Re: Mother of all 7603 XDF files
Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2022 8:14 am
Absolutely nothing, they are not even written in the same language. The flash kernels are also not even remotely similar. As a matter of fact, Ls Droid developed and pioneered a number of new methods for things that even commercial tuning software companies have started adopting. I can see what you're insinuating and I hate to burst your bubble but your so far off base its not even funny.persingc wrote:I was always curious as to how much if any source code lsdroid and pcmhammer have in common.160plus wrote:I don't think this is possible, at least not in any way that would ever hold up. Because every XDF requires using the same program and there is really only 1 way to display most tables/switches it then comes down to how something is worded or phrased and again there are only so many ways to label something. Displaying a VE table for example only has 2 possible method's and it's simply changing the X/Y axis for how the information is displayed. The table reference ID's where started a long time ago and are mostly unified between every tuning company now and for good reason. To copyright something i needs to be a unique work and there really is no way to make an XDF unique. At best it's simply a matter of how complete an XDF is.NSFW wrote: (And yes I do think XDFs are copyrightable and therefore GPLable - kind of like how an orchestra can copyright a recording of performance, even if they have no rights to the underlying score.) Without GPL for XDFs, we just have the honor system to steer people toward contributing what they add on top.
I can also see the value of creators distributing locked XDF's and they have no real negative impact on the community. If someone wanted to add to an existing XDF....AND they had plans to share what they were doing they can go on pretty much any forum and find someone knowledgeable to message asking where they can find an unlocked version or how they could contribute to adding additional information to an XDF. Now if they didn't plan on sharing what they wanted to do, then why should they even have access to the unlocked version in the first place? This aspect does apply to your thinking that anything done under a GPL should be reshared and if the person isn't willing to do that then they why should the work of others be given to them? The only reason for this would be that the person plans to profit off what someone else did or try and take credit for another person's work.
There is also a huge risk factor when someone wants to contribute or alter an XDF.....who's going to check and or validate what they did? Maybe they didn't know what they were doing and made bad edits that then get redistributed to hundreds of users. I have spent a lot of time over the last couple of years tracking down bad XDF's that most of the time where the result of someone editing another person's XDF where they screwed something up and then started sharing it. I have also seen a lot of XDF's where some some simply changed the creator's name and did nothing else to the XDF. Why would someone do that if their intentions were to help others?
My final point and my issue with GPL's is who's keeping people honest and who's going to enforce it? I have run into several people who do nothing more then cruise Github looking for things they can take, only slightly alter/reskin and then sell for a profit. A prime example is with Ls Droid for Windows and most of the moderators in my Ls Droid group can validate what I'm about to say. I initially planned to open source the program when it was done and I guess I just got lucky that it took me a lot longer to release the program then I had been expecting because some people got antsy and started contacting me directly asking for copies of the apps source code. I heard reasons that ranged from "I'd just like to see how the app works" to "I'd like to make some changes in it for personal use and I promise I won't share your source code". When I declined to share the source these people started contacting my moderators and tried all sorts of things hoping one of them would share copies of my source code....of course the moderators would immediately inform me someone was asking for source code and they seemed suspicious. Tazzi actually caught one of these guys who had been asking for source code selling a hacked version of another program on ebay.....so it's not an assumption there are people out there with malicious intentions.....it's already been proven and we've seen what their plans are. These are the same type of people who cry about locked XDF's because they can't easily alter them and make them appear to be their own. This was exactly what happened with Antus checksum dll, a person hacked it to remove his copyright and then started redistributing the dll as their own along with XDF's they also claimed as their own that were being included as part of a bundle with a program/tool being sold on eBay.