Hello,
this post is not a complaint, this post is to have a calm and reasonable debate about mods , mods’ authors and leagues ..

Scawen asked me to write something about it, and I'm sure it is the best thing to do.

Our team and league work everyday to support and offer pleasure to the community
All was fine since many years but,

Our Cup must be canceled…
Our planned Cup was based on 3 cars at the same time on tracks, 3 mods which have been brutally suppressed by the same author
2 hours before the start …
without mps, or any contact ..

It appears after mp to the mod’s author that suppression of the mods was deliberate because he doesn't agree with a simple post on our Discord… a simple rule.
The post was about trying to find an issue to the lag-crash (appeared with the new hosting) and many complaints about it from participants during our previous cup.
so we try to limit overseas (we are in EU) signups to approximatively a quarter.
we have read this possible cause in this forum, a post about this curious door-to-door ejection crash

So, that is the reason why the mod’s author decided to cut the access to the cars (which are great), and months of preparation with test combo and thousands of laps to setup and train from Live For Speed lovers was put in a trash … so what a waste of time and work… :’-(
just because he doesn’t agree with a simple rule we’ll trying to test

If i had not contacted him by mp, I never know the reason why ; it was so simple and fair to get contact with me or anyone of the Gum Garage’s staff.
Since this day, he never answer my multiple mps to have calm and fair discuss, he totally ignore

Joke : the irony of the story is that finally, if the Cup was not canceled, only 3 overseas have signups ; and 1 is a Gum Garage member team !!! (Australia).

Clearly, there is a before and an after to this unfortunate experience : Mod’s Authors have the power to ruin your leagues, your events, your races by a simple click.

Anyone doesn't agree with your rules…
anyone disappointed not to succeed in pre qualifying or qualifying session..
anyone wants revenge after penalties or in a clash with another participant..
anyone with a geopolitical motivation …
etc .. (there is no limitations to annoying someone)

.. could very well make inaccessible its mods, even if it gave the right of use to the developers and users of Live for Speed according to the data upload rules

I hope in the future a feature to guarantee the use of the online current version of a mod car for a correct (and no-stress) functioning of the leagues

I understand and sympathize with your disappointment.

Quote from Tomfuel :

(there is no limitations to annoying someone):

You said it. And that will never change (as long as some keep a tiny share of power over others, so...).

The feature you've been waiting for could be very simple and ultimately de-stress everyone. A sort of airlock.

The modder must be able to keep full ownership of his creations (I believe) without causing harm to others. This is possible if there is a version available online and usable by all and a wip version in test.

The modder can edit and/or delete wip development builds as they see fit. On the other hand, he must make the request before being able to modify/delete the last public version. At the time of this request, just check/ask if an event is organized with the mod. I don't see who that would bother. Except that it still takes more work.

maybe the rules should change on LFS side, that once the mod is public, it can't be revoked for that version of mod, similar to how common open source licenses with SW works, once you publish it, you can't prevent others from keeping it or distributing, etc (exact options/terms depend on particular license, but with common ones you can't just suddenly decide the source is not open anymore and others can't access it).

I really felt for you Gum guys when I heard about that, what a miserable action to pull a mod out of spite. We've had a couple disappear on us and we didn't notice until the round started and we had to scramble to find a replacement there and then. It doesn't matter to us with our format as much as it does to you, but it's still not much fun to have to do.

I like the idea of locking in the availability of a mod once made public, and/or the last public version if made private. I'm not a fan of the option to make things private anyway (no pros, lots of cons), but that one change would help alleviate this, IMHO the worst problem.

A friend of mine spent days skinning a mod to prepare for a race and then it was deleted the day before the race.
This is something that needs to be taken care of, or race managers will lose their sanity.

Quote from Racon :

I like the idea of locking in the availability of a mod once made public, and/or the last public version if made private. I'm not a fan of the option to make things private anyway (no pros, lots of cons), but that one change would help alleviate this, IMHO the worst problem.

I do partially agree with the first statement here. Perhaps it should be locked from deletion after 3 months? That way half developed mods or abandoned projects can be deleted after a few weeks or a month.

EDIT: On the other hand, there's no solution that keeps everyone happy. Either the consumers will suddenly lose a mod, or the mod authors will lose the ability to make their project private or delete it if they are no longer playing.

It is already bad enough to sometimes lose mods for legal reasons, sadly there is very little leeway there.
So it really does not need any more drama.

Quote :

the mod authors will lose the ability to make their project private or delete it if they are no longer playing.

I do not see that as a problem.
I think once a mod is published it should stay public. That is important for multiplayer and community.

Private mods should in my opinion not exist at all: It is a tool to test wip projects or temporarily hide bugged mods. It is not a way to create personal private cars.

Also, beside deleting a mod, another way to grief is to make silly edits to it. In my opinion, in such cases moderators would need to take over ownership of the mod.
Maybe those stricter rules should only apply to "approved" mods?

Quote from Tomfuel :

Hello,

Joke : the irony of the story is that finally, if the Cup was not canceled, only 3 overseas have signups ; and 1 is a Gum Garage member team !!! (Australia).

Clearly, there is a before and an after to this unfortunate experience : Mod’s Authors have the power to ruin your leagues, your events, your races by a simple click.

Anyone doesn't agree with your rules…
anyone disappointed not to succeed in pre qualifying or qualifying session..
anyone wants revenge after penalties or in a clash with another participant..
anyone with a geopolitical motivation …
etc .. (there is no limitations to annoying someone)

.. could very well make inaccessible its mods, even if it gave the right of use to the developers and users of Live for Speed according to the data upload rules

I will say at once that I do not know what happened and the details of the situation. But basic principles are important to me. It was also not very reasonable of you to trust (obviously) someone you didn't know, who was supposed to do everything in a good and decent way just because he is good and right or one that suits you.

No matter what you do. Sometimes you get people who aren't decent, sometimes they are decent just your interests don't align, and sometimes the situation just changes. For leagues such as yours, with mods from the same author - this situation shouldn't have happened at all. The organizer is wiser to have the authorship of legue mods, especially if there aren't many, because with many authors can agree to create their versions of other people's mods.

Quote from Tomfuel :

I hope in the future a feature to guarantee the use of the online current version of a mod car for a correct (and no-stress) functioning of the leagues

The basic principle of changing a mod by author should be inviolable. But this can be considered as a mutual agreement of both parties. Although even so, the author of the mod waives his right to change his mod. And in my opinion, even this is not a very correct way to do it. The best way is not to lead to such a situation at all, but to have your own mods.

Quote from Gutholz :

Private mods should in my opinion not exist at all

Why not? Some people want to use their personal tune of car and on the other side there's a lot of people that don't want to scroll list full of useless mods (different tunes/customs of one car) so there's some kind of win win here.

Quote from Gutholz :

another way to grief is to make silly edits

I must agree. Many good mods got ruined in weird updates but we can't really force mod makers to anything because it's their mods.

Quote from versiu :

Why not? Some people want to use their personal tune of car and on the other side there's a lot of people that don't want to scroll list full of useless mods (different tunes/customs of one car) so there's some kind of win win here.

I don't know of any modmaker who made the mod private for this reason. Imao the vast majority of modmakers just want to have a mod for personal use to make themselves privileged over others. Because everyone else can't use this mod. But the author can. I find it odd to say the least.
I am against private mods. But I'm in favor of having this option in LFS, because it gives more freedom to be creative for that small percentage of modmakers who just don't want to show their creativity in public. Its like how shy artists hide their paintings in their closets.

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

I don't know of any modmaker who made the mod private for this reason.

There's A LOT of derivatives based on public available mods. I'm lurking at review subforum sometimes

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

Imao the vast majority of modmakers just want to have a mod for personal use to make themselves privileged over others. Because everyone else can't use this mod.

Honestly... Most of that private mods aren't worth of appear in public list anyway. No interior, crappy physics (or even lack of it) and useless at anything except standing stanced on car spot.

Quote from versiu :

There's A LOT of derivatives based on public available mods. I'm lurking at review subforum sometimes

I know. But dint get it, that was not exaclty the topic of our conversation. I don't understand why you are telling me this.
This does not change my words, and the motivation may still be the one that I spoke about.

It sounds like a very messy affair… my first thoughts were that you actually have a binding agreement and thereby a contract, even when never explicitly calling it that way. On that behalf you could rightfully demand for the agreed service… but at the end of the day it is legal rambling with no effective way to enforce it right now… and due to the internationality of the community legal procedures will never get a result (even when obviously the first objective is to keep lawyers out of it and only ever using their services as last resort)…
While I do not really like the idea to have league specific mod derivatives, it seems to be the only way for league organisers to keep control over the vehicles. As it was pointed out, if mods cannot be made private, people could mess with other aspects of it in spite.

Quote from Gutholz :

It is already bad enough to sometimes lose mods for legal reasons, sadly there is very little leeway there.
So it really does not need any more drama.

I do not see that as a problem.
I think once a mod is published it should stay public. That is important for multiplayer and community.

Private mods should in my opinion not exist at all: It is a tool to test wip projects or temporarily hide bugged mods. It is not a way to create personal private cars.

As long as the mods get created by people not affiliated with LFS (under contract), the legal rights always stay with the creator.

And should this change in any way/shape or form i will delete all my mods before that update, as i will not let my work and passion projects get taken by the LFS team or it’s moderators/admins.

I already went the extra mile to try and get licenses for all 3 of my RX mods. Got 1 in the end and it’s still the only officially licensed mod 1,5 years after modding got released.

So thank you but no thank you for trying to steal the work community’s members should they decide to close this chapter of their life and not have to worry about making sure their mods still alright with subsequent updates in the future.

It would be good to hear from the author of those mods.
Also, I hope people stay cool enough not to annoy him in private about it, even if they might disagree.

Quote from versiu :

Quote from Gutholz :

Private mods should in my opinion not exist at all

Why not? Some people want to use their personal tune of car and on the other side there's a lot of people that don't want to scroll list full of useless mods (different tunes/customs of one car) so there's some kind of win win here.

- Most important reason, this thread: Private-option got abused to cancel races.
- Private mods need to go through the same reviews as public mods.
The review process is already slow enough and much effort&time is put into it by volunteers. It seems not right to clog up the review-list with private mods that will only be used by one person (or few).
-Private mods are sometimes abused to bypass the reviews: Suddendly the private tweaked XRT turns into a BMW from Need for Speed series.

Quote :

Honestly... Most of that private mods aren't worth of appear in public list anyway. No interior, crappy physics (or even lack of it) and useless at anything except standing stanced on car spot.

If the mod is bad quality then it should just not be published at all, private or public.
I want to repeat that I have no problem with low detail original work, for example what I wrote about the Poly Parvus:
https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/1980471#post1980471
That mod has a very simple model but I do not mind that. In fact I would love to see if more modders dared to publish their early modeling attempts. I think there is a place in LFS for that.
However, the typical private mod is rarely original. Just a downloaded model, sometimes with some parts copypasted from elsewhere, with questionable physics.


Cluttering the private list is a problem that would need to be solved. (Maybe those mods should be tagged as "Tweak" too, since they are basically tweak-mods, just not based on LFS default cars)

---

Quote from timdecnodder :

As long as the mods get created by people not affiliated with LFS (under contract), the legal rights always stay with the creator.

And should this change in any way/shape or form i will delete all my mods before that update, as i will not let my work and passion projects get taken by the LFS team or it’s moderators/admins. ...

As someone who has your mods saved in favorites, I am saddend by your view on that.
It is not good if a single person can ruin the fun of others like that, even if they did originally create the mod.
How else do you propose can we ensure that the mod system continues to work?

I do not see it as stealing from the creator: Creators still keep all their credit. Imo this is a case where people publish something and it becomes a sort of public domain, a contribution to the project.
It is a social contract and sometimes a legal one, too.
For example, I have contributed (mostly terrible) code and content to various open-source projects for 10+ years. I am passionate about that stuff too. My uploads are now part of those projects, I could not go back and delete random code lines or files. Technically I could do it but someone would just re-insert it. It is the way, imo only way, how such projects can work long-term.
Or look at wikipedia: People contribute text but you can not delete an article just because you wrote it or parts of it.
LFS mods should be like that, too. That is obviously just my personal opinion.

From a technical perspective, when we release (publish) a work with a Creative Commons license, we cant go back : we cannot forbid use and copy of the published work afterwards.
We can remove that work from locations we have access to, but nothing more : if someone make another diffusion point available, we cant forbid that.

Applying this to LFS mods system :
- once a mod has been made public, it shouldnt be possible to remove public use of that mod
- an author should be able to delete/hide a mod from his published mods list, but if that mod is public, it shouldnt be removed from the ingame mod list.

Once again, when we publish under CC, we forfeit our rights on use and copy (usus and abusus), we only keep the right to make profit from it (fructus).
That published work is not totally ours anymore. Keep this in mind when releasing a mod with a copyleft/public domain license.

Quote from timdecnodder :

As long as the mods get created by people not affiliated with LFS (under contract), the legal rights always stay with the creator.

And should this change in any way/shape or form i will delete all my mods before that update, as i will not let my work and passion projects get taken by the LFS team or it’s moderators/admins.

I already went the extra mile to try and get licenses for all 3 of my RX mods. Got 1 in the end and it’s still the only officially licensed mod 1,5 years after modding got released.

So thank you but no thank you for trying to steal the work community’s members should they decide to close this chapter of their life and not have to worry about making sure their mods still alright with subsequent updates in the future.

It would be unfortunate if modders of your quality stop publishing or withdraw their creations.

You are right to point out the rights of creators. It is essential that the rights of all creators be respected, and in a balanced way.

This is why your rights as modders cannot (and should not) be superior to the rights of the creators of LFS, who are also the creators of the tools that allow you to develop your mods for LFS.

Let's imagine an extreme example: the case of a person with bad intentions but competent and endowed with a strategic vision (which fortunately is rarely the case with bad people ).

Currently (with the current rules) this person could come up with great mods that all LFS players are used to playing with.
That person could then make those mods available in another game, or sell them to developers of an existing or future game, or develop another game themselves.
Then this malicious person could (this is his current right) delete them from LFS.

This person would thus have used LFS for his own promotion, and then taken some of the LFS players with him for the benefit of another game (if these players want to continue using his mods).

Without rubbing the knife in the wound, it wouldn't be the first time that the generosity of the devs would turn against them.

It is always complicated, but possible, to change or evolve the rules after the fact. And in the case of modding on LFS, this seems necessary. This does not mean that modders will necessarily be robbed or tricked. Or that the rules may force them to update their creations for life. There may be a fair middle ground for all.

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

that was not exaclty the topic of our conversation.

I also wrote answer releated to this topic:

Quote from versiu :

we can't really force mod makers to anything because it's their mods

And we can't if we wanna keep active modding community. U can even see timdecnodder reaction for that idea. He won't be the only one.
If someone have plans to make event with some mod, he just can write to creator or ask for make derivative to edit it specify for his event.
Noone tried that before because situation like that haven't happened before.

Quote from turbofan :

- once a mod has been made public, it shouldnt be possible to remove public use of that mod

But u also wrote:

Quote from turbofan :

We can remove that work from locations we have access to, but nothing more

So if u can delete ur work from other sites where YOU published uour work, why LFS system should be different?

I know that it's the pain when good mod have bad updated or get deleted, especially when someone have plans to use it on event but disallowing to delete mods is a bad idea. It's kinda about respect to mod creators.


IMO worse problem of mod system is for example possibility to leave empty update descriptions where tweaked XRT become BMW or something... But that's topic for separate thread.

Lets remind that anyone can distribute a CC work.
LFS is a bit special, it's like a bitorrent server. We can delete a mod from LFS, but it probably is already copied on many client machines and anyone of them can become a new distribution/diffusion point for that work.
The author cant forbid/bypass/control this, because of the open license.

LFS server can thus become an independant distribution point and keep the mod for public access, even against the wish of the author. Maybe an exception can be made with the NC clause, but even then, one of the devs could privately (no business) manage a repository.

Quote from timdecnodder :

[...] no thank you for trying to steal the work community’s members

: u cant steal something that has been made freely distribuable.
timdecnodder's input is the stereotypical answer from someone who should think beforehand and never publish under CC. He obviously didnt understand the spirit of an open license.

Quote from versiu :

I know that it's the pain when good mod have bad updated or get deleted, especially when someone have plans to use it on event but disallowing to delete mods is a bad idea. It's kinda about respect to mod creators.

This really depends on the license used to publish the mods.

IMHO LFS should enforce for approved+public mods some kind of CC-BY with optional -SA or -ND (adding "-NC" is kinda weird, as LFS does indirectly profit from the published mod, so "-NC" feels to me wrong in this context and extending CC with extra clause to allow only LFS devs to profit from the mod is IMHO just complicating things with little benefit... after all, if somebody is capable to make profit out of LFS mods, maybe we should be happy for them and learn from their skill, because I don't believe earning money this way is easy at all, seems to me even flipping burgers in McD is easier way for bucks... ).

So once you publish mod at LFS as CC-BY, the devs can safely archive it and keep providing the archived version until they want to.

If some author doesn't like such license, they can decide to not publish mod for LFS (or keep it private). I don't think Scawen wants to turn LFS mods into some 3rd party market, so having this strict licensing would make some mod authors refuse to publish mods, but I think there will be still enough of new mods added, and it will make it very clear and easy for users and devs how to handle already published mods.

Quote from turbofan :

u cant steal something that has been made freely distribuable.
timdecnodder's input is the stereotypical answer from someone who should think beforehand and never publish under CC. He obviously didnt understand the spirit of an open license.

considering i never published under a CC license but only private agreement / personal work means this doesn't apply to my mods, if i pull the agreement off then nobody else is allowed to use that mod/model or re-publish it, i think it's time you read up on licensing laws.

ps : This is not to say i will be deleting my mods, just that it's not ok for other's to steal work from individuals who put time and effort into it. As a mod creator myself, the only thing i ask is to let me know if you want to use my mods for an event/series, this so i also know not to change/update the mod till after the event is over.

@tim
alright apologies for the misunderstanding, i didnt expect that you werent using open licenses, for the simple reason that it makes your post quite irrelevant : it is obvious that authors publishing under closed/copyright license can do what they want with no exception.
There is no question here, the issues occur with open licenses.
Maybe Tomfuel could specify the license of that mod he wanted to use in his league.

Quote from versiu :

If someone have plans to make event with some mod, he just can write to creator or ask for make derivative to edit it specify for his event.
Noone tried that before because situation like that haven't happened before.

Event-specifique derivatives were done before.
Rony did it, Superstock Series does it. (all the mods with SST in name)
I think it is not a good way to do it. You end up with similar mods, bugs that are fixed in one version might go unfixed in the other version, players have to use another skin-upload and so on.

Anyway, in this case the mod creator knew about the planned events.
That is why he unpublished his mods: because he did not like the events or its rules. According to Tomfuel's story it was not accidentally, the sad truth seems that a modder wanted to ruin the races.

The conflict is:
1) For players and event organizers it is important that mods do not suddenly disappear or break.
2) Modders want the right to delete their mods at any moment.

I think there is only one way to solve that:
An optional agreement for modders to waive the deletion-right.
Meaning a modder can (if he wants to) click a button that will:
1) make the mod undeleteable
2) gives right to LFS team to revert the mod to a previous version, in case of edits.

So modders have the option to give up some rights but on the other hand it makes their mods much more trusted, and thus maybe more popular.
I can not think of good reasons to delete mods, so in my opinion it would be a good trade-off. If a modder wants to keep his right to deletion that is okay too. Just means that people will know to be more careful about that mod, when making skins/setups/planning races.

It could be tied to the approved status.
The creators of already approved mods would need to asked.

Why not just keep it simple, if the creator of a racing series/ server has identified a mod that they want to use for an event or entire series they should be able to contact the mod creator with a request to use the mod for a set period of time, 1 event/ 1 month/ 3 months/ 6 months/ 1 year. It can work with a simple tick box and all the mod creator has to do is approve or deny the request. If this is approved, the mod creator will then be locked out of deleting the mod/ making it private or updating the mod until that agreed time period has expired. Thereafter the mod creator could do what they like: delete/ update/ make private e.t.c. This way you have "buy in" from both the mod creator and the event creator.

Quote from Gutholz :

I think there is only one way to solve that:
An optional agreement for modders to waive the deletion-right.
Meaning a modder can (if he wants to) click a button that will:
1) make the mod undeleteable
2) gives right to LFS team to revert the mod to a previous version, in case of edits.

So modders have the option to give up some rights but on the other hand it makes their mods much more trusted, and thus maybe more popular.

I can not think of good reasons to delete mods, so in my opinion it would be a good trade-off. If a modder wants to keep his right to deletion that is okay too. Just means that people will know to be more careful about that mod, when making skins/setups/planning races.

It could be tied to the approved status.
The creators of already approved mods would need to asked.

Excellent idea ! A quality charter is the easiest way to avoid annoying anyone or creating endless and unnecessary copyright debates.

The modder is free to adhere or not to the charter. Event organizers can ask the modder to adhere the charter if they are interested in any of its mods.

The quality charter would stipulate that the mod cannot be erased or screwed up by the modder, and the basic qualities essential for a good fully functional mod (no bugs, lods that work properly, correct mapping with at least one base texture etc.).

We would thus have on the one hand clean, labeled and secure mods, and on the other hand the all comers, current.

Modders would not waive any rights by adhering to a quality charter. They would just give better visibility to their mods and reassure their users.

not the whole truth being told here tho, although im late to say it ha