Release new bare-bones web repo / mirror


sswam

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Dec 16, 2009
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Please have a look, and tell me how to improve.


http://pandoria.org/


features:


- pnd - all pnd from repo, but not old versions, wget friendly


- pnd2 - all other pnd from apps.openpandora.org


- ipk - packages needed for dev, incomplete


- src - source code in git for some few packages


- ppp - Platinum Pandora Pack, games for sale, vvvvvv


- wiki - first steps of snarfing stuff from the wiki


- pix - a large image gallery of all the apps and games


- blah - page about Pandora, links, Oz Pandora shop


- self-proclaimed awesome sysadmin


known bugs:


- pix - does not include all screenshots, too many megabytes on that page


- pnd2 - contains old pnds from 'apps' that have newer versions in the repo


- pnd - not yet mirroring old 'archived' versions of pnds


- ppp - sales pitch is very weak


- src - woefully incomplete


- ipk - not comprehensive, many common dev packages missing


- excessively low calorie (no sugar or pretty web design yet)


- no torrents or what for efficient distribution


- not yet mirrored to any other servers (waiting to upgrade them)


Wow, 9 features and 9 bugs, so overall score of zero!


It's my birthday so please say something nice.


I also want some good ideas for monster design and behaviour to add on my game!


--


http://blah.pandoria.org/ppp/


I'm offering the VVVVVV PND along with game data, if anyone is buying.


It's all legit, more or less - I'll "gift" a copy of the game from Terry to any hypothetical customer.


(edit: the legality of this has been called into question, and no sales have been made!)
 
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I can only hope you don't get avalanched with "redistribution" whiners! Good work, specially with the hosting unpacked source- that could be a good niche!


Oh and happy birthday!
 
I was slightly worried when I just saw all the commercial titles sat there in the list, luckily it's forbidden when you try and access them.


Not sure about hosting code like Sparrow, that'll be out of date pretty quickly unless you're constantly re-gitting the project, besides it's available on GitHub
 
Cool web site be very handy to show off the Pandora's capability when I don't have it handy .


BTW Happy Birthday !
 
http://pnd.pandoria....ppp/ README.txt


I'm going to sell this PND game with data, if anyone is buying.


It's all legit, more or less - I'll "gift" a copy of the game from Terry to any hypothetical customer.

Hold on, you're trying to sell Kami Retro, Aurora Rift, PolloPollo, and VVVVVV in a pack?


Unless you have explicit permission from the copyright owners of all of these games to do that, it's illegal. All four of these games are proprietary.
 
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http://pnd.pandoria....ppp/ README.txt


I'm going to sell this PND game with data, if anyone is buying.


It's all legit, more or less - I'll "gift" a copy of the game from Terry to any hypothetical customer.

Sorry but i this NOT cool at all, You have no rights to distribute the data or any of the other content you list. There is no reason to do this, any capable person can buy the game directly from the author.


You know how seriously furtunate that the game source was given for a port? The author could see this crap and block us from having anything in the future. This was the one gold nugget I found for the pandora and your foolish scheme will trash it.
 
hosting unpacked source- that could be a good niche!

I think it's necessary to host the source, for the open source projects anyway. It's won't be much fun having a binary pnd with missing source code.


I'm also including the mounted pnds at http://pandoria.org/mnt/ which is protected with an obvious password :p

I was slightly worried when I just saw all the commercial titles

Yeah, I have a plan to sell PNDs with game data, will buy and forward copies of the original titles so it's legit but does not require the author's permission.

Not sure about hosting code like Sparrow, that'll be out of date pretty quickly unless you're constantly re-gitting the project

Well, this is part of hosting source code for our projects. Yes I'm cloning everything and keeping it all in git, will set up automatic update. If a project is on github, I agree there's not much need to host it, but many other hosts are not reliable. It's also good to have everything available in one place. I will also host a list of 'upstream' sources, which people can use instead. And finally, it can give us somwhere to make changes for Pandora which are not yet accepted upsteam.

Cool web site be very handy to show off the Pandora's capability when I don't have it handy .


BTW Happy Birthday !

Thanks, mate!
 
Someone was snarfing from my server most enthusiastically with ~34 parallel downloads. It's only a small VPS and cannot handle that kind of load. I blocked that IP: 82.221.207.??? ES/56/Barcelona jazztel.es


I will unblock the IP later. You're welcome to download the pnds, but 2 or 3 parallel downloads should be more than enough. I will look at improving the server's capacity, and mirroring on other servers.
 
I don't see why it should be a problem. I am buying copies of VVVVVV and the other games, giving them to people, and moving the data files into a PND for them. I can't see any legal issues with doing that at all. It's not like I'm selling them and keeping the money for myself.


It's like if someone pays my $20 to go the store and buy them a PC game, then copy the data files into a PND for them. It's legal to do that yourself, so why would it be illegal to hire someone else to do it for you? I'm not even going to make any money from this. I'm sure this is legal, even a legally protected thing to do.


In the case of VVVVVV, he has a specific option to "gift" the game to someone else. I'm going to use that, so my "customers" will get proper licensed copy of VVVVVV for PC, Mac and Linux. Additionally, I copy the DRM-free data files into the PND for them, and give them the PND, which saves a bit of stuffing around.


I think it's a cool idea, myself. It might not work so well with other games, if they don't have a "gifting" option - but I'll figure that out. I'm intending to help the users and game authors, not to cheat them in any way. I am giving customers the option to pay more than the list price, if they wish to, in which case the game authors / porters will receive more than the usual payment.


This is not a "discounted" bundle, the price is approximately the total price of the games included, and the authors will receive at least the normal sale price for the games.
 
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Yeah, I have a plan to sell PNDs with game data, will buy and forward copies of the original titles so it's legit but does not require the author's permission.
Are you sure about this? How are you planning to distribute any sales revenue to them?

And finally, it can give us somwhere to make changes for Pandora which are not yet accepted upsteam.
What do you mean by this?
 
Yeah, I have a plan to sell PNDs with game data, will buy and forward copies of the original titles so it's legit but does not require the author's permission.
Are you sure about this? How are you planning to distribute any sales revenue to them?

Wasn't there a ruling that selling the rights to downloaded content is legally accepable?


So if dredd buys and downloads pollopollo ten times, he can then charge ten people to download it, and delete one copy each time - or something
 
I don't see why it should be a problem. I am buying copies of VVVVVV and the other games, giving them to people, and moving the data files into a PND for them. I can't see any legal issues with doing that at all. It's not like I'm selling them and keeping the money for myself.


It's like if someone pays my $20 to go the store and buy them a PC game, then copy the data files into a PND for them. It's legal to do that yourself, so why would it be illegal to hire someone else to do it for you? I'm not even going to make any money from this. I'm sure this is legal, even a legally protected thing to do.


In the case of VVVVVV, he has a specific option to "gift" the game to someone else. I'm going to use that, so my "customers" will get proper licensed copy of VVVVVV for PC, Mac and Linux. Additionally, I copy the DRM-free data files into the PND for them, and give them the PND, which saves a bit of stuffing around.


I think it's a cool idea, myself. It might not work so well with other games, if they don't have a "gifting" option - but I'll figure that out. I'm intending to help the users and game authors, not to cheat them in any way. I am giving customers the option to pay more than the list price, if they wish to, in which case the game authors / porters will receive more than the usual payment.


This is not a "discounted" bundle, the price is approximately the total price of the games included, and the authors will receive at least the normal sale price for the games.

IANAL, but my biggest piece of advice is to make it very clear that what you're doing is a PND-building service for legitimately-licensed software, that you only ever use the gift purchase option to buy on behalf of someone else, and that you already own your own copy, so you already had access to the files you are bundling for someone else with legitimate access to them.


The tricky part, as I see it, is making sure you're legally in the clear when you also have to get the person buying from you to redeem the gift link.


If you haven't already, I'd read What Colour are your bits? and then contact the authors of the games. They may be able to suggest a cleaner way of staying legal with their specific purchasing systems and personal beliefs.
 
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How are you planning to distribute any sales revenue to them?

By buying copies of the games, and donating any extra payments to authors and porters.


I am not making any money from this myself. The only way I could make money from it,


is if I later include a commercial game that I wrote or ported in the pack.


I have no such game to include as of yet.


Where possible I will try to get the upstream "store" to credit the game directly to my customer, e.g. with vvvvvv there is a "gift" option when you buy it,


and with steam and desura you can give games to another user. Some games still come with physical media, which I could have delivered to the customer.


I won't touch DRM games.


I will "gift" VVVVVV to my hypothetical customer, and give them a copy of the PND also, which they could also have assembled for themselves.


I am providing a free service of copying files and building PNDs. The fact that I am doing this once rather than for each customer is really irrelevant


since the outcome is identical for non-DRM games. I see no problem at all with that.


With the other repo games, I'm not sure the best way to do it yet.


Maybe we can have a "gift" function in the repo, that would be awesome.


I do intend to add many other new and classic commercial games, perhaps even classics like Super Mario Bros.


This can still be purchased from Nintendo for emulation on at least 3DS and Wii.


My service consists of extracting stuff from that package, and putting it in a PND on behalf of my customer.


In my opinion and I think most jurisdictions, emulation on any platform is considered fair use and within a consumer's rights.


So I can offer a service like that. My hypothetical customer can make sure that it is legal in their country.
 
I'm not violating anyone's rights. I'm performing a "shopping delivery service".


Fred gives Sam $5, Sam goes to the supermarket and buys some eggs for Fred, Sam gives Martha her eggs.


Sam is not charging any fee for this service, although it would be well within his rights to do so.


If there is any change, Sam will give it back to Fred, tip the egg-vendor, or put it in the plastic charity guide-dog.


If and when I actually do sell any of these Platinum Pandora Packs, which does not seem very likely,


I will give a full report here on the boards; please be cool until then.


Dredd performs free shopping delivery that's a laugh. I'm way out of character.


Of course I already have my own paid-for copies.
 
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Let me express my opinion here:


DREDD, I don't think you're understanding how copyright works.


Copyright is a legal monopoly on the distribution of an authored work, i.e.: only the copyright holder is allowed to redistribute a copyrighted work, unless the work is free/libre (either by being released to the public domain, or by being distributed under a free license such as the GNU GPL or CC-BY). None of the games you are intending to distribute are free software; they are all proprietary. Even worse, all of the programs you are intending to distribute are not only proprietary; they are currently distributed for a fee, which makes it much more likely that the copyright holders are going to care. It does not matter, legally, that you are giving money to the copyright holders in the end. What matters is that the copyright holders did not agree to the arrangement.


You seem to be under the impression that what you are intending to do is comparable to retail, which is not the case legally. I have a hard time explaining the distinction (though I understand it intuitively); maybe someone else can. But basically, digital copies (which are nothing more than data, i.e. a copyrighted work) are not like physical objects. What you're doing is not comparable to buying a video game from a store and selling it to your friend, but rather more to buying a DVD from a store, copying it to another disc, destroying the original disc (if you are actually following what you are saying), and selling the copy to a friend. You may consider it ethical, but it's not legal, and that's the point.


The bottom line: you do not have the right to do what you are saying you are going to do. You must get permission. If you can't, you must not do it. You could be sued, or worse, indie authors could irrationally be convinced that Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) is a good idea.
 
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