What Do You Think?

[Zimoon]

.... but I think it fair to point out that if people like myself are unable to use the data here in a way that suits us then there is little point in contributing to the site and that doesn't help the SWG crafting community at all.

That is close to what I asked for in the original question. I did not ask for aftermath discussions but no more than exactly what is in the two questions with the suggested options. If you can add yet another option, fine; otherwise, which suits you the best?

Notice, all of the options enables all individuals to freely use any kind of data in whatever fashion, way, or form they personally wish to. Any comment that negates that fact just derails the discussion.

Or put it this way: Should the compiled and refined data be free to any competing on-line service? Or not? The discussion is no deeper than that! I don't understand this wish for over-complicating things

/Zimoon

--- EDITED ---
A thought was lingering in my mind while doing some chores:
You wrote "contributing to the site" .... but that holds for the other way around too. Do members of this community wish that what they contribute to here is instantly (ab)used by a competing on-line service? I mean, could that be a hold-back on some?

Just speaking for myself --- and you should know that I happily contribute more than my fair share to this community --- I am not that keen on seeing everything I do just slip away to wherever. The past months I have spent a considerable amount of hours, summing up to days I would say, digging up data that supports schematics and categories. Some was easy to find, some took some investigation, nothing was hard, some of it was plain easy. My long-term agenda was of course SWGAide, but because that utility aims at helping myself, my friends, and this community in crafting and to support this site, but doing this I of course handed over whatever I found to Sobuno who tweaked the database plus added the data. Quite a lot of this was that kind of stuff that people do not think about when they read a schematic, it was more about the supporting structure than the numbers and resource types that is used. And that is what I mean with compiled and refined data, it is packaged in a way that makes the day for any other developer. To be frank, I would not be happy to see somebody abuse that packaged data and split our community and thin out what we have.

[Monty Burns]

What competing online services are we talking about though, there are a number of small applications that use data from this site to provide a service not already provided and this is precisely why I contribute here.

My personal belief is that as long as the sites using the data recognise where it came from then there is no real problem, in fact I would like to see this site do more to assist these applications become more mainstream with perhaps a links section rather than requiring us to hunt through the forums for something we saw sometime in the past.

In all honesty my impression of your thinking here is "I have a good application now I want to kill off any competition without appearing to be the bad guy", now that may be wrong but it is the impression I am getting.

[Zimoon]

...In all honesty my impression of your thinking here is "I have a good application now I want to kill off any competition without appearing to be the bad guy", now that may be wrong but it is the impression I am getting.

Absolutely not

I do not mind any other applications that help crafters and that help SWGCraft; people are different and use whatever. Any such application would be "personal use", right?

I understand your suspicion, but do not confuse the two things: I am the lead developer of SWGAide, and, I am a supporter of the on-line service named SWGCraft. I have no problem keeping these two items apart. It is the latter that concerns me in this forum thread. If your suspicion had any bearing then SWGAide would not be open-source and all of the data that I gather would be kept inside SWGAide, hidden from the outside world. But I would still argue in the favor of SWGCraft with ardor.


This matter is all about potential on-line services where I personally would hate to see the time and effort that myself and a couple of others put into supporting SWGCraft and this community just fly away elsewhere.

SWGCraft really, really needs every hand it can get to keep up with the constant resource spawns. That is a dynamic in the game that I like, but it has a cost, the man-hours necessary to keep up with it. Many servers seem to have their devoted crafters but obviously it is not as many as it was in 2004 when I begun playing. Any potential thinning-out-the-number-of-contributors would hurt even worse.


Sincerely
/Zimoon



PS: I just noticed that you are not a "schematics maintainer" Monty, why not?

[Swedishoyster]

Personally I wouldn't worry too much...

People tend to follow the rule of least resistance and whipping out your credit card to a pay site for a service that's available for free here is a huge obstacle.
Also if you pay for a service, you really expect an edge, like having chinese gold farmers reporting resource changes every 15 min. Also, if you pay for a service and something goes wrong, like that incident a few weeks back when someone reported a lot of resources as depleted, but they weren't, people expects to get compensated. Also, people would expect to get some kind of compensation for reporting new spawns if they knew someone made money frpm their reports. But, the number one reason I think you don't have to worry is that anything with STAR WARS in it and wants to get money will very soon be visited by George Lukas' attorneys...

I like swgcraft very much and use it a lot, if there was a great need to report new spawns I would put in some times to it but almost always someone (Hi Zimoon) beats me to it... I always report spawns if they are not on swgcraft and quite often report stuff as depleted.

All in all, people will always go for the free stuff!

[Zimoon]

...All in all, people will always go for the free stuff!

I do too
But your post is off topic,
the questions are not about resource data that people submit, including myself --- thanks for the kudos
the questions are not about on-line data that anybody can freely browse at this site,
the questions are not about files that are exported today,
the questions are if other data files should be made public for any use or for limited use.

And the intention of the question is solely about the community at this site and what negative effects possible competing sites may have.

It is very much possible I see ravens circling the sky where there are no worries. On the other hand, it is too late to whine in hindsight.

/Zimoon

[Savacc]

People tend to follow the rule of least resistance and whipping out your credit card to a pay site for a service that's available for free here is a huge obstacle.

Are you aware of anyone doing this, using our data and charging for it? I am not.

[Zimoon]

People tend to follow the rule of least resistance and whipping out your credit card to a pay site for a service that's available for free here is a huge obstacle.

Are you aware of anyone doing this, using our data and charging for it? I am not.

Who has mentioned anything about charging? I have no even implied that! Have I?

[Savacc]

I think SwedishOyster is just speaking hypothetically, (are there really oysters in Sweden?) saying no one would pay as long as the info is free here.

[Monty Burns]

PS: I just noticed that you are not a "schematics maintainer" Monty, why not?

Because it takes enough of my time to maintain the server resource list and I would like some time to actually play the game.

[Zimoon]

PS: I just noticed that you are not a "schematics maintainer" Monty, why not?

Because it takes enough of my time to maintain the server resource list and I would like some time to actually play the game.

Fair enough

[Zimoon]

This thread was about files which contain data that are gathered, refined and compiled either here at SWGCraft or donated to the SWGCraft project (resource data export is not touched upon).

The two questions were,

1. Do You think that SWGCraft should limit the use of these schematics data files in some way?
2. Do You think that SWGCraft should demand credits and links at applications and sites?

... both with a reasonable number of options.

Browsing through the thread there are a few posts that directly replies to these questions. And there are a lot of discussions about possible aftermath but they do not really deal with the questions as such.

The direct replies gives:
1 --- b, b, ==> 2*B
2 --- a, a, ==> 2*A
Just two "votes" is not really enough.

The "off-topic" discussions as such implies that
1 A is out of the question
1 C is OK
Option D and E are not really discussed at all and hence I conclude the community dislike these options.

No "off-topic" comments added anything to question 2, except that any user must credit the source of the info. Hence I conclude that any one of A, B, or C is suggested.

Conclusion:
If I am in a good mode I interpret the feedback as people would not mind limited use for other on-line services (currently I am not aware of anyone), but the data should be available for individual players.

If I am in a bad mode I interpret the feedback as most people do not give a s$$t about anything

Either way, I am a big fan of this site and wished to hear what you guys feel. I am confused, or maybe not, I don't know .... eeeeh, what .... ahem .... I go back and furnish my new office, see you

/Zimoon

[Savacc]

I vote 1E and 2D, as in, let anyone use anything they find here in anyway they wish. Because, they are going to anyway and we have no means of stopping them.

[Savacc]

Thinking about it a day or so more, Ild change my answer to 1A.
Once the data files for the schematics are complete here, why would we allow people to take them. If they want to look up a schematic, just come here. Im not sure why they would need that info on their own hard drive or even on their guild web page. If we make the data files available for "personal use" we are really saying "do whatever" because we will never be able to control it anymore. Our only options are access or no access. If there is any concern at all about how the data might be used, then go with "no access".
Question 2, is just too late to try to change anything now. We inherited our open policy from Trokk.

[Slyvampy]

Just for the record, the IP rights wouldnt belong to Trokk for two reasons:

1) This site was designed and built from the ground up (both myself for the first few versions and later progressed, adapted and maintained by Sobuno) None of the original code was used. Yes the "Idea" was reinvented but due to the nature of the game, various sites, including before Trokks's site was popular - exisited and offered the same or some features.

2) Trokk's site died a death, well over 2 years ago - which would mean as he abandoned it shows that he is no longer intrested in what we do here, nor has he ever apposed the idea - I personally have sent Trokk lots of emails before we even started designing the site b4 Sobuno came onboard when Lorette was a content developer as well.

Either way as far as im concerned, swgcraft.org owns the IP rights if you will, with the content owned by its members/users ("the community"). Remembering that SOE own the copyright laws on Star Wars Galaxies anyway - we after all are a fansite.

[Akshaag]

Finally,

I decide to change my vote, i think it will be a good alternative to ask the right to download the data to SwgCraft.com for a period. I like the idea that a schematics's maintener spend some times in the website for update and it will be right to get the data freely for his contribution and his own use. My vote 1 - D.

For the second question, i keep my vote 2 - B.