Article by Charles Mabbott
HTML conversion by Terry 'DS' Hendrix II using pico.

---

There has been quite a bit of controversy recently between the SABIN project, Ridah, as well as countless people who happen to read the Bot Message boards. There have been quite a few postings that support Ridah, some bashing SABIN, and some supporting S ABIN. The point however in all this seems to have been missed by many.

The whole controversy revolved around Client Emulation and Movement code. This particular code was the work of Alan Kivlin, and released under the terms of the SABIN agreement. Many of you would know him from the scoreboard code used by many Quake 1 bots.

A lot of the posts seem to revolve around how important this code is to the Eraser as well as others. What is really surprising is how many people base there arguements on if the Eraser would or wouldn't be as good as it is now without it. Well, that isn' t the point.

The point is copyrighted code was used without the permission from the author. Since the code is released under the SABIN agreement. One had to go to SABIN to get permission, not the original author. So SABIN would have full right to pursue a lawsuit if o ne came about, as well as the original author. It is not a matter of how good the program would be with or without it.

One point that was brought was percentages of code. Ridah stated that the possible code was merely .2% of the total code. This is a flawed argument in reality, here is why.

Looking at this from a legal perspective. For code to be considered yours the magic number is somewhere around 70% I believe. 70% of the code has to have been completely re-written or modified before you are allowed to declare it yours and are not require d to credit the previous author. Now lets assume The Client EMU and Movement code took up only 25% of the Eraser source. Who gets credited as the author?

The answer is both Ridah and SABIN. Of the total code, the routing is less then 30%, the routing code itself was copyrighted and therefor 70% of that has to have been rewritten for the original author not to be credited. Even if only a mere 5 lines of cod e were included. Unless 4 of those lines were completely re-written, the original author HAS to be credited for his work.

The only way around this is if it was developed without any knowledge of the other authors. This is how Compaq built the first PC Clones. They developed a compatible BIOS with people who have no knowledge of the Copyrighted IBM Bios. So both are independe nt and fully legal works.

The questions that need to be asked need to be asked of Ridah.

A.) Did you develop the Client EMU and Movement Code
B.) If yes, did you have any knowledge of Alan's (SABIN) Code over and above just hearing about it.
C.) If it was copied, did you receive permission from the author(s) to use the code.

In order for Ridah to legally be allowed to distribute Eraser as-is, the answers for the above questions need to be answered like

A.) Yes
B.) No
C.) Does not apply

Or

A.) No
B.) Does not apply
C.) Yes

Otherwise the Eraser bot is co-authored by Ridah and SABIN, and whoever else may or may not have code contained in the Eraser.

I don't believe SABIN (specifically DarkSkye) is jealous of Ridah or the Eraser, it is openly felt within the organization that it is a great to and most of the members use it. The point is, if you had work that went into anything, it would be nice to get credit for your work. It is not a common practice among commercial programmers to simply copy routines and use them, there is some amount of time spent getting permission to use some others work or development of your own.

This is why license agreements were originally developed.

If, for example, you unknowingly used someone's copyrighted code. You have only a few options. Get permission from the original author as soon as you find out, or remove ALL bits of code that are copyrighted. If you are unable to do either of these optio ns. You MUST discontinue your project.

In the case of the Eraser. Ridah now needs to credit SABIN (or Alan depending on how it was agreed upon) in the credits of his readme for his parts of the code, mark all pieces of that code in the source. This must be done to the other parties' satisfacti on. As in, SABIN (or Alan) must agree that both of these have been done to their satisfaction otherwise the Eraser should no longer be released to the public, or all the code must be removed.