There’s been a bit of confusion around what does or doesn’t constitute an appropriate credits section for posted projects. To hopefully make our policy more concrete and clear, we’ve put together an explicit crediting guideline and added a numbered rule stating that projects must comply with it. Note that this policy may not necessarily be consistent with rulings we’ve made in the past; these new rules will be the standard moving forward (with any major updates announced).
This thread will remain open for comments and clarifications on the new policy.
Most code assets do not strictly need to be directly credited, but it is good practice to do so anyway. If code is released under a license, please follow the terms of that license. As general practice, any code snippets posted on FEU with no other license is assumed to be released under CC0 public domain.
I think code should be required to be credited. At the very least, users could just screencap the installed patches they have by typing ! into the patches menu on febuilder. If using skillsys, include the credits from that somewhere
Requiring code credits in general gets into a slippery slope where what constitutes “an original” code snippet is hard to define well (many real lawyers have tried and failed!). As an example, “clean room” reverse engineering is generally protected under US copyright law, but as this applies to ROM hacking it may result in nearly-identical code being produced, leading to an impossible he-said she-said situation.
If you would like your code to be credited to you by name, you should release that code under an attribution-required license.
Considering many hacks use a lot of baseline patches (highlighting Skillsys for example, or other - equally relevant - patches such as Str/Mag split or Leadership stars), there should be a common credit list for mainline changes to the code that are widely used so that hackmakers can have a rapidly accessible credit note for such.
On an additional note - as long as such credits are readily accessible in game (and not locked behind the end-games credits, but within character pages, in-game guides or sound rooms), are they sufficient this way and aren’t needed to be put in the thread as well?
Yes, that’s fine, but please make a note somewhere in the thread that this is how your credits are structured, just so we can reduce the risk of false reports.
I think this only applies to referencing code. If someone releases a minor edit of someone else’s code, it gets hazy, but it’s simple enough to credit the rest of the time:
If you install a patch included in febuilder, credit it in some form.
If you install something found from someone’s asm thread, credit that user & anyone else credited in the installer.
(For example, my NewGameConfigMenu says this in line 1: // By Vesly, Sme, and Circles )
I’m not too fussed if this is only barely enforced in practice, but I do think we should call it a requirement.
It’s a good sentiment and a standard that I certainly would be in favor of promoting, but I’m wary of taking a stronger stance on code asset usage than other code-sharing forums of this type. Something like the FE8 skill system is explicitly released under the CC0 public domain, for example, so by requiring attribution we’d actually be imposing extra terms beyond the given license.
On a tangential note, it would be neat if FEbuilder could automatically produce a credits list from the list of installed patches.
EDIT:
After some discussion on the discord, we are discussing some means by which people who have already shared code on this forum can go back and apply some kind of credit-required terms to their already-posted code. This is mostly because I agree that it’s not fair to retroactively say that anything that was posted in the past is now released under CC0.
The details are TBD, but here are some of the considerations:
There is intuitively a difference between “I created a new mechanic from scratch” and “I edited three instructions in an existing routine” when it comes to what can reasonably be considered “new code”. Most cases will clearly fall into one or the other, but I don’t want to open the door for people posting installers that, I don’t know, change poison damage to deal damage out of 8 instead of out of 3 and then force all hacks with modded poison damage to credit them.
The concept of “free to use but not to edit” does exist in the real open source world, but it is extremely fraught and I don’t really want to be in a position where I have to be the one litigating it. Because of that, I think it’s reasonable to default code-with-required-attribution to being the equivalent of F2E, but it becomes a question of whether referencing code counts as editing it, and if so, do we need some kind of similarity measure, etc.
Enforcing the revoking of a code license is really, really difficult. It’s easy to tell if a visual, musical or literary asset has been replaced, but it is almost impossible to judge (without intrusive and complex code signing mechanisms) whether code that is in use is “actually” from the original source (which would be against the rules) or merely “derived” from it (reverse engineering is protected under most international jurisdictions).
I want to stress that none of the minutiae needs to affect what you, the conscientious project creator, thinks is a good standard to follow. I would love to praise project creators that go above and beyond to make sure that code authors get credit, and I’d even be in favor of making it an unofficial standard and using community pressure to enforce it. But if we force people to credit code under threat of staff action, then we have to nail down the edge cases.
I think as the owner of the site you’re allowed to do this. “If you want your project’s download link to be available, you should credit the patches you use.”
Pretty much the only things that regularly get installed are febuilder patches - asm thread installations are significantly less. If everyone uses a small inline patch such as my Faster Poison Animations one, it might be a minor inconvenience to have so many patches to credit, but it’s more of an inconvenience to find the inline changes yourself without looking. Sure, anyone could do that, but most don’t, so let’s just rely on people to be honest. If someone deliberately omits inline changes they found from someone else, it really doesn’t matter. Most people will include them if it shows up as installed on febuilder, and we don’t really need to enforce inline change patch crediting. If you want a strict stance on it, I’d say that crediting for inline changes should not be required, but I don’t want to discourage crediting them.
This would be nice, but I recall 7743 saying that this will not happen. I don’t really want to waste people’s time writing out credits, so I don’t really care if all we see for crediting patches is a screenshot with ! typed in, but I think showing nothing is disrespectful to the creators of the patches. It’s very common that patches are not credited whatsoever, so having it explicitly in the guidelines would be helpful.
If you feel strongly against words like “must”, or “requirement”, perhaps you could just use the word “should” in your intimidating mod post so that most users think it’s needed.
Sure, I’m allowed to do lots of things as the site owner, many of which are unreasonable. For this case in particular, I’m going to put my foot down and say that, if there is an explicit license attached, the site policy is “follow the license”, full stop. So in the case of the skill system, CC0 does not impose an attribution requirement (of course, users are strongly encouraged to do so anyway).
I am actually controlling for the opposite scenario – where someone creates a relatively trivial inline patch by themselves and then gets contacted by someone who’s also done the same work who wants credit or by well-meaning onlookers who think that some credit is missing.
This is precisely the kind of “enforced credits by vibes” that the new policy is intended to avoid. Nothing is intended to discourage crediting anything. As official site policy enforced by staff action, we have to have clear rulings on what happens on the edge cases so we don’t end up getting into the same arguments over and over again.
I don’t disagree, but there are limits to how much “respect” can be enforced via site policy, and it is my opinion that moderators end up being required to step in more frequently than they should as-is.
EDIT:
I have changed the language surrounding code usage to say “strongly encouraged” and removed the explicit carve-out that code may not need to be credited by default.
EDIT 2:
To be entirely clear, I completely agree with your reasoning. Code authors are just as deserving of credit as any other asset creator, and we should be encouraging people to give that credit where it’s due. My reservation is solely in enforcement and edge cases surrounding an actual thorny legal issue in the real world, especially in a community like this one where we already get many spurious reports from well-meaning community members.
I don’t understand why you want it written as a separate text file when you can just open ups and type “!” in the patch screen, but I don’t understand why you want us to go to the trouble of writing it as a separate text file.
It seems to me that you are just adding unnecessary work.
In the case of the buildfile, if the source code is disclosed, you can check it additionally.
Please feel free to use 7743 data as CC0 public domain.
There is no need to put it on the list every time.
Well, it might be nice to have somewhere like thanks 7743, but I don’t want to force it.
I am more of a GPL-oriented person.
In other words, I will release my results for free use, so please release your results for free use as well.
This is my basic idea.
I believe that if we bring foodstuffs to each other, we will be able to have a grander party.
That’s why I really dislike people who monopolize the data without making it public.
We are not dealing with a product to sell, so I would like the data to be shared as a common property, with the results made public whenever possible.
All my stuff is f2u/f2e. I don’t intend to try and strictly enforce crediting for my patches, but if anyone happens to notice that a project has neglected to credit me for a patch I made, I’d appreciate if you let the project author(s) know that they should credit me. Thanks.
Just some food for thought as it comes to mind as it regards to the policy
This is more general, but I think we should have an enforcement guideline on steps that will be taken to enforce this. I believe the most extreme action should only be immediately taken if a project is released without any credit list at all
As it relates to code, there are occasions when two people release a project that has the same mechanic but completely different ways of implementation. Sun God’s Wrath and Bell’s of Bylen are both examples of this with FE5’s PCC mechanic. I think this is something that should be kept in mind.
Speaking on a potential edge case, there are some things I’ve put in SGW that are probably from so long ago that in my young naivety I forgot to document since there wasn’t as much concern about code that I don’t think I’d be able to credit any longer unless someone pointed it out to me. Like, I think I mentioned and credited I believe “Mage Girl” (she made a Tales of FE hack to provide more identifying context) from the first iteration of FEU for how I implemented multiple S ranks in it, but other things I may have done directly in a hexeditor I don’t recall any longer.
I’ve generally been under the assumption that code wasn’t as important to credit, so I’ve never taken as in depth an approach to it.
As a programmer, I think that code shenanigans shouldn’t be credited. Like you say, it enters into a big slippery slope not knowing the real origin of certain patches.
I consider just to give credit to Assets (battle animations, music, portraits, ui elements, etc) makes more sense, since those are more easy to track.
I’ve made a further note about what will and will not be applied retroactively here.
Furthermore, some more substantial changes:
In the main body of the guidelines regarding code assets:
Most code assets do not strictly needto be directly credited, but it is good practice to do so anyway You are strongly encouraged to give credit to any code assets used by your project, either explicitly or referenced. If code is released under a license, please follow the terms of that license. As general practice, any code snippets posted on FEU with no other license is assumed to be released under CC0 public domain. , but please check whether the author is asking for credit!
In the FAQ, an added bullet:
What happens if my project does not meet these guidelines?
That depends a lot on how much you’re missing. If you’re just missing a few things, we’re typically happy to let things slide while you fix them. For bigger infractions, we may temporarily de-list your project until you can get your credits in order.