Obfuscating Code

[Touchfuzzy]

Saying "there are people in the community who sided with code thieves" is not calling out any specific people. The fact that you identified them is not my problem.

(And again, I assumed you were involved because sharing discord logs that you were not a part of is VERY BAD FORM. And something I would never do. I assumed you would have the same courtesy.)

 

[Tsukihime]

Seriously anyone who can look at these two images and claim the person is not a thief is either blind or has some motives outside the truth.

The screenshots interested me, because the "Press Z or X to continue" is identical.

I found the plugin in question.

https://banned.url/olivia-victory-addon

Which appears to be advertised as an "add-on", which I would assume means it makes edits to the Olivia's plugin.

I would expect there to be similar outputs as a result.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

The screenshots interested me, because the "Press Z or X to continue" is identical.

I found the plugin in question.

https://banned.url/olivia-victory-addon

Which appears to be advertised as an "add-on", which I would assume means it makes edits to the Olivia's plugin.

I would expect there to be similar outputs as a result.

It copies parts of it, and still breaks Olivia's TOU, as the TOU does not allow someone to edit her plugin or redistribute.

 

[The Stranger]

@Tsukihime The url won't display correctly here. It comes up as banned.url. xD

 

[Anyone]

Saying "there are people in the community who sided with code thieves" is not calling out any specific people. The fact that you identified them is not my problem.

(And again, I assumed you were involved because sharing discord logs that you were not a part of is VERY BAD FORM. And something I would never do. I assumed you would have the same courtesy.)

I think you've made it sufficiently clear that I'm a discourteous person who does stuff he shouldn't do. You've done so twice now, so everyone, me included, is aware of it now.

That's just what I am, I guess?

 

[Tsukihime]

It copies parts of it, and still breaks Olivia's TOU, as the TOU does not allow someone to edit her plugin or redistribute.

I would agree that it would be a violation of the TOU, but I wouldn't be able to look at the two images and conclude that one stole from the other.

If both plugins were completely independent of each other, then I would suspect there was something going on, but if it's an add-on to olivia's plugin, would that necessarily be considered "theft"?

 

[KakonComp]

I'd say yes, but only because it's in violation with Olivia's TOU. It doesn't need to be anything else after that to be considered theft.

 

[Hudell]

Judging by the images alone would be wrong. Two plugins can create the exact same screen without one copying the other.

But that is not the only thing that was considered in this case, as judging by the conversation posted above, Yanfly had shared snippets of code that showed it was indeed a copy.

 

[Musashi]

Dude has done incredible things for the RPG Maker community, and the attitude that people have towards him is honestly depressing.

As someone who heard an answer like this recently to justify actions I don't agree, I'd like to say that this is part of the problem. If you're being unreasonable you'll be called on that, despite all the great things you already did. You think he's right, other people don't. How would you react if some random dude was talking to you like Yanfly was in that chat?

PivbooToday at 3:14 PM
I think guilty until proven otherwise is pretty unfair thing to do tbh

Today at 3:15 PM
Then I'm afraid you're living in too ideal a world

I mean.. really?

It doesn't matter what you write in your Terms of Use, you do not own a coding style and shouldn't get mad if people are studying your code and learning from it if you leave it open. Plus, there is nothing really original/groundbreaking there to try to protect from copies. Copying things is not that bad too is some cases, this happens all the time with games, apps, movies...
Being visually similar also doesn't have anything to do with the code behind it, and it also shouldn't matter anyway.

"Copyright law protects finished works of art. It does not protect things like facts, ideas, procedures, or an artist's style, no matter how distinct. "

It's just some RPG Maker plugins guys, relax. It's just some people making bad games for fun and some people selling a dozen copies of a plugin that is similar to another.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

@Musashi It was not style that was stolen, it was whole sections of code.

Additionally: Encouraging people to break ToU's because you believe "It isn't illegal" is incredibly anti-creator. Good luck getting any resource creators to stay around and actually produce anything if you say "people lifted your stuff? Who cares?"

 

[Tsukihime]

Judging by the images alone would be wrong. Two plugins can create the exact same screen without one copying the other.

But that is not the only thing that was considered in this case, as judging by the conversation posted above, Yanfly had shared snippets of code that showed it was indeed a copy.

I may have missed the snippets. Where can I see them?
At first I was under the impression it was just design copying, but if it's actual code copying, then I agree that would be a problem.

 

[Hudell]

I may have missed the snippets. Where can I see them?
At first I was under the impression it was just design copying, but if it's actual code copying, then I agree that would be a problem.

There's some pastebin links a few posts behind with a very long conversation between yanfly and some people from a discord server, the snippets were mentioned on that conversation.

 

[The Stranger]

@Tsukihime It's amongst these chatlogs:




Not exactly sure where, but it should be in there.

 

[Proxxie_Desu]

I don't think there's much value in talking about this old feud. Whether you agree with Yanfly or the server admins, the only relevance to this discussion is that it motivated VS to obfuscate their plugins.

This thread should be about obfuscation and its effects on the community, not old beefs.

 

[??????]

I've read over all the logs a couple of times now. Its all quite disheartening tbh.

If the sold plugin was violating the tou then sure, that isnt acceptable. But to call it outright theft? I'm not convinced either way tbh. (I dont think I would be without viewing the source code for all systems involved)..

Any system that is an addon to another system is going to look similar, those pictures dont really prove anything to be because of that. Again, if its a breach of the tou to write an addon, thats a separate issue to theft. I dont think writing a pay-to-get addon for someone elses system is the right thing to do on a moral level, but again, I dont consider it to be theft, just a bit crappy.

Granted, there does seem to be (at least from the available logs) some similarities between the codes. And certainly enough to warrant a proper investigation... It seems like the server admins were trying to get a complete view of the situation before taking action and that wasnt deemed as good enough. But wasn't all this in the past though? Are we discussing this because this person is still active and stealing other peoples code, or are peoples names just getting dragged further through the dirt for no reason here? (on both sides)

Honestly, the longer I spend in the RM communities the more I remember why I stopped participating in them. There are so many little clique type factions (forum staff included in some of them) that whether your a part of them or not your being affected by the actions.

This in itself is not fair to the community. We shouldn't be fighting and competing against one another, we should all be here trying to help the community grow as it helps open up new avenues for our own projects each time it does! Look at some of the systems already released for mz, and some systems made for mv before it. People are literally bringing 3d to rpg maker, 3 FREAKING DDD!!!!! Other people are working on animations, lighting systems, and battle systems to name just a few!! Just think of the things we could achieve if we all actually worked together!!!!!!!

But all this fighting is just tearing the community as a whole apart and forcing people further into these clique type groups. I think everyone should take a second to ask themselves, is this really what you want for the community? Do you think that is going to help the community grow and the engine expand? If you were a new user, and you seen the "community leaders" acting like this, would you want to stay in that community?



Sorry, kind of went on a bit of a tangent...

TLDR: Why are we discussing this here? This BS, it all just needs to stop. I'm tired of wasting my time reading absolute trash for days! I have systems to write, and this is just a massive pointless discussion. I actually feel quite bad for you touch, for having to moderate all this sh!t.

 

[Hudell]

I don't think there's much value in talking about this old feud. Whether you agree with Yanfly or the server admins, the only relevance to this discussion is that it motivated VS to obfuscate their plugins.

This thread should be about obfuscation and its effects on the community, not old beefs.

That's true. And even on the obfuscation subject, VS has the right to do it even if people don't like it or don't feel they had a valid reason for it. I doubt anyone will be able to convince them to go back on their decision. At the same time, people who have been against it don't seem to be changing their minds, so this whole discussion is technically pointless at this point.

 

[Tea's Jams]

It seems to me that what can be said about VS's choice to obfuscate code has been said.

As far as I can tell this thread has gone very much off the rails and has diminished to pointing fingers and bickering.

I would think most threads in this shape would have been shut down by now.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

I would think most threads in this shape would have been shut down by now.

Yes, the only reason this thread isn't closed is because people would accuse me of bias.

Also, @?????? I agree in the overall theory that we should all be friendly with each other and there shouldn't be divisions, but that is difficult if bad actors are ignored. Anyone who broke a content creator's ToU intentionally and flagrantly (which they did) would be extricated from the official forums.

Additionally, Yanfly and VS have been heavily targeted. The ones targeting them are causing way more divisions than anyone else. (There is one user who is regularly going on JP side of Twitter and doing their best to convince JP users not to use VS for instance).

 

[Astrea]

I'm in agreement with Tea here. I think we've really gotten off the initial topic. Everything that can be said has been, and I think this is devolving into targeting other users, accusing people of code theft, and various other things that have little to do with the initial topic.

While many people clearly have strong opinions about this subject, we've already passed the initial topic multiple times and unnecessarily put various members of the community on blast for seemingly no real reason. Perhaps instead of constantly giving this topic more and more leeway over the space of the forum, we should just let it go already.


Edit: Also, if anyone reading this thread wants to try their hand at making their own plugins so they have complete debugging control, Codecademy's Javascript courses are a great place to start. There are also a lot of good resources on the forums about RMMZ's internal functions and commands.

 

[Musashi]

@MusashiEncouraging people to break ToU's because you believe "It isn't illegal" is incredibly anti-creator. Good luck getting any resource creators to stay around and actually produce anything if you say "people lifted your stuff? Who cares?"

That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that a creator can't write "Here's my code. You can read it. Now that I made this, it's prohibited to use my work as reference, or to make something similar, or to use Javascript to code anything ever again" and expect people to obey. There are things you can ask and things you don't have the right to.

If there is in fact copyright infringement happening there it's beyond my knowledge and I believe beyond yours as well, so I can't really discuss it any further.
As a member of the community though, to me it seems like they are using the same structures to solve the same problems to make similar plugins. I can't see the problem, but again, I'm not an expert.