Real author of "Boom Boom Boom" music

[0zone0ne]

In STK, the song "Boom Boom Boom" (that plays in the math class) is listed as being composed by Matt Thomas. However, when I checked the description in the original module file, I found something that suggests otherwise:

-kbx128- march 1993
music for a crap amos
game written by my
brother.(only joking)

It appears from this that "kbx128" is the author of the music. The music created by Matt Thomas (the other TuxKart music) contains different descriptions, all of which are very similar:

TuxKart Track 7
composed by:
Matt Thomas (2000)

Track Select Menu
background music

TuxKart: Track2

In-game racing music

composed by:
Matt Thomas 2000

I am fairly confident from this that kbx128 and Matt Thomas are not the same person. Boom Boom Boom sounds nothing like Matt's TuxKart music; the style in which his music is written and programmed is completely different.

I did a search for "kbx128" and found a page about them on this Demoscene database, however here they are listed as "vim!". It does state that they were known as kbx128 from 1993-1995, the same year that Boom Boom Boom was composed according to its description. It does not list their real name.

I also found a page about them on the Mod Archive. Tons of their music can be found here, including Boom Boom Boom on the very last page of the modules section (listed as "boomboom.mod").

[leilei]

It's likely he just used the sample list from an existing mod to lay a track down.

(which is still an icky non-Free practice no Free Software should do anyhow since it's likely all those STxx samples are sampled from copyrighted material)

[eltomito]

I didn't know about the mod archive!
It's cool you can actually play the original mod with audacious.

http://modarchive.org/index.php?request ... uery=38184

[QwertyChouskie]

Uh-oh... viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7062&p=70586#p70586

[Auria]

Seems like we may need to remove this song from STK It does look like it is not open-source

It's likely he just used the sample list from an existing mod to lay a track down.

Unless we get really solid information that this is the case, this is not an assumption that we are allowed to make

[MTres19]

QwertyChouskie's link however is not the end of this. That's not kbx128's official site, it seems. I see three questions that should be answered:


- Under what license did Steve Baker add "Boom Boom Boom" to TuxKart?

- Can kbx128 be contacted by email or any other method?

- AMOS appears to be a variant of BASIC for Amiga. If kbx128 is not joking about the game, only about his brother, which game is he referring to? This game may provide more licensing information.

[0zone0ne]

Looks like we can contact Vim through his Bandcamp page: https://vimster.bandcamp.com (right-hand menu)

Strangely, he isn't credited at all in TuxKart. The contents of "AUTHORS" is as follows:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

TuxKart was written by Steve Baker, some 3D models were built
by Oliver Baker.

Matt Thomas composed the music.



[MTres19]

I suppose the best course of action would be to get some formal statement from him stating that he releases boom_boom_boom.mod under a free license, preferably CC-BY-SA 4.0.

It would also be interesting to know whether he knew anything about its inclusion in TuxKart. (By the way, the original mod in TuxKart's CVS repository includes the same header you mentioned.)

[QwertyChouskie]

Did anyone succeed in contacting him?

[vimster]

Hello. I'm Keith Baylis aka Vim and I am the original composer of this track, way back in 1993. I was completely unaware this tune had been used until I received an email just now. I started using tracker software in 1993 under the name KBX128 but changed it to Vim in 1995 and have used this ever since.

Just to confirm this was never used in any finished game. The one mentioned in the module header was just some small game made in AMOS BASIC on the Amiga that was never completed or released.

All the module music of mien available via sites like The Mod Archive are free to use, all I ask is for a proper credit.

I hope this clears up the mystery. It feels strange talking about a piece of music I made 23 years ago in this way.

[Auria]

Hello. I'm Keith Baylis aka Vim and I am the original composer of this track, way back in 1993. I was completely unaware this tune had been used until I received an email just now. I started using tracker software in 1993 under the name KBX128 but changed it to Vim in 1995 and have used this ever since.

Just to confirm this was never used in any finished game. The one mentioned in the module header was just some small game made in AMOS BASIC on the Amiga that was never completed or released.

All the module music of mien available via sites like The Mod Archive are free to use, all I ask is for a proper credit.

I hope this clears up the mystery. It feels strange talking about a piece of music I made 23 years ago in this way.

Hi, great to hear from you! Just to clarify, "free to use" is unfortunately a little vague, for instance we usually use the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ ), do you think such a license would suit you?

Also, credit is most definitely due, is there a way you wish to prefer being credited? Your real name, or perhaps a nickname?

Thanks a lot!

[deve]

Hi Vim,

Thanks a lot for your answer!

I would like to clarify the problem. As far as we checked, the song "Boom boom boom" is shared under cc-by-nc-nd license. The problem is that the license cc-by-nc-nd is considered as non-free by linux distributions.

Is the license cc-by-sa acceptable for you?
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

If you could accept it, we could still use this song in our project. It would be really great for us, because this song is used in Supertuxkart for a very long time (most probably since february 2002).

[MTres19]

Not to be annoying, but wouldn't the CC-BY-SA 4.0 be better since it's designed to be legally interpreted the same in all countries?

[vimster]

I say "free to use" because when I made it back in the early 90s licenses and the like weren't really on my radar. The one mentioned on the MONO211 page was basically put there for all the tracks on that site and I didn't have any input in that. To be honest it's all Greek to me; the music is free (as in freely available) to use as long as it's not for profit. The one recommended there would probably cover it, you sound like you know more about this sort of thing.

And "Keith Baylis aka Vim" would be a preferable credit.

Sorry if I'm being vague, I'm not really down with he minutiae of CC licenses - maybe I should be!

[MTres19]

Unfortunately CC-BY-SA-NC (Non-commercial) is not Debian Free Software Guidelines-compatible. It would be fine without the NC clause.

[Akien]

Hi vimster. You can check https://creativecommons.org/choose/ for some guidance on picking a Creative Commons license.

As others mentioned, I would encourage you to avoid the Non-Commercial (NC) and No-Derivatives (ND) clauses, which remove too many freedoms of usage to be considered as "free licenses" (basically NC + ND is the same as plain old "Freeware", i.e. proprietary but you can use it if you want).

Using the NC clause for your song would mean that if anyone wants to sell copies of SuperTuxKart (be it for-profit or not-for-profit), they would have to remove your track, as selling a game that uses your track would constitute commercial usage of your track. A maybe more anecdotical example: if someone wanted to make a Linux distribution ISO image with pre-installed open source games like SuperTuxKart, and distribute it via a paid Linux magazine, NC-licensed tracks would also have to be removed. It's partly for those reasons that Linux distributions would consider licenses using a NC clause nonfree.

A typical choice if you care about a "good" (as in, beneficial to all) usage of your track would be CC BY-SA 4.0 (version 4.0 just because it's the latest one). BY means "Attribution", anyone using the track has to credit you properly. SA means "Share Alike", i.e. anyone distributing and/or modifying the track has to distribute their version under a similiar license, i.e. the same license or another one that requires attribution and propagation of the license.
So with the SA clause, you make sure that your track will always stay in the real of free culture, so that everybody can benefit from it and from future spin-offs (or existing ones, SuperTuxKart already has original tracks inspired from the melody of Boom boom boom if I'm not mistaken).

Hope this helps

[Wuzzy]

I would have no problem if the Boom Boom Boom music would be just removed/replaced. It's very old, it's the worst music of STK, doesn't fit the style of other tracks and I hate it. It simply seems to be out of place compared with all the other STK music. I have nothing against chiptune but it simply doesn't fit into STK nor the tracks in which it is played. I find it annoying whenever I hear this track in STK.

Losing this music would be no loss for STK. Sorry to say it, but these are my honest feelings.

[QwertyChouskie]

I have to respectfully disagree. I love the tune, not to mention it is a well-known part of STK's history.

[0zone0ne]

Wuzzy, another reason it's important that we clear up the licensing for this song is because other songs in the game, and more that are currently being made, contain remixed/referenced parts from Boom Boom Boom (for example, Gran Paradiso and Bovine Barnyard both contain parts of the melody). If it turns out that the song is not under an open-source license, then we don't have the rights to remix it and various other songs are going to have to be changed.

[MTres19]

0zone0ne: If he chooses to license it under the CC-BY-NC 4.0 it is okay, because that leaves you to free to allow commercialization of your derivative works provided he receives credit. In that case the original song could simply be removed but derivatives of it could still be made. However, if he required the CC-BY-NC-SA, then there would be problems because everything based on it would also have the non-commercial restriction.

[onpon4]

0zone0ne: If he chooses to license it under the CC-BY-NC 4.0 it is okay, because that leaves you to free to allow commercialization of your derivative works provided he receives credit. In that case the original song could simply be removed but derivatives of it could still be made. However, if he required the CC-BY-NC-SA, then there would be problems because everything based on it would also have the non-commercial restriction.

No, that's not how that works. The original license doesn't disappear just because you made a derivative work.

However, it's not necessarily a problem anyway, because fair use might apply depending on the use and jurisdiction.

[deve]

I was talking with Vim on email.

Here is the last message that I received from him:

Okay that license sounds fine to me. We'll go with that one. Hopefully that
clears things up. Seems daft for some small tune but I guess it had to be
right.

Keith

On Mon, 3 Oct 2016, 11:13 Deve, <deveee@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Keith,
>
> It depends on how do you want to allow to do with your song.
>
> The best solution for us is CC-BY-SA:
> https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
> - it is typical Creative Commons license, used for the most of artist
> stuff in open-source projects (textures, 3d models, sounds etc...)
> - it doesn't contain the non-commercial restriction, so that it's not
> considered as non-free by linux distributions
> - it allows to remix this song, which allows us to use our songs that
> partially depend on your song
> - it will allow us to use your "Boom boom boom" song and also our
> songs in Supertuxkart game
>
> Second solution:
> If you really want to have the non-commercial restriction (I
> understand that you may want to have it), then you could at least
> write a clause that you allow to use our already made songs (Gran
> Paradiso etc...) under CC-BY-SA license. In this case:
> - we won't lose our already made work
> - practically these songs will be re-licensed from "CC-BY-NC" to
> "CC-BY-SA" because all authors agree to re-license it
> - we will need to replace the "Boom boom boom" song by something other
> because it will be still under CC-BY-NC license
>
> If you want, you can ask OzoneOne for the full list of songs that he
> made and that depend on "Boom boom boom".
>
> Again sorry if I am annoying, but this situation is a bit problematic
> for us. This song was available in STK for a very long time and we
> were sure that it is really free.
>
> Best regards,
> Deve

It basically means that he accepts the CC-BY-SA license.

I asked him if he could write it officially on the forum, but I didn't receive any response.

I hope that this is enough to finally solve the licensing issues. I can attach full email message as a documentation if it's needed.