whraven

From the End User Agreement: "You may not copy, reproduce, translate, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, modify, or create derivative works from the assembled code or any part thereof." So, it depends on whether their lawyers consider the databases part of the code base or not. Historically, they have been considered part of the copyrighted code, at least in cases I've followed. Immediately following the sentence above is material that also limits the use of the internal editor. It has sometimes been argued that some databases are expressions of fact and not subject to copyright. However, where the databases express such facts in a specific format upon which software behavior is based (rather than merely to convey such information to a reader), that particular expression has been held to be subject to copyright, at least in the cases I've seen (Disclaimer: I am *not* a laywer, just interested in the legal aspects of these issues). As for creating your own database, as long as you did it from scratch, you might be okay (although it may be subject to the reverse-engineering or derivative prohibitions). However, modification of an existing one may violate the copyright. At this point, I'm going to bow out of the discussion. I've stated what I know, or have read. My own opinion is that such modifications should be allowed, but whether they actually are or not is really up to how WarfareSims (or a court) chooses to interpret and enforce the license and how it applies to the databases involved. I'd just as soon leave it at that.

It is certainly possible (as well as easy) to modify or add to the databases, as they are SQLite format, and any good RDBMS analyst can figure out the schema and record formats. The problem with doing this is twofold. First, such modifications violate Matrix's copyright, since they have publicly stated that they do not plan to allow user modifications of their databases, will not provide an editor, and will allow only such limited modifications as are provided in the scenario editor. Of course, this may not matter to some users, and I will be watching to see what happens (whether Matrix changes its policiy, or decides to enforce it, and possibly even adds some sort of DB verification) if and when modified databases start appearing. Yes, I would certainly like to see such modifications officially sanctioned, even if they're not officially supported. However, for now, Matrix and the developers public statements seem to indicate that, even if it can be done, it is technically illegal.

Of course, there are some gotcha's. Probably the biggest one is the formation editor. Harpoon's FE had some very rich features. CMANO's is pretty much for station keeping only. One symptom of this is that ASW platforms do not sprint/drift in the formation editor. In order to obtain this behavior, relative reference points must be used to set up an ASW patrol mission in the mission editor, not in the formation editor. I find this slightly cumbersome, although workable. Another issue is that the database is closed -- there will be no editor, although there are some facilities for unit modification in the scenario editor. What this means is that hypothetical platforms will not be available (for example, if one wanted to create a "Hunt for Red October" scenario). Although it has been released, there are requested and planned features and improvements that make it feel a bit like a work in progress, which is fine by me, since some of those features will make it even more flexible and accurate. A good example might be a feature that is currently ahead in a feature poll that will implement altitude and speed changes for each waypoint in a plotted course. I can think of several other features that would make the sim more realistic or reduce the requirement for micromanagement in some situations, and the impression I get is that those may well be coming in the future. In sum, although there are some things I would like to see improved or added, CMANO is definitely a worthy successor to Harpoon, and that is from a hard core Harpooner (both computer and paper versions).