Etterna trying to violate StepMania's license?

StepMania's license is a very common permissive/attribution-based license called the MIT license. You can pretty much do almost anything you want, as long as you maintain the attribution and notices contained within the source code. However, stripping out copyright notices from the source code is a blatant violation of these terms.

This pull request replaces the "redundant license footers" with a newly-created credits list that lists all names that have been attached to copyrights in the source code. However, StepMania already has a credits file in its source code (Docs directory), making this a redundant effort, and the action may be in violation of the license (although IANAL).

Lol they merged it

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etterna best stepmania fork 2019

etterna gone in 2020

For anyone curious:

The license file ( https://github.com/etternagame/etterna/blob/13267c3a4bfcf1c0713b77496ff1a4361e1ce4ed/Docs/legacy/Licenses.txt ) is still present, the license file at the root ( https://github.com/etternagame/etterna/blob/master/LICENSE ) is still there (And is MIT). There's this file listing contributors: https://github.com/External69/etterna/blob/72e322fddd3f6a6a57bf217ae64ddda8975887c7/STEPMANIA.TXT .

Both license files are, afaik, bundled with every installation of the game. The readme also clearly states that the game is a fork of stepmania 5, and even links to the repo in the first paragraph ( https://github.com/etternagame/etterna#table-of-contents ).

I left my personal opinion on the matter here ( https://github.com/etternagame/etterna/pull/600#issuecomment-517875875 ), I don't really agree with merging it, but I also don't think it's that big a deal.

On a side note, wtf is wrong with that register page (BPM of some random song, the year of creation, and asking for last names. The only reason I managed to register was this reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/Stepmania/comments/4rgpe3/cant_register_for_an_account_on_zenius_i_vanisher/ )

Nice clickbait title...how are you going to say that they committed a huge license violation, calling it a blatant violation and then say it may be in violation of the terms? If you want to provide some concrete proof that you need to include the license in every source code file, then please do so.

Afaik unless it's 100% crystal clear in the terms the best thing would be a court case precedent or similar (I pretty much have no idea though so I wouldn't trust my opinion).

I'd like to clarify the intention is *not* to obfuscate the origins/copyright holders. Afaik the only reason this was done was to remove the boilerplate license notice in every file. Specially with regards to files like this one https://github.com/etternagame/etterna/blob/51810772003332b30b92baf72d612077a188329d/src/Etterna/Globals/Main.cpp#L10 which is about 3/5 lines of code.

Also, slightly unrelated, but just a reminder that this https://github.com/stepmania/stepmania/commit/40dc97717e1bd0f5b6ce1db03bafccb6abc84226 restored credits that were removed in sm5 in 2009, in 2017 (So they were missing for about 8 years)

I see the topic title has been changed.
Though the footers have been removed, all the contributor names are in STEPMANIA.TXT. And the MIT license is still there.
Even though it's kind of questionable since who worked on what isn't listed, it's still valid as far as I know. But to be honest I don't think anyone is going to do anything about it anyway.

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Yeah interesting title change from `Etterna commited a huge StepMania license violation` to `Etterna trying to violate StepMania's license?`. Not saying I don't apprecciate it tho

we actually noticed that the wording of the license statement is not always 100% identical to the "boilerplate" MIT License published by OSI -- so putting them under a blanket assertion is somewhat inaccurate.

Tltle: ETTERNA COMMITTED A HUGE STEPMANIA LICENSE VIOLATION
aaaand the title immediately changes once you
Title: etterna trying to violate stepmania's license?


I think at this point we all know etterna is very big and widely used as a client in almost every keyboard community. I get it, you want to smear etterna and kill it, but at least try base your smearing on facts and not clickbaits, nobody supports clickbaiting and nobody wants to see a nothingburger, which is exactly what you are doing. For all efforts that you spent 24/7 monitoring the etterna repo you make really low effort attacks man.

Lirodon was in the wrong and he acknowledged it.

You're not doing yourself any better by attacking him for it.

Certainly.

As long as he don't spread any more misinformation and present them in a clickbaity way there is not much more to be said. He already hurt his own reputation by doing this, I won't pursuit further.

You’re a new member, possibly an etterna stan trying to brigade, so for context: Lirodon is a programmer working with StepMania itself on a branch that could end becoming main in the future. He’s savvy to how licensing typically works and this thread was a warning to the team, for they hadn’t done the merge yet originally, then backed off, then reversed and did it anyway. (Hence the initial title changes) Then the possibility was brought up that they might be fine by a technicality, so the title changed once more to reflect that ambiguity. It wasn’t out of malice, but rather concern: among people who actually are in the scene, his reputation is fine.

C'mon, man... wasn't the UKSRT server enough?

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I do not use the ziv forums, hence the new account. He decided to put out wrong information here, in a misleading manner, hence my response here.


I understand that you are not the one posted those smearing messages, and I also want you to understand he has yet to provide any proof that any part of the license was violated. If there is, he should give proof. If by examining the license term by term you find no violation, then its not compliance by technicality, but simply compliance. Regardless, the burden of proof lies on him.


This sort of negative campaign by him continues to alienate etterna players as a whole, and harms relationships both ways. I as one person simply want to point out that the claim is unsubstantiated, which I think hardly counts as brigading.


As said, I do not plan on engaging him needlessly, have a nice day.