Thursday, July 17th 2014
EVGA Allegedly Cuts Out Original Developer of Precision Overclocking App
EVGA allegedly violated the license agreement it held with the original developer of its Precision overclocking and monitoring app, when it developed the latest version of its Precision X 15 app, featuring what it claimed to be a "100 percent in-house" back-end code. EVGA Precision was originally based on RivaTuner codebase, which developer Alex "Unwinder" Nicolaychuk licences out to several major VGA add-in board manufacturers; the more popular being MSI Afterburner. The RivaTuner base, derived from Unwinder's pioneering VGA tweaking app, forms a vast majority of the code of the likes of Precision and Afterburner, with clients going only as far as to innovate shiny skins and UI ideas, or add-on features (ideas), which are then put into code by Unwinder.
Unwinder alleges that the latest version of Precision X, the one EVGA claims to be an in-house development, continues to be largely based on RivaTuner, including the more superficial bits of it, such as user interface dialog control IDs (the way the app takes inputs from the user), and text from the multilingual help system. The installer in which Precision X is packaged, ironically, continues to feature the licence agreement copied over from the older version.
Unwinder states:
Source:
Guru3D
Unwinder alleges that the latest version of Precision X, the one EVGA claims to be an in-house development, continues to be largely based on RivaTuner, including the more superficial bits of it, such as user interface dialog control IDs (the way the app takes inputs from the user), and text from the multilingual help system. The installer in which Precision X is packaged, ironically, continues to feature the licence agreement copied over from the older version.
The most sad and painful thing for me is that the company entirely copy-pasted RivaTuner's unique concepts of displaying data into On-Screen Display. RivaTuner Statistics Server was the first tool in the industry that introduced the concept of in-game hardware monitoring via OSD back in 2005, I spent almost than 10 years on polishing it. And most sad thing for me is that original Precision was not supposed to include such functionality, so it is not included in development budget and royalty fees. I added RTSS to Precision in one of the first versions completely free of any licensing fees just to help the company to promote new tool and it truly became one of the most important application features. So it was used during more than 5 years completely free (and the company was never brave to admit that) and in final they originally "thanked" for free OSD usage by stealing it. EVGA's brand new "in-house" OSD is also open a simple rip of open source FW1FontWrapper overlay. And If I were the developer of FW1FontWrapper, I'd read the story of RTSS and think 1000 times about it.EVGA, in response to the allegations, maintained that "no code was copied," and that it doesn't see a wrongdoing in keeping the user interface consistent (UI) with older versions, since the UI is "100 percent designed by EVGA." It stated:
The original Precision was always a joint effort anyways, some elements were designed by EVGA others were licensed like the RTSS server, and many features were added because EVGA requested it. In this new version we rebuilt all back-end code from scratch. This will allow us to continue to add more features in the future, and not be bound by any "exclusivities."There has been no public release of Precision X 15, yet, and so we cannot verify claims from either side.
48 Comments on EVGA Allegedly Cuts Out Original Developer of Precision Overclocking App
BTW, the EULA in the Steam version has changed. Now it's just a couple of paragraphs.
I wish he would have handed them their asses in court.
"First, we value the relationship that we have with Rivertuner Alex/Unwinder since Feb.13th, 2008. With EVGA and Alex/Unwinder mutual efforts, Precision has became a very popular overclocking utility since it launched. Afterburners first release was in Oct. 2009.
It was originally EVGAs idea to provide the worlds first simple overclocking GUI designed for NVIDIA cards that utilizes some of the Rivatuner technology for free. Due to some misinformation floating around about EVGA Precision recently, we would like to clarify several points. Also, EVGA wouldnt have any interest to develop our own version if Alex/Unwinder had showed his interest back then like weve seen today!
1. The EVGA Precision main GUI (main Window) and format was fully designed and owned by EVGA, that means Alex/Unwinder did not design the Precision GUI at all. The Rivatuner technology was used for the backend like GPU reporting, OSD and overclocking. Other features like voltage tuning, pixel clock control and Bluetooth function were coded by EVGA. We want it to be clear that Rivatuner source code has never been released to EVGA. A year and half after Precision was introduced, Afterburner was released, that shared a lot of the same ideas and concepts originally set by EVGAs Precision, and also used Rivatuner technology.
2. Most gamers knew that some of the key features that have been requested and missed such as 64bit OSD, voltage control and video recording in the early versions of Precision, yet Afterburner had it. You probably dont know that some of those ideas were initiated and requested to Alex/Unwinder by EVGA to implement into Precision well before it was available in Afterburner, but Alex/Unwinder had no intention to add it. One year later they showed up in Afterburner exclusively without any notification and/or offer to EVGA. We felt that we became Alex/Unwinder and Afterburners free consultant if we continue this route.
We like Precision, the interface and the features, just like most of the gamers in the community, but under these circumstances, it became clear that in order to provide more features that are requested by the community, we needed to recode the back end from the ground up, using our own existing Precision skin designed as merely inspiration, that is why today we have the new EVGA PrecisionX 15. In the latest PrecisionX 15 we have put in some features like 64bit OSD support, Steam achievements and more. We want to make it clear that EVGA PrecisionX 15 is 100% coded in house without using any code from the older Precision due to we dont have the source code since day one!
EVGA will continue adding features to support the community on PrecisionX15 for free as usual, and hope to inspire other overclocking utilities to be better for the entire gaming community.
The bottom line is that EVGA doesnt want any third party to dictate what features the community should or should not have!"
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Originally Posted by Unwinder
"Well, Ill give my official statement on it as well. First, let me summarize the terms of our business relationships with the company. According to the contract I had to develop very simple overclocking tool for the company, take the following features from original RivaTuner and fit them into the concept art of EVGAs skin design:
* Core / Shader / Memory adjustments
* Ability to link/unlink Core/Shader clocks
* Fanspeed adjustment
* Monitoring utility (Monitor temps and all 3 clockspeeds, like Rivatuner monitoring)
* Ability to save clocks / fanspeed on reboot.
Couple years later we extended the list of official contracted product functionality with advanced fan speed control (ability to define curve) and power target / thermal target adjustment support for modern NVIDIA GPUs.
My business obligations per contract were to provide the following support to the product: launch new versions of software to add support for new NVIDIA cards when they are released and fix bugs in the code if the company reports any. No new functionality development in any form was ever assumed. Thats it as it is defined by contract signed by both parties. Thats the functionality we included in the development budget and in royalty fees. Thats how you had to see original EVGA Precision if it was designed by EVGA. And if the company is brave enough to call it a lot of the same ideas and concepts originally set by EVGAs Precision let it be so.
Yes, I know I did huge mistake myself, overclocking tools development is a passion and hobby of my life so I tried to combine the hobby and business and started adding new and new things to the project on top of commercially functionality licensed by EVGA. Now I learned the lesson, you cannot do it with business because the companies lose self-control because of greediness.
Anyway, this way Precision was powered up by other advanced features from original RivaTuner: G15 monitoring features, screen capture support, entire On-Screen Display support module, tray icon monitoring and so on. No development budget or royalty fees were ever requested for those features and additionally bundled applications like RTSS and it was absolutely OK for me to develop and support those things freely simply because I liked coding them. So Im certain that I followed the contract 200%, but if the company thinks differently I see absolutely no problems in terminating the contract. But it is not OK for me to previously licensed things stolen. Especially, if the company got free license on them like it was with RTSS. Sorry, EVGA, but it is not OK.
And by the way, the company PR said at least a part of truth: EVGA indeed requested me to add 64bit OSD to Precision before it became available in Afterburner, but did it in rather interesting form. The company expected to add new free feature to RTSS they got freely to use it in commercial product. Bravo. With Battlefield 4 launch both MSI and EVGA users wanted to get 64bit OSD badly. Both MSI and EVGA knew that it is rather time consuming task, both vendors perfectly realized that it is big job and ut is not covered by the contract. MSI preferred to make users happy and invest into development of it. And other vendor preferred to sit and wait while some crazy Russian programmer code it for them freely due to his coding passion. So once again, if the company believe that they can call it we became Alex/Unwinder and Afterburners free consultant let it be so, I can only sadly smile on that."
EVGA wanted everything MSI was paying for free. Like the obese kid that goes to Costcos/Sams Club for the free food samples to eat and complains there isn't enough or doesn't fill him up. He/EVGA is willing to have a membership to get him in the door but doesn't want to pay for the food. Then when He/EVGA get called on it, He/EVGA says he wanted something else so He/EVGA will go home and cook his own food but takes the recipe.
Crap now I'm hungry.
... and then proceed to call it "Rivertuner"
it's different from copying (possibly unpatented) ideas
A side effect is that all the plugins and skins developed for previous Precision versions don't work with the new one.
* <------------- your head is here
I don't expect you to get that one either.
( ! ) (ps another name for donkey/burro/liberal/democrat) Respect veteran members here and youll get help when you need it the most otherwise disrespect them and theyll turn their back on you.
If it's a problem over the UI design then I don't care because a universal UI is always better than when every manufacturer has their own. Even if everyone copied the guy who did it best.
If I'm reading this wrong and EVGA is just violating something about redistributing RTSS then I honestly don't see any problem because they aren't claiming or re branding it. EVGA is just redistributing a free program.