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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : CMM2: Welcome Tape
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thwill Guru  Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3863 |
Hi Mick, I wouldn't call it alpha yet, nevermind beta, but version 0.1 was released last weekend: https://github.com/thwill1000/cmm2-welcome/releases/download/r0.1/welcome-r0.1.zip Version 0.2 should be available by the end of this weekend. Best regards, Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| capsikin Guru Joined: 30/06/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 341 |
You can try the link I just posted: but there's also the 0.1 thwill posted earlier: And you can download the thwill's current code (not exactly released, but I think it was working when I downloaded it) from here Edited 2020-08-29 15:48 by capsikin |
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| capsikin Guru Joined: 30/06/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 341 |
Do you need the pull request in a particular branch of yours, master vs develop-r0.2? Also I'm putting one in soon to display "Loading..." in the second or so it takes to load the menu or program. Edited 2020-08-30 00:20 by capsikin |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3863 |
Hi "capsikin", I think/hope I have correctly made some comments on your changes which you might like to address - this is now definitely looking a lot like my day job. I have also changed the pull requests so they will be pulled into develop-r0.2, you may want to rebase so you have my latest changes from that branch, but in theory it's not essential since at least currently there should be no conflicts. I have also made you a contributor on the main repository though I'd still prefer it if you would work via pull requests. Best wishes, Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| chris Regular Member  Joined: 24/08/2020 Location: United KingdomPosts: 54 |
Sounds brilliant. It'd be good to see a youtube video going through this "tape" if you have time, maybe after it stabilises? |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3863 |
Thanks for your interest Chris. I sort of thought that since everything is public https://github.com/thwill1000/cmm2-welcome anyone who was interested enough would just download and run it  I suppose I may make a YouTube video in the future, but it's not really my skill-set. In the meantime if anyone want to make one then please be forgiving, it's only version 0.1. Best wishes, Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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TweakerRay Senior Member  Joined: 01/08/2020 Location: GermanyPosts: 138 |
Hi ! I don't know if my Programm qualifys for your welcometape but maybe you enjoy this. It's a small chiptune Drumsynth. (No fancy real drummachine, but it makes some cool unique sounds) It can store 16 patterns on SD Card (as .txt file) If you like to include this programm so you have also some programms with sound ? ;-) Drummachinev5.zip Cheers TweakerRay http://tweakerray.bandcamp.com |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3863 |
Thanks "Tweaker Ray", Thanks for the offer, it's too late for me to include it in version 0.2, but I'll definitely take a look for inclusion in version 0.3. Am I correct in assuming you are happy for it to be distributed under The Unlicense ? Best wishes, Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| TweakerRay Senior Member Joined: 01/08/2020 Location: GermanyPosts: 138 |
hmmm... I don't know since everyone could sell my programm ? when not even I have sold it ? sounds strange to me... I am happy if all people use it but if people can distribute change (for example erase my name out of it and declare it as their programm) I feel a little bit strange... Is there a way to use this under CC Licence ? For example a BY-NC-SA Licence ? Attribution + Noncommercial + ShareAlike (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license) With that people can use it, and remix it ( which means to me edit the code... as long as I am still named as the original creator) The chance that my programm would be sold from someoneelse is very small, still I feel a little bit strange if people could edit my name out of my work... Does that work for you ? Greets TweakerRay (not Tweaker Ray) :-) ) "TweakerRay" is an artistname and has nothing to do with Tweakers (which consume Meth) Edited 2020-09-01 03:02 by TweakerRay http://tweakerray.bandcamp.com |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3863 |
The simple answer: If anyone has ANY reservations about their code being distributed under the Unlicense and thus being made Public Domain then I do not wish to include it in the "Welcome Tape". So thank you for your offer but at least for the moment I'm going to respectfully decline Also note that the CC licenses are in the most part considered unsuitable for software, see https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software. Though I could have, and on reflection possibly should have used CC0 as it is more mature than the Unlicense ... however that wouldn't have addressed your concerns since that still puts the respective material into the Public Domain. The detailed answer: - apologies for my rambling I have no axe to grind or political reasons for wanting to make software Public Domain. My day job involves getting paid for working on closed-source software, albeit making use of lots of open-source software within the provisions of the respective licenses; my employer has made some contribution to open-source, but in my opinion not enough for the benefit we take from it. Other than the "Welcome Tape" my personal projects for the CMM2 are being distributed under the MIT License which does require the attribution you desire. Unfortunately the LICENSE file also seems to expect a single author/company/creator and it was not obvious (or I was too lazy to determine) how to apply it to this project that aggregates the work of multiple authors ... though actually I've taken a look again and perhaps it wouldn't have been too difficult. Given the above I decided to curate the "Welcome Tape" under the Unlicense as it doesn't require a single (or indeed any) attribution in the (UN)LICENSE file. Even so I half expect that licensing will be the death of this project, if someone contributes some non-PD code or other non-PD asset then if the copyright owner notices and are so inclined then they could issue a Cease & Desist notice or worse. Ideally I should be collecting digitally signed copyright waivers/releases for all significant contributions. Despite what I've written above the "Welcome Tape" includes one exception to the Unlicense and will probably need to contain at least one more: 1. Scott Adams' Pirate Adventure is (c) 1979 Scott Adams - If you have a Public Domain text adventure that we could use in its place then please let me know. - Especially since the code is complete GOTO spaghetti and has defeated our first attempt to port it to the CMM2  2. Mauro has warned me that we will need to give attribution for the music used by the splash-screen he proposes to create. I'm open to suggestions on how things could be done differently as I'm not having much "fun" with this project at the moment. I will probably only maintain effort on it until Christmas and then leave it in abeyance unless someone else wants to take it over ... though perhaps by Christmas there will be a Version 1 we can be moderately content with. That's enough whining from me, Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3863 |
Sorry about that, but surely I'm not the first person to make that mistake? Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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Fred Newbie  Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3 |
Hi Tom / All Firstly may I caveat this post by declaring I'm still to receive my CMM2 so my contribution here is purely an observation....... This idea of a 'demonstration or welcome tape' is an absolutely fantastic idea, although the ins and outs of understanding the licensing or non-licensing seems overly complicated.  To use an analogy from back in the 70s/80s where the original home computer or in this case CMM2 harks back to - the programs included with this project would, to me at least, be akin to submitting your computer listing to a computer magazine for consideration for publication ...... this doesn't remove your creditation as the author, but with that implies your code will be completely visible and modifiable by it's very nature of being written in basic. I might by 100% wrong about this, but again in my mind now as back then, the whole point of computer program listing in publications was to demonstrate what someone (the author) has created and how they'd done it - which by it's very nature offered as a learning tool for many. By doing so, any aspect of the published 'listing' was open to modification by it's very nature of being a published listing. Anyone that's invested in computer programming books/magazines over the years, I'm sure will have gained direct benefit from someone else's material to either enhance their own ideas or thoughts.  The only credits given to such program listing authors was their name included somewhere (normally at the start) in the listing and generally displayed at the start when their program was run. 'IF' the above analogy makes a contributor feel uncomfortable / unwilling to take part then it shouldn't be include at all? There's also nothing stopping the 'collection' of contributions being organised in sub directories with their own preferenced version license file, if that was more suitable - that way each contributor could be accommodated with a public license that they were more comfortable with - the analogy here is of a public domain collection floppy/disk/archive etc where it's purely a collection of individual submissions integrated together by a main menu program selector. The final caveat here being, these submissions are unlike compiled PD programs - they are by nature of the CMM2, easily readable computer program listings (yes some with additional data / bitmap / music files etc but you know the implication of what I'm trying to explain). I wasn't going to mention, but I will now in this edit - most of the listings and associated files are already available on a publicly accessible forum / github  ........ If I have completely missed the point of this project then I apologise and retreat back to the shadows from which I came. Phil Edited 2020-09-01 18:35 by Fred |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3677 |
The problem is that copyright law is quite something and prevails unless suitably (and explicitly) disclaimed. It's why there are so many attempts at licences. Bear in mind also that when a work includes part or all of another then there is yet another potentially tangled mess. I expect the magazines got each author to sign an appropriate licence. It's not that anyone here, or elsewhere on the net, is likely to sue, but it makes sense to try to eliminate any possibility. Which is awkward. John |
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| Fred Newbie Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3 |
There's nothing to stop the project to stipulate that any material included in the project should be original and solely created by the contributor - akin to electronic magazine submissions..... They could as the originator also include their own acceptable license text to remove the burden on the project co-ordinator..... Edited 2020-09-01 19:43 by Fred |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3863 |
And as if by magic version 0.2 appeared (promptly to be drowned out by a conversation about licensing): https://github.com/thwill1000/cmm2-welcome/releases/download/r0.2/welcome-r0.2.zip ChangeLog: Release 0.2: - Added missing 'Conway's Game of Life' implementation - by Bill McKinley & "TassyJim" - Added 'Speech Demo' - by "capsikin" - Added 'Chirps, an interactive sound effect demo' - by "capsikin" - Added new graphical welcome/splash screen - by "vegipete" - Updated Lunar Lander to v7.2 - by "vegipete" - Changed menu framework to display "Loading <file>..." message - you may not always see it if your monitor has to change VGA mode when changing program. Many thanks to all contributors, especially "capsikin" for serving as a GitHub guinea-pig. Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3863 |
Hi Fred and/or Phil, Yes, the modern world sucks. That's how I see it too. I suspect that back in the day nobody was paying a great deal of attention to the niceties of who owned the result. Was the magazine buying the code outright, or only the right to print it? If you typed it in then could you redistribute it? Or be paid for it? Either way did you have to include the original attribution? It hardly mattered in the 80's for such trivial programs and there was no significant open-source movement or any particular need for it; prior to the 70's computer code wasn't even covered by copyright. An example of one author who did care is Scott Adams (the Adventure International guy, not the Dilbert guy). The source code for Pirate Adventure published in BYTE Vol 05-12 1980-12 is accompanied by the following text: Please note that the Pirate's Adventure is copyrighted. Its publication in BYTE entitles the reader to personal' use only. The program may not be distributed in any way without the written permission of the author. I absolutely agree and that's the rule I am trying to apply. I wasn't part of that scene, but that does sound like the correct analogy for what I am doing here ... except given the content of the Welcome Tape is source code I am engaging in more editorial control than would be possible for a binary distribution. I don't believe that changes the copyright situation. Unless the author specifically makes provision otherwise they have copyright on their own works even if they don't put a (c) message at the top of them. In theory you could get in a lot of trouble just picking up (significant) random pieces of code from forums, in my day job we've had to remove such from our code-base on a couple of occassions. All this said I am going to have another look at licensing because as I learn more about it I think the MIT license is better suited even if that means some parts of the collection will have to be dual-licensed (having previously been released using the Unlicense.) "Another visitor. Stay a while... stay forever!" And remember folks, I am not a lawyer, Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| Fred Newbie Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3 |
For complete openness and transparency, my name is Phil, although when registering that's not obviously available hence the use of my nickname which is Fred  ..... it all has to do with a used to be famous tennis player - it's his fault I'm just trying to think of/sugesst a possible simplification with regards to the potential licensing headaches and associated rabbit holes. Phil |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
Hi Fred / Phil, <thread hijack on> You sound like an attorney (excuse me ... solicitor or barrister on that sidee of the pond)! Back in the 1960s an interesting kerfuffle developed when Sperry Gyroscope's lawyers told the Pan Am lawyers that a computer program they had written for the purpose of testing the Sperry autopilot computer used on the B707 aircraft could not be copied. The program, which Sperry had named "TRACE", existed as punched holes on a reel of paper or mylar tape. Sperry had objected when they learned that our engineers were making duplicate copies of the reel of tape. The lawyers finally got around to talking to Engineering and it landed on my drafting table. I threw some sh*t in the game by telling them that the Sperry demand means that the program can not be executed and is thus valueless. Our lawyers said "Huh!". I had to explain that when the computer reads the program on the tape it makes a copy of the program in core memory and Sperry's contention is that any copy is a copyright infringement so the progam can't be executed and is therefore valueless. Pan Am sued for the return of the funds we had paid for the program which was contingent on the purchase of the autopilot computers as part of the 65 B707 aircraft we owned at the time. <proceed to court> <kerfuffle on> ....... <kerfuffle extended> ...... After a few years some higher level court decided that computer programs must be copied in order to execute them and that the purchassor had the right to make backup copies in both machine readable form and in human readable form. <kerfuffle off> This resulted in a general reluctance to allow the lawyers to communicate in any way with the engineers. <thread hijack off> Paul in NY |
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vegipete Guru Joined: 29/01/2013 Location: CanadaPosts: 1085 |
Paul in NY: Awesome, I love little tid-bits like this! Kerfuffles can be so entertaining and educational. Tom (thwill): would the tape benefit from having ALL versions of Lunar Lander as developed in that thread? Then someone looking under the hood can see how things were modified and expanded, starting with relatively simple and advancing. Visit Vegipete's *Mite Library for cool programs. |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3863 |
Hi Pete, I think it would make excellent material for a tutorial or series of blog posts, but I'm going to pass on it for the "Welcome Tape". My guiding principal is to only include material that might have been at home on the introductory media of 80's and early 90's microcomputers. It might be an idea to compose a list of links to the original TBS sources to be included in a document on the tape. In my opinion the things that the tape would really benefit from are: - another two or three modest games, including sound and graphics. - for nostalgic reasons I would really love a graphical version of Hamurabi (c.f. the BBC micro's "Yellow River Kingdom" - but please nobody pinch that code which is presumably under copyright). - some sprite demos - these must not use assets lifted from commercial products. - some basic content generation tools - art/paint package - music and sound composition - sprite editor - font editor - none of these need to be terribly fancy or use all of the CMM2 features, just something to get people going and which can be built upon - of course mileage may vary here and there are good arguments for doing all of this on your Windows/Linux box Under my stewardship it is not the intention that the contents of the Welcome Tape should be unbounded. Once it gets to 10-20 good "programs" (where all the fractal demos would count as one program and all the rotating 3D objects as another) I'm going to consider it "feature complete". Beyond that there would potentially be a phase of tidying up the source and making it as clean, consistent and well documented as possible. Perhaps there will be other compilations in the future, with other guiding principles, but they will be for somebody else to curate. Best wishes, Tom Edited 2020-09-02 07:36 by thwill Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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