Jason Rohrer [1] is the author of Passage [2]. His latest game, "One Hour One Life" [3], is a massively multiplayer online game where your character has only one hour of life. You start off as a baby and are dependent on others for shelter and heat before you're able to be autonomous. Eventually you die of old age but your impact on the world/server persists. I recommend anyone interested to purchase the game [4] or…
> as far as I could tell was dedicated to the public domain I recommend everyone to read this regarding that matter: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/ay0w64/one_hour_on... I don't think Jason really understood what public domain means when he released the game into public domain. Once people started using his work as PD work, he started to complain, file DMCA requests, etc.
He's appealing to ethics, not the law. He says right there that his objection is to the naming of forks. If that looks to you like violation of the public domain promise, you must think the name constitutes the body of the work.
I'm not sure what to make of the DMCA filings, though, since those should obviously rely on copyright in the first place.
From his twitter, it seems he's also convinced by now that the trademark law provides perfect solution for this problem, and has apparently filed an application for a trademark on the OHOL name.