TES3MP

If you are interested in OpenMW multiplayer development, please see the Other OpenMW multiplayer forks section below.

Please open an issue or pull request if you are interested in contributing to the documentation about TES3MP history in the "about" branch.

Branches other than the "about" branch are archives. Please do not open any issues or pull requests for changes to those branches.

Why this repository is here:

• To collect some history about upstream TES3MP in case it may be useful to the OpenMW community or anyone wanting to contribute to TES3MP
• To archive some contributions that were accepted and then later discarded by upstream TES3MP in retaliation
• To archive some later contributions that were not submitted upstream at all
• To archive the legacy Dreamweave fork of TES3MP which was discarded in favor of a new OpenMW fork

Statement by backlabs1

Why I was not able to contribute to TES3MP:

• The main TES3MP developer censored community discussion about a licensing question by deleting TES3MP issue #685 (archived) and then deleting OpenMW issue #7935 (archived).
• In further retaliation, he also discarded four unrelated merge requests by backlabs1 that he had previously accepted and merged, without any explanation, force-pushing to the default 0.8.1 branch without them: #675 (archived), #676 (archived), #677 (archived), and #683 (archived).
• According to psi29a in OpenMW issue #7937 (archived), he agreed to revert the licensing changes. About 20 days later, he authored and pushed commits that did so: 90a5333485 (on the default 0.8.1 branch) and 2344ac1c7a (on the 0.8.1-vr branch); see also the archived 0.8.1 commits and 0.8.1-vr commits. Then about four days after that he removed those commits and force-pushed to the two branches without them; see the archived 0.8.1 commits and the 0.8.1-vr commits.

Branches

Find the following branches in this repository:

• about: some history about upstream TES3MP
• tes3mp-0.8.1-snapshot2: snapshot of TES3MP 0.8.1 branch in which the license change was reverted with permission from contributors
• tes3mp-0.8.1-vr-snapshot2: snapshot of TES3MP 0.8.1-vr branch in which the license change was reverted with permission from contributors
• dreamweave-legacy-master-snapshot: snapshot of legacy Dreamweave which was based on TES3MP
• master: TES3MP contributions by backlabs1
• tes3mp-0.8.1-snapshot1: snapshot of TES3MP 0.8.1 branch showing three contributions by backlabs1 before they were discarded

Timeline

Dates are approximate.

• 2021-04-18: David Cernat authored commit f6887559f6 (archive), which changed the TES3MP license from the standard GPLv3 used by OpenMW to a GNU GPLv3 license with section 7 additional restrictions. There is no indication that permission for a license change was granted by OpenMW or TES3MP-specific copyright holders. The following GPLv3 section 7 requirement was not met: "If you add terms to a covered work in accord with this section, you must place, in the relevant source files, a statement of the additional terms that apply to those files, or a notice indicating where to find the applicable terms." Note it is impossible to know what license governs a particular line in a source archive, aside from "TES3MP" markers added for some of the changes.
• 2021-04-18 to 2022-05-01: Many changes were merged in from upstream OpenMW and from the madsbuvi OpenMW VR fork, both of which are governed by the original GPLv3 without additional terms.
• 2022-03-06: David Cernat authored commit cf4ff3513f (archive), which updated the license specified in the README (as "GPLv3 with additional allowed terms").
• 2023-11-01: David Cernat was given "Owner" role permissions in the GitLab OpenMW group. There is not an archive of this but it was stated as occurring in approximately November or December of 2023 by a member of the community. This archive from 2022-06-02 lists David Cernat with "Maintainer" role; there is no snapshot during the time when he was listed as "Owner".
• 2024-02-13 to 2024-04-15: backlabs1 opened four pull requests that were merged by David Cernat: #675 (archived), #676 (archived), #677 (archived), and #683 (archived). The first three of those can be found merged by David Cernat in the tes3mp-0.8.1-snapshot branch (archived).
• 2024-04-12: backlabs1 opened TES3MP issue #685 (archive) for discussion regarding the license change. After some discussion (all of which is included in the archived version) the issue was abruptly deleted. Also, the four pull requests by backlabs1 (that were previously accepted and merged) were discarded and the default 0.8.1 branch was force-pushed without them.
• 2024-04-17: backlabs1 opened OpenMW issue #7935 (archive or see 2024-04-17_7935_0_backlabs1.md). In the next approximately 14 hours, the following comments and actions were posted publicly:
  • AnyOldName3 (see 2024-04-17_7935_1-1_AnyOldName3.md)
    • backlabs1 (see 2024-04-17_7935_1-2_backlabs1.md)
  • backlabs1 (see 2024-04-17_7935_2_backlabs1.md)
  • backlabs1 (see 2024-04-17_7935_3_backlabs1.md)
  • David Cernat (see 2024-04-17_7935_4-1_David-Cernat.md)
    • Chris Robinson (see 2024-04-17_7935_4-2_Chris-Robinson.md)
      • David Cernat (see 2024-04-17_7935_4-3_David-Cernat.md)
  • "Issue was closed by David Cernat" notification dated 2024-04-18 07:47:10 UTC
  • "Issue was reopened by uramer" notification dated 2024-04-18 13:15:27 UTC
  • Then the issue was deleted.
• 2024-04-17: backlabs1 opened Dreamweave issue #89 (archive).
• 2024-04-18: backlabs1 sent a private message to the following GitLab OpenMW group members who at that time had either an "Owner" or a "Maintainer" role, excluding David Cernat: psi29a, Marc Zinnschlag (@zinnschlag), AnyOldName3, Anton Uramer (@uramer), Chris Robinson (@chriskcat), Pieter van der Kloet (@pvdk), and @jvoisin. See 2024-04-18_backlabs1.txt. From that date to 2024-05-10, backlabs1 received a total of five replies from three of the recipients.
• 2024-04-19: David Cernat was removed from the GitLab OpenMW group (archive).
• 2024-04-20: psi29a opened and locked OpenMW issue #7937 (archive) in which he stated, "David has apologized and is willing to revert the commits that changed the licensing of TES3MP as the threat of a hostile fork from 2018 has long since passed."
• 2024-05-10: David Cernat authored and pushed two commits changing the license back to the "regular GPLv3 license without additional terms", stating that the "change has been made with the explicit permission of the following people who contributed code after the additional terms had been added: GrimKriegor, nalal, madsbuvi, sidke, magicaldave, HotaruBlaze, trofi." The commits are 90a5333485 (on the 0.8.1 branch) and 2344ac1c7a (on the 0.8.1-vr branch). See also the archived 0.8.1 commits and 0.8.1-vr commits.
• 2024-05-13: psi29a posted to OpenMW issue #7937 (archive) stating "Mr. Kuhn said he would follow up with a more formal response that can be considered the guidance/support of the Software Freedom Conservancy" and then edited the post to add a preliminary conclusion regarding the legal guidance received.
• 2024-05-14: David Cernat removed the two commits from the 0.8.1 and 0.8.1-vr branches and force-pushed to those branches without the commits from 2024-05-10. See the archived 0.8.1 commits and the 0.8.1-vr commits, in both of which the license change revert commit is now missing.
• 2024-05-24: backlabs1 sent a private message to the same recipients as the message on 2024-04-18. See 2024-05-24_backlabs1.txt (one quote from a private reply is redacted).
• 2024-06-24: To this date, there has been no update from Bradley M. Kuhn on OpenMW issue #7937 (archive) and no reply to the message on 2024-05-24.

Other OpenMW multiplayer forks

This is a list of known OpenMW forks focused on multiplayer functionality, aside from the TES3MP project which this document is about.

• Dreamweave-MP

About backlabs1

I am just an insignificant past contributor to a few OpenMW- and TES3MP-related projects; here are some my patches that were accepted and merged, in addition to the last 21 commits in the "master" branch:

• hirstoast/tes3mp-mmar commit f48090e49b (archived)
• portmod/openmw-mods commit a2b8cc6d05 (archived)
• samkaufman/tes3mp-mac-pkg commits a125086247 (archived), dca9ff3182 (archived), 35be65622f (archived), 0479045a19 (archived), 7be23e1f16 (archived), and dcaac7471c (archived)
• TES3MP/TES3MP pull requests #675 (archived), #676 (archived), #677 (archived), and #683 (archived)—These changes were later discarded as described above.

Legal

Copyright 2024 backlabs1. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

Included quotes are copyright their respective owners.

Files in other branches may be governed by other licenses.