Retired authors and plugin licenses

[l3m35]

I'm aware of the actions of Soulpour777 years ago, stealing snippets of code to make his plugins. BUT as far as I know, he made one of the best lighting plugins available, called Thomas Edison MV. The terms of use are flexible (archive here), it's free and the plugin itself is fantastic.

And although I understand the guy stole codes and no one really knows the extent of the theft, I don't think it's fair to say literally all his work is stolen unless we have a solid proof for each case.

That said:

1. Has anyone recognized stolen code in specific plugins from him? I'm very interested in Thomas Edison and Ultimate Title Screen, but I don't want to have problem in future if I decide to sell my game.
2. The guy seems to be retired from RPG Maker and out of reach. If some of his plugins are "clean", would it be ok to use it in a commercial project based on its license terms, or do they cease to exist?
3. Is there a better lighting plugin? I know "better" is a kind of relative, but I mean flexible enough to create spot and ambient lights, change colors, connect with weather system plugins, etc.?

Thank you.

 

[Shaz]

The license terms remain whether the author is still making plugins or not, unless they state otherwise.

A lot of his stolen items were from Moghunter. You might go looking for Mog's plugins to see if there's a lighting and title screen plugin, and compare them.

 

[Andar]

stealing snippets of code

he didn't simply steal snippets of code .

What got him banned here was that he took one of Moghunters scripts, made purely cosmetic changes to it (renaming functions from MOG to his own name, changing the divider comments but not changing even a single space of the code itself), then replacing the licence text from moghunter to say that anyone wanting to use it commercially had to pay him for it and releasing it as its own.
And when the truth was revealed he continued to lie about everything while moghunter provided proof that he did the same (art theft) under a different name a few years back on a different forum (where he got banned as a result).

The end was when he claimed toward the mod here to have made peace with moghunter and that everything was cleared from moghunters side.
The answer to that was: OK, have moghunter send us an email confirming your claims of having made peace - and that email never arrived because that claim was a lie as well.

Yes, soulpour has written some plugins without stealing code - unfortunately there are very few people who can tell which ones, because even the ones he wrote followed the ideas of other scripts and plugins. A few other users have helped him writing scripts and plugins as well, but I don't remember who that was. They could probably tell you which few plugins or scripts are safe to use because they intentionally helped with those scripts.
But in general no one can really tell what he did on his own and what not at this moment, and the fact remains that he masqueraded a script not of his own to be able to claim payment from anyone using it commercially.

 

[ShadowDragon]

Khas has a nice lightning plugin, but he retired, so only those who has it can use it (free) while it cant be used for commercial.
another one close to khas, maybe a bit extended is from ocram Light plugin I cant go in details how it works,
but the things in there are amazing though, and work very differently than khas (which I love though).

 

[Kes]

[move]JS Plugin Requests[/move]
On a different note, sheer practicality probably means that you won't be able to use these plugins. They were written long before substantial updates in MV, meaning that they are only workable in the very early versions - versions which were unstable, with memory leaks etc. Even if they were 100% written by soulpour, trying to get them to work now is unlikely to be successful. I'd save yourself the time and frustration and go for other plugins.

 

[Marquise*]

Not defending anyone here but for future endeavors adding that comment of some realization just popping trough my mind;

You win more love, respect, trust, reputation and karma points (if not money) by having to share one single original idea than cut and paste many and repackage them with your label on (and especially resell them).

I think it would be my credo. I know I love to use others work but I just am so grateful that I want to credit them at least and feel really sad to stop myself because I cannot get a hold on them.