To provide a method by which Wabajack can assist mod authors in maintaining creative control over their mods while still allowing for more rapid installation of mods
- Users can download a mod, change it and create an installer with Wabbajack that publishes these changes via binary patching this goes against usage restrictions for "no modifications of this mod are allowed".
- Users can extract BSAs with Wabbajack, going against warnings for no BSA extraction
- The nexus doesn't seem to provide a good way to track a modder's desire to not allow end users to modify their files
- Wabbajack allows downloading from 3rd party sites that does not maintain author's rights. We currently have a "who cares" attitude, which isn't condusive to collaboration with the modding community. It would be good to improve this situation.
- Wabbajack maintain a list of authors/mods who have opted out of allowing their mods to be modified.
- This list will be editable via a GitHub PR (a hassle for authors), or by including a magic string
WABBAJACK_OPT_OUT_OF_MODIFICATION
(or something similar) to their mod summary page. - Wabbajack will query this info during compilation and refuse to binary patch or extract BSAs for any mod in this list.
- Wabbajack will switch to using code signing for releases, and a non-exe distributed modlist. Modlists will become serialized blobs of data, and not executable code. This means users will know when they are using a unofficial build. And thus someone disabling these content control features will create a modlist that no official Wabbajack build will install.
- Wabbajack will scan files from 3rd party sites to try and find matches with the "opt-out" list. This matching will be done via SHA256 (not very useful) and via filename. So if author
modder334
has opted out and his mod containsmodder334s_immersive_cheese_reborn.esp
, Wabbajack will never create a modlist that downloads opt-out files from a 3rd party site.
Rather ironically, it's quite possible for Wabbajack to pull up the mod page before downloading and look at the Nexus permissions for the mod.
That would require opt-out authors to use the Nexus permissions system, however (I notice that USSLEP has custom permissions). But we can still provide a github repo for tracking permissions for those who want more fine-grained control.
If I were to implement this, it seems like this would be a logical interpretation of the existing Nexus rules:
You are not allowed to upload this file to other sites under any circumstance
You are not allowed to modify my files, including creating bug fixes or improving on features under any circumstances
You are not allowed to convert this file to work on other games under any circumstances
Other situations Wabbajack handles that would need to be considered
ok
on the nexusok
on the nexusThanks for reading this, I'm really like where this is heading.
I've looked at quite a few mod licenses on the Nexus today, and it looks like this system would work for most cases.