You sound like a real piece of shit.

I wouldn't get nasty just yet, at least from what I have read here i don't know if this was all that underhanded or not.

If the code being sold commercially is a straight modification of the original open source code and that modified code is not itself republished as open source then yes, that is a shitty move and IMHO all wrath deserved. Although if no licencing was included to restrict any use, its just really crappy but probably legal.

However, if it was modified to add hooks into seperate commercial extensions (and any modifications to the original source are publicly available) then that is fairly common practice and given no licencing agreement perfectly fine, the code for the commercial extensions does not need to be shared as long as any changes to the original that allow those extensions to work are made available.

Note by extensions i'm not talking about just new modes and whatnot added to the original code. They would have to be added in such a way that they are completely seperate from the original code and contain no part of the original code.

It does not matter if what he did was legal or not. What Andre did was shitty and in poor form. End of story.

Again, it depends on how it was done, there are a lot of commercial products out there that are based on open source projects.

However they all release the original open source code along with any key changes and enhancements they made to said code retaining separate components not required to make the modified open source code run. They may even rebrand the thing as a new package and it's still common. Google does it, Apple does it, Microsoft does it, Oracle does it.

Now, if the code was modifed such that releasing it would expose his "propietory" code that he claims allows him to charge for it... Too bad, gotta release it, should have coded better or reworked it from the ground up, Otherwise as cougar said its supremely shitty, bad form and mucho bad karma.

All I am sayin is there are proper and improper ways to use open source projects. This sounds improper but I think from our armchair perspective its hard to say.

Another angle...

Regardless of the code being open and all that technicality... Wouldn't the dot animations themselves be considered separate works of art and therefore subject to copyright? That may actually be a stronger position to persue sunce he openly admits to using them unchanged

I agree that Eric's work is a real treat to all of the CC's out there, even though he'll deny it if you ask him. For those who choose to do something similar in the future (as in create your own custom game software) and want to give it back in the same spirit that Eric did, you can license your work under GPLv2 or newer and any modifications must also be open source. Free and Open Source licenses have nothing to do with charging for the work, mind you. Free = Free Speech, not free as in beer. If you want something like that, then you'll have to add in your own clause or find a license that supports it.

(I'm not a lawyer, just an accidental copyright expert)

You can release it with any license you like and it wouldn't protect it from unauthorized use unless you have money to burn or the potential judgement is so large as to make it worth a legal battle.

For a hobbyist, protection from unauthorized use of their invention/contribution is mostly determined by whether the community condones or rejects this kind of behavior.

If you want to support/reward innovation in the hobby, support the innovators.

Yes, Eric's work is an inspiration and I do hope to follow him sometime with another game... No idea what yet, but its a dream of mine. I think open source is important and would also do it that way, but will be as Pixels said, using some protection to help keep the snakes away.

Lol so... Tasteless STD joke came to mind I almost submitted... Bad me.

Yeah, I really hope that this does not put off future projects from being open source. I know for one, almost all of my projects are open source and I would be pretty pissed if someone did this to my stuff. This is sadly one of the risks of putting your source code out there for the public to view.

Part of me wants to really believe that Andre feels he is doing nothing wrong here and is just ignorant, but in all reality, he has to know what he is doing. Sadly, Andre is setting a bad example for everyone in this small community. What he did may not be illegal, but that is totally besides the point. We are a community of people who share code to help each other out. Without this community, we would not be as successful with our projects.

Andre, get you shit together and start your own project instead of taking what someone else did changing a bit of it, and calling it your own. Shameful.

The term "Andre" is already in Urban Dictionary.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Andre

Get your shit together Andre.

I think if the modded version would be free and still open source no harm would be done, wouldn't it?

There are just so many games that could be expanded and improved or even re-envisioned, as we have seen done quite successfully with projects such as BOP2.0, CCC and Earthshaker After Shock. If he is a good programmer he could have chosen one and done his own thing vs taking something he did not create and against the wishes of the creator, slap some stuff on it and start selling it. If he had created something new and all his own, we would all be lauding him for what he had done vs putting him on our shit lists.

Yeah, that is sad. Also in reading that Eric had even gone to the amazing effort of hiring voice actors, paying them out if his pocket only to have this guy take those resources that someone else had invested hard earned money in and re-sell them for his own profit!

*sigh*
Anyway. Last night I downloaded the code and started skimming over it, great stuff! I've seen code from "professionals" not look nearly as good.

I think I'm now on the hunt for a canidate game to expand on. Don't think I'll have the same level of success, but will give it a good go, should be fun!

Merccat,

You might check out this IJ4 rewrite. (link below and a video)

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/indiana-jones-stern-software-rewrite-port-over-the-journey/page/3#post-3147626

Jim at mypinballs from the UK rewrote this for IJ4. In fact, we just received our kit from him yesterday to beta test. Just no time lately to install it.

BTW, I'm from Visalia, CA (born and raised). Moved to Clovis, CA 7 years ago.

Awesome! Born and raised and never left myself, I do wish there were more on location games around here.

An IJ4 rewrite sounds slick, I'll watch the whole thing when I get home and will try not to hijack Erics thread about CC.

Hello
On Andre website it says that a lot of crashs has been fixed on the last release.
Not sure what he is reffering to but I really don't get that he doesn't share what he found as crashes with this small cummunity.
When I see things like cva2 or else, feels like same idea at the end. To me ccc is already really well fill with sequences. Not sure to get the added value to add plenty of new stuffs.
The best would have been for him to start over a new project with new ideas from scratch

The ccc project is the only one to me. Copy is never better than the original, period.

The only thing to me to make it perfect would be to add more lighing effects during sequences for old bulbs pins
Thanks again for everything.

El Wire Cowboy mod! Its not complete but this is the general idea.

image_(resized).jpeg

That looks great, good idea!

I think its a nod to Cowboys vs Aliens

That was my first thought too... That or the green glow also made me thing... Ghostbuster Cowboy?

That El Wire stuff is cool!

Thanks everyone!

Maybe I should make a dozen or so for CCC owners only! Who wants one?

Not sure on cost. Have to convert it from 3v to 5volts, add wire mounts, potion the EL wire better then its done.

I can make them in any color. Red or blue EL might look good!

However, I am very limited on time and only have 1 day a week for my pinball hobby (Wednesdays). Demanding job, 2 small kids with one on the way, and building a custom house.

-Pipe

cowboy_(resized).jpg

Congrats on the new one on the way!

I know what its like only having limited time for the hobby. Anymore though I try to at least keep work out of the weekends but then other stuff needs to be taken care of.

Still though i have the following projects stacked up:
-KISS resurrection (it had three legs in the grave now looking decent)
- Bubbler jukebox restore (this and KISS likely to finance my next game/project otherwise I can't justify my hobby to my wife LOL)
- Cocktail game restore (favor for a friend)
- Alladins Castle restore.

Once I get through that my shop/plate will be clear for me to do something like what Eric has done with CC (new project on a different game) May have one in mind too if I can find it on the cheap.

After reading this thread I will also be looking closer ar CC's in the future as well

Just (again) for clarification since its always the same crying and childy song and always from the same people trying to spread out wrong information:

- CCEE WAS not and IS not a commercial project and we never sold / sell it, so all this commercial talk is completely a lie

- CCC is OPEN SOURCE, so the words "you steal my code" is completely a lie

- I tested Erics code for about 6 months and proposed improvements, so we partially worked together since I used his bug tracking system and reported nearly every day bugs, which he then fixed so that other people (e.g. like you, shouting here around) could more enjoy CCC at that time

- I always sent a donation to his PayPal account for each GamingStation / Color Kit

- I had ideas (software and hardware based ideas) which Eric didn´t like

- I took the opportunity to add those ideas into the code since its open source

- Eric asked for a clear separation between his code and the modified version I did, which I did and called it CCEE

- In my CCC presentation video, I started the video with the word "Eric is the godfather of this whole project", just check out YouTube, and despite his childy behavior, I still let all these videos inside and not "take revenge" for this stupid mess.

- To respect Erics code, CCEE is not publicy available and can not be downloaded

- Eric is mentioned in the CCEE attract mode, in the end credit animation when the player finishes the game (only CCEE has this) as well as in the CCEE compendium, where I wrote one big article about him and CCC

- For clarification, I wrote a long article about the whole story: http://bandera6.wix.com/pinballmoding#!cactus-canyon-extended-edition/c6tp

- People asking to get the CCEE code which we refused, now try to make trouble on the net and spread wrong information as you can read here.

I see that PiperPinball reproduced our beer mug mod, which we created long time ago - (Published : February 2, 2013 - see http://bandera6.wix.com/pinballmoding#!cactus-canyon-page-2/cnbf) , so should we also again start to cry like a baby and say "Ohhh...you stole my idea...määh..uhhh". No, we don´t and we think that its cool that another one is entering the scene and creates great mods for the community, so keep up the good work !

Ok so here is the problem. You *sell* Gaming Stations that have CCEE preinstalled in them. Since you're selling those, by definition, CCEE is a commercial project. Since you do not give out CCEE in any other way as you stated above, CCEE is *only* a commercial project. So there you have it.

Agreed - and on top of that, don't most open-source licenses require any changes to be made open-source as well, so -

But I'm not sure about

Okay, so lets cut the crap and just clarify that you sell systems with the code pre-installed. The only way to get said code is by buying one of your systems. Why else would you make and promote "deluxe editions" of the system? Why are you specific about who you sell to? Why would you reject anyone? Why is there a restricted "members only" portion of your site? It seems that you've gone to considerable lengths to promote the product and its "exclusivity", so calling it a commercial product is probably the most appropriate.

How microsofty of you.

You are a fool and this post of yours goes a long way to prove this.

I robbed a liquor store. But no crime was committed because I posted a notice of credit to the store owners when I resold the booze.

I also robbed a liquor store but committed no crime because I let the store owners know that about some issues with their security system.

And we're former employees of the liquor store.

I clicked on this thread because I recently played CC for the first time and instantly fell in love. I have only read the first page and the last two and that was enough. Epthegeek started all of this 3 years ago with nothing but good intentions. It is obvious he was not in this for any monetary reasons, he simply wanted owners to enjoy their games even more. To do what you did....shame shame shame.

And I am just some dude in the store buying a bottle of good whiskey.

Sorry but I don't believe you have any specific rights here other than what Eric grants you to modify or redistribute his code. Unless you can produce a written, irrevocable license to redistribute his code, you're pretty much at his mercy as he can change the terms at any time.

You are clearly doing things that the author disapproves. This is a problem.

Your attempt to cast yourself as some kind of victim in that "long article" is contemptible.

This kind of reminds me of Red Hat, which also reminds me that I was afraid to buy in at $14/share when they went public because I couldn't imagine people buying something that was free to download.
On the other hand, every year somebody copies my designs and tries to make a buck, and every year I get mad and nervous about it, but I always survive it and they always fade away in time.
Most often the creators will soldier on and the profiteers will come and go. It's annoying, but part of living among other humans.

I think banderas still really does not realize what he does and what this causes. This almost looks like suffering from a tunnel vision...

Is it legal to take an open source code, modify it and sell it along with hardware without providing a free download link to the open source software?

This depends on the license. At the time, such modifications were permitted under the license that CCC was distributed under. The license has recently been changed to prohibit redistribution of derived works. However, the license isn't retroactive, but any new derivations going forward (including ones where banderas wants to take new features developed in the original code base and include them in CCEE) are prohibited from redistribution under the new license. The new license, however, does permit making changes for your own personal use. The new license is reflected in the 'Continued...' GitHub repository.

Andre is an opportunist and knows exactly what he's doing. CCC gaming computers were being sold (with the CCC code) without Eric's permission, even before Andre introduced additional features.

From my understanding, he was asked to stop and ignored the request.

I agree completely.

I do not understand why he did that? There are not so many CC out there to make big money. Weird.

Real question, not to change the subject but I'm stuck the watchdog timer keeps shutting things off at random times for no apparent reason, where can I find that to change or disable it to figure things out?

, it's a little Shuttle with the Intel Sandy bridge. But yes, all the lights and coils go out, and the watchdog led lights.
We just found and changed watchdog timer to 5000ms and recompiled. Seems to have stopped the problem so far.
It only recently started doing that, this cpu was working fine for a couple years before this. Kind of puzzling.

Are any caps swelled on the motherboard? Are your voltages right on the pc? This is about time those failures start.

I haven't tested voltages, but everything still looks shiny new visually. If things like that could cause the watchdog shutoff maybe I'll take a closer look at things...

epthegeek - I have been playing CCC for a couple of weeks now via Visual Pinball and I just love it. I actually played it on a real CC a couple of months back at the Ann Arbor Pinball Show and didn't realize I was playing something different, I mean I knew I was playing something different because I had never seen drunk multi-ball before but whatever it was I was playing was just amazing! Then being more active with Virtual Pinball than 'real pinball' I was able to get the Visual Pinball version of your game running and it is just great.

I do have one question... The P-ROC/VPX version of the game displays the DMD on the screen which is great but I've got a real DMD (pinDMD3 actually) and another great contributor to the hobby has written a dmd extension tool (https://github.com/freezy/dmd-extensions) that allows us Visual Pinball folks to use our real DMD's with other virtual pinball simulators like Pinball Arcade and PinballFX2. Using this tool I am actually able to capture the screen and display your wonderful colour dots on my pinDMD3, but I have to keep the DMD displayed on the screen to do this... not being a programmer myself I had asked the author of dmdext if he could grab the frames from memory for P-ROC games in a similar fashion to what he is doing for other emulators and he did seem to think it was possible and asked if there any Python pro's out there...

I figured it couldn't hurt to come to the source as I stumbled upon this thread last week and figured why not ask you... his actual thoughts were "...Can you load COM DLLs in Python? If so, it shouldn't be hard to write a bridge for P-PROC using the dmdext library directly, which would then add support for all displays out there...".

What do you think? Such a thing possible?

Thanks for a creating such a great game!

@roar, it is possible to load DLL's from python using ctypes. You can also build C/C++ extensions.