Extension Licensing

[eporrini]

I am sure one of the moderators will move this, but wanted to post here as it's extremely relevant to this forum. There have been a ton of great extensions that have died on the vine, only to have to be created anew again and again. It makes sense to me that developers of the extensions have lives and many do this as a "labor of love", until it doesn't make sense for them to continue on with it. First off, THANK YOU to all of you to take time out of your lives to make FG better, it means A LOT to many of us. My humble ask is that if you decide to step away from your extension(s), please consider modifying the licensing on your thread to allow for others to continue the development of what you started and keep your hard work alive and thriving. I'm sure you can ask for proper credit(s) and protections for what you worked hard on, while hopefully allowing others to build off of the tremendous work already invested. Watching so many great extensions die off due to the original developer stepping away and not allowing the use of their code is deeply depressing.

As for Smiteworks, you see the extension boards and the huge following some of these have. I've created an "enhancement request" for working with the development community to incorporate some of their great work directly into the codebase. Don't count on "free development" for your product. I am not a developer, but changes made this week were the straw that broke the camel's back on one of my long running extensions (no longer supported) and hamstringed two others. I don't fault you for carrying the product forward or not testing against homegrown extensions. I DO fault you for not incorporating key feature enhancements that have needed inclusion in the core product FOR YEARS. I don't really know what was added this past update (your release notes aren't always detailed), but from a gameplay perspective my players were unhappy and disheartened with FGU and said this week felt worse than when we had started playing on FGC years ago. You can continue to drive major updates (Vision & Lighting) while incorporating other features that have become table stakes for a VTT.

[deer_buster]

I am sure one of the moderators will move this, but wanted to post here as it's extremely relevant to this forum. There have been a ton of great extensions that have died on the vine, only to have to be created anew again and again. It makes sense to me that developers of the extensions have lives and many do this as a "labor of love", until it doesn't make sense for them to continue on with it. First off, THANK YOU to all of you to take time out of your lives to make FG better, it means A LOT to many of us. My humble ask is that if you decide to step away from your extension(s), please consider modifying the licensing on your thread to allow for others to continue the development of what you started and keep your hard work alive and thriving. I'm sure you can ask for proper credit(s) and protections for what you worked hard on, while hopefully allowing others to build off of the tremendous work already invested. Watching so many great extensions die off due to the original developer stepping away and not allowing the use of their code is deeply depressing.

As for Smiteworks, you see the extension boards and the huge following some of these have. I've created an "enhancement request" for working with the development community to incorporate some of their great work directly into the codebase. Don't count on "free development" for your product. I am not a developer, but changes made this week were the straw that broke the camel's back on one of my long running extensions (no longer supported) and hamstringed two others. I don't fault you for carrying the product forward or not testing against homegrown extensions. I DO fault you for not incorporating key feature enhancements that have needed inclusion in the core product FOR YEARS. I don't really know what was added this past update (your release notes aren't always detailed), but from a gameplay perspective my players were unhappy and disheartened with FGU and said this week felt worse than when we had started playing on FGC years ago. You can continue to drive major updates (Vision & Lighting) while incorporating other features that have become table stakes for a VTT.

Extensions don't always get incorporated into the ruleset, because the ruleset developers are typically very busy, and in at least some of the cases, are community volunteers that maintain the rulesets. If you feel an extension you have created deserves to be included, you should be contacting the ruleset developer directly to see if they agree that it makes sense to include it if they have time.

As for the recent changes breaking extensions, it was very clearly documented what changed in the Laboratory forum...and extension developers were encouraged to get their extensions updated prior to the changes going live, and we even encouraged to contact FG support if they needed advice on how to change their extensions to work.

[eporrini]

It's tough to bring meaningful changes into these forums as I feel the responses avoid addressing the issue and focus on either "Smiteworks fanboy" or "flame". I've been using FG for YEARS. Some extensions should not be required at this point. Examples include: Coin Weight, Elven Accuracy, Advanced Effects, Blank Skills, Language Fonts to finish out whats missing (user choice), Dice Tower (sheet). Other extensions, including wound/blood indicators, death indicators, save indicators, automatic range calculators, etc... many, many people use. 5e Enhancer did so many little things, simple things like a larger health icon, that were quality of life improvements over base. Better Menus and Tabber are awesome enhancements to what feels like an aged UI. Constitutional awareness provides core functionality for HP loss. All I am saying is let's start somewhere and maybe move a few things into the base so that when a developer decides that their time is better spent elsewhere it doesn't turn into a significant step backward for the software.

[deer_buster]

Your recourse to affect change is to submit and vote for ideas on https://fgapp.idea.informer.com/ or report bugs on the appropriate ruleset forum or house of healing.

I've been an owner of FG for over 15 years now...things progress slowly because it is a small shop that has only recently started growing in size....but they are a long way away from being properly staffed to handle ruleset support and must currently depend heavily on volunteer community developers to help maintain their included rulesets. Also, unless an extension explicitly allows it, the code cannot be included into the ruleset.

[LordEntrails]

I think the core here; "Community Developers, please be conscientious of how you license your extensions and if you plan to stop supporting them, please consider changing the license." is valuable and would be wonderful.

In part it's why I started the discussion on Licensing that is in my signature. I hope community developers take this post and the discussion to heart.

[daddyogreman]

I think the core here; "Community Developers, please be conscientious of how you license your extensions and if you plan to stop supporting them, please consider changing the license." is valuable and would be wonderful.

In part it's why I started the discussion on Licensing that is in my signature. I hope community developers take this post and the discussion to heart.

I still haven't managed to get a straight response as to exactly what wording i should put in my license files for extensions so that SW could potentially incorporate my code back into the product.

[damned]

I still haven't managed to get a straight response as to exactly what wording i should put in my license files for extensions so that SW could potentially incorporate my code back into the product.

"As the developer(s) of this code, I/we give permission to Smiteworks to incorporate the code within this extension in to the Fantasy Grounds code. This permission may not be revoked."

[damned]

It's tough to bring meaningful changes into these forums as I feel the responses avoid addressing the issue and focus on either "Smiteworks fanboy" or "flame". I've been using FG for YEARS. Some extensions should not be required at this point. Examples include: Coin Weight, Elven Accuracy, Advanced Effects, Blank Skills, Language Fonts to finish out whats missing (user choice), Dice Tower (sheet). Other extensions, including wound/blood indicators, death indicators, save indicators, automatic range calculators, etc... many, many people use. 5e Enhancer did so many little things, simple things like a larger health icon, that were quality of life improvements over base. Better Menus and Tabber are awesome enhancements to what feels like an aged UI. Constitutional awareness provides core functionality for HP loss. All I am saying is let's start somewhere and maybe move a few things into the base so that when a developer decides that their time is better spent elsewhere it doesn't turn into a significant step backward for the software.

The vast majority of extensions are not used in the vast majority of games being run.
Weight of Coins for example, in over 3 years has 500 downloads. Most tables do not count coin weight in encumbrance (most tables largely hand wave encumbrance full stop).
Elven Accuracy, 200 downloads. Advanced Effects, 600. Tabber, 100. etc
Every table has different things that are important to them.

[SilentRuin]

The vast majority of extensions are not used in the vast majority of games being run.
Weight of Coins for example, in over 3 years has 500 downloads. Most tables do not count coin weight in encumbrance (most tables largely hand wave encumbrance full stop).
Elven Accuracy, 200 downloads. Advanced Effects, 600. Tabber, 100. etc
Every table has different things that are important to them.

Some may interpret these from the numbers they actually see in "views" where they download. Every time an update is removed and reloaded (say for fixes) you start from 0 views again. Now, if the update has been out there for a significant amount of time - a month or so - you can tell get a rough estimate of the population of users for it. However, with this recent update - that's going to be all reset back to 0. I saw it in death indicators since I like most other free extensions in the forums had to change it and it went back to 0. After a week its a bit over 200 views so I know that is good ball park for people who have regular games with it. But I'm quite sure people will continue to trickle in asking why extensions are not working and that number may tick up. Hence, wait a month for those type of numbers to reflect usage. Just FYI - though I'm assuming since you used the word download your getting that from somewhere else.

[SilentRuin]

I am NOT a lawyer - IMHO only based on what I have personally learned.

I think some people have a problem understanding license and copyright because they are looking at it with blinders on. For example, when an extension puts a license in it - all they think is - that's it - whatever I say there goes for this entire thing. But that's not really true.

Your extension is like a thin film running on top of the FGU application. It's nothing by itself (unless you don't make any API/ruleset/art/data use of anything but things you personally created - never seen an extension like that yet). Any time the full law is applied to something it takes into account the whole thing. Not just one part of it. Each part can have its own copyright statements of use - but that only covers that one part. If your using the whole thing - which extensions are just a part always - then the copyright use takes into account all the parts.

For example, you have a free extension for distribution.
If you don't provide a copyright license you are assumed to be automatically covered fully by copyright laws. If you do provide a copyright license then you are expressing something specific about the copyright, and letting people know any conditions on it.
That's for things you wrote. Unique. Not for any copyrighted material you may be using. Which in all the cases I've ever seen will usually involve at a minimum SW copyrighted API and/or ruleset code. So when you say - ANYONE CAN USE MY STUFF COPY IT OR SELL IT - that is for the few lines you personally wrote. Not the extension itself. Because it is using other copyrighted material to do its thing which would be taken into account when actually USING the extension. In this case, SW licenses would apply. And they reserve the right to revoke the use of their code by you in case there are some kind of copyright legal kerfuffle that occurs. Now in reality, if your distributing your stuff for free with no strings attached then you have no worries. If however, you or someone else tries to profit on your free stuff (patreon, pay pal, etc.), even if you said in your license they could - the underlying licenses which you are dependent would say you could not. You use their proprietary code to work and they will expect you to have a publisher license with them to insure they get their fair share of any of the sales made using their stuff. Free? Don't worry about it - your good.

Now if you plan to sell an extension you HAVE to have a publisher agreement with the copyrighted stuff you use to run it. This means Smiteworks (who has its own agreements with other products it uses covering those things). So if you do have a publisher license with them then you can sell the extension because part of that will be you giving them their cut. If you don't then currently ONLY DMsG has a license with Smiteworks that will cover you as they are the defacto publisher. And that, for the vast majority of extensions currently on there will be going away. Because DMsG has a license covering things sold on their site (which holistically will be taken into account in any USE of your extension regardless of what your personal copyright states), and also WOTC has a license with them on things that can be sold on DMsG (currently revoking that for non 5E VTT code like extensions - why they will be going away), and SW has a license with them on things that can be sold on DMsG. All of these things get taken into account holistically, and if any of them prevent something from happening then that prevents it all from happening. [FG Forge is something SW is working on for free/paid extensions - FYI]

This is the thing people seem not able to understand. Its not all about you and your copyright. The only time it IS is if you are providing something that is purely your own stuff with nothing copyrighted used by it - or those copyrights are all free to use open type of copyrights. Which is NOT the case for extensions. Or modules for that matter - though they get more into copyrighted art and data side of things.