Critique of the "Free Releases" Rule

FiveM Discussion
,
1

I want to discuss a rule in our forum about sharing free stuff. Right now, the rule says that if you want to give something away for free, you have to offer a download option that isn’t Tebex. But this rule is causing some problems.

First off, it stops people from sharing free escrowed scripts. Some developers might want to give away their work for free but still keep control over it. This rule makes that difficult.

Secondly, not everyone wants to make their code open source when they share it for free. Some people just want to help out without giving up control. But this rule forces them to either sell their work or find a different way to share it.

But here’s the thing: if you make your code open source, other people can use it for their own benefit, including selling it. So, some developers are rightly worried that if they share their code openly, others might take advantage and make money off their hard work.

Also, the rule seems to encourage selling scripts over giving them away for free. It’s okay to sell escrowed scripts, but not to share them for free without making them open source. This doesn’t seem fair to developers who just want to help out.

Overall, this rule makes it harder for people to share their work freely and limits options. It might even push developers to sell their work just to follow the rules. We should talk about changing this rule to better support sharing and collaboration in our community.

9 Likes
2

Such a non-sensical rule. This is not a great way to encourage people to make free protected releases, it’s a good way to alienate the developers and force them to charge money. Unethical as ever from our favourite platform providers!

It’s also a community that we see a lot of intellectual property theft on open source resources. Like we have seen recently with RPEmotes and others. @Eichenholz and every other developer should be able to reserve the right to protect their work but make a free release for the community.
We had to make our prop spawner £1 due to this rule. It’s unethical for customers and unfair for creators.

Yet another typical greedy, money-hungry business model from CFX and enforced by their partners.

4 Likes
3

I totally agree with this post. I have plenty of free releases, which I want to keep creative control over. Sadly due to this rule, the amount of people who can find them, is limited by this, in my opinion, outdated rule

6 Likes
4

You can release works as pay what you want + escrow; you can set the minimum price to 0.00 and release it. That way, it’ll still be marked as paid.

The main issue here is that free releases are listed as free to avoid confusing users with what is genuinely free/open source, with what is essentially you using the free release as ad space. You’re still allowed to release free escrowed resources; you need to advertise them elsewhere.

Additionally, there’s another important aspect to this: realistically, you will likely not care for or maintain your free or escrowed resource. You’ll probably make a couple hundred dollars if you do well in FiveM, then quit later in the future, and hundreds of people will be stuck with your free escrowed resource they can no longer fix.

You have no incentive to work on a free and escrowed resource, you have no financial incentive, and the only incentive to create that resource is to get your ad space on the releases page.

Really, everyone loses when you release free + escrowed stuff.

The customer loses because they potentially get trapped in your escrowed product, and you lose because you waste your time creating something that will take your own time with no incentive to fix (no money = no incentive).

Then, that drops the burden on others to clean up the mess if you decide to quit FiveM one day. There is nothing anyone can do since you hold the full rights to the code. It’s not like CFX can unescrow your resource and share its code, because you could turn around and sue them.

Edit: Also, when making suggestions to the platform you’re using, saying dumb things like:

Unethical as ever from our favourite platform providers!

Reinforces my point that you will probably abandon your stuff if things don’t work out for you in this space, making you unreliable and untrustworthy regarding a free, escrowed resource.

Honestly, I wouldn’t touch on a single resource from you, open source or not. It seems like you have a low constitution in this space.

3 Likes
5

fwiw, this rule was introduced after complaints/feedback from the community. That’s why I asked to raise the discussion about this in a discussion topic.

6

Might be a good idea stop selling resources for $40 and calling it open-source, when it is in-fact not open source. You’re not making anything open-source, you’re simply making the source available. It’s misleading and creators should stop doing it.

1 Like
7

Scripts that are ‘free’ should also have the source code available

This doesn’t make much sense, when a script is released freely most of the time it also means without proper maintenance. Developers/server owners should be able to modify free releases to fix issues or add onto them themselves.

I think this is a valid concern, there should be a better way to get in contact with Tebex to remove releases that use free releases as a “base”

I think this goes back to my second point

Developers/server owners should be able to modify free releases to fix issues or add onto them themselves.

2 Likes
8

This being said, by developers who would already do such.

Not sure how this is unethical, “free” escrowed releases are annoying and aren’t actually “free” you can’t modify them or adjust them for your needs.

This comment seems more so like you want to start an argument.

Not sure what “intellectual property theft” you’re talking about here a lot of these resources are released with an open source license and forks are allowed.

Yet another comment that points to you just wanting to start an argument.

2 Likes
9

Simple solution:
Use an appropriate license with your work (e.g. one that disallows redistributing it in a paid release) and DMCA them into the ground if you see a valid copyright issue. I’ve managed to take down entire stores because of people selling my (free) ContextMenu.
Yes I know, these take effort to do and can be annoying at times, but the sheer satisfaction of seeing their whole store come crashing down makes it worth again :heart_on_fire:
Protecting the community a big step at a time. Who knows what else they copied…

3 Likes
14

This being said, by developers who would already do such.

What are you trying to imply here?

Not sure how this is unethical, “free” escrowed releases are annoying and aren’t actually “free” you can’t modify them or adjust them for your needs.
This comment seems more so like you want to start an argument.

Not sure what awful free and escrowed resources you’ve been using, but any reputable free and escrowed resources should come with extensive configuration options so the user can change anything they need to without being exposed to all of the protected code. Lastly, how is expressing an opinion “wanting to start an argument”?

Not sure what “intellectual property theft” you’re talking about here a lot of these resources are released with an open source license and forks are allowed.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you’re obviously not as involved in the FiveM community as you thought you were. Either that, or you’re deliberately trying to bait me to discuss unrelated drama regarding RPEmotes?

Yet another comment that points to you just wanting to start an argument.

I’m simply making statements. Your responding is what started the argument. Just like programming a command. The argument comes second.

15

It’s outdated in my opinion, and I am entitled to this.

Finally, I’d appreciate if my comments weren’t continually deleted, especially considering I’m not breaking any of the ToS, and you’re simultaneously allowing people to refer to me as “dumb” without consequence. You should be careful how the community might perceive this, as the example of you removing my comments with nothing but fair and honest opinions with some defending myself from personal attacks by your friend @Noor_Nahas, will only go to proving my point that CFX is enforcing rules and pushing their own narrative without allowing differing opinions to be voiced in a respectful manner.

I have backups of all of my comments, so I will be reinstating them word for word.

16

I never said you were not, I just wanted to give you insight why this rule was added. It might be outdated, who knows. That’s why it’s good to have a discussion topic about it, since I know some forum regulars were pretty much against it.

Deleting your comments (and others) was an attempt to stop this topic from derailing. Let’s keep this topic about the rule, not any other drama unrelated to it.

Please stop with these ridiculous claims.
Like said above, this rule was added because of demand from the community/forum regulars in 2022. You can browse topics from back then if you don’t believe me.

People who have been member on this forum for a while know I have always tried to adapt the rules with the concerns that have been raised. See also the 12-hour rule, and the topic template we made mandatory for releases (actually something I’m proud of).

2 Likes
17

For what’s it worth we will be discussing our releases rules internally in the coming weeks, so any feedback that comes up here can be very useful in adding or changing rules.

1 Like
18

That’s why it’s good to have a discussion topic about it, since I know some forum regulars were pretty much against it.

That’s something I can agree with you on.

Deleting your comments (and others) was an attempt to stop this topic from derailing. Let’s keep this topic about the rule, not any other drama unrelated to it.

The problem here lies with you selectively removing comments that you feel could potentially derail this topic, but allowing comments that actually do derail the topic to remain. Thus, removing my ability to defend myself from the false implications about my work and personal character attacks above, all of which were received for what I can tell - because the individual didn’t like my opinion.

Please stop with these ridiculous claims.
Like said above, this rule was added because of demand from the community/forum regulars in 2022. You can browse topics from back then if you don’t believe me.

I’m not one to make “ridiculous” claims usually, but the fact that the comments that I spent a long time writing were removed with little to no basis led me to such a “ridiculous” conclusion. I was also just as surprised as you. I was also around back then, I remember the topic and didn’t agree with it then either.

People who have been member on this forum for a while know I have always tried to adapt the rules with the concerns that have been raised. See also the 12-hour rule, and the topic template we made mandatory for releases (actually something I’m proud of).

I don’t doubt you. You are an active and helpful member of the team and I appreciate your work, as do others in the community. But, recently a lot of us creators have been in disagreement and felt alienated by CFX - removing comments regarding this is only adding fuel to the fire of this situation. I’m not the only one in consensus with this, I guess I’m just the only one careless enough to voice it. I value truth over feelings, if there is consequence for this - then so be it.

19

This would be very interesting indeed! :slight_smile:

I do have one thing you can discuss:
Discrepancies between the rules on Tebex and the rules on the Cfx forum.

  • Let’s take this threads topic as an example:
    Tebex doesn’t care if something is free and encrypted. This forum does however do so. In theory put plain simply this means that if you just release it on Tebex for free, nothing will happen. But if you create a release topic here in the forum, it will be removed from the forum.

  • And another thing that might be worthwhile talking about:
    There used to be talks about a new platform for releases. Is this still in the works? Any ETA? :smiley:

  • And as a last point:
    I feel like the forum has actually gotten pretty pointless for releases. There is like 50ish each day, most of them the same and overshadowing actually nice releases. Why adhere to the forum rules when you can simply sell on Tebex without a care in the world about forum rules because you just never advertise those resources in the release section? I would argue that 95% of my new customers are coming not from the forum, but from mouth to mouth by my old customers. (though I do not have any concrete numbers)

20

If you actually want to contribute to the community, providing open source resources is far better than a escrowed free resource. Allows others to actually learn from and build on your code. If you are releasing something for free, im not sure why you would even care if someone uses your code?

21

That was being worked on by nta, which is no longer apart of the team, I doubt the people currently in the team would want to do it.

22

Secondly, not everyone wants to make their code open source when they share it for free. Some people just want to help out without giving up control.

It’s also a community that we see a lot of intellectual property theft on open source resources. Like we have seen recently with RPEmotes and others.

The RPEmotes issue and the issue topic is about, I believe mostly stem from incompetent developers not understanding the open source definition, and too many times confusing themselves with source-available licenses.

A defining part of open source is that open source code is free to access, but users are also free with what they can do with it - such as usage, modification, and redistribution - maybe with a few limitations at times (see the definition link above for more details). Source-available code, on the other hand, is free to access (as the name implies), but whether you want users to have permission for anything else is up to you and the license you choose for your code.

As said above, one of the things you are free to do with open source software is redistribution. RPEmotes included an open source license, therefore by definition anyone was allowed to modify and redistribute the code. That also means that if the creator tried to take down forks that abide by the license, they are wrong in doing so, since the license allows redistribution. Instead, they should’ve used a source-available license that does not allow redistribution. I would believe there are a lot of developers here who are making the same mistake as has been done with RPEmotes.

Another mistake many do here is distribute their paid resource’s code at a higher price than the resource, and calling it an “open source” version, but providing no open source license. Although less relevant to this topic, in this case too, developers are confusing open source with source-available.

In conclusion, and to connect what I’m saying with the topic at hand, if you don’t want to allow people to modify and/or redistribute your code, it’s possible to share your code, but using a source-available license - which allows you to heavily limit what the end-user can do with your code (other than accessing it) and subsequently take down anything that breaks that license. Not an open source license - which by definition is open to do pretty much whatever you want without strict limitations (it’s in the name too - open source). It’s simply not what you’re looking for.

If you are still not convinced to use even a source-available license - then that’s pretty disappointing.

1 Like
23

Which would be amazingly ironic seeing as RPEmotes “stole” (by its toxic communities’ definition) dpemotes, rebranded it, added a license to it (it had none until yesterday), and began profiting off of it while harassing anybody who dared to fork it.

Anyway to stay more on-topic, I had discussed this with Cfx a couple months ago.

Linden: There’s also some discussion about free releases, namely people are told to sell something if they want to escrow it as free resources must be available on github. Unfortunately issues like theft mean people want to encrypt their resources, but they have to sell it to do so.

neon: We are actively looking into allowing free escrowed releases, there was fear around people choosing between monetization and an opensource release. In a few examples we looked into, those authors chose to either sell and escrow or not release so this rule didn’t seem to promote more opensource on reflection.

Encryption really has the major issue of content theft and moderation though – if people take my code (and trust me, they do), they can easily encrypt it and ignore my rights and license; there is no way for me to know and enforce my rights as a content creator.

Low quality releases and copyright violations are already the norm and have only gotten worse with encryption, as well as more difficult to verify and report. We also need to need to get content taken down on the forums and tebex separately as there’s seemingly no way for Cfx to remove products that violate their terms – kind of hoping tebex can just be dropped entirely some day.

3 Likes
24

This is the modding community of 2024 in a single thread :sob::sob::sob: