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I find the negative reception here confusing. Seems to me they got removed from a marketplace, so they launched their own. They put the announcement into an art
by jchw 3y ago
I find the negative reception here confusing. Seems to me they got removed from a marketplace, so they launched their own. They put the announcement into an article about the thing that motivated what's being announced. That is generally what you do, because otherwise the article would leave you with the impression that you have no option going forward, and a follow-up would reach fewer people. Just doesn't make sense.
Also, I'm no Unity expert, but C# integrations generally use PInvoke right? It's the most dynamic of linking, there's really no inherent reason LGPL libs can't be used in Unity games. At worst, Unity should make sure you know your obligations, but I don't understand the necessity of a blanket ban. I'd be very surprised if VideoLAN, a well-respected organization that has been doing open source work for a very long time, had such a fundamental misunderstanding of the software licenses they use.
Either way, a request: please stop using "clickbait" to describe literally anything you don't like. The article is chiefly about their ban, even the announcement is. By all means, critique whatever you want, but that's simply not what clickbait is. Clickbait is more like "actually we didn't get banned, But..."
- benj111 3y agoThe sudden disjoint between story, and selling you a thing does seem very click baity. I think it's because they didn't stay in story mode. "So we decided to set up X..." To me it reads as if the company has been around for a while and this story has been dug/made up purely to sell a product. And we should expect 15 more of these. I suspect it's just bad/honest (?) Writing though.
- tankenmate 3y agoThe article said they got banned from the Unity store several months ago and tried for months to reconcile the issue, and now they have come up with a solution for their customers in the wake of the banning. They even included the correspondence from Unity in their article, so barring Unity coming forward with evidence of double dealing on the part of VideoLAN I struggle to see how "this story has been dug/made up purely to sell a product". Without some evidence your conclusion seems to be a hand wave.
- benj111 3y ago>"this story has been dug/made up purely to sell a product" No I said that's how it reads, Its why i suspect that people are saying it's click bait. My actual conclusion comes in the following paragraph. This is actually interesting from a marketing perspective. We all understand that marketing is there to sell us stuff. This is making us aware of a product, so it is in that sense at least, marketing. But then people don't like being 'sold to', at least they don't like noticing. This takes the form of 'marketing' that we don't recognise as such, but the disjoint puts it into an uncanny valley where it annoys people more than it objectively should. Is that un hand wavey enough?
- agsnu 3y agoIn Unity games on platforms like Windows, Linux, macOS sure - but one of the advantages of their toolkit is supporting porting to many platforms, like PlayStation, iOS, etc where the platform vendor store model’s DRM & code-signing gets in the way of end users swapping out dynamic link libraries.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- coldacid 3y agoYeah but there's nothing saying that you have to support _every_ platform Unity runs on if you offer some package extending the engine.
- oefrha 3y agoIf you actually read the very long ad, you’ll realize they’re promoting all the unrelated stuff, mainly their consulting packages. The only thing not mentioned is VLC for Unity, you wouldn’t even know it’s in the Store without clicking though. Nobody gets roasted for saying “by the way, you can get this banned product from <place> now”, this is some next level shit that makes people question your integrity and your one-sided story. Edit: Apparently some people can’t understand what I mean by “the very long ad”. It’s everything starting from “Introducing the Videolabs Store”, not the whole article.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- blauditore 3y ago[flagged]
- martz 3y agopost author here. Yes, basically all of what you said. I've edited the post.
- rerdavies 3y ago[flagged]
- janet-catcus 3y agoThis is great, but this is about not accepting Lgpl licensed code.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gnulinux 3y agoAre you aware of the fact that LGPL and GPL are entirely different licenses? Any form of dynamic linking is fair game in LGPL.
- rerdavies 3y agoThe LGPL includes the entire text of the GPL license, with an additional exemption for linking. If you are unable to meet the conditions attached to the exemption, you are then governed by the terms of the GPL without the linking exemption. The specific topic at hand is that Google and Apple app store applications cannot meet the conditions attached to the LGPL linking exception, which requires that LGPL components must be user-replaceable. So they are therefore governed by the terms of the GPL without linking exemptions.
- simiones 3y agoYes, it's obviously a form of dynamic linking, which triggers the GPL share-alike clauses, but not the LGPL ones.
- theseagin 3y agoNot all hero's wear capes. You sir are definitely one.
- master-lincoln 3y agoFor expressing their opinion and providing reasoning? Seems a bit inflationary to me to use the word hero here
- froh 3y agono, for changing the mind of the original author of the posted article.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago> Seems to me they got removed from a marketplace, so they launched their own. not only removed, but removed with no hope of reconciliation (if the author is to be believed). They offered to remove all LGPL code to comply and were refused. Their entire publisher account was banned over what I assume is one infraction. They made it pretty clear that Unity just didn't want VLC on their store.
- jmull 3y agoWe're hearing one side of the story here, so who knows, but looking at it from Unity's perspective... Unity doesn't want to have be the "cops" and "prosecutors" who have to go around to find, investigate, adjudicate and enforce violations in the store agreements. They want partners who, having agreed to the store terms, will make reasonable efforts to adhere to them. E.g., Unity may have come to the conclusion that VLC violated the terms of the store agreement not by simple mistake or a reasonable different interpretation of the agreement, but on-purpose or through negligence. In that case, the reasonable thing to do is to simply stop doing business with VLC (if it's not too costly to do so), because of the relatively high likelihood it will happen again. Don't forget that Unity could be sued for violating the terms of LGPL'd software. If they "have received a report" of an LGPL violation, they have to take it seriously. Any future lawsuit would likely be more successful if they had previously received a report of a violation and did not resolve it..
- dangus 3y ago> ...if they had previously received a report of a violation and did not resolve it.. "Resolve it" would include working with the offender to remove the LGPL violation. They could easily document the process and demonstrate a good-faith effort to comply. Sure, Unity is well within their rights to kick Videolan off their store. It's the cheapest way to comply: no need to collaborate with store vendors and put any hours into that sort of thing. But that's all it is, a cheap way to comply. It's the laziest form of compliance at the expense of their own customer experience.
- smaudet 3y agoExcept that's not what happened at all, at least per the article they use LGPL and have LGPL code all over their store, and refuse to work with the OP at all over the issue. Unity are absolutely to blaim here, this is indefensible.
- ziddoap 3y ago>Either way, a request: please stop using "clickbait" to describe literally anything you don't like. Preach on. This is one of the most annoying things, to me at least, here. If there is a post with more than 10 comments, there's a very good chance one of those comments contains "clickbait". The word has lost all meaning to me at this point.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agoI disagree in general (although I agree this article isn't clickbait). the internet runs on clickbait and HN's insistence on reflecting the title of the content itself means a lot of things that are posted are legitimately clickbait. Just this morning I rolled my eyes when I saw an article titled "Airbus shatters record for jet orders as demand soars" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38967262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38967262). I didn't even bother clicking on it. people are getting oversensitive, but not without good reason.
- ziddoap 3y agoIn your opinion, what makes your example article title clickbait? Is it using the word "shatters" as opposed to "more than doubles"? Maybe I'm just stuck on an old definition or something, but in my mind, clickbait refers to a headline that is purposfully dishonest about the content of the article. Having an eye-catching title doesn't mean it's clickbait if the article delivers on what the title says. I guess I would also classify any title that doesn't give any representation of the article content as clickbait as well. "Airbus shatters records", as an example, wouldn't give any indication of what records were shattered, thus baiting clicks. But, maybe the word has evolved to refer to any non-boring title and I just haven't caught up to the times.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agobecause of the adjective shatters. "doubles" is accurate but not as strong in the mind of the reader. it's like seeing an entry in youtube titled "person x DESTROYS person y" and it turns out it's just your normal, everyday, point/counter-point discussion. It's meant to increase the odds that you click, and that's literally what clickbait is.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pvg 3y agoI find the negative reception here confusing. [...] Either way, a request: please stop using "clickbait" You're better off directing this stuff to whatever negative reaction or word usage you're referring to otherwise you get a subthread of meta/ants. Or for even less effort required, just skip it. Almost all comments are greatly improved by meta-elision.