waiting for resolution RAZBAM Situation Post Archive (will be deleted)

[Charly_Owl]

20 hours ago, Hammer1-1 said:

Ask Chuck Owl (of the Chuck's Guides fame) about how he feels about Razbam too

I've got no beef with RAZBAM.

[scommander2]

1 hour ago, Charly_Owl said:

I've got no beef with RAZBAM.

A wise response  

[Hammer1-1]

1 hour ago, Charly_Owl said:

I've got no beef with RAZBAM.

Thats good not holding a grudge. But that little outburst wasnt the first time from Ron as more than a few of us back in the other sim days had almost identical situations.

[Beirut]

39 minutes ago, Hammer1-1 said:

Thats good not holding a grudge. But that little outburst wasnt the first time from Ron as more than a few of us back in the other sim days had almost identical situations.

 

I made a comment once on Deephack's DCS podcast about the poor state of RazBam's PR.

 

He corrected me right away and said RazBam has never had any PR. 

[NineLine]

Guys, last warning. Please let's not attack anyone on either side, no matter how frustrated we are. 

[BIGNEWY]

removed off topic 

[Kang]

That seriously hampers our efforts at producing art out of all this drama and chaos!

[Bucic]

Is the summary as of today still "RB modules unavailable, no resolution on the horizon"?

[Horns]

9 minutes ago, Bucic said:

Is the summary as of today still "RB modules unavailable, no resolution on the horizon"?

Add that news will be shared when there is any, and yeah, that sums it up pretty well

[GUCCI]

It wouldn't be 2025 Hollywood if we don't include at least one or two young and over-cast A listers, and a random popular music celebrity. I nominate Zendaya to portray Nick Grey, Tom holland to portray Nineline, and Bad bunny to play Ron.. 

[NineLine]

4 hours ago, GUCCI said:

It wouldn't be 2025 Hollywood if we don't include at least one or two young and over-cast A listers, and a random popular music celebrity. I nominate Zendaya to portray Nick Grey, Tom holland to portray Nineline, and Bad bunny to play Ron.. 

I would prefer Adam Ray for me, please. 

[EbonySeraphim]

I just watched Spud Spike's (speculation) video on YouTube titled: "What Actually Happened Between Razbam & ED!" I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link it here, or even discuss it here -- I'm fine having this post deleted if I can't discuss it as speculation. Anyways, I noticed a critical detail of his speculation-analysis that spelled it out for me pretty clearly as a software engineer myself, and if I assume some of the core relationships and facts about the entities are quite true. I'm just going to quote my own comment on the video mostly, but offer some context first:

The core issue speculated is that RAZBAAM entered an agreement to make their own simulator (different aircraft) for another public/government customer. Spud (referenced) claims in the video that this agreement all on the "up and up" and kind of glazes over looking this scenario with proper scrutiny and that's where I vehemently disagree having a background with software engineering, and even a bit of gamedev at a hobby level. I'll summarize my full comment: any active DCS third party module developer, with access to the private SDKs shouldn't be trying to make their own simulator as a side hustle for any customer. Even without specific proof, knowledge of the activity alone is enough to slam on the brakes up front.

====================================================================================

8:03 -- this is where you critically mislead your audience. Sure, you can consider the agreement itself normal, but the execution of that agreement is the issue and the problem is obvious to anyone who works in software and understands the nature of secret sauce being revealed when you have access to an SDK. If RAZBAAM has zero software engineers that have ever written their own original and large scale battle / simulation engine and the pieces to it, and after they work to deliver some products with an existing one[engine], and all of a sudden they are contracted to work on creating just that[another simulator] for another customer -- it SCREAMS a violation of IP. The RAZBAAM devs absolutely are using the engine modeling and integration methods of DCS's engine to create their own product and profit with another customer.

Said differently, this is like if a game developer who's never created a video game console, makes a few games for Sony or Nintendo with full access to their hardware/software dev kits and turns around and suddenly is making their own. You can start to see the issue there. They didn't have the expertise, but they had access to a LOT of trusted detail about the internals of the console hardware and now they suddenly are capable of making their own and solving the problems associated with that? Messing with the major console manufacturers directly is going to get any company flattened pretty hard and quick, so ED and the DCS engine is a soft target in this respect, but I think ED has a strong case. If I were anyone at ED, the instant I discover or have an understanding of two things: 1) RAZBAAM engineers do not know how to make a simulation engine/environment and 2) somehow they have a contract to write one for a customer of their own. That is a lawsuit by default. But since lawsuits take time, why would I pay RAZBAAM all the while when they're almost certainly in violation. Getting money returned to you is near impossible; I'll pay up after/if you can prove you aren't stealing my stuff.

That RAZBAAM had the audacity to claim ED isn't paying them and NOT offer this context upfront shows me how they like to operate. Am I suggesting that no third party module maker with DCS can ever make their own simulator? Literally no, but pragmatically, yes. If you want to peak under the curtains, you pretty much need to swear that you'll never attempt to create a competing product. At least not for a long period of time after that relationship ends. If a module developer ever tries to make their own sim while their products are actively available and recently developed, ED absolutely should put eyes on how and why they are capable of doing so. Did this company actually hire new devs who have a lot of industry experience with it, and those engineers provably do their own seperate work and research with zero access to the internal SDKs of DCS? Is the simulator/simulation engine being created by this developer significantly different or divergent from DCS's implementation approaches? This is the core proof of the legal-technical matter for RAZBAAM to prove they aren't stealing from Eagle Dynamics, or weren't intending to steal. Simply put, it would be a bad idea for any third party module developer to even try to make thier own sim ever while working with DCS. I'm sure ED would love for third parties to have as much unfettered knowledge and access to their engine as possible to make better modules. Even if ED doesn't hand over their complete source code, the SDKs workings, binaries, and design are still telling a whole lot of what is going on and third party devs could decompile the core engine or see debug symbols enough and use other tools to basically see everything. If you're a third party developer, you have to understand that if you have this access, your knowledge is IP theft if you're a part of helping create a competing product. That RAZBAAM would work on a DCS module while entertaining making their own sim is busch league level behavior. To me, it seems like they were hoping ED would not find out about their own side hustle IP theft, and if they could deliver a single aircraft sim project for this public customer, they'd be building up their own engine to come after DCS after some iterations.

Thanks for posting this video. I respect you Spud for your contributions to the community. I think expert knowledge is always needed to be laid on top of facts. (I should have written speculation here)

====================================================================================

This is all my opinion and analysis offered on top of the speculation, and alleged info from Spud in his video(s). Spud to me, is just some guy on the internet. He doesn't know me, and I only consume his channel a bit.

Edited July 12 by EbonySeraphim
Quote formatting was broken.

[NineLine]

I will allow this to stay, but the discussion of the above video like certain sus subreddits are purely opinion pieces fueled by bias for one side or the other with a heavy mix of speculation. If I were to give my opinion like these sources as you could imagine it would be seen as heavily biased no matter what facts I personally know.

So I don't want to see people crapping on Spuds as I am sure that is coming, rather take it for what it is and realize the original post in this thread is all that's really known for sure and we all just want to see this resolved for the best of our customers.

[EbonySeraphim]

Make sure the whole imported content is OK. I wasn't hiding it before but noticed the quote formatting cut off the full content, and since it doesn't reference another post on the forum, it wasn't accessible. Or at least the expand button was broken for me.

Edited July 12 by EbonySeraphim

[Aapje]

12 hours ago, EbonySeraphim said:

The core issue speculated is that RAZBAAM entered an agreement to make their own simulator (different aircraft) for another public/government customer. [...] and all of a sudden they are contracted to work on creating just that[another simulator] for another customer -- it SCREAMS a violation of IP.

There is a big difference between making a full simulator and making a module for an existing simulator, and it is not a good sign that you conflate the two. The allegedly leaked information suggests that the latter is the case and that RAZBAM signed an agreement not to develop such modules without a contract with ED.

So then it is not so much an IP case, but rather a contract case, which can be very complicated, since all kinds of factors can play a role, like whether contract clauses are legal in the first place, whether the clause is actually violated, whether there was an attempt to obey the letter of the contract while violating the spirit, whether the courts would allow that, etc, etc.

Note that according to the allegedly leaked document, the actual company who was to create the simulator setup was a third party, neither ED nor RAZBAM, so that makes it even more complicated, given that this third party would presumably not be bound by the same contracts as RAZBAM.

From what I can tell, the attempt to paint this as a mere IP violation appear to be deceptive PR by one side of the conflict, probably because they don't want to divulge the contents of the contracts, and Spud's video rather one-sidedly presents the claims of that side.

 

12 hours ago, EbonySeraphim said:

That RAZBAAM had the audacity to claim ED isn't paying them and NOT offer this context upfront shows me how they like to operate.

If they provide the 'context' you want them to give, they would probably be lying, given your misconceptions about the situation. Furthermore, you are assuming that they are even at liberty to disclose certain information.

12 hours ago, EbonySeraphim said:

Am I suggesting that no third party module maker with DCS can ever make their own simulator? Literally no, but pragmatically, yes. If you want to peak under the curtains, you pretty much need to swear that you'll never attempt to create a competing product. At least not for a long period of time after that relationship ends.

Your entire post strongly suggests that you don't understand IP law. You don't even seem to understand that there are different forms of IP, with different rules. For example, copyright is strongly protected and doesn't require any work to establish that right, but is only about the exact expression. It doesn't protect solution mechanisms, for which there are patents, which are far more restricted in a variety of ways (requiring registration, them being novel solutions and having a relatively short time limit). Also, the courts have established that APIs are not subject to copyright protection in the context of their use, so making software that calls an API doesn't violate copyright, even if the API calls use the same expressions as the API (which of course is needed for the calls to work).

If you want to seriously talk about IP violations, you need to establish what kind of IP violation you are talking about, because they are very different; and how the IP was violated exactly.

In general, it's absolutely not the case that once you have worked with a specific product, you cannot make a competing product.

You talk about the question whether a third party module maker can make their own simulator, but this statement again seems to confuse things and is very vague about what you mean. Are you talking about the alleged module for a military that RAZBAM would make, because this is not a full simulator in itself, and would need to be bundled with DCS (or its military version). So that is not at all the same as developing a full simulator. That distinction matters a lot, but you completely ignore this due to how sloppy you are with your words.

Your assertion that any company that makes either competing simulator (again, it is unclear whether you actually mean a module for DCS or completely separate software) would need to obey some vague cooldown period, suggests that you are projecting your experiences as an employee on this situation (and even then without understanding employee law). Cooldown periods can be part of employee contracts, but Ron Zambrano is and was not a DCS employee. With copyright and patents, there are defined expiry dates, which have nothing to do with how recently one worked with, or on a product. And if the actual issue is a violation of a contract, not a violation of IP law, then what matters is what is in that contract, so then all your talk about how IP laws works is not relevant to that.

PS. Not sure why you made most of your comment bold.

Edited July 12 by Aapje

[draconus]

8 hours ago, EbonySeraphim said:

secret sauce being revealed when you have access to an SDK

You might be overestimating the DCS module SDK as a mean to know the insides of the whole software allowing you to create a new simulator. Even assuming you have a dedicated talented team of coders, which already know how to program a game, it's still years of work from scratch, even if they buy large chunk of it instead of writing their own, ex. gfx engine.

[cfrag]

8 hours ago, EbonySeraphim said:

Anyways, I noticed a critical detail of his speculation

I'd stop right there. Speculating on a speculation does not make it better. It's fun, sure, and we can't manufacture facts from speculation.

8 hours ago, EbonySeraphim said:

8:03 -- this is where you critically mislead your audience.

Uh. Methinks you should put an "I think" somewhere in your assertions to make clear that you, too, are not talking about facts. So you believe that at that crucial point, the video is misleading or (one of the many other possibilities) you do not follow the reasoning.

8 hours ago, EbonySeraphim said:

this is like if a game developer who's never created a video game console, makes a few games for Sony or Nintendo with full access to their hardware/software dev kits and turns around and suddenly is making their own.

For someone who claims knowledge of the industry this is a jaw-droppingly silly assertion and documents that you seem to have no understanding of the industry at all. Neither consoles and their industry, nor console titles and entertainment titles or how they are developed. If you develop a module or other DLC for a title, you do not suddenly gain the ability (nor have the code) to replicate the environs that your artifact (mod/dlc) runs in. Just because you can create a plug-in for, say, Photoshop you do not suddenly have the ability to create your own image manipulation suite. What you allege may have been a case here is not feasible. We don't know the details, but I think it exceedingly unlikely that RAZ was alleged to have written their own sim engine, much less that they have done so based on knowledge gleaned from the SDK.

8 hours ago, EbonySeraphim said:

1. RAZBAAM engineers do not know how to make a simulation engine/environment

Agreed. And I do not think that anyone has claimed that.

8 hours ago, EbonySeraphim said:

2. somehow they have a contract to write one for a customer of their own.

 I think this may be based on a spectacularly wrong interpretation of yours. Allegedly, the discussion is about creating a plug-in based on tech for one of ED's products (DCS) and then selling that plug-in to a customer as a plug-in for another ED product which they were not licensed to do. I'm sure that there is more to this, and outside the legal proceedings surrounding this, nobody knowns. I'm quite sure that nobody accused RAZ of 'white-rooming' ore reverse-engineering the sim engine itself. I fail to see how you may have arrived at that conclusion.

8 hours ago, EbonySeraphim said:

Simply put, it would be a bad idea for any third party module developer to even try to make thier own sim ever while working with DCS.

Agreed. And I do not think that this particular brouhaha is about that, that anyone alleges RAZ of trying to build their own sim. I believe (not having access to any facts about this) that the spat is about RAZ applying knowledge gained while producing for one of ED licensed products (DCS), they used that knowledge to create a plug-in for another ED product that they are not licensed for. If that can be proven, I agree that RAZ could be in breach of contract (depending entirely on the contract that they did sign).

Even if they are not in breach of contract, it's rarely a good idea to try and sell an accessory to a product where the manufacturer of that product is hostile to your business. The entire business plan can collapse with a simple unfriendly patch or modification. 

Let us hope that there will be some kind of resolution that is helpful for us customers. At this point, the entire proceedings -- and the fact that we know about an internal spat -- is incredibly unprofessional and childish, and IMHO wreaks havoc on both companies' reputation. Which is why I think we should not talk about this - while ignoring my own advice.

[Kang]

If any of us were inclined to listen to good advice, we wouldn't be in this community.

[Dragon1-1]

Eh, since we apparently can't say anything too bad about the person actually responsible for the whole mess, this thread really is pointless. All this speculation on technical points doesn't really matter, since we already know the facts that matter: Ron did a dumb thing (we know because such a decision simply doesn't happen without a CEO's approval), is trying to avoid responsibility for doing a dumb thing (we know because of all the things he said), and we're all suffering because of it. It's not an "attack" to say it wouldn't be the first dumb thing he did, or the first time he tried to shift responsibility away from himself. Not the first time his actions hurt a flightsim community, either. It's a simple, verifiable truth. He's the guy making business decisions at this outfit, that's what a CEO is for, so he's personally responsible. He's also one with the power to make a decision to end this debacle at any time. 9L might not agree, but I think given that, he fully deserves to be described in stronger words than this.

Can we have a "5 minutes of hate - Ron Zambrano edition" thread?  I can't be the only one frustrated with him.

Edited July 12 by Dragon1-1

[felixx75]

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Eh, since we apparently can't say anything too bad about the person actually responsible for the whole mess, this thread really is pointless. All this speculation on technical points doesn't really matter, since we already know the facts that matter: Ron did a dumb thing (we know because such a decision simply doesn't happen without a CEO's approval), is trying to avoid responsibility for doing a dumb thing (we know because of all the things he said), and we're all suffering because of it. It's not an "attack" to say it wouldn't be the first dumb thing he did, or the first time he tried to shift responsibility away from himself. Not the first time his actions hurt a flightsim community, either. It's a simple, verifiable truth. He's the guy making business decisions at this outfit, that's what a CEO is for, so he's personally responsible. He's also one with the power to make a decision to end this debacle at any time. 9L might not agree, but I think given that, he fully deserves to be described in stronger words than this.

Can we have a "5 minutes of hate - Ron Zambrano edition" thread?  I can't be the only one frustrated with him.

And here we are again. You seem to know exactly what happened, how it came about and who else was or is involved. So of course you can put the blame solely on one person...

Your post alone shows the absolute nonsense of this thread, namely deriving facts from no real information.

[Dragon1-1]

48 minutes ago, felixx75 said:

So of course you can put the blame solely on one person...

Except I enumerated all the real information we have. We don't need to know exactly what happened. We know a few basic facts. Ron is RAZBAM's CEO. That's a fact. A CEO is a person responsible for company's high level business decisions, and in a small company like RAZBAM, he's solely responsible for signing off on business decisions. A fact. Ergo, Ron is the person solely responsible for RAZBAM's business decisions.

The other information we have, as stated in the first post, is that RAZBAM, as a company, is accused of a deliberate (as opposed to accidental/"beyond their control", like Ron claims) breach of contract with ED. This implies a high level business decision was involved. In particular, anything involving business dealings with an air force would have passed through Ron's desk. Had the dealings not involved the CEO, it would likely not have been a breach of contract by the company, but rather misconduct by an individual employee, these are usually resolved by termination of that employee, rather than a legal standoff between companies.

Given those facts, further details are irrelevant. The buck stops with the CEO. Given Ron's track record, it's a reasonable assumption it started with him, as well, but it's ultimately also irrelevant. Ron made or approved a high level business decision that landed us in this fix. If you have arguments as to why it might not be the case, I'll be happy to hear them.

[cfrag]

4 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

We don't need to know exactly what happened.

Perhaps we need to also acknowledge that if all that you say is true and was known, other people stood by and let it happen without implementing sufficiently mitigating measures to keep damage away from the customers. “It takes two hands to clap”. This disaster did not happen in a vacuum, there was precedence. There is enough blame to go around and share it. I’m not interested in who’s most to blame - I’m interested in finding out how the people involved intend to fix this really bad situation. 
 

Hating on someone maybe feels good for a second - and never fixed anything. So let’s look forward to fixing this mess.

Edited July 13 by cfrag

[felixx75]

55 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Perhaps we need to also acknowledge that if all that you say is true and was known, other people stood by and let it happen without implementing sufficiently mitigating measures to keep damage away from the customers. “It takes two hands to clap”. This disaster did not happen in a vacuum, there was precedence. There is enough blame to go around and share it. I’m not interested in who’s most to blame - I’m interested in finding out how the people involved intend to fix this really bad situation. 
 

Hating on someone maybe feels good for a second - and never fixed anything. So let’s look forward to fixing this mess.

But it's so much fun and so much easier to put all the blame on one person...

 

 

5 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Except I enumerated all the real information we have. We don't need to know exactly what happened. We know a few basic facts. Ron is RAZBAM's CEO. That's a fact. A CEO is a person responsible for company's high level business decisions, and in a small company like RAZBAM, he's solely responsible for signing off on business decisions. A fact. Ergo, Ron is the person solely responsible for RAZBAM's business decisions.

The other information we have, as stated in the first post, is that RAZBAM, as a company, is accused of a deliberate (as opposed to accidental/"beyond their control", like Ron claims) breach of contract with ED. This implies a high level business decision was involved. In particular, anything involving business dealings with an air force would have passed through Ron's desk. Had the dealings not involved the CEO, it would likely not have been a breach of contract by the company, but rather misconduct by an individual employee, these are usually resolved by termination of that employee, rather than a legal standoff between companies.

Given those facts, further details are irrelevant. The buck stops with the CEO. Given Ron's track record, it's a reasonable assumption it started with him, as well, but it's ultimately also irrelevant. Ron made or approved a high level business decision that landed us in this fix. If you have arguments as to why it might not be the case, I'll be happy to hear them.

Yes, you can do it that way, but it is in no way objective (since you are of course leaving out all the other circumstances), but quite deliberately a subjective decision.

Since I don't know what happened and what the circumstances were/are, I'm not accusing anyone (especially since it doesn't do anyone any good to accuse anyone). There will be a solution at some point (whether we like it or not, we'll have to see), but we certainly won't find out exactly what happened. And to be honest, I don't really care because I have no influence on it either way. Why should I concern myself with the situation between ED and Razbam? I can't do anything about it and neither can you. But I can state my opinion about how people here on the forum only badmouth one side or the other because they don't like them.

But I won't change you and I won't change this thread anyway. So it will continue exactly as before. So I should just ignore this thread (and all others). Have a nice Sunday everyone, I'm out. 

[Aapje]

9 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

The other information we have, as stated in the first post, is that RAZBAM, as a company, is accused of a deliberate (as opposed to accidental/"beyond their control", like Ron claims) breach of contract with ED.

[...]

Given those facts, further details are irrelevant.

Except that you are not actually just basing your opinion merely on facts, but on the speculation that the accusation is true, and are actually going further than that, by claiming that the alleged breach of contract was deliberate, which I don't think was even the accusation by ED, nor do we have any evidence for this.

If I assumed the worst about you, like you seem to assume the worst about Ron, I could accuse you of misrepresenting the facts deliberately. But that would be irresponsible and unjust, just like your assumptions about Ron are irresponsible and unjust. We lack a lot of information and there could be a lot of facts that are unknown to us, that could lead to a conclusion of greater and lesser fault, and greater or lesser malicious intent, both on the part of Ron and ED.

[Dragon1-1]

5 hours ago, cfrag said:

Perhaps we need to also acknowledge that if all that you say is true and was known, other people stood by and let it happen without implementing sufficiently mitigating measures to keep damage away from the customers.

How do you know they did? There are two kinds of "other people" who are involved here. The first group are RAZBAM employees, who are bound by NDAs and in the end, if the CEO is sufficiently bullheaded, they can't do a damn thing to stop him other than threatening to resign (and for various reasons, this is not always an option). Since it's hard to believe RAZBAM's lawyers suggested to Ron that he make the statements he did, it's pretty safe to assume he really is that bullheaded.

The other side is, of course, ED. For all we know, they tried to keep this quiet and keep the facade of "business as usual" as this case was ongoing, but there's no option of letting whatever RAZBAM did fly. A contract that's not enforced is not worth the paper it's written on. There had been a suspicious lack of updates to RAZBAM modules even before the thing went public, suggesting that they tried. ED would probably love nothing more than for RAZBAM to throw their hands up, accept the punishment for breaching the contract, and get back to business as usual.

5 hours ago, cfrag said:

Hating on someone maybe feels good for a second - and never fixed anything. 

Show me one thing this community can do in order to fix anything. The way I see it, all we can do it feel better about for a bit.

4 hours ago, felixx75 said:

Yes, you can do it that way, but it is in no way objective (since you are of course leaving out all the other circumstances), but quite deliberately a subjective decision.

What other circumstances? There was a high level decision to make, that ran the risk of knowingly breaching the contract. That decision was approved by the CEO. What's subjective about that? 

No amount of handwaving will change the facts, nor will it change another fact: that regardless of all the sleuthing and handwaving, reading between lines and so on, we can't do a damn thing to affect the outcome, or even speed it up. All we can do is express unanimous disapproval of the person responsible, but even then I have my doubts that simple torches and pitchforks would be enough to shift Ron's position, anchored in place by his well documented massive ego.

7 minutes ago, Aapje said:

which I don't think was even the accusation by ED, nor do we have any evidence for this.

First post:

On 6/18/2024 at 12:55 AM, NineLine said:

Without entering into the details of matters that are confidential to the parties, we firmly reject the allegations that the current disagreement between Eagle Dynamics and Razbam Simulations would be as stated by Razbam “due to circumstances completely beyond our control" and that it is "a situation that Razbam Simulations did not seek".
 
On the contrary, the current disagreement is the result of improper actions that have been taken by Razbam Simulations, in breach of its contractual obligations towards our company and of our legally protected IP rights, and for which we are seeking a reasonable and forward-looking commercial outcome rather than entertaining legal claims.

Here, stated verbatim using a couple more words.

7 minutes ago, Aapje said:

If I assumed the worst about you, like you seem to assume the worst about Ron, I could accuse you of misrepresenting the facts deliberately. 

Do I have a history of doing that? All I'm assuming about Ron comes from how he handled other issues before. None of this is happening in a vacuum, nor is Ron a fresh face in the sim community. You can disagree with me, but don't accuse me of bad faith unless you can find a previous post of mine in which I was actually found to have argued in bad faith. Go on, search around, I'll wait.

Edited July 13 by Dragon1-1