. It's just the sheer idiocy of everyone calling out that Technic is illegal because it doesn't have permissions. I believe that half the people who do call the pack illegal are just jumping on a giant bandwagon that's growing smaller and smaller each day. Most of them probably even torrent things. Is that not an example of hypocrisy?

I see where you are coming from, after I heard what happened with Forestry, I was inclined not to use the mod ever again. It is a great mod, and just because the creator is a -snip- doesn't mean that his work is the -snip-

[CovertJaguar]

I'm sure everyone would appreciate it if personal attacks where left out the discussion, seeing as they little bearing on the real subject, and just serve to further distance the dev community from the technic community.

[Mooseman9]

I just needed to post that somewhere and I thought it related to the discussion at hand, but I guess you are right, it does stray too much away from the subject.

Also, Jaguar, I really enjoy Railcraft, and I hope you discuss more and get everything sorted out with your mod and the pack.

[Killer-of-Lawyers]

Well, you didn't exactly need to post it. No one needs to talk about shit. Except for plumbers.

[dragonshardz]

So, here's a thought I had - having not read the entire thread, 'cause I'm a lazy bugger - is it possible to meet somewhere in the middle on all the copyright stuff?

As it is, by Minecraft ToS the modding community in it's entirety is on shaky ground, legally speaking. IF Mojang decided to, they could screw over everybody EA-style, so where's the benefit to all this pointless infighting? If it's simply to boost a modder's ego or to allow him to flex his creative control muscles, then I really think that falls under the definition of "doing it wrong". The benefit should be for the end users, and from what I can see, the greatest benefit to the end user would be for everyone involved to get together, work it all out so everyone's at least ambivalent, and then make a HUGE FREAKING DEAL about having worked out said problems.

Fighting between mod creators and modpack janitors isn't good for the end user, and what isn't good for the end user is generally not good for the developer. To paraphrase a quote, nobody ever went bankrupt by selling good product at a fair price. I'll allow you to draw your own comparisons between that and the situation here.

I'm firmly of the opinion that while the mod devs do have a point concerning copyright, the fact that everybody is on pretty shaky legal ground should be more than enough incentive to resolve disputes amicably and rapidly.

[CovertJaguar]

It actually has very little to do with legality and everything to do with respect.

[noonespecial1]

hey again guys i just wanted to say i am sorry that i said that you did not care about the users slowpoke.

it is just that this whole thing is making me a bit mad. i often use mods but all this drama is almost making me consider to stay with vannila. i love playing with railcraft and all other technic mods but my head is starting to hurt from all this drama.

i wish you all luck in resolving you'r problems.

[Killer-of-Lawyers]

Of course, from the end user, what's the difference in respect if they use technic or not? Is the arcane use of unpacking the jar and adding forge and railcraft in yourself as opposed to having it come in a neat package really part of something like respect? That always seemed wierd to me. There's a lot of "users who don't know how to mod shouldn't be using mods" going around at curse's forums that I see, and it boggles my mind.

[slowpoke101]

So good morning, a good nights sleep and refresh the brain before stepping once again into the arena that is Technic Forums. Very quickly before I get into this, @ Spartanyanni, my wash my mouth out with soap and water last night, was intended to be humour. It was late, I had been following the thread pretty much all day, I was extremely tired and if it came across wrong to some people, I apologise.

@Noonespecial Apology accepted, I wanted to say very quickly that it is my hope that at the very least some of you go away from this with the understanding that all of us. The Mod Developers, The Technic team, now the FTB team, we all do what we do for you guys the end users. We dont really get anything substantive for it and we dont really need anything substantive. The one thing the Mod Developers ask for is to show them a little bit of respect and common courtesy, even if you dont agree with everything you do. Just like I am sure Kaker and Cheap Shot and the other admins are perfectly nice people when you get to know them. The same is true for the developers. I can honestly say, hand on heart that of all the modders I have been privileged to talk to over these past months. There is only one that I would consider to be somewhat of an egotistical dick and even then, I never really spoke to the guy so I am basing my opinion on very little actual information.

Anyways I want to stop this post now. This is more aimed at the end users and I have a pretty substantial wall of text incoming so I didn't want to ask everyone to read that, when the part that applies to them only takes a little to say. I apologise in advance for technically breaking the forum rules by double posting, however Like I said there is a pretty large wall of text coming that a lot of people may not care to read.

[cmwatford]

Figures, I go to bed and the devs start showing up. Good morning all.

[The Merchant of Menace]

I think such grevious things as double postings can be excused under the current circumstances.

[Killer-of-Lawyers]

Except that if you post about him double posting before he double posts he can't make a double post thereby meaning you shouldn't be posting about him double posting but then he'd be making a double post...

[The Merchant of Menace]

I'm simply referencing a potential future doublepost, not necessarily the impending double post that my post interevened with making it nought but a simple post post.

[slowpoke101]

So onto the wall of text, it is great to see this conversation carry on overnight. So take it as confirmed CovertJaguar is the real CovertJaguar. So gotyaoi, this is kind of backwards considering the technic guys said dont start shit but personally I think you have a legit question. Hold on, I will ask a mod developer right now. OK so spoke to a developer who has a closed source mod, from his point of view keeping his mod closed source has allowed him to maintain a greater degree of control over the way his mod has evolved and this has helped to keep him motivated on the development of his mod. The feeling was that going open source may remove some of that control and the motivation to continue development would disappear.

So moving on to Mooseman and SirSengir and Flowerchild. Flowerchild is not someone I have ever spoken to, so I cannot really speak for him. My natural bias through being friends with Eloraam steers me against his side of the story re: Forge. Does Flowerchild have a point, maybe. Does Flowerchild have the right to not make his mod Forge compatible and intentionally make it incompatible with most mods, Absolutely. The only comment I will make is I never had any interest in BTW until a couple of days ago and whilst the technical aspects of the mod are lacking a bit. The guy is creative as hell and knows how to balance a mod. He also knows how to communicate with his community. Have any of you ever taken a minute to look at how much he interacts with BTW users. Its a LOT, trust me. Having said all that, flowerchild is still an ass for staying away from Forge lol.

Which leads us onto Sengir and his infamous exploding bee's. Maybe this next bit might help some people to look at this from the other side of the coin. I am copy/pasting something I have aready written this morning so I could have it checked for inaccuracies before posting, my memory is terrible for things like this.

Having spoken to Sengir with regards to this situation just today whilst it is technically correct that he never directly asked for Forestry to be removed. Kaker was fully aware of the fact that Forestry was in technic without any sort of consent. Sengir had made his feelings very clear in public, He had returned donations that had come from technic, hell Kaker even said at the time when BC was handed over to Sengir and Krapht that he already knew Sengir hated him. In hindsight that code may not have been the perfect solution, but it wasnt quite nearly as destuctive as some people made out and it was disabled shortly after Forestry was removed from Technic.

There is something that I would like you all to know, over the past few months it has been my pleasure to actually get to know Sengir a bit. I would like to assure you he is not the Devil and he not a monster. I would like to make some sort of joke her about having an evil streak or something. But the truth is, he is a coder who is absolutely busting his gut to not just give the community Forestry but also help to keep Buildcraft alive (especially problematic at the particular moment in time with the recent changes to Mincraft and Forge.)

I actually spoke to him briefly about this just yesterday whilst I was on this Forum and even he said that in the right circumstances if Technic was shown to be totally legit, he would possibly rethink his position (I Want to make this next bit VERY CLEAR, first possibly means posssibly. That was a fairly big bridge that was destroyed over a long period of time and also some sweet talking just is not going to cut it. This isnt about appeasing people or throwing a bit of money Sengirs way. It is about substantive real change to the way that Technic approaches this sort of thing both now and in the future.

Moving on to Dragonshardz. We are already at the middle ground, truth be told. The middle ground is most developers tolerate their mods being in technic pack without actively supporting it. This is a discussion about the possibility to move away from that middle ground and towards the point where Developers may actually be able to actively support the pack. This however is where we have the huge problem, because you have to remember it isn't the Mod Developer that needs to or even should be moving towards the centre. The mod developers are not the ones who did anything wrong here. They are looking for the same thing now that they have always wanted and that is respect for the work that they do and the their wishes for the mods that they create. Respect is not defined by throwing up a donation link and thinking lets chuck a bit of money at it.

I have done pretty much all I can for right now. The ball is in the Technic Administration Teams court now, what they do from this point on is up to them. I can provide what little help I am able to if I genuinely see that the team really do want to change things for the better. I have no idea what the mod developers would want to see, but my own personal guidelines for what I would be looking for in order for me to see that they are willing to make a change and be willing to get involved in the process are pretty simple.

1) The creation of a thread on these forums in public for all to see that allows mod developers to come and and post either a consent or not on the thread.

2) The commitment that any mod whether that mod be open source or not would be removed from the Technic Pack immediately and not put back in until a time when said developer was happy to give consent for the mod to be returned. (I am not sure how you would want to address the issue of mod developers who do not respond at all, however I would be inclined to remind you that putting a mod in and worry about permissions later is what got us into that mess in the first place. I can pretty much guarantee that if you went into this with the mindset of permissions not posted are permissions not given would go a HUGE way towards making developers happier about this whole thing.)

3) All mod developers that have mods included in the pack are indiviually contacted by a member of the technic team informing them of the existence of this thread and re iterating their commitment to abide by the wishes of the mod developer.

4) The understanding that any consents given in that thread are conditional upon the only mods contained in technic are those that have given consent.

I understand that this is no small task, but honestly I do not see any of those as being unreasonable or not doable. The question that I would say the current technic administrators and technic end users have to ask is are the benefits of having developers actively support technic worth the pain that something like this would entail. Worst case scenario again, is no one posts and technic stays as tolerated. I will be around a lot of the day to answer anything that may come up. But honestly The ball really is in your court now, talking can only take people so far here.

[Killer-of-Lawyers]

Some thoughts I have as a user.

2 Is kind of unreasonable. Open source is open source. Other than that, it's fairly level headed, beside siding with the bees guy. I find it hard to believe that inserting malicious code to go after the end user comes from anyone who doesn't think of themselves as John Galt. I think the example falls short because it goes like this. I've got a water spout out on my porch. Every day someone drinks from it. I make it clear that I don't want it drunk from. It's still drunk from, so I put poison in the water to make the person drinking it sick. That's not ethical at all, is it? It's a bit to close to my button issues for me to ever consider, however, it's in the past.

Finally, the big issue comes out to be handling consent. What do you do if there's not enough consent to make a pack? Turn the switch off on the current users and have them hope the FTB pack comes out at some point? That seems a bit punishing to the end user, and I think that should be avoided. I haven't seen a serious grievance from the modders to the end user. To the pack creators? Fine. I can see them having a reason to be upset even if I don't agree with their alien desire for control over their mod. But turning the lights off for thousands of current users seems more directed at the user than Kaker and company. How would you handle that, slowpoke?

Is the end user a part of this? Are they collateral damage? You said you care about them. The modders care about them. Shutting them out would be an action that would run counter to that, would it not?

[xxmikegigsxx]

I have been following this thread since the start (I was the first poster) and this is a little off topic from what we are currently on.

I really don't see a mod developer ever "supporting" the Technic Pack, even if they give permission. Lets say Technic did get all the permissions. A mod developer may not "support" Technic because of something that has been said a lot, community backlash. While Technic users would love the support, Technic haters would not. Some could go as far as to not using the mod anymore. Now that number may not be enough to make an impact, but from what I have seen there are a lot of people who despise Technic and don't even know why.

I'm gonna make a baseball analogy, just because it is a sport I follow. Lets say Derek Jeter decides he is going to become a Red Sox. Yankees fans wouldn't support him and his fans wouldn't support him. However Red Sox fans would be happy to have such a good player on their favorite team.

I'm not saying this would happen. This is just an opinion and it could be a legitimate fear and reason for not "supporting" the Technic Pack publicly.

[danidas]

Simple Killer, keep the pack as it is now for technic 7 and tekkit 3 for minecraft 1.2.5 and apply the new consent requirement for the next versions. That way we can play the current version for the time being until the mess is sorted out. To me that would be a fair compromise as we lived with minecraft 1.1 for such a long time.

Another compromise would be to remove the mods in a way that makes it as easy as possible to add them back in manually. Even provide config files and or detailed instructions on how to rebuild technic yourself. Basically what Direwolf does for his build it your self mod pack that he puts together for each new season.

One way or another technic needs to change in the manner slowpoke mentioned or at least find a acceptable compromise with the mod devs.

[cmwatford]

As an end user I most certainly would not want to be suddenly without techic so I'm all for keeping the current pack as is and trying to gather permissions for the next edition of the pack.

[slowpoke101]

So killer, 2 being kind of unreasonable is true, but then I am trying to make suggestions that might actually work and not just pull suggestions out of my ass. The reasoning behind number 2 is to show that Technic is willing to go beyond the call of duty so to speak in order to make this happen.

As to what you do if there are no consents and should the end user be a part of this. I pretty much addressed this already at the end of my post.

I understand that this is no small task, but honestly I do not see any of those as being unreasonable or not doable. The question that I would say the current technic administrators and technic end users have to ask is are the benefits of having developers actively support technic worth the pain that something like this would entail. Worst case scenario again, is no one posts and technic stays as tolerated. I will be around a lot of the day to answer anything that may come up. But honestly The ball really is in your court now, talking can only take people so far here.

The point is that this is initially for the Technic Admins and then you guys to decide what is and what is not worth attempting. It is also worth remembering that these only apply to me and do not apply to anyone else. I came on this board to discuss a post that I made on my forums that had been reposted here. I came here and initial faced a fair amount of hostility and I am still here, hopefully during the course of the last 24 hours peoples opinions at least of me have changed a little.

mikegigs, I have seen this argument of community backlash before and quite honestly it just does not hold up at all to any sort of scrutiny. I can tell you what I do know for an absolute fact. First, the amount of end users that have taken sides on this and made or make comments without having a single clue about the actual facts is simply astonishing. It may take a little time to get the point across, but I honestly believe that with just a little education from people who have a voice in the community and posts made openly from the developers with regard to the situation the backlash would be minimal.

Danidas, I see no major problem with your idea, If they start with the commitment that Technic will not release a new version from here on in without following through on something like what I have wrote, that would seem to me like a good starting place. That would give you plenty of time to resolve those permissions (we are still a good few weeks away from seeing enough mods updated and ready for release).

[Killer-of-Lawyers]

Well, to be fair I was thinking more if the thread was made and it wasn't just ignored, just everyone wanted out (Which is what I suspect would happen to some degree.) That said, it's not an unreasonable request. I don't know if it will happen, since that'd be something for the team to decide and it's just cheapshot right now, but we'll see what happens. I think Danidas has the right idea for how it should be done if it is done. Also, you're right about the clueless. It's one of the reasons I hate the topic at all. Still, though you're on the opposing side from me, you're making an effort to explain things to people, and I can't fault that.

[jakj]

In hindsight that code may not have been the perfect solution, but it wasnt quite nearly as destuctive as some people made out and it was disabled shortly after Forestry was removed from Technic.

Aside from this being quite an understatement, you can't possibly be acting like a reasonable human being if you accept that and let it just wash away what happened. Analogy time:

Joe Foobar is a painter, and has created some really nice prints. He has stated that anyone who wants to have copies of these prints for themselves are free to make them. Fred Quux owns a gallery a few towns over, and wants to help his local community (who have trouble travelling, aren't that good with copy machines, and may not even know about the prints in the first place), so he goes and makes a copy of the prints, and then starts making more copies himself and hands them out to the locals.

Now, Joe and Fred never really talk, so things just carry on, with people enjoying the prints. Then Joe gets fed up, goes to Fred's town, and starts putting pastrami sandwiches in the mailboxes of anybody who got their prints from Fred. A nice hot day goes by, and when people start checking their mail the next afternoon, it smells like six goats died all over town. So they have to clean out all the sandwiches and scrub down the mailboxes, and Fred gets rid of his copies of the prints, telling people to fend for themselves if they want them in the future. Joe nods to himself, and doesn't make any more sandwiches.

Joe, being (sometimes) a reasonable man, had nothing against the people who were getting prints from Fred: He likes it when people look at his prints. Joe just had something against Fred. But is Fred really the one who got punished? No, he isn't: All the people who looked at the prints were, some of whom didn't even know who Joe was until Fred showed them the prints and told them, and most of whom didn't even know that Joe didn't like Fred. And yet Joe was perfectly willing to temporarily make miserable the lives of his fans, just to get Fred to cease distributing the prints himself.

Sengir temporarily ruined the playing experience of people who just wanted to play and enjoy Forestry. To this day, I would not even have tried modding Minecraft, only getting interested in it because of the Yogbox (and subsequently Technic), because vanilla Minecraft no longer interested me, and the Yogscast was my only vector for Minecraft information at all. Their first Minecraft video got me to buy the game, and their Yogbox and Technic videos got me to try mods. Otherwise, I would have missed out on all of this.

I honestly don't care what Sengir is like personally, as a man, because as they say, actions speak louder than words. He was willing to punish a third party for what a second party had done. I do not accept a person who fires blindly into the dark, trying to hit a specific target he isn't willing to approach, regardless of everyone else in the way.

Other than that, I admit: What you said made some sense, and I'm beginning to respect you, your position, and your effort here.

[spartanyanni]

A. I support request 2 from slowpoke101, assuming this only affects future technic/tekkit versions.

B. Good analogy jakj, but that was a while ago. I have all but completely forgiven seguir, as looking at both points of view, we (as the technic community) and the admin team, didn't pull the smartest moves, like rectifying the permissions as soon as Technic became popular. Although seguir REALLY jumped the gin and went nuclear immediately, he expressed (informally) that he didn't want it in the pack. I'm not trying to justify his actions, I'm just saying some of this hate directed towards him by a good amount of the community is undeserved.

P.S I predict either Eloraam or Seguir will be the next devs to comment.

[slowpoke101]

OK Jak let me humour you and fix you analogy .

Joe Foobar is a painter, and has created some really nice prints. He has stated that anyone who wants to have copies of these prints for themselves are free to make them. Fred Quux owns a gallery a few towns over, and wants to help his local community (who have trouble travelling, aren't that good with copy machines, and may not even know about the prints in the first place), so he goes and makes a copy of the prints, and then starts making more copies himself and hands them out to the locals.

Fred knows that Joe has a strong dislike for Freds gallery because this isn't the first time that Fred has taken it upon himself to deny a painter his or her right to choose how their works are distibuted. Fred feels that because something in on the internet and distributed for free then those actions invalidate any rights that an artist may have to distribute their own works. Not only this, in the past Fred had tried to appease Joe by sending him a few dollars to show is apparent appreciation of said works in order to support Joes efforts. These dollars were promptly returned, thus further enforcing the fact that Joe really didnt want anything to do with Fred or his Gallery. Despite knowing all of this in advance, Fred decides to say I dont care what Joe thinks, I will decide what is good for Joe because I am Fred and I know best and well, fuck Joe.

Now, Joe and Fred never really talk, so things just carry on, with people enjoying the prints. Then Joe gets fed up, goes to Fred's town, and starts putting pastrami sandwiches in the mailboxes of anybody who got their prints from Fred. A nice hot day goes by, and when people start checking their mail the next afternoon, it smells like six goats died all over town. So they have to clean out all the sandwiches and scrub down the mailboxes, and Fred gets rid of his copies of the prints, telling people to fend for themselves if they want them in the future. Joe nods to himself, and doesn't make any more sandwiches.

FIXED FOR ACCURACY.

[jakj]

And you missed the entire point of the analogy, which was to counter your attitude of "It wasn't the right thing to do, but it wasn't a big deal either.", combined with your statement that you want to emphasize how you and the modders in general really do have the players in mind, and try to make it clear how those two things are entirely at odds. I will easily or grudgingly (depending on the modder in question) accept your assertion for all but that one, but for that one, I reject it.

If you can explain to me how I should believe he can have the players in mind when he used the players as a tool of retribution against the modpack they play, I'm eager to know. (And no, "retribution" is not florid hyperbole: It's far less dramatic than his own anti-Technic bee-line names were.)

[slowpoke101]

And you maybe missed what I quoted when I said in hindsight Sengir's solution was not perfect. Look at the end of the day Sengir had a goal, that goal was to have his mod removed from the Technic Pack, people may not agree with his decision but again we should respect it. Could he have achieve that goal by coming and asking directly for it to be removed. Maybe, we will never know. But lets be honest here and apportion blame where it belongs and it certainly does not rest solely at Sengirs door. Technic was the instigator here, lets not forget that and maybe you could and should at the very least ackowledge this?