Legal Advice Offer

[inigmatus]

from: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/132186-spacedock-dev-thread-the-kerbalstuff-replacement-site-now-live/&page=15#comment-2421176

One and all, I'd like to contribute to this effort.  I have no technical expertise, but I do have LEGAL expertise, as I am graduating law school in 85 days (wow!) and my school has free student-clinic representation for non-profit corporate clients.  I am based in New York, USA, but I can access other jurisdictions either within or potentially outside of the United States through my own personal network of lawyers, law students, and other professionals.

KerbalStuff failed, ultimately, because of a poor incentive-model (cost of time and money) to update and maintain it.

SpaceDock, or any successor, will eventually run into the same problem in some form.  Squad's licensing, of course, is with Curse.  Curse predicates its own commitment to Squad based on an economic model of forcing mod downloaders to physically visit their website and be exposed to banner ads as their primary method of cost defrayment and profit generation.  This is reasonable, because mod cloud-storage is not free; mod hosting and listing and indexing is not free; and bandwidth for mod downloading is not free.  Indeed, anyone who knows or prefers CKAN understands that Curse is VERY CKAN-unfriendly, as CKAN is based on metadata files that presume the ability to remote-call and remote-download hosted mods -- Curse actually updated their software to affirmatively prevent CKAN from doing it's thing, specifically to ensure that mod downloaders were forcibly exposed to Curse's banner ads.  This is why CKAN management favored a mod that was hosted on KerbalStuff, Github, or some other miscellaneous hosting (such as Dropbox / OneDrive / GDrive / etc.)

I am unfamiliar as to the exact particulars of Squad's licensing, but I'm fairly certain that Curse's deal is one of exclusivity -- that any other mod-hosting site is prevented by licensing restrictions from adopting any for-profit model that would compete with Curse.

My Proposal: With someone else's help, I can act as point man in forming a non-profit corporation of some kind (my own jurisdiction of New York would offer several filing options for this, and other jurisdictions may offer different options, each with advantages and disadvantages.)  I can even serve as a member of a corporation's managing board.  I suggest we find a way to manage and navigate the existing licensing restrictions, or possibly even negotiate with Squad in good faith to allow some form of compromise solution, that would allow SpaceDock or some KerbalStuff-successor to operate and generate modest revenue from hosting and CKAN integration, not for the purpose of generating lasting profits, but for the exclusive purpose of strengthening the non-profit product so that it remains as available and robust as the technology could allow.  From actually offsetting the digital costs of webhosting and bandwidth, I foresee the possibility to manage a small cohort of otherwise-volunteer programmers and other mod hobbyists by actually offering them some sort of financial incentive to donate their time.  I'm not suggesting we hire someone full time with salary and benefits, but something that would make their late nights of sacrificed personal time worthwhile.

I can be reached by PM here, or by email directly at David.Jacobson@brooklaw.edu.  I get a lot of emails from other sources, so to make yours stand out, please indicate "KerbalStuff Successor" in the subject line.  I am convinced that there can exist a fully-legal, fully-compliant, self-sustaining solution to this issue, and I'd care to be a significant contributor to that effort.

Best,
David

Do we have any thoughts on this kind of offer?

inigma

[inigmatus]

I'm thinking if anything was done, it would have to be entirely pro bono (ie. free). If nothing decided now, then certainly it would be good to keep David as a standby contact should the need arise.

[godarklight]

There's a few problems with this message:

"KerbalStuff failed, ultimately, because of a poor incentive-model (cost of time and money) to update and maintain it." - SirCmpwn made it pretty clear that money wasn't an issue - and afaik he kinda just burnt out on looking after kerbalstuff, especially after some disagreements with other modders. Motivation is probably the biggest driving factor.

"SpaceDock, or any successor, will eventually run into the same problem in some form" - Perhaps, every dog has its day, but VITAS has been running the current server for other things for quite a long time now, SpaceDock appears right at home on it, and we don't have any plans for migration atm.

"CKAN understands that Curse is VERY CKAN-unfriendly" this is completely untrue now - CKAN has the goahead from jadedcat (a curse rep) to allow CKAN downloads from curse now. The reason they never tried before was because automated tools appeared to be against their terms of use - but jadedcat says otherwise.

"I can act as point man in forming a non-profit corporation of some kind" - I'm a bit sketchy about this. Currently we do have a patreon page which covers server costs, although I do realise that won't last forever. What exactly would the non-profit entail?

"I can even serve as a member of a corporation's managing board" - Now I'm really sketchy on this :P

"possibly even negotiate with Squad" for? Squad isn't going to pay modders unless they hire them to code for the game :P

I'm a bit sketchy about the whole thing, but I'll let others comment on it too. Currently doing what we are doing appears to be the best option to me.

[TN-1]

I agree with what @godarklight concluded.

[ghost]

I think we should not go overboard, we are hosting mods for a game with little cartoon like green men.
we are not even charging for use of the site, so any "Legal Advice" would be very simple stuff.

[jameswolff96]

Another important thing to realize is we are an alternative to, not a competitor with curse. 100% agree with @godarklight.

[ghost]

yeah i agree with @godarklight

[Shuudoushi]

@godarklight does have very good counter points, though having someone with at least legal experience kicking about could help first time modders in picking licenses and help encase of douchebaggery of CR/patent/TM trolls (even though that phase has luckily seemed to have died).

[godarklight]

@Shuudoushi That's more an issue for modders though than for us.

[jameswolff96]

While having someone like that around would be nice he seems like he has "big ideas" for the project and a lot of the stuff he is talking about seems like a conflict of interest for what the project is (at least in my opinion). It all depends on the type of person he is and if he would be able to, for lack of a better term, "tone it down".

[ethan3369]

I may not have any thing to contribute but my opinion but after the shutdown of KerbalStuff I don't want that to have ever again. I think that some amount of legal protection would help in ensuring that SpaceDock stays around forever.

[inigmatus]

I am closing this issue for now. We have the information on file, but at this time we've decided to not pursue this. Thank you!