bloodsong opened this issue on Sep 14, 2002 ยท 10 posts
bloodsong posted Sat, 14 September 2002 at 7:42 AM
uh.... so are we allowed to discuss these things, or is that some kinda reverse-engineering that ain't allowed in the eula or something??
lesbentley posted Sat, 14 September 2002 at 8:14 AM
New P5 CR2 Stuff !?! I'm still struggling to understand the old P4 CR2 Stuff!
maclean posted Sat, 14 September 2002 at 4:38 PM
Well, IS there anything new to discuss? I won't receive my copy for 10 days or so yet, so I can't find out. But, contrary to the current mania for Firefly renders, cloth doohickies and whatnot, the first things I'll be checking are files formats, parameter groupings and a few of the unmentioned tools (like the measuring system, for example). The things the majority of the community is interested in don't really affect me, so I find a lot of the info I'm getting to be useless. If anyone can enlighten me on some of the less 'popular' aspects in advance, I'd be grateful. I don't even NEED poser 5. The reason I ordered it was plain and simple. If there's anything worthwhile in it that I can use.... I want to know about it now, not in a year's time. If not....well, I'd've ended up buying it anyway. mac
bloodsong posted Sat, 14 September 2002 at 7:48 PM
heyas; there's some new channels, for backface cull, and the... whatchacallit boundary thing. and they're in each body part, not in the figure, like you'd expect. then, of course, there's all the new material setting things. and how materials are saved, and how dynamic hair and cloth is saved (where do the simulations go?) and stuff like that.
ockham posted Sun, 15 September 2002 at 1:14 AM
As I read the EULA, it's pretty specific about not -discussing- internals of the file formats or the executable. The provision is undoubtedly aimed at warez types, but it's written very broadly. I'm going to wait for clarification before doing anything along those lines.
maclean posted Sun, 15 September 2002 at 10:17 AM
'As I read the EULA, it's pretty specific about not -discussing- internals of the file formats or the executable' I don't believe that for a minute. Kupa and Larry Weinberg have both specifically stated SEVERAL times that their eula is IN NO WAY aimed at restricting poser users or 3rd party creators. To prohibit discussion of the file format would be insane. mac
bloodsong posted Sun, 15 September 2002 at 6:21 PM
heyas; where do you see you can't discuss it? is that in the reverse-engineering section? i thought that was pertaining to the poser program.
ockham posted Sun, 15 September 2002 at 7:45 PM
Here's the part that throws the fear of God into my copyright-loving and somewhat law-abiding soul: In the first paragraph of the EULA, the term "Program" is defined like so: Curious Labs, Inc.(Company), a California-based Corporation, provides the computer software and associated proprietary file formats (Program)...... [Note that "Program" includes the software and the formats.] Then later on, You cannot reverse engineer, decompile, debug, disassemble, circumvent security features, or interfere with normal Program functionality and operation (or attempt any of these actions) for any reason whatsoever without express prior written consent of Company. Any such activity performed without the required consent is a violation of this EULA........ Since "Program" was defined to include the file formats, this prohibition seems to include "reverse engineering" in the proprietary files as well as the .EXE. If there's an exception, it may hinge on a precise definition of "reverse engineering", but that isn't given explicitly in the EULA.
ockham posted Sun, 15 September 2002 at 11:10 PM
Obviously CL didn't -mean- to prohibit such discussions or such modifications. But the language in the EULA says otherwise. I suspect it was written by a lawyer who had no understanding of the distinction between hackers and productive experimenters. Come to think of it, maybe an official distinction wouldn't be a bad idea... consider the difference between licensed radio amateurs and unlicensed CB'ers as a parallel example in an older field of experimentation.
kawecki posted Tue, 17 September 2002 at 5:46 AM
Nobody can restrict a discusion about the contents of a text file, there's no reverse engineering here. If you read backface cull it means not to render backward oriented faces (faster rendering of closed objects without holes). How is done? : testing the face normal (public knowledge). The code used by Poser5 for doing this? : This is propietary of CL, if you want to know it you must do reverse engineering and probably will be illegal.
Stupidity also evolves!