This is more or less taking advantage of a loophole and also makes installing mods that may try to take this approach need too much effort to install. Not to mention it blatantly disregards the wishes of the author whose assets you're essentially trying to acquire. I am aware of the history behind the author of IR3, but that does not mean it is fine to ignore licensing nor the wishes of the author. In my opinion, this is something that should not be encouraged, I'd rather not see mods require assembly more than just downloading and installing mods through Factorio itself. While this technically does not break any rules to my knowledge, it's still something I see as rather blatant disregard to licensing and am worried about what kind of standard this could set should it be encouraged.

I thank you for your input, it is worth considering. I do not know the author, or why he chose the particular license. I do not agree with your assessment that this mod is a "blatant disregard to licensing". It does not infringe on the license, to the contrary, it respects and honors it.

I like the mod, thanks

Thank you CarlosTorch, I do plan to do more, probably furnaces next.

@amHunter
I do thank you for your concern in this matter. But I would like to assure you that this mod and others I may add, do not infringe on the copyright.
This mod does not contain any code or graphics from IR3 or the asset packs. There is nothing incorrect about a user installing the IR3 mod packs and modifying the info.json, this is perfectly in line with the license. This mod then uses the Factorio API to access those graphical assets, again perfectly in line with the license. Nothing is being redistributed, nothing is against the words or spirit of the license.

Now, does the author desire his work to be used in Factorio 2.0? That is a very different question, he may or may not. Could he update and repackage the asset packs in a way that would prevent this mod from using them, yes he could. A perfect example is his add-on mod, Airships.

For those with maybe similar concerns, I have added a FAQ

This is not a loophole.

IR3 still has a CC license. Fully redistributing IR3 in its entirety is fair game. Making modifications for personal use is fair game. If Deadlock didn’t want to give away said rights, he would have kept it as all rights reserved, but he did not. He explicitly gave the rights for this in his license.

The part of the CC-BY-NC-ND license that makes this silly is the clause that explicitly allows any and all technological modifications required to play the work in other media/formats, even ones that are created after the work (eg digital => hardcopy, or .doc => .pdf). The impasse we’re at as a modding community is disagreement about whether this would cover updating IR3 to 2.0.

Thank you to 0N0W1C, this is a great job, please ignore those noises. IR3 is my favorite MOD, unfortunately it was abandoned for some reason, but at least now I see some hope again.

What is the ultimate point of porting all these parts of IR3? Is it ever possible to glue everything into a working IR3 build for Factorio 2.0?

I am not remaking IR3, I am reskinning vanilla Factorio. After so many years, I wanted something different to look at. However, it is possible that I will add some content to incorporate IR3 assets that lack a vanilla counterpart, this still to be determined.

I didn't think it was gonna take long to see one of these posts lol. I appreciate the efforts 0n0w1c, and partially bringing back some nice sprites that should not be abandoned entirely due to hurt feelings. Keep up the good work brother, and thanks again.

Hi. Could someone explain to me what's Deadlock's "history" or "hurt feelings", what did they do with the airship mod?

A link is ok is you don't want to write a Bible in here XD

Just curious about this whole thing. I though this was just about always requiring a mention, but it looks like something else.
Thanks

Hi. Could someone explain to me what's Deadlock's "history" or "hurt feelings", what did they do with the airship mod?

A link is ok is you don't want to write a Bible in here XD

Just curious about this whole thing. I though this was just about always requiring a mention, but it looks like something else.
Thanks

There was nothing of sort. Author (Deadlock) use CC BY-NC-ND license as some tools and assets used to create mods graphic require it (case of IR1 to IR3). Because of this people are angry that their favorite media person will not cover IR mods as that would require loss of profit from the videos/streams and Deadlock fully supports his license use.

What people do when they are angry? Flood, spam and write very "not nice" messages in the mod comment section, on the forum, on reddit or github.

that would require loss of profit from the videos/streams and Deadlock fully supports his license use.

Now I'm more confused.
Does the license forbids the creation of a video about it?

I never thought playing a game on video would be considered a derivative work 🤔

Did Deadlock actually said or did something? Or this if just people not liking the licence?

I'm not being dense (only slow 🙃)

that would require loss of profit from the videos/streams and Deadlock fully supports his license use.

Now I'm more confused.
Does the license forbids the creation of a video about it?

I never thought playing a game on video would be considered a derivative work 🤔

Did Deadlock actually said or did something? Or this if just people not liking the licence?

I'm not being dense (only slow 🙃)

CC BY-NC-ND covers commercial purposes. With that, you cannot use the licensed material for commercial purposes (which basically is google ad revenue, twich subs etc.), you still can use the material (i.e. IR mod series) but you cannot "profit" from it. With that, many content creators just have not covered IR mod series (or covered and still profit as any reporting requires manual labour from the author) as they cannot gain any profit from their videos and Deadlock was/is defending this stance.

That and the "exotic" license that Deadlock used is a point that makes people angry, as by popular belief - mods should be free, usable to any possible extend and possible to build upon/change by other people. Deadlock went against this idea as he put hard work into his sprites (as you can see) and used some tools/assets (the explaination above).

Of course this post (the first paragraph) is an idealised scenario. It's just very hard to manually (mod maker) track every material that covers your creation and define if the material correctly adjust to license.
There is much to debate about what really can happen (practical enforcement) with mod using CC BY-NC-ND license and how you can even enforce non-stealing, no-profitability policy. Especially when Deadlock country of origin is uknown (Berne Convention), Wube and it's hosting services are covered by Czech IP laws and YT falls within the juristiction of State of California.

Gotcha. Thank you @Renchon99 💜

Deadlock is also misrepresenting his reasons for choosing that license, because the "ND" (No derivatives) part of the license was purely their choice and not possibly mandated by using assets. If the assets had a license like that, then it would be impossible to use them in a mod. If they simply had the same license including no derivatives then that would not affect the mod as a whole, only the individual asset/file in the mod. So Deadlock either doesn't understand the license they use or they are deliberately lying about it.

Please, there is no reason to bring a person's intent into the discussion, Deadlock intentions are his own and unknown me, and they do not matter. The relevant issues are the terms of license and if this mod violates them.

has anyone actually tried to contact Deadlock to allow an exception for updating the mod to 2.0?

If you would like to obtain additional permissions to use the work beyond those granted by the license that has been applied, or if you’re not sure if your intended use is permitted by the license, you should contact the rights holder.

https://creativecommons.org/faq/#who-gives-permission-to-use-material-offered-under-creative-commons-licenses

As far as I know, there is no current contact information.

Thanks 0n0w1c for this mod. You pushing me this way as IR3 weteran, to remake ir3 with your style aproach with possible all features from original.

that would require loss of profit from the videos/streams and Deadlock fully supports his license use.

Now I'm more confused.
Does the license forbids the creation of a video about it?

I never thought playing a game on video would be considered a derivative work 🤔

Did Deadlock actually said or did something? Or this if just people not liking the licence?

I'm not being dense (only slow 🙃)

CC BY-NC-ND covers commercial purposes. With that, you cannot use the licensed material for commercial purposes (which basically is google ad revenue, twich subs etc.), you still can use the material (i.e. IR mod series) but you cannot "profit" from it. With that, many content creators just have not covered IR mod series (or covered and still profit as any reporting requires manual labour from the author) as they cannot gain any profit from their videos and Deadlock was/is defending this stance.

That and the "exotic" license that Deadlock used is a point that makes people angry, as by popular belief - mods should be free, usable to any possible extend and possible to build upon/change by other people. Deadlock went against this idea as he put hard work into his sprites (as you can see) and used some tools/assets (the explaination above).

Of course this post (the first paragraph) is an idealised scenario. It's just very hard to manually (mod maker) track every material that covers your creation and define if the material correctly adjust to license.
There is much to debate about what really can happen (practical enforcement) with mod using CC BY-NC-ND license and how you can even enforce non-stealing, no-profitability policy. Especially when Deadlock country of origin is uknown (Berne Convention), Wube and it's hosting services are covered by Czech IP laws and YT falls within the juristiction of State of California.

I don't think that there is any question about videos about a game/mod being transformative works in terms of copyright law, as long as the game isn't like 90% cutscenes (and even then, it might still fall under fair use depending on the specific circumstances!). Especially in a game like factorio, that require and encourage significant player creativity, gameplay videos should be a prototypical example of what fair use is designed to allow.

Deadlock threatened legal action over such fair use, and when he got negative reactions for that, he even tried sabotaging peoples local installations by pushing an empty update of the mod.

Doing god's work with these mods.

I've been watching this project with some interest, and I have some questions with respect to the CC BY-NC-ND license (posting here because it seems like the most popular/relevant thread):

Why is re-uploading the assets with the 2.0 metadata considered an adaptation, not merely a change of format? (as much as it may disgruntle the author)

If somebody were to adapt the code for the base IR3 mod to work in 2.0, would that be considered a "sufficiently creative" change to be an adaptation, even though the mod would be functionally the same?

If not, could they distribute their work as a set of patches / instructions to change the original, similar to what you're doing here?

Personally, I think that I could update info.json and upload the assets without further changes. But, I am not educated in copyright law, so I stay at arms length by having folks make the change themselves.

As far as IR3 itself, I think you would be making a derivative of the mod, which is not permitted. The assets have no code, they can be used without modification, which is permitted. But the control.lua code, you would need to modify it for 2.0, making a derivative.

You can adapt IR3 to work with 2.0, but you can not share it with others.

I tried to adapt IR 3 to 2.0 and gave up, amount of work is insane because of changes between 1.1 and 2.0, its easier to make new overhaul, same thing said Deadlock.

its easier to make new overhaul

I don't agree, I think it's quite possible. ;)

Nobody seems to have answered my third question.

To address your third question, yes, if you are only distributing your own work. Users are free to make any changes required to the code and/or images.
Redistribution of the licensed work is what is prohibited. With your code and the original assets packs, you could in theory completely remake IR3, without infringing on the license.

Some jurisdictions also explicitly allow changes made to ensure compatibility with a different software product, so as long as no changes irrelevant for compatibility are made, uploading a 2.0-compatible version of IR3 would be perfectly legal there.

edit: The license text of the CC-ND also seems to explicitly allow whatever technical changes are necessary to "reproduce" the licensed material:

Media and formats; technical modifications allowed. The Licensor authorizes You to exercise the Licensed Rights in all media and formats whether now known or hereafter created, and to make technical modifications necessary to do so. The Licensor waives and/or agrees not to assert any right or authority to forbid You from making technical modifications necessary to exercise the Licensed Rights, including technical modifications necessary to circumvent Effective Technological Measures. For purposes of this Public License, simply making modifications authorized by this Section 2(a)(4) never produces Adapted Material.

That itself might not cover the changes necessary for compatibility with Space Age, but it should certainly cover everything that's necessary for 2.0 compatibility.

Agreed, users can make any changes. The issue as I understand it, is the redistribution of those changes.

Today, I am prepared to show you the Industrial Revolution 3 Patchset for 2.0. Hopefully this will clarify exactly what I meant by "patches" in my question. You give it the original IR3 mod, run the script, and it produces an altered IR3 which runs on 2.0. I will admit I was more than a little inspired to do this when I saw your mods, but I haven't actually referenced any of your work.

I assume all of your mods contain original Lua code (making them "clean")? Unfortunately, I've read far too much of the original IR3 source to be able to produce a complete clean-room re-write, my mind is "dirtied" by it. (And I'd have no idea how half of the mod works without reading the source anyway.)

For now, I'll request to any readers that you keep this quiet, until the project is stable and it's been tested some more. I await your feedback. :)

I have not yet tried it, been looking over your work... Incredible!

Extremely impressive, thank you very much!

I opened an issue on Codeberg, had an issue with empty zip files.

Does this violate the CC BY-NC-ND? I do not know.

That would be my fourth question: What on earth do I do with this? Can I put this on the mod portal? I started the project out of boredom, I didn't think I'd actually get somewhere.

I've been thinking about AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake), which if you don't know, it's a fan-game which got taken down by Nintendo when they decided they wanted to make their own Metroid 2 remake.

So the community provided updates and patches for it, provided that you can supply that original, forbidden binary. And it's still around.

Just my thoughts here, so take it with a grain of salt.

Since you are not redistributing assets, this is clear of that major hurdle.

Is this derived/adapted work? Probably.
But, and it is a big but... the intent of the patchset is to simply port it to 2.0, you are not claiming the original work is your own. You are not modifying it more than required to make it operational by updating it to the new API. In my opinion, this acceptable.

It is important to keep in mind that WUBE owns the in-game database and API. There is very little one can claim as original creative content to copyright, it is called a "mod" for a reason. So while Deadlock might disagree and ask you to take it down but that would be the extent. There are no commercial interests here and he has abandoned the space.

Nothing in your work defaces Deadlock's work and importantly, you are not gaining financially from his work. Who is to care?

After sleeping on it, I think there is a significant point that I did not consider. I would think there is a difference between, "is a derivative" verses "creates a derivative". Your mod makes editing changes that people choose to apply themselves, for their own use. The work that can be copyrighted, the art work, is not affected and used as is from the original packages. In my uneducated opinion, I think this is fine and does not violate the CC BY-NC-ND.

Can you post it to the mod portal? I do not know WUBE's position on a mod containing a script that executes outside of the Factorio engine. Just give clear warning and instructions on the portal page as you do with the readme.

If I do post it here, I have a particular release date in mind.. :P

I've been quite hesitant to do this, namely because of this post you made where you warn against encouraging users to run code outside the mod API.

Also, I'm going to need a thumbnail. I did make one already, but I quite like the look of the one you have on the "assembly required" mod. I would appreciate a similar one to that with the words coloured in, and it would imply that we are sister projects (you'll get credit of course).

This may be one of those situations where it is better to ask for forgiveness, than to ask for permission. ;)
I did not know if my mods would be acceptable with manual editing required, but to date, no contact from the WUBE and they are still on the portal.
If it is unacceptable, I think the devs would just remove the mod from the portal.

Posted a quick first attempt image for you, with some color added. Let me know how you would like for it to be to adjusted.

Posting a delta that itself contains no original content, but only the parts you adjusted, wouldn't need any kind of license from Deadlock, since you, as the creator of those adjustments, own the relevant copyright.

If you package a merge script, you have a "moral duty" to minimize the risk of data loss, but (when adequate warnings are provided) should not be legally responsible for damages if something does go wrong (excluding malice, and maybe in some jurisdictions gross negligence?).

The relevant part with Nintendo was another issue: trademark law. Since I'm pretty sure "Industrial Revolution" couldn't be registered as a trademark (existing meaning), trademark law doesn't matter for this (and since there is no indication he tried to apply for a trademark registration, the point is moot anyway).

(IANAL, this is not legal advice, etc.)

The relevant part with Nintendo was another issue: trademark law.

I'll add that AM2R also used textures from Metroid: Zero Mission, whereas I'm not packaging any of them.

On the other hand, Black Rubber Belts - Remastered has been on the portal for a while now..