Slimjim, who made the kart mod etc. for rFactor has been banned from rsc and all his stuff removed for using gplea models in his upcoming historic f1 mod
ouch,maybe he will get sued now, this is a reason why the devs shouldn't allow mods too. I won't be surprised if he makes a new account and starts again, then gets found out and ban, then repeat.
imo, RSC just killed one of the best mods ever made for a game. the handling is amazing, it makes rfactor fun to pick up and play, and RSC admins completely killed it for because he didnt credit people who think any 1960's F1 mod belongs to them.
For christ sakes the release was a beta, as slimjim said he was just releasing it to get peoples opinions, im pretty sure he was going to go round everybody and make the mod kosher before a final release, but he doesnt get the chance now.
What actually happened was that he asked the GPLEA (GPL Editor's Association) for permission to use their models and didn't get it. He spat the dummy and used their work anyway - as well as the work of the many people of the GPL Mod teams, for which he sought no permission at all - hence the ban. The GPLEA and the GPL Mod team are just community members who have put thousands of hours of their own time into modding their favourite game, for no other reason than they love it and the era that it represents. If they don't want others to use their work it's up to them. Also, slimjim's mod is simply a little fun thing and NOT representative of the 1967 season - he said so himself. He just used the models and graphics by the GPL editors. The physics he uses in the mod are not accurate to the era and have not been researched. Basically slimjim's mod is a fantasy open-wheeler mod using GPL cars made by the GPL community. Any resemblance to historic racing is visual only - and only just, in the case of the Eagle car with the giant Brabham bagde on the front...not to mention the BRM car has a 5-speed gearbox when it should have a 6-speed.
Noone over at GPL-land thinks they own 60s F1, that's an utterly ridiculous assumption. Most GPL fans would love to see historic racing in other sims - if it's done properly, and if those modders have enough respect to ask the GPL editors for use of their material. Hell, many GPL editors would probably like to get involved in such a thing if the platform was right. Several GPL'ers make mods for rFactor, so this certainly isn't some group of spiteful fanboys bashing some rF modder.
They key thing here is that slimjim used other people's work for his fantasy mod without asking and got schooled for it. A few people have popped up here and there to defend him, which sort of surprises me (but sort of not, considering the "everything's free on the net" bullshit attitude that's everywhere these days). We see people getting pissed off at this forum if someone tries to pass another driver's personal skin off as their own work - well, this is the same thing but on a larger scale, involving the work of dozens of people over many years. I'm positive that if slimjim had acted maturely and asked permission to use the work of other people, or sourced other models for his fantasy open-wheeler mod then none of this would have occurred.
okay fair enough. im just going by what people are saying on RSC. at the start of the mod, slimjim said he had created his own models, i guess he was talking BS then.