One Hour One Life Forums

"The public" in this case cannot sue anybody on civil law. There are no "public domain cops".

Some notes:

* About layman "lawyering", yes we're all no lawyers, and those that maybe will even put brackets around like saying it's not their specialty. Anyway, "layman lawyering" is something we've to do all our lives as citizens, as we ought to live according to the laws.

* IMO it has be apparent now, it is a trademark issue. As I see it, Jason feels protective about the mark "One Hour One Life" and the "Eve"-Icon used to market his game (or any computer game in general). This is fair enough. A potential trademark claim was not waved with the public domain waiver. It would likely be best to clear that up and you can put on allowness of the use of trademark following certain conditions.  This doesn't touch the public domain, you can still call your mod "60 minutes, 60 years" (or whatever), use another icon, and thus not touch the trademark.

* Regarding fraud... well googling on US-law I don't see it going through as all of these conditions must be fullfilled (I'm just a WIkipedia-reading layman here):

Regarding which person you see in relation to whom, some of these are fullfilled, but I don't see all three at the same time.

* Regarding confusion to ingame similary... Dunno there is Garr'y Mod based on Half-Life 2, Counter Strike being a modded Half-Life (1) etc. I suppose that has been mostly been clear. There also so many Minecraft clones and Mods.. usually it's also works pretty fair. And don't gets started on Tetris or Boulder Dash.

* Some things that chinese distributer pulled off are still hard to forgive like registering the Trademark on the literal translation.

* You cannot withdraw your license of stuff already released under conditions you didn't specify. What is out is out. Also from what I understand of US version of copyright, waiving into public domain is *not* a license. It's exactly that, putting it into public domain. For countries which allow this action in the first place.

AFAIK this is no longer the case for a long time.

As I see it, we got two issues.

First the confusion of players, reviewers, who think (and are made to think) they play the original on mobile. -> This is really exactly the reason what trademarks are for. And from what I read there is some confusion about it, it's not a kind of "backup copyright" it's really a complete different beast. A TM would be easy to circumvent, call your variation "60 Minutes One life" and no TM issues there... Also users are not confused, so exactly as planned. In practice the only "evil" thing about TMs I see is that there are cases of people selling stuff and suddendly get their "trademark" "claim/stolen" by someone else. As for example, there used to be some kind of cheese produced all around, some region claimed that name, so everyone else had to rename it (not strictly a trademark thing but other regulations, but for an internet argument I don't bother about details ). Or for example "Apple" the Music Label from the Beatles, and "Apple" computers who co-existed long without issue, because different markets get in conflict once Apple sold music computers. I read on the mobile forums, the chinese publisher registered the trademark for the literal translation of one hour one life? Thats another case of just completely missing tactfulness. It might easily be challenged anyway.

The other issue is, people arrogantly claiming sole authorship. There is not much to wield against that, except making public aware about it. Yes any license except public domain would require reference, but as been pointed out, this can be so well hidden, the public wouldn't notice. You got only a case if it would have not been there at all. As far I looked up, making a case about fraud is going would be very difficult to get through. For example young people claiming to have made their "own operating system" which on close inspection turns out to be a rebranded Linux happen with certain regularity.

I suppose both issues can be settled by the willing parties without courts.

I don't like the word "official" either, or anyone but a state authority claiming it. Originating from latins "officium" "to serve" always referred to a position of public state. So I eye any body claiming it. I know however that it has been claimed already by several entities anyway, other game publishers selling "official hintbooks" etc. In sports there are broadly accepted institutions, albeit private foundations, also use "official" all the time. It's no a protected adjective either. Anyway it's something I'd rather avoid was is "official" and what not. This shouldn't  distract from the fact there shouldn't be confusions on who did what and is responsible for mainting which.

Onetech would have been very possible as well, if you would have used CC-BY or MIT. Even with the most restrictive CC version (CC-BY-NC-ND) onetech would have been possible. Just saying.

The only thing all of them would require is *somewhere* to put a remark on the license and Jason. And yes it's not regulated on how visible/hidden it may be. In modern cases it could not even be. Imagine a device running an embedded GNU/Linux system, you'd have contributions of thousands of people...

Actually it would cost 250 or so. Anyway.

Just wanted to bring a practical example, you certainly know Firefox the browser. Or the "brand". It's a Trademark by the Mozilla Foundation. The browser is actually "Mozilla" So whenever you download and install "Firefox" you know it's a version that got their final blessing. It's an understandable policy.

This got the Debian Foundation into quarrels, as they want to be able to fix securities issues in software in the repository on a whim. Also an understandably policy. It resulted them rebranding it as "Iceweasel". It was otherwise pretty much the same OpenSource software, only the title and the logo was changed. It got a lot of users confused, that looked to install Firefox on their machine, "Well you have it already, it's only called differently". Or that looked down on Debian, because "it doesn't include Firefox .. but that other distro does".

After a while they settled on redistributing "Firefox ESR" and both communities got their heads cooled on the clash of their policies, which by themselves were understandable from both sites, but conflicting. Also there seems now to be much more mutual trust between the Foundations.

Honestly as I read his non-license waver, he explicitly relinquished of this right... putting it in "public domain" and do whatever. not "copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."

Which would make this very clear. And be in effect otherwise not be different.

BTW: This pitfalls are the reason why you should not write your own license, but use one of the very well tried OpenSource licenses available... And if you want to be cited, in future use a license that requires that. I recommend MIT (expat). It is constructed out of reason in this modern form, first taking you every right away and then give you give explicitly each right of use under this condition...

How about registering a Trade Mark on "One hour one life"... so everyone using it to make a buck still can, but needs to call it something else.

Although the 3 clause BSD-license has fallen somewhat from grace in OpenSource community, this is exactly the reason the 3rd clause was for.

PS not related but because we're talking about the license: "Public domain" as you are using a non-license hasother issues, it works for the US, but for example here in europe it is simply not valid. European copyright law doesn't allow the author to transfer copyright (only at max to give exclusive license, the right to cited it not forgeable). The MIT (expat) license is IMO as simple as it can get, if you simple with your one sentence waiver, you are getting other issues.

And that should allow them to watch closely my playing times?

Why not just change the DNS and wait until it propagated?

Awesome, one question about virtualization. If virtualization is an issue, can't you afford a dedicated server given the scale of the game by now?

They are about 100-200 bucks a month. I don't know how much the 15 VPS are in comparison, but maybe this checks out to switch?