Captains,
Commensurate with the update we published today for the PMDG 737-700, we are making a global change to our End User License Agreement. This change is in effect immediately and covers our entire product line retroactively.
The short version:
Beginning today, anyone wishing to create texture/artwork mods for their PMDG product is able to do so and may also distribute them as freeware. This should end a rather unpopular and contentious requirement that constantly had us filing DMCA takedown requests when someone would fail to follow the older EULA which limited modifications to only the creation of liveries
Our hope is that this will bring some relief to the creators out there who enjoy being able to mod their sim but also want to share their creativity with the community.
The Long Version:
Back in the mid-late 2000s, PMDG became subject to a license agreement that allowed us to use certain intellectual property not belonging to PMDG, but it also had very strict guidelines about things we could not allow to be done with our products. Those who were participating in the simming hobby will recall that the post September 11 simming world was a bit more tense and "legal" than it is now- and beginning in 2008, PMDG had some pretty rigid restrictions by which we had to adhere in order to maintain our license with Boeing. (In the very beginning, for example, we even had to argue on behalf of allowing the creation of liveries as the initial agreement prohibited this.. Just imagine!
)
We really haven't revisited these restrictions in a dozen years, mostly because the much smaller (and lets be honest, shrinking) simmer community had been with us through the transition period and understood why we were required to only allow livery creator modifications. Everyone adapted and it met the needs of the time.
With the change to MSFS, the simming community has grown exponentially and now is made up largely of folks coming to the simming community from elsewhere in the gaming sphere where norms and expectations are different when it comes to modding. Some of these expectations ran into our limiting EULA requirements and this has created some drama as we have continued to enforce our EULA as required to maintain our license.
We have had a series of calls and discussions over the past couple of weeks aimed at giving us some wiggle room that would allow modders and tinkerers the chance to share their creativity. It has taken a bit of work, and we even recruited a couple of folks who had reached out to us for permission (as required under the previous EULA) and their input and examples of their work were used to demonstrate that the creativity that comes from the user community need not be viewed as a source of potential risk, but instead as a source of creativity.
I am happy to report that the re-approach on this topic worked, and this has allowed our counsel to re-write our EULA to make it much more friendly for modders.
I would like to thank Mike, Charles and Briney for their participation in the intellectual exercise that allowed us to make this change. You guys had a great sense of humor and offered thoughtful insight in a manner that was really useful to us in making our case. I much appreciated the insight and the discussion, as it helped to shape the argument we used in opening this issue up for discussion. We didn't expect to get an affirmative answer this quickly, but I think using you guys as an example really helped. Given the pace with which these sorts of discussions usually move, we kicked off this effort in hopes we'd have an approval in time for release of the 737-800 in August- so the changing being authorized today came as a bit of a surprise on our end.
There is still a tripwire to beware of, here:
If you are a skilled modder and want to do anything outside of textures/artwork- we do still require that you hit us up for permission before distributing any creation that involves modified versions of our models, sounds or other files. This requirement comes from some complicated case-law in intellectual property that can cause the owner of intellectual property (PMDG, in this case) to lose control of their IP if they are shown not to be defending their ownership of same. The simple way for us to avoid this is to thank you for reaching out, offer you a worldwide, royalty free license to distribute your mod, and off you go. A number of users have done this over the years and it works really simply.
What if you have questions?:
Easy! Just hit up our support team and we'll do our best to help you out.
What if you have a previous mod you created that got hit with a DMCA takedown?:
Sorry.
Until we received relief from the strict requirements late this afternoon, we had to stick to the letter of the requirements. The good news is that *provided your mode is artwork/texture based* you are now free to do as you like and don't need our input at all.
As always- shout if you have questions. We see this as a win for all of us!
You can see the new End User License Agreement during installation of the 737-700 for MSFS. It will be added to the rest of our product metric over time, and it can also be found in the /documents directory of your 737-700 for MSFS installation.
Commensurate with the update we published today for the PMDG 737-700, we are making a global change to our End User License Agreement. This change is in effect immediately and covers our entire product line retroactively.
The short version:
Beginning today, anyone wishing to create texture/artwork mods for their PMDG product is able to do so and may also distribute them as freeware. This should end a rather unpopular and contentious requirement that constantly had us filing DMCA takedown requests when someone would fail to follow the older EULA which limited modifications to only the creation of liveries
Our hope is that this will bring some relief to the creators out there who enjoy being able to mod their sim but also want to share their creativity with the community.
The Long Version:
Back in the mid-late 2000s, PMDG became subject to a license agreement that allowed us to use certain intellectual property not belonging to PMDG, but it also had very strict guidelines about things we could not allow to be done with our products. Those who were participating in the simming hobby will recall that the post September 11 simming world was a bit more tense and "legal" than it is now- and beginning in 2008, PMDG had some pretty rigid restrictions by which we had to adhere in order to maintain our license with Boeing. (In the very beginning, for example, we even had to argue on behalf of allowing the creation of liveries as the initial agreement prohibited this.. Just imagine!
)We really haven't revisited these restrictions in a dozen years, mostly because the much smaller (and lets be honest, shrinking) simmer community had been with us through the transition period and understood why we were required to only allow livery creator modifications. Everyone adapted and it met the needs of the time.
With the change to MSFS, the simming community has grown exponentially and now is made up largely of folks coming to the simming community from elsewhere in the gaming sphere where norms and expectations are different when it comes to modding. Some of these expectations ran into our limiting EULA requirements and this has created some drama as we have continued to enforce our EULA as required to maintain our license.
We have had a series of calls and discussions over the past couple of weeks aimed at giving us some wiggle room that would allow modders and tinkerers the chance to share their creativity. It has taken a bit of work, and we even recruited a couple of folks who had reached out to us for permission (as required under the previous EULA) and their input and examples of their work were used to demonstrate that the creativity that comes from the user community need not be viewed as a source of potential risk, but instead as a source of creativity.
I am happy to report that the re-approach on this topic worked, and this has allowed our counsel to re-write our EULA to make it much more friendly for modders.
I would like to thank Mike, Charles and Briney for their participation in the intellectual exercise that allowed us to make this change. You guys had a great sense of humor and offered thoughtful insight in a manner that was really useful to us in making our case. I much appreciated the insight and the discussion, as it helped to shape the argument we used in opening this issue up for discussion. We didn't expect to get an affirmative answer this quickly, but I think using you guys as an example really helped. Given the pace with which these sorts of discussions usually move, we kicked off this effort in hopes we'd have an approval in time for release of the 737-800 in August- so the changing being authorized today came as a bit of a surprise on our end.
There is still a tripwire to beware of, here:
If you are a skilled modder and want to do anything outside of textures/artwork- we do still require that you hit us up for permission before distributing any creation that involves modified versions of our models, sounds or other files. This requirement comes from some complicated case-law in intellectual property that can cause the owner of intellectual property (PMDG, in this case) to lose control of their IP if they are shown not to be defending their ownership of same. The simple way for us to avoid this is to thank you for reaching out, offer you a worldwide, royalty free license to distribute your mod, and off you go. A number of users have done this over the years and it works really simply.
What if you have questions?:
Easy! Just hit up our support team and we'll do our best to help you out.
What if you have a previous mod you created that got hit with a DMCA takedown?:
Sorry.
Until we received relief from the strict requirements late this afternoon, we had to stick to the letter of the requirements. The good news is that *provided your mode is artwork/texture based* you are now free to do as you like and don't need our input at all.As always- shout if you have questions. We see this as a win for all of us!
You can see the new End User License Agreement during installation of the 737-700 for MSFS. It will be added to the rest of our product metric over time, and it can also be found in the /documents directory of your 737-700 for MSFS installation.
Kevin is probably right regarding the rules, he's on this forum more than anyone and has probably read the rules in detail....I just brushed over them and got what I needed from them. hehe.
all above regarding the sig. 
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