Tremulous human playermodels use animations from Quake 3

[Megagun]

Comparison between Battlesuit and the Quake 3 keel model's taunt and jump animations
Comparison between human_base and Quake 3's Visor's taunt animation

As far as I know, you can't take these animations and relicense them as part of your model/the Tremulous package under CC-BY-SA 2.5 as the right to these animations belong to ID Software.
Is there anything I'm missing here (such as obvious proof that you *can* use these animations freely)?
Is 1.2 going to use the same models/animations?

[benmachine]

It is also my belief that the Q3 media still belongs to id. Prior to Tremulous being released as standalone, it was perfectly acceptable that it use q3 models as it required a retail version to play. In order to transfer from q3 to standalone, it seems likely to me that the modellers for Tremulous attempted to recreate the models they had been using and their animations as accurately as possible.
I'm not sure how similar the two have to be in order for claims of copyright infringement to hold water, but I'm sure that id don't own the copyright on those gestures, or on jumping up and down. It is easy to understand why two developers might independently create two extremely similar animations, especially if one has seen and used the other's work beforehand.
From what I've heard, 1.2 may have some new animations but is unlikely to revoke any of the current ones unless there is a very good reason for the animators to create more work for themselves.

[amz181]

trem uses the quake3 engine, so im sure theyre able to use the animation.

no offence, but i hate people like you, its people like you who ruin it for everyone.

[David]

The engine is open, then assets are proprietary to idtech, so we can't use them (Unless those bits were also released).

[Megagun]

In a private conversation I had with someone in the development team, I heard that the actual intention was to use the Quake 3 animations, and that that person thought that using those animations 'would be okay'.

no offence, but i hate people like you, its people like you who ruin it for everyone.

How exactly do I ruin it for everyone? Please do tell me.
All I'm doing is shining the light on something that could eventually lead to an even bigger situation, depending on the people involved in this. Especially 'further down the line', if people use the Tremulous models and animations under the CC-by-sa 2.5 license, not knowing that the animations are actually by ID software, it could cause some trouble. I'd rather not want to spend time myself on doing a project and then getting an angry note from ID Software claiming that I infringed on their copyrights without myself actually knowing that I did so.

(If I wanted to ruin it for everyone, I'd notify ID and the people responsible for the Debian repositories about this a few days after the release of 1.2)

[zaishaza]

this accusation might hold a little more weight if you were talking about a skeletal animation format like doom3's, where it is quite easy to import the skeleton complete with animations and use it to animate your own model.

quake3 models are actually md3 models which don't have skeletons. Animation is recorded by describing the position of every vertex in the model for each frame of animation¹. so if you wanted to "take these animations" you could only do so by using the original model, which obviously isn't the case here.

¹from this page.

[Taiyo.uk]

no offence, but i hate people like you, its people like you who ruin it for everyone.

That was an unnecessary troll.

He did not flame, troll or blindly accuse the developers of theft. He merely stated his observations and asked whether they were accurate. He did nothing wrong. Being an open-source project does not relieve us from the requirement to remain legal, and vigilance in the community is important to achieving this.

[Lava Croft]

I think you should call id Software and rat out on the people that made Tremulous, and then all kneel down and start praying very hard that the bastard CEO with the long brown hair will send evil lawyers to Scotland to take with is rightfully theirs.

Or, as an alternative, you could just not give a shit until nobody else gives a shit, since the original creators, thusfar, certainly have not expressed to give a shit. But somehow I feel this option is way too comfortable for a certain kind of people, with a certain kind of unpleasant appetite.

[Yarou]

What's your point?
(More accurately, who gives a fuck?)
Fuck off.

[Lava Croft]

http://www.fileplanet.com/hosteddl.aspx?q2pmp/tools/quake3/bips-q3-steed.zip

[Syntac]

no offence, but i hate people like you, its people like you who ruin it for everyone.

Why is it that whenever someone says "no offense", the following remark is always tailored to provide the highest possible amount of offensiveness?

[Hendrich]

Tremulous human playermodels use animations from Quake 3

Essentially, all of us couldn't give a fuck, lets try using my computer buddy WinDOS(tm) to examine this problem:



Hmm, I guess he came up with 0 results. I suggest you stop posting such crap into the forums and try to rat out the Tremulous developers from getting a lawsuit from I.D, even though I.D couldn't give a crap about Q3 anymore.

Btw, who the hell wants to download pictures for comparison? What the hell is wrong with just hosting them on Photobucket or something? It seems to yell "I'm a virus, lolololol" when we need to download something that is unnecessary to download.


Meh, my mistake, they were downloadable videos, because YouTube's video quality sucks. 

(I'll be the first to accuse him of being a NS agent sent to destroy us)

I was thinking of him being a Gloom agent. Yea, yea, gloom is more balanced and they like a game inspired by them, but they always have been jealous of our....engine...superiority. You could call me crazy, but wait.

One day, Quake 2 will rise once again, and will squash all of you Tremulous noobs in the dirt, with your fancy engine bells and whistles. And you wouldn't ever known a member in the forums worked as a double agent to bring you Q3 nubs down, mwhahahahahHAHAHA!

*cough*, umm, I mean, go Tremulous! 

[David]

Its a video.  Click it and it plays in your browser, much preferable to youtube's bastardisation of videos.  And if he hadn't posted evidence then this thread would have gone in a much more "fuck you noob" direction.  (I'll be the first to accuse him of being a NS agent sent to destroy us)

Anyway, all the smart ones of us do care.  We care a lot.  Non-free items in tremulous can cause major shit, its a lot better to clean them up on our own terms than wait for the DMCA takedown letter to be sent to the upstream.
IMO there's no problem here, but its certainly worth checking.

[Lava Croft]

I think the smart people are the ones who just don't care, while the retarded ones are the people creating a fuzz over next to nothing.

Look at the link I posted, it is most likely that TremDev got the bipeds from the archive that Paul Steed put online years ago. The archive does not include a readme or a license. There is a chance that these bipeds receive much the same treatment from id Software as the vwep models in Quake2; they just don't give a shit.

Of course, retards like you people don't give a shit about this, you just want attention.

[silverbak]

You're missing the point and misrepresenting the situation.

When you say Id software 'doesn't care anymore' what you're really saying is that the product is old that they are unlikely to enforce copyright action against it.  This isn't a decision that you can make for Id neither is this how open source endeavours works.

The point here that licences are important to people and big distributions, and if it can be demonstrated to distributions that piracy of other companies and individuals works has taken place then they won't hesitate in kicking those works out of the repositories.

[silverbak]

I'm not sure how similar the two have to be in order for claims of copyright infringement to hold water

In the UK, all and any derived works would be considered copyright infringements, regardless of the level of similarity.  Naturally it can be difficult to demonstrate something is a derived work however there are many cases that are obviously derived works.

[silverbak]

Look at the link I posted, it is most likely that TremDev got the bipeds from the archive that Paul Steed put online years ago. The archive does not include a readme or a license.

In many jurisdictions in the world (especially within the EU) copyright is an automatic process that doesn't require any registration and is immediately applied to any new works.

In light of this, imagine you're preparing a submission to a solicitor for the tremulous project so that he can defend a copyright infringement claim made by an agent of the author.  Please regale us with your submission and imagine that a legal representative was reading it and imagine how it would sound!

[gimhael]

Look at the link I posted, it is most likely that TremDev got the bipeds from the archive that Paul Steed put online years ago. The archive does not include a readme or a license.

In many jurisdictions in the world (especially within the EU) copyright is an automatic process that doesn't require any registration and is immediately applied to any new works.

In light of this, imagine you're preparing a submission to a solicitor for the tremulous project so that he can defend a copyright infringement claim made by an agent of the author.  Please regale us with your submission and imagine that a legal representative was reading it and imagine how it would sound!

Copyright holds for automatically for all works, if they have a license file or not. If the work does not include a license from the copyright holder that explicitly states that it is ok to use for free, then you cannot use it legally in an open source project (unless you wait 70 years for the expiration of the copyright). Adding a creative commons license file yourself would make your legal position only worse.

So if these animations are derived from Id's copyrighted material, they should IMHO be replaced because if Id doesn't claim it's copyright now doesn't mean that they (or any future owner of Id) will never change their mind and also because every linux distribution (except Gentoo maybe) would immediately remove tremulous from their repositories.

[Lava Croft]

All of you license gestapo seem to overlook the fact that the only people that should care about this are the creators of Quake III Arena and the creators of Tremulous. What I can see from over here, none of them care.

So, if there is no problem, why create one?

@silverbak: Please keep on triple posting, that way I can happily remove you from these forums.

[Megagun]

What about people who redistribute the Tremulous files? They might care that they're redistributing illegal files.

Of course, retards like you people don't give a shit about this, you just want attention.

EDIT: and people who want to use the Tremulous content in their own projects might care, too.

[Lava Croft]

Please supply me with any proof that these files are illegal. Do not post generic text about copyright and what not, be a real man and email id Software.

[EDIT] Also remember that the biped files used by TremDev for these animations were not a part of Quake III Arena and its copyrighted data.

[silverbak]

All of you license gestapo seem to overlook the fact that the only people that should care about this are the creators of Quake III Arena and the creators of Tremulous. What I can see from over here, none of them care.

So, if there is no problem, why create one?

There is a huge problem because a.) we don't want to personally redistribute files illegally and b.) there are people here like myself affiliated with GNU/Linux distributions where we just cannot distribute files of this nature.

So really what this comes down to is a userbase issue.  If tremulous as a project wishes to reduce its userbase then certainly the quickest way of this happening is to start including files that cannot and will not be distributed by mainstream linux distros.

I don't want to see that happen to tremulous

[Lava Croft]

As I see it now, you create a problem where there is no problem. Out of a theoretical problem, you try to create a real problem.

My suggestion is that you do not distribute Tremulous to your userbase if this is such of a 'huge problem'.

Do keep in mind that any suggestion coming from me is one of a mere forum moderator, who speaks for nobody but himself.

[Nux]

Firstly, thank you Megagun for your information and insight.

If there is a chance that this animation could cause trouble, should reluctance to put in the effort be any reason against changing it?

@silverbak: Please keep on triple posting, that way I can happily remove you from these forums.

You, as a forums administrator, have just asked a user to provoke you so that you might remove them seemingly out of resentment to their point of view. Regardless of any level of sarcasm intended, I would urge nobody to accept such behaviour. Please keep your hot head out of the discussion.

[silverbak]

My suggestion is that you do not distribute Tremulous to your userbase if this is such of a 'huge problem'.

It won't be a huge problem, distros will just pull the package.

It is incredibly short sighted to underestimate what this will mean from tremulous if linux distros won't carry it.

For example, in Debian, there have been 564 people who have installed tremulous of which 413 are considered regular users.
http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=tremulous

This is just one distro.

[Lava Croft]

If all those people 564 feel they cannot play Tremulous because of this 'huge problem', then I don't think they really care about the game itself.

[Kaleo]

I think you will find that any of the animations/player models that Tremulous "steals" from Q3 are in the shareware version. Which, as far as I can remember, is freely redistributable.

[silverbak]

If all those people 564 feel they cannot play Tremulous because of this 'huge problem', then I don't think they really care about the game itself.

Your response is indicative of someone who isn't intimately familiar with the open source philosophy, and your response is also indicative of someone who looks like they would seek to 'blame' tremulous players with such a philosophy for not using the pirated works of others to entertain themselves.

[benmachine]

I think you will find that any of the animations/player models that Tremulous "steals" from Q3 are in the shareware version. Which, as far as I can remember, is freely redistributable.

The media of Tremulous claims to be licensed under the Creative Commons licence. This is only legal if the developers who chose to do so owned the original copyright of the work (and I think we are yet to see really compelling evidence that they did not).

Given that the models look different, and from what I hear the model format doesn't really support easily transferring animations from one model to another, I don't think there's anything to worry about until evidence suggests otherwise.

[David]

Those stats tell me there are 87 people with the evil tremulous-server package, would be doing them a favour to remove it.
But that is not the point.  You are arguing with lava who has no power and is hated by a lot of people.  If there is evidence of infringement then I am sure the devs will react, although as it is I see none.