[Moon3D Pre-Seeding Event] Why we didn’t get the Bustabit License — Moon3D Team

[kxu1005]

To start, we want to thank the BaB team and RHavar for building out such a cool game to begin with! We also want to thank our awesome community of players, as we are so thankful to each of you. You won’t regret having picked us!



Why did we make Moon3D?



Much like most BaB players, we were fascinated by the gaming concept the first time we played it. But we soon realized we wanted more and that we could try to take the idea to the next level and manifest it with better UI/UX and features in a way that would appeal to more users. Hence, we decided to mold/modify it to make it our own.

What's different about Moon3D?



In building Moon3D, we took the time and genuine effort to dissect everything we knew of BaB and its open source codebase. In the process, we built new (never before seen) features like our bonus hunting system, profit share referral system, and our clean/futuristic graphics interface -- all in TypeScript (superset of Javascript). On top of that, we host and manage a custom exchange backend that processes near-instantaneous withdrawals! And we have much more to come...



Why didn’t we buy the Bustabit License?



Each week, we have been pushing new features to reimagine and innovate on our game! While we respect BaB's implementation, we don’t believe they own sole proprietorship to all other implementations of the idea. Like most “internet ideas,” it seems to us only the implementation matters. Unlike most “licensed” sites, we took the painstaking effort of upgrading our game beyond the usual v1 features.

And to those that believe that licensing is the only path to legitimacy, here is a recent counterexample -- a not-so favorable “licensed” site by the name of CrashDoge (and more).

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/azh66t/crashdoge_crashingbitcoin_and_crashingcrypto_are/

If you're so different, why are you on license.txt in such manner?

Well, when we were notified about landing on license.txt, we contacted Daniel (BaB's current operator). And unfortunately we couldn’t come to an agreement that Moon3D was sufficiently different. While we continue to add upgrades to the game (including new crash-style games soon), we would like to open the question up to the community.

Should all implementations of the graph game be forced to conform to BaB's standards?

To Daniel and the team, we are still open to sharing our code with you privately, so you can take a look at all the changes we have made

What’s next for Moon3D?



To live up to our promise of innovating on the Crash Game concept, we have new (never before seen) crash-style games coming to Moon3D in the future! With new math and new hash chains



Join our Discord to stay updated and ask for free rolls to check us out on Moon3D!

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[StackGambler]

I've played on Moon3D before. It's an extremely cool site with a gorgeous UI, and all my withdrawals went through without a hitch. The deposit bonus was pretty cool, too, never seen anything like it before (on a legit website, that is). Keep up the good work.

[areyoudonuts1]

Thanks for sharing more about why you didn't want to get the license. I have personally played some eth on the site and have withdrew 1+ eth successfully within seconds.
I would recommend you guys get your seeding even set up pretty quickly and that would be perfect

[ProfessionalBuster]

I've played on here before, deposited and withdrawn ~10ETH no problem.

Shoutout to the revamped bonus system. Got 5,000% bonus once. Very lucrative and competitive.

[tagrn1]

Regarding licensing, I think an important question is: are you running Bustabit code that you have modified, or has all your code been written by yourself?

My position would be that the idea of a crash game cannot be owned by anyone, and so it is fine for one to look at existing crash games - even reviewing the open source Bustabit code - and then write their own crash game. However, if rather than writing their own implementation one starts from the Bustabit code and adds modifications, then I have to side with the license holder

[souldriver]

I have been playing and promoting moon3D on YT from the start easy deposits and withdraws. Love the game and UI. user: ENLIL
TheDev is great.

[devans]

Why didn’t we buy the Bustabit License?



Each week, we have been pushing new features to reimagine and innovate on our game! While we respect BaB's implementation, we don’t believe they own sole proprietorship to all other implementations of the idea. Like most “internet ideas,” it seems to us only the implementation matters. Unlike most “licensed” sites, we took the painstaking effort of upgrading our game beyond the usual v1 features.

And to those that believe that licensing is the only path to legitimacy, here is a recent counterexample -- a not-so favorable “licensed” site by the name of CrashDoge (and more).

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/azh66t/crashdoge_crashingbitcoin_and_crashingcrypto_are/

To my knowledge, the idea or concept of a crash game is not protected. In other words, anyone is completely free to create their own crash game. What is protected however is bustabit's work, namely the software we develop. We have published the code of an older version of bustabit's software (v1) under an open source license, the AGPLv3. This open source license allows anyone to use the code for free—even commercially!—as long as they publish their own source code under the same open source license. Casinos that want to use bustabit's v1 software but don't want to share their code have the option of purchasing a paid software license from bustabit which doesn't have that requirement.

So in short, bustabit doesn't own all implementations of a crash game, but it does own its own implementation (v1). Regardless of how many changes you make or how many features you add: If you use any part of bustabit's code then you must comply with the terms of the license.

You claim that your software is a clean room implementation that does not use bustabit's v1 code or parts of it in any way. Generally I would give you the benefit of the doubt, but for a number of reasons I believe that your claim is false and you are still using significant parts of our code:

• Your front end code shows remarkable similarities to bustabit's code, e.g. the rendering of the graph and the WebSocket protocol.
• At its launch, moon3d.io was undeniably pirating bustabit's v1 code. You have admitted this in private.
• Large parts of your FAQ were straight up copy and pasted from bustabit.com. Since then you've changed some words to obfuscate it a little but the plagiarism is still evident.

To Daniel and the team, we are still open to sharing our code with you privately, so you can take a look at all the changes we have made

That's what I asked you to do in my last email more than a month ago, but you have yet to follow through or even acknowledge my email. If I were a more cynical person I might suspect that you're delaying in order to reimplement or obfuscate bustabit's code.

[StackGambler]

That's what I asked you to do in my last email more than a month ago, but you have yet to follow through or even acknowledge my email. If I were a more cynical person I might suspect that you're delaying in order to reimplement or obfuscate bustabit's code.

This looks to me to be the case. I don't think Moon3D's intentions are malicious, and I'm sure they will end up being a great site, but from the get-go, they've had multiple issues and errors like this that they take a long time to fix. They should have created a stable, original, working release before actually putting up the site, instead of making money through piracy and then using that money to fix up what they had. Oh well.

[RHavar]

This seems like a pretty dishonest take. Honestly you should've just went with: "we are against copyright law, it's bullshit and we have no intentions of following it" and that's a stance I could at least respect.

Should all implementations of the graph game be forced to conform to BaB's standards?

Nice misdirection. Clearly no one actually thinks, implied or said that. It's just that if you're going to directly copy the bustabit source code you need to comply with the license.  And the license is exceedingly reasonably, if you don't want to pay all you need to do is keep the entire code under AGPLv3.  Or you can pay if you want to keep it private. I don't think you'll find any other commercial software that is more reasonable than that.

And to those that believe that licensing is the only path to legitimacy, here is a recent counterexample -- a not-so favorable “licensed” site by the name of CrashDoge (and more).

That's not a counter-example? That just shows buying a license doesn't stop you being dishonest. But no one claimed so. In most places you need a license to buy a gun. If someone with a licensed gun misuses it, that doesn't give you permission to have a gun without a license.

Well, when we were notified about landing on license.txt, we contacted Daniel (BaB's current operator). And unfortunately we couldn’t come to an agreement that Moon3D was sufficiently different.

Reminds me of what recently happened: I was trying to buy this guys (no longer manufactured) 2-speed internal bicycle hub. I really wanted it, so I offered him a couple hundred dollars (way more than it's worth, really) but he refused to go lower than $1000. We didn't come to an agreement, so I walked away and he kept his stupid hub. Generally that's what happens when you can't come to an agreement.

If you're not willing to buy the code, you should've done your own clean-room implementation or comply with the AGPLv3 license.


But honestly, I just don't get the point of pirating code like this. It seems you fundamentally misunderstand how the industry work. The number #1 thing players care about is playing somewhere trustworthy. There's not even a close 2nd to that. You'll never be able to build a trustworthy brand when it's clouded in, and founded by software piracy. If you don't have the money for a license, just keep your changes under AGPLv3 too. It's only fair.


I understand you've never scammed anyone, and I don't really think piracy is that big of a deal (I just downloaded a pirate copy of the last episode of GoT, and sure as hell glad I didn't pay for 40 minutes of people exchange greetings...) but I'd strongly distrust your brand and encourage other people to do so too. Why? Because bitcoin is pretty much the wild-west, and the only realistic recourse people have if they feel they've been mistreated is trying to raise it to the publics attention. A brand with a squeaky clean image is going to bend over backwards to maintain that (e.g. I once badly mishandled and bungled someone's support ticket, so I gave them a bitcoin in compensation to make sure they came out of that happy)  while a brand mired in controversy, a customers avenue of recourse is approximately 0.



Good luck with your project!

[kxu1005]

That's what I asked you to do in my last email more than a month ago, but you have yet to follow through or even acknowledge my email. If I were a more cynical person I might suspect that you're delaying in order to reimplement or obfuscate bustabit's code.

@devans Well your reply is misleading(!), as you make us sound like we're maliciously lying. This is what we said earlier which you didn't address (i.e. asking for a call): https://i.imgur.com/hWQCi25.png

Instead, you wanted us to open source our code entirely OR provide you a full copy for review (like how? do you seriously want us to email you the entire codebase online?). Or perhaps there was some miscommunication.

Again, down to hop on a call if necessary.

[allo_moon3d]

Hi! To address your concerns in order:

It's just that if you're going to directly copy the bustabit source code you need to comply with the license.

I think this is exactly the point, we don’t believe we directly copied the BaB code at all. As a matter of fact, we took a lot of painstaking effort redesigning experience beyond the usual v1 clones and upgrading outdated packages. A lot of the changes we made are not only visually obvious, but also changes to the core stack and game functionality. 



"we are against copyright law, it's bullshit and we have no intentions of following it"

In regards to your core point on piracy, frankly speaking we don’t respect the integrity of copyrights on the internet. I spent my childhood torrenting away, because all the good content took ages to come to where I lived. Moreover, I've personally used countless stack overflow answers and several npm packages with no concern to whoever wrote them. I think a lot of people in this community have benefitted from similar use of the internet. It seems to me that a subjective moral debate around internet piracy, doesn't hinder both kxu and I from being trustworthy game operators.

If you don't have the money for a license, just keep your changes under AGPLv3 too. It's only fair.

To your point on open sourcing our code. Given all the modifications we made, open sourcing our code will open us to potential software exploits and make us less competitive against those that just copied BaB v1. As an early company that doesn't seem wise, and that's why we won't do it.



Having said that we don’t plan to leave our community with just another v1 BaB clone. And that’s why we push features constantly, almost every week we add some tweaks. And sure @StackGambler you are right to say we can be slow at pushing out all features, though we've always pulled through and gotten to the requests. And we do have plenty more features to come!



The number #1 thing players care about is playing somewhere trustworthy.

@RHavar you do bring up a really good point on trust, it is a top priority for us. We believe trust comes from: consistency over time. Each week we consistently push new features and fairly payout our players so over time players in the community will definitely take notice! We can't help that other game operators do not appreciate our approach, but we believe we can build trust with the community by continuing to prove ourselves over time. Which is exactly what we've been doing!

[RHavar]

Looking at the minified code, it's pretty clearly based on the bustabit source code. And it doesn't seem to be in question:

To your point on open sourcing our code. Given all the modifications we made, open sourcing our code will open us to potential software exploits and make us less competitive against those that just copied BaB v1.

and looking at your game-engine in chromes debugger and all the state is largely the same. You're using the same anti-lag algorithm and axis-rendering algorithm. Looking at the network protocol, it's exactly the same as v1. Your code happens to have some of the exact same design errors that bustabit v1 had (which was fixed in v2) and your server exhibits the same timing as the unoptimized v1 server (.e.g. v1 opensource, not running the kungfuck branch).

It's also undeniable that the text (e.g. FAQ) and code used to be a direct copy as well.


I don't think you're acting fairly by taking commercial software, making a bunch of improvements (well done!) and not contributing them back like the license requires (nor paying for a commercial license, that doesn't have that restriction). And the fact you're willing to tarnish your brand to avoid following one of the most reasonable commercial software licensing program that I'm aware of, doesn't give me much optimism for your future.

 

[allo_moon3d]

The state being largely the same is not true. There may be a few of the same variables at best, most everything else is completely different. You're only evaluating the limited scope of the minified code. Also in regards to the anti-lag algorithm. Should a one liner count?

Your description does not begin to give us credit where due! It does not mention the redesign effort and upgrading of outdated code we performed. Additionally it does not factor in our realtime ETH exchange backend or any of the visually obvious design changes that we’ve made. 


To your point on FAQ (which since Daniel pointed out, we also updated), but is FAQ really the criteria on which we evaluate software copyright? To me, it is absurd that we are even talking about the FAQ.

I don't think you're acting fairly by taking commercial software, making a bunch of improvements



Fair to who? Us getting the license certainly does not benefit crash players. At best, it would give Daniel some pocket change. It does not seem “fair” to a startup to be forced to either pay for a license or Open Source their competitive edge (in a sea of commoditized v1 clones). Hence we are sticking to our guns.

Frankly its a shame that the only people who think it is “unfair” to use the open-source code are other game operators that have cloned v1 BaB (or in your case made BaB v1). Much like George RR Martin wouldn’t be ecstatic at you downloading GOT, I’m sure you and the other license holders aren’t ecstatic about us not buying it.

Still to come out here and publicly claim we are untrustworthy (even tho we never did any wrong to our players), seems more “unfair” to me. Saying things like this “does not give me much optimism for your future” and we are “tarnishing our brand” just seems like blatant attacks on our character, rather than our actions as game operators. Still you’re entitled to your opinion. We will continue to build trust in our community one feature/one day at a time. I’m sure consistency over time will benefit us!

[RHavar]

Your description does not begin to give us credit where due! It does not mention the redesign effort and upgrading of outdated code we performed. Additionally it does not factor in our realtime ETH exchange backend or any of the visually obvious design changes that we’ve made.

I don't mean to in any shape-or-form minimize the amount of work you've done. And I can see there's several improvements. You (and your team?) seem like competent developers, and I have no doubt you'll keep improving it.

However, it's also kind of beside the point. All your work is built upon code in which you're not following the licensing requirements.



Fair to who? Us getting the license certainly does not benefit crash players. At best, it would give Daniel some pocket change. It does not seem “fair” to a startup to be forced to either pay for a license or Open Source their competitive edge (in a sea of commoditized v1 clones). Hence we are sticking to our guns.

As you know, the code was made available on the condition that you contribute back either monetarily (via paying a 1 time fee) or via making your changes also open-source, to potentially benefit everyone else who is interested.

Frankly its a shame that the only people who think it is “unfair” to use the open-source code are other game operators that have cloned v1 BaB (or in your case made BaB v1). Much like George RR Martin wouldn’t be ecstatic at you downloading GOT, I’m sure you and the other license holders aren’t ecstatic about us not buying it.

It really makes absolutely zero difference to me what you do. I'm just posting my opinion here as someone linked me to this thread and asked me what I thought, and I figured it'd make the most sense to me just being public with my thoughts.

Still to come out here and publicly claim we are untrustworthy (even tho we never did any wrong to our players), seems more “unfair” to me.

I wouldn't say that you are untrustworthy as much as I'd that I'd never trust your operation. (Or maybe that's the what untrustworthy means? But still, it feels like too strong a word).

Of course everyone needs to make up their own mind. 

To be perfectly honest, the reason that I wouldn't trust you isn't so much about the piracy/copyright infringement, it's more just how you're handling it. I just don't for the life of me understand why you'd let this whole thing tarnish your brand. And a brand that doesn't mind being tarnished, is one I'm scared of. Actually not very long ago (a couple months, at most?) there was a much bigger site (betking) that also violated the license and then pulled the "we modified it, so we shouldn't have to pay or open-source it". I too left them negative trust over it, as I reasoned that it's kind of ridiculous to trust a site that is happy marring it's reputation so easily (also their lying about it wasn't really inspiring).

Then a week or so later, they decided to scam all their investors.

Now I'm not trying to imply you'll do the same, but I just don't trust brands that don't fight hard to have a squeaky clean image.

Saying things like this “does not give me much optimism for your future” and we are “tarnishing our brand” just seems like blatant attacks on our character, rather than our actions as game operators. Still you’re entitled to your opinion. We will continue to build trust in our community one feature/one day at a time. I’m sure consistency over time will benefit us!

I think you misunderstand what a character attack is. I believe I've only criticized your actions  on account that's all I know of you. Violating the license is an action as a game operator! (Unless you've internalized this so much, it's now part of your character?! :S)

Despite this, I harbor you no will-ill and hope you go on to surprise me and build a successful business.


P.S. you build trust via how you act in situations like this, not in how much development or features you make.


P.P.S.  why do you think it'll lower your competitive advantage in releasing your changes? bustabit built a multi-million dollar business on totally open-source code. A site is made up of a lot more than its source code.  Actually the only reason I stopped publishing the source as open-source was for anti-DOS reasons. I was getting attacked by a bunch of people I pissed off on bitcointalk (lol...) and they kept reading my changes and the source code to better learn how to DoS the site. From a competitive point of view, I'm really not sure it matters.