I think your focus on the financials, which was a very small part of the article is misguided. I'm under the assumption that the article is part of the author trying to "piece things together" - as a part 2 of his spiritual journey where he concluded:
> I wrote a story for a friend, but in the end, he didn't treat me like a friend, and I'm hurt.
By accepting this premise, these are examples of when he expected to be treated as a friend, but was instead treated as an outsider. As for the legality, I don't think a vague agreement can clarify if the work is licenced or if the licence was transfered.
But he was an outsider, he wasn't Notch's friend. Notch contacted him for the express purpose of writing the End Poem.
Of course, I'm sure they were friendly in their discussions, there's no point in being actively hostile to the people you're working with. But the idea the relationship extended anything past a game developer and a contracted writer seems to be entirely in the author's mind.
One side sees it as the start of a friendship, the other as a work contract.
It certainly feels a bit like he was feeling lonely and needed to see this as a friendship. I'm sure there was a deep artistic connection, but that's not quite the same thing as a friendship. It's awkward and frustrating when only one side sees a relationship as a friendship.
It's possible this is true, but then the author needs to stop acting like they are totally blameless and everything is just where the universe took him. All of the author's problems here are self-inflicted.
How could you possibly read that into it? The only blame I see assigned in the text is self-blame.
Select snips:
> I just misunderstood what was going on.
> Now, Carl didn’t do anything wrong here. Carl is not the baddie either. He was a CEO, and major shareholder, behaving the way a CEO and major shareholder is supposed to behave. The misunderstanding was all mine.
> But that anger was of course misplaced. If I had trouble paying for my kid’s clothes and shoes, that was on me: my life, at that point, after all those years, was the direct result of all the decisions I had made over its course, and those decisions involved prioritising art and deprioritising money, again and again. (As Robert Louis Stevenson dryly put it, “Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.")
> Again, I have to calm down and remind myself, and you, there are no bad guys in this story. Do not hassle Markus, or Carl (or even Microsoft) about this. I’m sure they didn’t even think of it as “tricking” me; that’s my perspective, not theirs.
> He was projecting his motivations onto me, in the same way I had been projecting my motivations onto him. Mutual misunderstanding.
> Most of the fault there is mine (I am a deeply flawed guy)
> But that anger was of course misplaced. If I had trouble paying for my kid’s clothes and shoes, that was on me: my life, at that point, after all those years, was the direct result of all the decisions I had made over its course, and those decisions involved prioritising art and deprioritising money, again and again. (As Robert Louis Stevenson dryly put it, “Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.")
While the author says this in a few places, the picture he tries to paint is one of a grand misunderstanding. Both sides of the communication just weren't understanding each other.
But the reality is that _all_ of the misunderstanding comes from him. There is no "mutual misunderstanding", Mojang understood the conversation perfectly well.
The author asked for an offer, Mojang offered $20k, and the author accepted. It's not reasonable to expect Mojang to "understand" the author is going to hold some grudge about believing they deserve more than the offer they accepted without negotiation.
The correct response from the author would be something along the lines of "I am entirely at fault, all of the misunderstanding was on my side, Mojang/Notch/Carl did nothing wrong".
Instead the author reminds us at every turn about how Notch gave bonuses to all the Mojang employees but not him, how they're such a great guy for not getting lawyers involved, and how they're turning their work into a "priceless gift" (despite being paid $20000 for it).
I think it's fair to say that Carl, and Mojang in general, didn't understand him either. So the understanding was definitely mutual, even if the reason for that was almost entirely Julian's inability and unwillingness to talk about contracts and money, but also not wanting to hand that over to his agent.
But at the same time it's pretty clear he was jealous of all the money he didn't want to talk about, and that he saw himself as a partner rather than a contractor.
It was very much mutual. Mojang seemed to have been of the understanding that they paid for more than just the work done and the right to use the poem in the agreed initial release of the game, which was a major misunderstanding on their part. IP transfer was not part of the agreement.
It is what it is, everyone involved probably learned some form of lesson, and I don't see why we need to create villains or victims in this story.
More fundamentally, it takes two to tango. Just because the perspective of Mojang is the more common one in the industry doesn't make it the more "correct" interpretation. It's very much a two-way street and it's on both parties to make sure they understand each other when things are not explicitly spelled out and agreed upon.
The author never attempts to communicate they didn't want to transfer the IP. I believe that if the author told Mojang "I don't want to sign this contract, I'll give you a license to use the poem instead." that Notch would have been entirely open to that - after all, that is the deal they had with C418.
Mojang, at a minimum, paid for a license to use the poem in the game. They wanted to have this on paper because it would make the deal with Microsoft easier, but they would have been right about that fact either way. The author, on the other hand, believes they are in a situation where Microsoft has no right to use the End Poem despite the fact they accepted $20k for it.
Mojang clearly did not understand the conversation perfectly well, if they did they wouldn’t have sent the check until the contract was signed.
I mean, ignore all the stuff about friends, blah blah, Carl has apparently signed them up for whatever the defaults are under (based on other comments) UK IP laws?
> We just didn’t understand each other, because we were playing different language games.
The author collectively places the blame on poor communication from both sides. But the reality is that all of the poor communication was entirely from his side, and he knew in advance he struggled talking about money and had an agent for that very purpose.
There's also this whole weird subsection where he describes things the universe did to him as if he has no agency in his own actions and where he ended up in life.
I found the writer’s story engaging, moving, and with a satisfying conclusion. I appreciated his articulation of his struggles with how he feels about art and money. I definitely did not take away the same feelings from it that you apparently did.
I definitely agree, and on the basis of the information given that seems to be the crux of the issue. Yet I can easily believe and totally see that the author saw it as more - who's to say that they weren't closer to friends prior to the initial discussion about contracts?
It’s fair to focus on financial when the author spends the entire article mulling over legal action because he feels hard done by, and then ends the article begging for money in the form of donations.
> I wrote a story for a friend, but in the end, he didn't treat me like a friend, and I'm hurt.
By accepting this premise, these are examples of when he expected to be treated as a friend, but was instead treated as an outsider. As for the legality, I don't think a vague agreement can clarify if the work is licenced or if the licence was transfered.