Introduction
August is one magical month.
It's the month where people like to seem like to get angry and defecate onto other people's otherwise peaceful lives for no reason.
No good reason, I should say.
Restart, the creator of Fossil MZ, decided to do just that.
Part 1. Accusations
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Out of the blue, I got this direct message in Discord one day.
The first thing that comes to mind is how strangely worded this whole thing is.
Why?
- It's extremely vague with what is the actual problem.
- It's extremely vague with who actually "verified" the problem.
- It's extremely vague why I need to be there in person to answer questions.
And for those wondering, he never answered which are the members that "verified" this.
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I'm sorry, but when I see people texting and driving, it angers me. It reeks of irresponsibility.
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I don't understand why this couldn't have been stated in his initial post. Is it so hard to say "I think there's a potential copyright violation with your Dragonbones Union plugin" to get the point instead of skirting around?
I also don't know why this is even a copyright violation in the first place since the MV plugin is something that both The Green Kel and I have collaborated on. Apparently, I can infringe upon my own copyrighted work?
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Do you want to know why I'm so confident that we aren't using the code from the KELYEP_DragonBones.js?
That's because we tried to use it and it wasn't compatible with the new PixiJS version.
This was attempted three times over.
- First attempt was a direct port.
- Second attempt was a modified port.
- Third attempt was a PixiJS function reversion. It "worked" but it also broke everything else. However, that's a story for another day.
Ultimately, we decided the best course of action was to recreate the integration from the ground up.
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He shows one function that had an argument (what he calls a "variable") that was unused.
This is what tipped me off to something strange: Any kind of programmer should know full well there are differences between "variables" and "arguments" but semantics, so I digress.
The second tip off is, why is he deobfuscating our plugin? Is he trying to edit a function in it? Or is he trying to take it for himself?
Furthermore, unused arguments aren't uncommon. Look at RPG Maker MZ's coresripts. There are functions all over the place that have unused arguments.
Like that.
However, at this point, I'm still unsure at what he's trying to get at.
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It was getting late for me so I didn't want to deal with it.
I figured if anything, settling it in court would be better than prancing around with someone who probably doesn't even know programming all that well.
The next odd thing I'm hearing from this person is that I'm "infringing" upon a library under the MIT license.
I don't know about you, but something about that doesn't sound right.
"Infringement" refers to the violation of a law, but the only thing I can think of regarding this is "copyright law".
But even then, that's under MIT. Still, suspicious.
In addition to that, he still refused to answer me which "community members" are responsible for letting him know this information.
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At this point, he's arguing that the usage of a generic function name "loadComplete" is plagiarism-worthy.
Which, sure we do have a function in Dragonbones Union called "loadComplete", but this is like trying to call someone out for using generic sentences in a book that is shared across many. Imagine going to court because one book contains "Oh my God" in it and stepping on the toes of another book.
At this point, I'm fed up. It'd be faster to just take things to court and let the lawyers have a good laugh.
However, he tries to conclude the whole thing on his own, putting words in my mouth that I "have no intention of making things right".
Keep this in mind, this inserting-words-into-other-people's-mouths is a recurring tactic of his.
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Here is another thing that tipped me off.
"If you're willing to reveal to public the full plugin, everyone can see for themselves"
In another words, probably another individual who is hampered by obfuscation and cannot read the code as it is. Suddenly, it makes sense as to why he deobfuscated our plugin in the first place.
However, revealing it to the public isn't the only way to get a plagiarism check on things. Especially since we can have unrelated third-party individuals check it. Keep this part in mind, too.
Now, the part with the Public_0_Dragonbones.js not having the aforementioned MIT license notification is correct. We were lacking in that.
However, that's not infringement. Infringement refers to laws. Violations refer to conditions. It'd be correct to say we were violating a condition. You can argue it's semantics, but the United States court treats cases for law infringements and licensing condition violations differently.
But! Even the Github linked from Dragonbones.com's website fails to include their own MIT license as a part of it. Example seen here. Still, adding the license back to the Public_0_Dragonbones.js plugin is no big deal.
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I don't know why he is so set on calling it infringement. I'm guessing it's because he doesn't have an understanding on how different laws, intellectual property, or licenses are from one another.
Either way, I show him proof that it was never sold.
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He never mentioned the third "infringement", to which, leads me to believe that he probably thought it was illegal for me to sell the Dragonbones library MIT license.
And yes, that's actually semi-true, except, that's only if there were changes to the code breaking the "as if" clause of the MIT license.
However, at this point, I decide to play stupid to see where he's getting at due to him skipping around so much.
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To be honest, I'm still not sure what he's getting at.
Yes, we forgot to include the MIT bit on the actual redistributed library itself, but even the official Dragonbones Github forgot to do that, too.
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Now this is where things start making me question whether or not he's a programmer at all.
These are generic call functions used to load and parse Dragonbones data from the library itself. It's a straight up declared function with preset arguments.
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At this point, it feels like he's just grasping for straws so I show him some generic loading functions from RPG Maker MZ's core scripts themselves.
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What?
Just what?
Multiple ways to structure it?
How the hell do you restructure a function and its arguments from ANOTHER library and expect it to work?
For the non-programmers, this person is expecting us to change ABCD into DBAC.
During the conversation, I tried to add in Archeia and some programmers to further explain what this person isn't understanding, however, it was blocked. No avail there.
Now, onto the next stunt he tries to pull off. He's trying to get me to refund the plugin for "relying on infringing code".
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To be honest, I don't even know how he came up with this angle.
Refunds only apply the actual product being "defective" and cannot be fixed.
He wants us to "refund" based off missing license agreements, which can easily be fixed.
Once again, I have to remind him that RPG Maker MZ is also selling a product that relies on Pixi.
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At this point, I see what he's trying to do.
He's trying to make me say something that is not true with "yes" or "no" answers. Either this is an attempt to slander me or to shove words in my mouth that I didn't say. Remember what I told you to keep in mind? This is exactly that.
So, how do you deal with these situations? Instead of answering "yes" or "no", you answer clearly what you meant in detail.
However, he also refuses to answer my questions. He tries to avoid them by asking other questions.
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A simple update is all that's needed to get this fixed. And that's exactly what we did.
However, this person choose to make a mountain out of a molehill.
It becomes clear to me that he's just here to start trouble.
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Once again, the refund despite there being no problems with the actual product itself.
The person clearly doesn't understand how infringements and license condition violations work.
At this point, it's extremely late and he's still skipping around in circles.
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Usage of Public_0_Dragonbones.js has always been optional.
In fact, inside the help file, we clearly provided a link to the official Dragonbones website to where users can acquire the Dragonbones library.
So why did we include Public_0_Dragonbones.js? It's because not everybody knows how to get rid of that annoying message in the Plugin Manager saying the plugin is not supported by MZ. We added in comments (which aren't code) to trick MZ into thinking the supporting library is a legitimate MZ plugin.
But back to the topic, suppose his fantasy copyright infringement law is even real, there is still no legal liability attached to it due everything else being met by the MIT requirements outside of the license mention which they didn't even do for their own library release.
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Now this is where things got interesting.
Archeia has discovered that this individual is Restart, the creator of Fossil MZ.
And now it's all falling into place.
For those not in the loop, Restart goes around telling people to not use VisuStella MZ and use Fossil MZ with old MV plugins instead.
He plays dumb.
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At this point, I'm talking to several RPG Maker discord owners all at once.
They're all telling me their experiences with Restart and how he likes to stir trouble regarding VisuStella.
Also, I have my doubts about him trying to screw me over.
Why?
Because a simple "Bro, I think you're missing the MIT license in your Public_0_Dragonbones.js" should have been more than enough instead of trying to set up verbal traps to me advocating for copyright infringement so he can "go public".
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This is where I decide to put an end to it.
The time for playing stupid is over.
The reason why I brought up car recalls is because it will similar to the very course of action I'll be doing.
For those who don't live in the United States and/or unfamiliar with how car recalls work, if a car manufacturer discovers that they have a faulty part, potentially harming their customers, they will issue a nation-wide car recall. Any customers that comply with that recall will have their vehicle fixed with proper parts. At this same time, this will protect the car manufacturer from legal liability pertaining to those faulty parts from thereon after. It makes sense. If you received a car recall due to a faulty party, refuse the recall, then get into an accident where the faulty part is the cause, then you lose legal viability to push forth a case.
The same applies for software.
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