confidentcrescent
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User ID: 423
confidentcrescent
3d ago
The FULU repository went up May 12. The developer took his repository down on April 23rd.
Apparently he received the threats from Bambu in late April. Unless some very fast-paced discussions happened behind the scenes, he could have had no idea a replacement would go up when he took his repository down.
Furthermore, is FULU maintaining the code or just re-hosting the original? Now the developer is out of the way all Bambu needs to do is make a small change to obsolete the backed-up version.
And if Bambu still tries to sue him, Louis Rossman has pledged to pay his legal fees.
He pledged $10,000. This is good of him but probably insufficient for even a simple legal case, and doesn't cover the personal cost of dealing with this either. Fundraising might cover the rest if the developer actually gets sued. I wouldn't want to take that bet. Would you?
confidentcrescent
3d ago
the hobbyist sued for bypassing EOL-not-EOL software can get enough people and attention on their side to recover any financial damage and Streisand the game company.
We have examples now that show this isn't how it will work in practice. I think the recent case around Bambu Labs' software is illustrative.
I won't go into all the details but what I find notable about that case is that, when served with a legal threat, the developer who made a workaround to now-removed functionality immediately took it down without any attempt to fight a legal case. This happened despite a significant number of people interested in his success and despite the developer appearing to believe the threat was legally unsupported.
It shows very clearly that legality is not sufficient to protect game preservation efforts. Under the current legal system threats of legal action often work even if the target believes the case is meritless.
The problem with adding regulations is that they may be applied to smaller devs.
I'm not convinced the requirements from Stop Killing Games will be much of a concern for small developers. They're far less likely to use DRM and turning off Steam's DRM would put basically all of them in the clear of even your more stringent requirements. They're also far more likely to stop supporting a game because their company has gone bankrupt, at which point fines for non-compliance are irrelevant.
I'm far more concerned that SKG and similar laws will be added to the pile of laws that are effectively unenforced than I am about seeing them enforced strictly on small publishers.
confidentcrescent
4d ago
For the future, I support removing regulations on buyers circumventing end-of-life software, rather than adding regulations on sellers.
I like this in theory. In practice I think the massive disparity in legal resources will make this no different from the current situation.
If the game company with lawyers on call says their game doesn't count as end-of-life because of some transparent bullshit and threatens to sue a buyer sharing how to circumvent their restrictions then the likely result is that the buyer gives in or goes bankrupt fighting an expensive legal case (and then gives in).
The government might be inconsistent and heavy-handed but they do actually have the resources to threaten a company like Activision if enough people demand it.
Apologies for the late response.
That one does seem to have been created before the original went down, fair enough.
I think it's more likely that two things are true
If I was a soulless corporate bastard in charge of killing this open-source product off I'd get the teams working on this product to rework the APIs in a way that just happens to break this method and look to deliver that in 6-12 months. This gives plenty of time to work on it, plausible deniability as to why the workaround broke, and hopefully everyone has forgotten by then.
But are they, actually? FULU isn't a person so while the organization could be sued it seems much less likely for any of the people behind it to be vulnerable. It's hard to tell in a foreign language but that "dafik" fellow seems to be fairly anonymous, with a common name, few projects, and little information.
I'm also not sure if just hosting the repository is legally problematic. Most of the claims Bambu made sound related to development of the repository and it's not clear to me that any of the people rehosting intend to continue development.
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