Breaking the GNU agreement

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  • I also will consider legal action as here some posters were suggesting to target my business.

    I will not accept this in any way.

    Arguing about the license is one thing, suggesting to target my ebay account is something completely different.

  • 6Fix

    I will not tell you where the graphics are from, why should I!

  • I highly doubt this is the actual guy. This seems just to be a pesky troll to me. If it is however the real owner of the business, I must say.. you really are a bitch. What you do may be "legal", but still... what a dick move.

    You also shouldn't accuse people of being no-lifers, when you are the one defending yourself on a forum for some open source software.

  • Games made with Construct are the sole property of the creators of the games. Anything produced in Construct is protected by copyright and is NOT under GPL or any other "open" license. It is a completely separate product and using any games or images from them in a commercial way (or in many cases even noncommercial) is copyright infringement.

  • Guys, lets just leave things be. Ashley is the only one really can say or do anything about this... its his call. As far as example's, demo's, graphic's go... it the net, dont stick it out there if you don't want somebody to use it.

  • So, now I have removed Construct from my listings.

    I have no time to distribute software where the buyers end up in such communities.

    A pity, as the software is good, but why should I put my money in promoting it.

    Keep it to yourselfs.

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  • Sorry if this has been posted before, But according to the rules of the GNU open source agreement the applications cannot be sold. I have bought what I did not know was open source from ebay (It does not say it in the auction), This is the listing http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... K:MEWNX:IT

    Did you guys knoe about this?, The company behind this is known as CashGang.

    They have 2 websites http://cashgang.net/ and http://cashgang.co.uk/

    Lethalcleric

    Just ask for a refund.

    "Guarantee

    All of my products come with a 30 Day, 100% Money Back Guarantee."

  • If you did do everything that the GNU says you need to do in order to sell the program that is fine,I havent looked at your software but if you do that then its cool, but I think that it is kinda crappy that would would charge for a program that is free, I think that is the problem that most people have with this.

    As for the tutorials and games you bundled with it you should ask permission because constructs games are not necessarily covered under the GNU and even though you took the screen shot yourself it is still some one else's work that you are using for your advertisement, it would be essentially the same as me using Mario to advertise my game, and im pretty sure that I would be slapped hard and fast with a lawsuit if I did that even if I took the screen shot my self.

  • [quote:206ydxhh]Aeal5566

    Truth.

  • There is another issue that makes selling Construct as a whole a problem; namely, there is one of libraries used by Construct itself, but not game projects, that has a different license than Construct itself. If I remember right, it is the Prof-UIS or something.

    By selling Construct, that particular library's license may be violated:

    http://www.prof-uis.com/prof-uis/eula.aspx

    [quote:7nsnq5hd]9. You may not:

    a) sell, rent, lease, or sublicense the SOFTWARE

    Which is why Scirra won't ever sell Construct, I believe. But eh, I'll let Ashley and David clear this matter up.

  • or if Rich were to come back. he is a lawyer after all....

  • Gah, I don't check the forum for 2 days and this happens!

    This is locked now and moved to Open Topic (it's not help/tech support).

    To clear up some of the discussion points:

    1) AFAIK Prof-UIS does not factor in to this at all, it's just a UI library which can be used in commercial apps too (don't know if Construct being GPL changes this, but I'd guess not)

    2) The GPL specifically states it is allowed, but pointless, to sell GPL software. Sure you can sell it, but you'll never get a high volume of sales, because you rely on the fact the buyers don't know they can in fact get it for free. Anyways, no issue with selling it here.

    3) The only grey-area issue is the bundling of tutorials, games and artwork from the forum. These are NOT automatically GPL covered as spelt out here, so there is no automatic permission to sell them. In many jurisdictions such as the UK, copyright is also automatic, so you are not required to explicitly state that the work belongs to you or is copyrighted to you for the work to be protected by copyright (eg. artist's paintings don't usually have 'Copyright (C) 2010 ...' in the corner ). However, since it could be argued only Construct itself (which can be sold) is being paid for, and the rest of the content is free on the internet anyway and simply supplied as a free add-on bundle, it becomes a bit of a grey area and I don't really know what the rules are. To be honest, the odd stray ebay auction is not going to get much attention if you complain.

    The issue of collecting up free games on the internet and selling them has been around for years, and it's pretty much a right of passage for an indie gamer to find some of their work suddenly for sale somewhere at some point. It's a well-known fact (or should be if people here didn't know) that this will happen. To protect yourself you essentially should just put your full credits (name, website, email etc) in your games/tutorials, a message saying it's freely available at such-and-such a URL, and maybe that if you paid money for it you got made. That should be enough to give the right idea to someone who paid money for it, and maybe clue them in enough to start looking for a refund. Leaving work empty of credits leaves it open to exploitation, and removing credits from a work in order to sell it is a much more serious issue.

    Hopefully that clears it up. To be honest, if you see anything else like this, just leave it. You probably can't stop it, and even if you do, someone else will. Start protecting your work.

    As for the response, I'd have hoped for more maturity. Vigilante justice is never a good idea, even less so vigilante justice before proof of guilt. Next time try to keep cool. I've specifically edited out a post inciting that the buyer's reputation be deliberately reduced; that's very poor conduct indeed. Please, never respond with dirty tactics or name-calling - it's important our community appears respectful and mature, and we're not doing a great job of that right now.

    Edit: In retrospect, I can't see if the product sold actually does bundle anything from the forums, other than comments from people here. Even if it does not, the point still stands, you should take preventative action in case.

  • Just a heads up on eBay's policy on beta software:

    http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/beta.html

    [quote:3813apsu]eBay's policy on beta software:

    Beta, test, or evaluation copies of software may not be listed on eBay.

    Warning

    Listings offering beta, test or evaluation copies of software may be ended early by eBay. Multiple breaches of eBay's beta software policy could result in the suspension of your account.

    I would say that definitely violates eBay's policy.

    Also, in case cashgangnet is still monitoring this thread... no you do not have permission to distribute my game.

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