Torque EULA Discussion

#121 The comment that was removed was an comical assumption as to how 'finite resources' could possibly effect the 'legal' team ability to preform a timely EULA redraft(What have been stated to be in the works for near a month now), it did not even contain a criticism of any type.

I like the fact that it was censored and not simply debunked as the silliness it plainly was. That means alot to me, such as the idea that my unspoken assumptions are more correct then I had previously thought could be possible. It is also good to know that the 'line' I keep bordering on is calling into question expected behavior based on assumptions from what information the community have been officially told.

Finally the information I had been looking for, but not coming from any plain as normal days text, but a interpretive action what speaks volumes as to what true intentions are. Of course the truth of the intentions can only be proven once the new EULA redraft is actually read by the torque community.

I guess there is nothing more to say on this subject, what is fine because TorquePowered actually have never said anything real on the subject for weeks now.

#122 The buzz I am hearing is that Torque and Instant Action may be selling or shutting down and that is why the focus is on attracting new customers and not addressing the issues of current customers, such as the EULA.

This seems consistent with not having the resources to update the EULA to the intent of the company and agreement of existing customers.

Is Instant Action going to be shutting down or selling off Torque?

#123 @Kyoko -

That is flat out false

There are no plans to sell or shut down, nor any indicators of that. Where did you get this information?

#124 @Mich: why are you even answering that? It's an account created just to post here.

#125 Because people are subscribed to this thread and will get the e-mail with his statement. It's best I reply so an employee is on record immediately following the untrue statement.

#126 @Kyoko - There's no truth to that. Instant Jam was a really big push for the company as a whole. It consumed our resources. We recieved an updated version of our EULA today but we sent it back for more changes since there were still a few issues that we weren't happy with.

#127 @Mich: yep, I didn't think about that. This whole thing is getting absurd.

@Eric: thanks for the update ;)

#128 Thats what I call unsubstantiated rumor mangling. Only fools rush in. And it is a insult on human intelligence to utter inflammatory statements like that without any scrape of evidence to support and substantiate such opinionated assumptions.

Productivity on Torque products is at an all time high, not reflecting the actions of a company that is in an unhealthy downward spiral. If TorquePowered offered public stock I would invest (just so I have more room to place my soap box).

Im going to state my unspoken assumptions now, just so as not to leave room for my griping and complaining to be used as fuel for stupidity, and far separate myself from the complaining complainers who froth at the mouth trying to provoke mob stupidity.

I have assumed for many weeks the EULA modifications were indeed put off for the official T3D release, and I was only being pissy bitchy about it because TorquePowered keep acting like the EULA redraft was expected any day, then any week, finally its been a month and actually we learn legal is working hard on another project.

A perfectly plausible and reasonable reason for the EULA redraft to take a lower/slower priority. It was TorquePowered 'uncool' to not be forthcoming with this information because many Torque community members are riding a high-roll gamble of time work and effort invested in a Torque engine based project. A legal contract issue is a show stopping problem in my world and indeed starts eating money until resolved.

My lawyer have billed me near the price of T3D for his work on EULA contract questions, I non mathematically estimate over 5 hours of me expressing concerns and seeking information in this one thread. My point is; It seems that whenever a discussion like this one is driven into exasperation, TorquePowered will finally reveal the full truth, what would have preemptively solved many abased problems like this thread is, before it becomes a problem.

I observe TorquePowered answering questions as quickly as possible, and sometimes that efficacy inveterately leads to building the wrong expectations/impressions, but when the false ideas are not corrected after days/weeks of time, people tend to get mad about the misunderstanding and anger is an emotion what always leads to illogical reactions. TorquePowered needs to improve its causality so this misunderstanding ignorance may quickly grow into enlightenment, and cease to be repetitious.

@Eric: I am happy the EULA was returned because of possible missing details who were late to make it into this thread. This is great wonderful news, and proves that TorquePowered works endlessly to please their loyal Torque community.
EDIT: If someone who knows would email why my earlier post was moderated I would love to be able to avoid future unintentional insulting comments (I truly am incapable of knowing what emotional provocations my words my have).

#129 @Caylo - Yes, expectations were not managed well regarding the update of the EULA. Unfortunately, I didn't know that IJ( Instant Jam ) was causing a legal log jam for us until the expectation was set. Anyways, I'm not a fan of excuses. I'd rather suck it up, say we messed up and takes measures in the future to correct the issue.

Unfortunately, one solution to not knowing the future is to stay quiet until information is final and more certain. I'm not a fan of that. While the dialog in here wasn't always..um..uplifting, there is a lot of information that we wouldn't have extracted if we were quiet.

Anyways, like most things in life, there's a balance.

We got our changes back tonight and on the first pass we think it addresses the majority of concerns. Another read in the morning will confirm.

There was some simplifying done as well, so hopefully the new language, from the community perspective, is better and not just different for the sake of being different.

We really want this to be done right and fair for all parties. We'd prefer to spend our time on tech and keep the EULA change free as possible.

#130 @Caylo
I was actually just about to turn in for the night, but I'll email you first thing tomorrow.

#131 Scientists are capable of communicating the difference between FACT and logical assumptions and definition clarity for 'theoretical facts'. Only a bad Scientist is fearful of being wrong, and hesitates to offer educated guessing, or assumptions based on all known facts. Programing, game engines and computers are a Science.

As for assuming the role and perspective for the EULA from the community point of view, brilliant solution to the EULA English problems in the first place.

Remember every small word effects the real meaning of a sentence, often rearranging wording can change the perception of the communication, different EULA wording(as you mention it) would still be an improvement.

At the end of the day; It is equally as easy to be well articulated then it is to be ambiguous(speak articulated, write articulated = thinking articulated).

Im already out of bandwidth today, 10MB go so fast, and I am too far from towns to catch a wild WIFI signal(I hope I can catch some in Petersburg).

#132 Thanks Scott, I seldom intent to be insulting. Careful to only insult concepts and ideas not people and personal believes.

#133 @Eric

Thanks for the info. Your and Michael's way of communication IS appreciated :)
Regarding the problem of legal "phrasing" in an EULA, i have seen a solution in a number of companies which i might suggest for TP too. With the release of a new EULA version, also release a seperate "plain english" summary of the key elements the EULA is meant to say.

It will need to include a standard disclaimer that its not an addendum or replacement, but it will reduce general confusion among those of your customers who arent using legal councel for each EULA (change).

@Caylo
I was reluctant to post this here, but regarding your previous problem of having income from other businesses being accounted towards your "income limit" with potential games (the 250.000 a year which where mentioned in this thread). I am in europe and am in the same situation, but you can easily deal with this problem by creating a seperate business entity with seperate trademarks, registration and tax/income/legal handling.

Here in europe for small (read: tiny) businesses it is cheap to set up a UK based LTD. Get a trademark, register the new company, do yearly tax reports for that company, assign your T3D license as a studio license to that company and do any release using that companies name/brand. Seperate phone/fax lines, physical adresses, legal entities, bank accounts and no problems with any 250.000 a year income limit which might be in some EULA that company needs to sign. Costs for setting this up, are mostly negligible (700 to 1200 dollar plus a bit of bureaucracy). I would suggest talking to your lawyer about this :)

ps: standard disclaimer applies, IANAL.

#134 @Ramihyn - We have built a FAQ based on the EULA for that very purpose. When you click on a license option, there will be a link to the FAQ that then directs you to the EULA for more detail. That should help us set the tone for the spirit of the EULA.

#135 Hey everyone, here is a link to the updated draft. We also have an FAQ, but we wanted to wait until we recieved your first impressions.

#136 3.3.2

What is the "installed" software? Is that just a copy of the code in a folder?

If so thats not really acceptable. I have the software on machines that are headless dedicated or test machines for debugging. This is similar to backups, what is the difference between a backup and a installed instance of the software?

3.4.3. make more copies of the Software than are permitted by Sections 3.2 and 3.3, provided that You may make one additional copy for archival/backup purposes;


Why even describe limits for backups to one copy? That is kind of dumb. To the letter of the eula I'm a huge violator having many backups.

3.5.2

What if the game has no about/credits screen?

3.5.3

This one seems a little excessive too, I am glad we are doing a digital download with no printed material. There is no instruction manual either but there will be helpful sections on our website.

It might be better to just require torque be mentioned one time in physical packaging (back of box, or back of manual, etc).

Also it does not seem that (unless waived by InstantAction) applies to the sub sections? We were under the impression that if you pay to remove torque branding you can remove it all and that should be clear.


9.3

I could be wrong on this but I don't think you can take my right to trial by jury through a license agreement if it ever came to that.

#137 Usually eulas might as well be written in Urdu, the Lawyerese is so thick ... so that's probably the first eula that I actually understood after reading.

#138 ok... the backup stuff in 3.4.3 seems to render the product quite useless...
In an entire studio you are only allowed _1_ backup ???
And for both individual and studio licenses, are we at all allowed to use a SVN repository? Does that perhaps use the _1_ backup we can have?
And what about different versions of the Software? Can I at least have 1 backup of each version? If working on 2 different projects, I'm only allowed to back up one of them?
Am I not allowed to copy the files to a server with mirrored disks?

3.4.4. What are you trying to say here?
Are we not allowed to even try to understand how the software works on the inside?

3.4.5. To me it seems this will prevent me from updating logos with newer versions, even if I'm told to do so by 3.5.1.
So basically if you change the logo guidelines I can't ever comply with the EULA :)

#139 initial questions not covered yet in discussion:

// there is nothing about the "methods of distribution" for personal computer based games and non-games..
- i.e.:the terminology "disc based" was removed. Is there no limitation on distribution method ? (IMO, there shouldn't be one anyways)

// 3.5.1. "display the Torque Logo, consistent with the Logo Guidelines, in the start-up sequence of the Product (unless waived by InstantAction); .."
- OK, but which one ? ..the c++-splash-window or the TS-splash-screen ?
It's a bit silly to require both, don't you think ?..seeing 2 Torque splashscreens/windows within 2 seconds is; silly.

// 2.1.2 ...
- It would be nice to understand what happens after the 500k cap is exceeded. What is the fee & term extensions ?

off topic:
// lol @ 9.3
"... .the substantially prevailing party shall be entitled to recover its attorneys' fees and costs. "
- As if the word "substantially" was needed in any form or fashion.

**Edit: I duplicate the first half of Janr's concerns as part of this post. With SVN repositories, different projects in development...it seems like you guys are hindering our needs to safeguard our development processes.

Thank you for reading.

#140 I can not find any fault between the intention of the words and the English of this contract. There is no room for common logic to misunderstand the intention of this EULA, everything is well defined and worded (I would say about middle school level of expected comprehension- what is perfect English for a contract).

But perhaps as mentioned, Section 3.4.3. archival/backup are two different words that are not truly related to each other any more then saying library/book are related. See archive is a container to hold a collection same type things. Every other part of the EULA is defining perfectly clearly what 'intention' it was meant to be saying.

I myself have many Torque Backups but only ONE Backup Archive. I enjoy the productivity freedom allowed by keeping multiple experimental versions in my Backup Archive for future study and reversions.

EDIT:
My Backup Archive is mirrored array would that count as multiple backups?