[DISCUSSION] Skin credits and permissions

[TCSSkin]

The show your skin thread devolved into this, so i figured a general think tank where we discuss crediting and permissions. 

What is acceptable?

Possible Solutions

Opinions

Civil debates

What is not acceptable?

Finger pointing

personal insults

 

Anything that doesn't conform to this will be dealt with appropriately. 

[GIMN]

5 hours ago, TCSSkin said:

What is not acceptable?

Finger pointing

personal insults

It's all your fault, but what else can be expected from a Coventry fan.

Joking aside, I'll try and paraphrase what I put in the other thread:

• We can all do better - just because some people steal unashamedly, doing the bare minimum doesn't make us "good"
• Elevating each other improves output, and helps serve the wider community better

I will be introducing attribution directly into my skin for FM24.  This is something I've planned before this conversation, and appreciate that I am in no position to insist others do the same.  I think what @Grootinho has done with naming selectors for the person he's asked to borrow from is a great way of going about it.

[Grootinho]

yeah you thought about Mustermann Tab in Electric Panther v4 (not released finally). Yeah i think it was logical cause nothing went from me in this tab.

[_Ben_]

I agree that we can all do better and I say that not as a perfect example but as someone who wants to be part of the change I ask for. 

In my skin, I have one area that is completely copy and pasted - the pizza chart (with full permission from him for this). Therefore, I’ll credit @GIMN inside of the game for this. There are several areas that have been influenced by or started their life as panels from other people’s skins - @snowofman, @TCSSkin , @Woz etc etc but I want to distinguish the difference between learning how to do something from them and using their code. I think, for example, I have a ‘TCS’ folder within my graphics file but I know that there aren’t any images from that skin actually exist there any more - at least ones that are referenced in game, anyway. 

What I think would work best is not demanding payment (again, illegal), or password protecting, but just being open and honest. Seeing new users sign up and ask ‘share this?!’ makes me somewhat angry but I know we, as a forum, have to do our bit to expand and grow this community. I think it’s starts with asking permission and, referencing this somewhere - either as @keysi does or inside the game. 

I’m coming into this after downloading the OPZ skin and seeing at least 8 panels directly copied in, with no consent sought. Furthermore, and slightly amusingly, they’ve still got the bugs in that I had. That infuriates me. I’m not saying that I’ve never done this but I’m now in a position where I’ve seen the error of my own ways and I just think it’s polite to ask. 

Edited October 30, 2023 by _Ben_

[keysi]

55 minutes ago, _Ben_ said:

I’m coming into this after downloading the OPZ skin and seeing at least 8 panels directly copied in, with no consent sought. Furthermore, and slightly amusingly, they’ve still got the bugs in that I had. That infuriates me. I’m not saying that I’ve never done this but I’m now in a position where I’ve seen the error of my own ways and I just think it’s polite to ask. 

This part about our own bugs is one of the best examples. I remember the same in the past with my files in other skins. Even one small font issue always can make me angry and frustrated, especially when the collection of files/XYX skin is later labelled as the best skin by others  I also remember I left a notice in a couple of files for those who are taking everything here and here. But they probably never read it 

I'm making the description/titles of widgets mainly because of myself but also because of other authors/creators to ensure it's 100% clear where it was originally used. Even if it would be only one person who would open that XML file. 

[JackBauer]

Hello, this subject interests me to get your opinions.
**This is just my take on a newbie in the world of FM skin***
For me, the only owner is Sport Interactive which gives us the possibility to "play" with their XML code and create a skin.
The skin creators do not create any code, they take the data from SI.
On the other hand, by principle and for the FM community we must indicate in the config.xml (and in the article if we post on a site) the skins which inspired us and those which we used.

I hope I was clear because my English is very, very bad! ^^

[rootcoors]

3 hours ago, JackBauer said:

Hello, this subject interests me to get your opinions.
**This is just my take on a newbie in the world of FM skin***
For me, the only owner is Sport Interactive which gives us the possibility to "play" with their XML code and create a skin.
The skin creators do not create any code, they take the data from SI.
On the other hand, by principle and for the FM community we must indicate in the config.xml (and in the article if we post on a site) the skins which inspired us and those which we used.

I hope I was clear because my English is very, very bad! ^^

This is incorrect. The skin creators do create code; they spend hours doing this. So that is a fundamental misunderstanding on your part there.

Edited October 30, 2023 by rootcoors

[BuzzR]

1 hour ago, rootcoors said:

This is incorrect. The skin creators do create code; they spend hours doing this. So that is a fundamental misunderstanding on your part there.

If you are trying to speak in absolutes then maybe it should be stated that XML is not code by any accepted definition, as it's just a descriptive language that is parsed. It's not compiled and it's not executed. 
So @JackBauer is correct in his statement - in an absolute, fundamental form we the skinners do not create any code.
What we do is fiddle around with descriptors of "how to show some data" in the given framework of the game. These descriptors happened to be defined using XML, that makes them ( kind of ) accessible as these are txt files.
So anybody can edit and anybody can copy.
IMHO the debate regarding credits and permissions is reduces to common sense and you know, good manners. If you use something from someone acknowledge them - at least. 
I think @GIMN said it best: that some people are s****y, and that is the reality. And in this reality, you cannot force someone to acknowledge your work as long as that work is in .txt file, free on the internet.
You can ban some skins here - if they are published for downloading, but there will always be other sites available. 
 

Edited October 30, 2023 by BuzzR
some spelling

[JackBauer]

Il y a 1 heure, BuzzR a dit :

If you are trying to speak in absolutes then maybe it should be stated that XML is not code by any accepted definition, as it's just a descriptive language that is parsed. It's not compiled and it's not executed. 
So @JackBauer is correct in his statement - in an absolute, fundamental form we the skinners do not create any code.
What we do is fiddle around with descriptors of "how to show some data" in the given framework of the game. These descriptors happened to be defined using XML, that makes them ( kind of ) accessible as these are txt files.
So anybody can edit and anybody can copy.
IMHO the debate regarding credits and permissions is reduces to common sense and you know, good manners. If you use something from someone acknowledge them - at least. 
I think @GIMN said it best: that some people are s****y, and that is the reality. And in this reality, you cannot force someone to acknowledge your work as long as that work is in .txt file, free on the internet.
You can ban some skins here - if they are published for downloading, but there will always be other sites available. 
 

That's exactly what I meant, XML is not code, it's a markup language like HTML @BuzzR
The definition of XML: Extensible Markup Language (XML) allows you to define and store data so that it can be shared. XML supports the exchange of information between computer systems such as websites, databases and third-party applications. Predefined rules make it easy to transmit data as XML files over any network because the recipient can use these rules to read the data accurately and efficiently.

But I understand what you mean @rootcoors.

[rootcoors]

I stand corrected.

[GIMN]

I've just spoken to some of the devs at my workplace and let them know that from now on any html/css will no longer be considered as on the clock because only coding can be considered as work.  Does anyone mind telling the people creating facepacks, stadium packs, etc... that the time they've spent compiling and editing stuff doesn't matter because they didn't take the original photo, and so it's unreasonable to expect anyone to acknowledge the work they've done?  I've already pissed off one set of people today, so I'd appreciate if someone else could deal with that one, please.

Van Gogh didn't invent paint.  Or sunflowers.  Or the idea of painting flowers in a vase.  I certainly can't pass his work off as my own on the basis that he just used tools available to him, and I could've come up with the same idea.  It would also be dishonest of me to develop my own style based on his sunflowers series, and not then acknowledge that inspiration.

 

 

[MattyEssTTV]

As a part time retired content creator, I have nothing but admiration for the skinning community. You guys have made improvements to the game and should be applauded for it. 

However, my thinking around skinning and creators borrowing assets is that it’s the natural evolution of any form of content on the internet. 

So many ideas, even in saves in YouTube videos, came from an idea someone had. 

Unless someone was making a profit from it, I wouldn’t be upset if someone took something I made. However, proper credit needs to be given always. 

[TCSSkin]

9 hours ago, rootcoors said:

This is incorrect. The skin creators do create code; they spend hours doing this. So that is a fundamental misunderstanding on your part there.

We don't make layouts. We dont make widgets, we don't make classes, at most we create graphics. 

We repurpose SI's framework, same as any coding language, ultimately if SI pulled skinning then there's nothing we can do, to me, that isn't owning, that's licensing.

[alian62]

Im not a skin maker but a skin user . I have always thought that if you make a skin for this game , and are given the tools to do so ,  then its not for you to own it or charge money for it . Im not saying i am right but for me it just seems this way . I thought making a skin was for the love of the game and not for finacial reward if its asked for . I would be sure that if you made anything for this game then SI have to right to take it and use it with or without your permission ( correct me if im wrong ) ?

As for others using certain parts of something you have done in a skin is just the way it is . Im not sure where a court of law would rule in this case but it would be intersting to find out if anyone on these sites have legal qualifications . 

[BuzzR]

7 hours ago, GIMN said:

I've just spoken to some of the devs at my workplace and let them know that from now on any html/css will no longer be considered as on the clock because only coding can be considered as work.  Does anyone mind telling the people creating facepacks, stadium packs, etc... that the time they've spent compiling and editing stuff doesn't matter because they didn't take the original photo, and so it's unreasonable to expect anyone to acknowledge the work they've done?  I've already pissed off one set of people today, so I'd appreciate if someone else could deal with that one, please.

Van Gogh didn't invent paint.  Or sunflowers.  Or the idea of painting flowers in a vase.  I certainly can't pass his work off as my own on the basis that he just used tools available to him, and I could've come up with the same idea.  It would also be dishonest of me to develop my own style based on his sunflowers series, and not then acknowledge that inspiration.

 

 

You are exaggerating the comparation and I think that it's not helping the argument. "The devs at your place" are doing paid labor - whatever that work is html/css or .NET/ Java / C++, coding or not. Do they credit stackoverflow, by the way ?  
No one it stating that people that put time into doing kits/ face packs / skins should not be acknowledged. They should be. Some people even donate to them, but by their own will. 
The hard reality is that this is just a matter of community guides, common sense, good behavior and there is no way to enforce it.
"Hey man, you have used foo_subtle_box from foo_skin ! Well ok then, now it's named bar_subtle_box". It's going nowhere. It will just consume energy, time and drain your nerves.
As for inspiration acknowledgement again, it's a matter of class, good manners but again, it's not mandatory. Not going into Van Gogh painting theory as it's too far away from a FM skinning discussion.

I hope you can find peace with this issue.
I know it's frustrating for all of you that publish your skins here or anywhere else, but it will consume your energy and time and in the end nothing good will get out of it.

I, for one am grateful to all of you that publish your skins, kits, faces etc. - I took bits and pieces ( and whole folders sometimes  ) from all of you for my personal skin, and I would say that this game would be horrible without all of your efforts. I did acknowledged and mentioned the sources that I knew when I've put some screenshots from my personal skin on the FM23  "Show your skin .." thread. Got some backslash for not publishing ( for some strange reason ) but that's another (strange) story. 

So please once again, don't get mad and keep doing what you are doing - you changed this game into something better for tens of thousands of people. There are so many people that appreciate your work. 

 

[GIMN]

2 hours ago, BuzzR said:

Do they credit stackoverflow, by the way ?  

Ironically, yes.  Because when someone has to fix it later down the road, it helps to know where it actually came from .  I suppose that's less about giving credit, and more about covering onself.

I apologise if my point came across not as intended.  The point I was trying to make is that semantics over what constitutes coding is irrelevant.  Ideas, effort and time count, and it's our responsibility as skinners to ensure that we acknowledge the contributions of others properly.  As you quoted, there will always be s****y people, we can't stop that, but we can do better ourselves and lead by example.  Good, transparent attribution makes things easier for the end user, fosters a better community and serves everyone better.

As this conversation started in the other thread, I will restate what I said before: I recognise that this is just personal opinion, and whilst it is the approach I will be taking, I have no right to expect similar of anyone else.

[TCSSkin]

7 hours ago, alian62 said:

for . I would be sure that if you made anything for this game then SI have to right to take it and use it with or without your permission

it's outlined clearly in the EULA i think. 

7 hours ago, alian62 said:

As for others using certain parts of something you have done in a skin is just the way it is . Im not sure where a court of law would rule in this case but it would be intersting to find out if anyone on these sites have legal qualifications . 

So you could cover your skin with different licenses, stuff like creative commons and so on, but that'd require you to act if someone violated that, and i don't think anyone wants to go to court over a spreadsheet simulator. 

7 hours ago, alian62 said:

I thought making a skin was for the love of the game and not for finacial reward if its asked for

Mods were in general for a long time, but now we're in a phase where every mod maker has a patreon and the like and i'm determined not to let FM get to the point. I had patreon for a few months when i was going through severe financial troubles and even then subscribers got early versions of the skin that needed testing. These days, if someone wants to donate i push them to a charity and try and match the donation if i have enough money

[JackBauer]

The debate is vast and interesting. You have to be pragmatic and I think almost everyone agrees that the Skinner is not the owner.
We just do visual creation, which is our only property. For me the only "theft" of content would be a skin copied visually identically and that the person claims its creation.
For the rest it doesn't make sense

[TCSSkin]

For me, it's just a thing you have to deal with. In an ideal world everything will be followed perfectly, but it's not a perfect world. 

Until SI give us better tools to deal with it, all you can do is call it out when it happens, take it on the chin and deal with it 

[Tyburn]

TLDR: A lot of waffle as the topic is complex.

A lot of code is generic and can really only work in one particular way. But often code can be configured in such a way that is totally unique or placed in areas of the game previously not thought about by clever work arounds.

As an example, and correct me if I’m wrong but @GIMN’s pizza chart is almost completely his own making. He has taken code given by the game, arranged it for his purpose and added his own graphics. It is unique. A pizza chart simply doesn’t exist in the game without his idea. Many other regular skinners who share their work have countless similar instances of item uniqueness. More so recently than ever before. The code may be absolute, its configuration is absolutely not, and some of the work arounds required to get certain information showing in certain sections is often ingenious and remarkable. Those ideas came from someone. They deserve to be credited.

For the most part there is nothing you can do about people using your work once you have decided to share it. Personally I get satisfaction from sharing an idea and watching the community run with it. If I don’t want an idea to be used by others I simply don’t share it.

The original skinner’s great idea eventually gets lost as more and more people use and adapt that idea, but rest assured. If you’re a skinner who is coming up with new ideas, us fellow skinners remember. Punters will never care, and skinners that blatantly use these ideas without permission or crediting will often be spotted. There is no reward in ripping off someone else’s idea without crediting them.

My question is why do we share our work? Vanity? Helpfulness? Pride? To make the game better for us all? All of the above? Everyone is different but I’d imagine the vast majority of us just want some recognition for the work we’ve created.

I think crediting should be mandatory. Just a simple list on the mod page, or a text file within the skin, or labelled folder structure, or a tag at the top of the panel code. Or some or all of the above. You’d get more respect and a greater sense of self worth for crediting someone else’s work than you would for knowingly passing off their work as your own.

Perhaps it is the duty of all of us, especially those of us who are experienced and active, to pay attention to full skin releases and if we spot instances of blatant idea stealing, without crediting, we can flag it. Not sure that won’t create problems, it’s often hard to spot plagiarism, but it might help in creating a culture where we acknowledge and respect each others work.

But generally, I’m lost on this topic. I can’t see any definitive answers. Partly why I don’t intend to release a full skin again anytime soon. It’s all a bit too stressful.

[GIMN]

59 minutes ago, Tyburn said:

As an example, and correct me if I’m wrong but @GIMN’s pizza chart is almost completely his own making. He has taken code given by the game, arranged it for his purpose and added his own graphics. It is unique. A pizza chart simply doesn’t exist in the game without his idea. Many other regular skinners who share their work have countless similar instances of item uniqueness. More so recently than ever before. The code may be absolute, its configuration is absolutely not, and some of the work arounds required to get certain information showing in certain sections is often ingenious and remarkable. Those ideas came from someone. They deserve to be credited.

The example goes further, too - because whilst the pizza chart was my "own" making, manipulating classes to work in ways they weren't intended to.  For FM24 it will be at least 72 classes, 12,000 unique entries, 253 graphics, data analysis of 25,000 players, and a script written to help create the xmls.  Probably north of 200 hours of work just on the pizza chart alone.  But it wouldn't exist without @TCSSkin introducing the attribute_bar back to the masses.  Or @_Ben_ also experimenting with classes to see what was possible, and having worked together throughout last year, that relationship helped explore new and different ideas and hopefully push each other to do better.  Or The Athletic for the Pizza Chart idea in the first place.

It's why I'm specific with why people are being credited, and why I don't feel that hiding credits in xmls is enough.  It's there in the start screen because without their contributions, there would be no skin at all, and also why I include links.  If there's something that people like about my skin that was inspired by someone else, I want it to be super easy for the user to identify it's source and go check out their work.  It might well be that someone else's skin was actually what they wanted all along - and ultimately I want end users to find the thing that is most suitable for their needs.  Maybe it's because I'm focussing on a niche, and I'm oblivious to other people's motivations, but I don't get the impression that skinning is a competitive environment.  It's not about whether a skin gets the most downloads, or is "the best skin ever".  It's about providing options to an ever expanding player base, all who have very different needs and priorities.  Elevating one another helps funnel players towards the thing they wanted all along.

My interest in this topic is actually about what can I do to continue championing others work.  I haven't had to worry about "theft" much at all (touch wood), probably because I've gone a little bit off the deep end with some of the style/design choices, which makes it hard to steal without it looking out of place or requiring quite a bit of work.  That, or people are just too polite to tell me it's s**t 

[Tyburn]

8 minutes ago, GIMN said:

The example goes further, too - because whilst the pizza chart was my "own" making, manipulating classes to work in ways they weren't intended to.  For FM24 it will be at least 72 classes, 12,000 unique entries, 253 graphics, data analysis of 25,000 players, and a script written to help create the xmls.  Probably north of 200 hours of work just on the pizza chart alone.  But it wouldn't exist without @TCSSkin introducing the attribute_bar back to the masses.  Or @_Ben_ also experimenting with classes to see what was possible, and having worked together throughout last year, that relationship helped explore new and different ideas and hopefully push each other to do better.  Or The Athletic for the Pizza Chart idea in the first place.

It's why I'm specific with why people are being credited, and why I don't feel that hiding credits in xmls is enough.  It's there in the start screen because without their contributions, there would be no skin at all, and also why I include links.  If there's something that people like about my skin that was inspired by someone else, I want it to be super easy for the user to identify it's source and go check out their work.  It might well be that someone else's skin was actually what they wanted all along - and ultimately I want end users to find the thing that is most suitable for their needs.  Maybe it's because I'm focussing on a niche, and I'm oblivious to other people's motivations, but I don't get the impression that skinning is a competitive environment.  It's not about whether a skin gets the most downloads, or is "the best skin ever".  It's about providing options to an ever expanding player base, all who have very different needs and priorities.  Elevating one another helps funnel players towards the thing they wanted all along.

My interest in this topic is actually about what can I do to continue championing others work.  I haven't had to worry about "theft" much at all (touch wood), probably because I've gone a little bit off the deep end with some of the style/design choices, which makes it hard to steal without it looking out of place or requiring quite a bit of work.  That, or people are just too polite to tell me it's s**t 

Definitely make it complicated if you don’t want it plagiarised 😁

Totally agree with your points about boosting each others work. There is a core here that is very strong with this philosophy. Can see this becoming the dominant culture.