
Creator Of Angry Birds’ Physics Engine Calls Out Rovio For Not Giving Him Credit - ssclafani
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2011/02/28/creator-of-angry-birds-physics-engine-calls-out-rovio-for-not-giving-him-credit/
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pavlov
And here's the same story from a less sensationalist source.

[http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/28/overheard-gdc-credit-
where...](http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/28/overheard-gdc-credit-where-
credits-due/)

 _"What physics engine did you use for Angry Birds?" --Man "Box2d" --Peter
Vesterbacka, Rovio "Would you be willing to credit it?" --Man "Yes"
--Vesterbacka "I'm the creator of Box2d." --Erin Catto, creator of Box2d

Following this exchange -- which took place during Rovio's panel on its multi-
million-dollar franchise -- a smiling, caught-off-guard Vesterbacka said that
the company would credit Box2d as the physics engine it uses if Catto would
see him after the Q&A session._

AFAICT, this controversy is completely fabricated by the MobileCrunch tabloid.

~~~
bermanoid
Here's a thread @Box2d where Erin responds to this himself, confirming that
this was not a "calling out" or any sort of big deal:
[http://box2d.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6462](http://box2d.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6462)

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mikek
If you want to be given credit for some open source software, require it in
the license. Otherwise you have no grounds to complain.

~~~
jedsmith
Counterpoint: If your company has developed a powerhouse franchise with a
value roughly equivalent to the GDP of Canada, and all of that is built upon a
little piece of open-source software, it wouldn't hurt anybody to toss him
some credit or sponsorship. He did say he'd appreciate it.

Just because you don't _have_ to doesn't mean you _shouldn't_. I'm not sure I
agree with this little display, but saying he has no grounds to have a gripe
is a bit simplistic.

~~~
mechanical_fish
While they're at it they should probably toss Isaac Newton and von Neumann
some credit, too. I mean, who did the _real_ heavy lifting here?

And let me be the first to acknowledge all the authors of the floating-point
math libraries that power the physics simulation that powers Angry Birds.
Whoever you are: Nobody ever thinks of you, but I know how much work you did.
Thanks.

Also, somewhere, probably in China, there is a crew of people who work long
hours in a clean room, peering through microscopes, inspecting the tiny wire
bonds on the RF multiplexers that will filter all those Angry Birds levels out
of the ether and capture them onto our iPhones. Let me thank those people,
many of whom are young and work very long hours, because I doubt that many of
them will ever come to a tech conference and stand up to demand credit for
their work, perhaps because they don't speak English well, and perhaps because
they probably can't afford the tickets to the conference, but mostly because
they're just too polite.

Meanwhile, what on earth should we expect the Rovio folks to do when some
passive-aggressive person stands up _in the middle of a crowd at a conference_
and claims to have written some underlying component of their product? Make
the guy pull out his open-source license, put some lawyers on speakerphone,
and adjudicate the thing right in the middle of the Q&A? Or are they just
supposed to casually give credit to anyone who asks politely, without doing
the necessary research first? Are software licenses supposed to be taken
seriously or not? Do people not realize that copyright trolls and cranks
exist?

~~~
jedsmith
So what you're saying is, you didn't make it to the part of my comment where I
indicated that I wasn't on board with his stunt?

I merely pointed out that dismissing his gripe is a bit premature. How he went
about expressing his gripe is an entirely different matter, and embarrassing
companies publicly is often not a good first step.

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ConceptDog
Box2d is amazing, and powers about 90% of physics flash games and now a good
portion of iPhone games as well.

It's also a great example of a creator having buyers remorse about the licence
used. At somepoint the creator decided to be altruistic and release it in a
way that it could be used far and wide in applications across hundreds of
platforms. Now people are using it in fabulous projects and very rightly,
getting famous and wealthy through those creations.

That said, Angry Birds isn't successfull because of it's physics engine. In
fact, there isn't one single element of the game that makes it successful. The
Rovio guys studied their audience, listened to feedback, and invested
everything in creating a killer app.

Box2d was one bolt in the process, and if the licence had prevented the
developers from utilizing it, they would have swapped it out for another
model. It wasn't the lynch pin to Angry Birds' success.

~~~
bad_user
Yeah, but how hard it is to give one guy credit for the free fish you got; and
why did he had to ask for it?

That's why I've been saying it - a gift economy on the Internet does not work,
except in very few instances / narrow niches. In the future, we'll get more
DRM and more restrictive licenses, not less ; as most people are just leeches.

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mkr-hn
Direct link to the license (for the curious):
[http://code.google.com/p/box2d/source/browse/trunk/Box2D/Lic...](http://code.google.com/p/box2d/source/browse/trunk/Box2D/License.txt)

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akozlik
This is probably coming up because Tiny Wings gave Box2D credit, and Catto's
probably like 'Hey! Why didn't Angry Birds do the same!'

