WoWInterface

WoWInterface (https://www.wowinterface.com/forums/index.php)
-   General Authoring Discussion (https://www.wowinterface.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=20)
-   -   Solidice - another site hosting addons without permission (https://www.wowinterface.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49578)

ronburgundyy 08-05-14 11:01 PM

Notifications of the authors is a action item in which we have yet to address, but notification on curse is certainly something we can do, preferably once the authors are able to gain control of their addon, as I am sure that is what many will wish to do upon notification.

Prior to that time, at the very least, all addons which are hosted should be hosted in compliance with their licenses.

Fizzlemizz 08-05-14 11:03 PM

With tiny running around with a Staff tag on he appears to be an official representative of the site. If that's the quality of your sanctioned first point of contact with customers and authors then you have far bigger problems than a few poached addons.

One of the reasons I host here at WoWI and nowhere else is the quality, professionalism and the always courtious nature of all the staff here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ronburgundyy (Post 294824)
As it is not my place to comment on the actions of any other person, I can assure you that I am dedicated to ensuring a positive progression for the relationship of Solidice and the addon community and its authors.


Phanx 08-05-14 11:05 PM

The right way to go about launching a new addon site is to post an announcement on other, established addon sites where authors are already publishing their addons. Explain what's good about your site, and why authors should bother uploading their addons there. Authors who are willing to add another point of distribution to their network will upload their addons to your site. Others won't, and that's just how it is.

What you're doing -- rehosting addons without their authors' consent or knowledge -- is the wrong way. What you're doing is unethical at best, and illegal at worst. Even for addons that are under open source licenses, you're not doing their authors any favors by rehosting those addons without contacting the authors first; Seerah already did a great job of explaining why.

There are some authors who only post their addons on Curse -- yet you don't see WoWInterface scraping those addons from Curse and rehosting them on WoWInterface, because that would be shady and scummy and (in many cases) illegal. Likewise, there are some authors who only post their addons on WoWInterface, and Curse doesn't scrape and rehost those addons.

Personally, I'm just not interested in adding another point of distribution for my addons. I'd already removed them from ui.worldofwar.net and wowguru.com long before those sites shut down, simply because it was too much work keeping everything updated in that many places. It's enough work posting updates and providing support for several dozen addons on two sites, and I suspect most other addon authors feel the same way.

You'd have to offer something really, really, really awesome to get me to even consider dealing with another site -- especially after your first move was to rip off my addons and post them on your site without crediting me or linking to any official download/support pages -- and based on the look of your site (very basic, clearly not the work of professional designers) I just don't think your team has the resources to offer monetary incentives (eg. Curse author rewards) or advanced features (eg. GitHub-quality code viewing, issue tracking). If all I wanted from a distribution site was the ability to upload a ZIP file and type a description, there are literally thousands of file-sharing sites where I could do that. Why should I bother with yours?

ronburgundyy 08-05-14 11:23 PM

You also raise many good points Phanx, and maybe our inexperience is showing (obv it is).

We have alot lined up for features to come, many of which we hope addon authors will find useful and appealing. We would also love to get to the point we were could offer other incentives for authors, similar to curse's author reward points, however at this time we are not there. Our actual development team is small, consisting of solely myself. This is not an excuse for any poorly executed practices, merely a statement to give transparency. We are taking every concern and suggestion and treating them with the utmost importance and will do our best to work toward implementing and adopting those practices which are best received.

This first go around, certainly was not the most author friendly approach. In the past, we have experienced quite a bit of slander / resistance from already established sites. Stories like this lead us to believe any outreach to the authors would have been resisted by those sites on which they previously belonged, as we are obv not the only ones they are targeting. Again, not trying to make any excuses, but merely provide some transparency.

CobraA1 08-06-14 12:22 AM

Quote:

But if there's no long-term ramifications, then how will they learn anything?
I dunno about you, but when I was young, I learned not to touch a hot stove in about a fraction of a second :eek:, and haven't touched a hot stove since. Long term ramifications aren't the solution to everything.

Problem with Ten Ton Hammer was that they got all tied up in being defensive, rather than taking the time to communicate and learn from their mistakes. Rather than learning what the law states about intellectual property, they got tied up in defending their actions. They also chose to ignore best practices as already established by the addon community, which created a lot of ill will.

Ronburgundyy, I highly recommend stopping by copyright.gov and reading the circular on copyright basics. If you have the time, they've got the entire copyright law there as well.

Do provide authors with a means to update their addons. Authors uploading their addons is considered best practice for addon websites, while scraping addons from other websites is a frowned upon practice.

And oh, Ronburgundy: I've already grabbed the CobraA1 handle for myself at SolidICE, so please ensure that no other handle can claim ownership of Reagent Restocker; if your website does resolve these issues and uploading addons by authors becomes possible, I may consider hosting Reagent Restocker there.

Cairenn 08-06-14 12:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CobraA1 (Post 294830)
Also: What's the sales pitch for your website? I'm sure a lot of authors may be interested in why they should host on your website rather than (or in addition to) Curse or Wowinterface.

Ummm, I've been courteous enough in letting them use our forums to apologize, but I don't think it unreasonable of me to ask that they post their sales pitch on their own site ...

CobraA1 08-06-14 12:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cairenn (Post 294831)
Ummm, I've been courteous enough in letting them use our forums to apologize, but I don't think it unreasonable of me to ask that they post their sales pitch on their own site ...

Fair enough. Consider my question un-asked ;).

ronburgundyy 08-06-14 12:50 AM

Much appreciated for the words of advice Cobra, we will make sure to do our homework and review those links.

We are certainly trying to avoid the same mistakes TenTonHammer made in regards to communication, that is not the relationship we wish to have with the community.

I notice Reagent Restocker is currently Licensed MIT. We have taken measures to avoid hosting any All Rights Reserved addons. My understanding is MIT would allow for such hosting, however in best interest if that is not your wishes prior to being able to claim the addon please let me know and it will be disabled.

Quote:

I've been courteous enough in letting them use our forums to apologize
I do appreciate the hospitality and civility, at least starting after my first post.

Quote:

I don't think it unreasonable of me to ask that they post their sales pitch on their own site ...
Completely understandable and we will make sure to do so when the time comes. I would ike to point out, or more so pose the question, would us pitching our sales pitch here on WoWInterface have been prohibited?

I feel as if it would have been, not that it would be your problem, obviously its our problem, but its leaves me to ponder if this suggestion, is really viable at all:

Quote:

The right way to go about launching a new addon site is to post an announcement on other, established addon sites where authors are already publishing their addons.

Torhal 08-06-14 01:03 AM

Yeah, not sure Phanx thought that one out.

It'd be akin to someone from Walmart going to Costco and telling their customers to come shop at Walmart. Definitely not appreciated, and a hugs faux pas. Also grounds for ejection by security.

Fizzlemizz 08-06-14 01:06 AM

But then again Phanx is not purporting to be a site official. It's time Ron figured it out that it's best to let go the baiting and just get back to focusing on his .... thing ;)

ronburgundyy 08-06-14 01:10 AM

o/ *waves goodbye*

Fizzlemizz 08-06-14 01:14 AM

<-- Notices little green square of still connectidness and wishes Ron well.

Phanx 08-06-14 01:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Torhal (Post 294834)
Yeah, not sure Phanx thought that one out.

It'd be akin to someone from Walmart going to Costco and telling their customers to come shop at Walmart. Definitely not appreciated, and a hugs faux pas. Also grounds for ejection by security.

You may have a point there, though I'm not really sure what the alternative is... Walmart and Costco can put ads on TV and radio, put up billboards, etc. but those aren't really practical options for a WoW addon site. An announcement on the official forums? (Not sure how many addon authors read anything there; I certainly don't, as 5 minutes of reading posts there makes me hate WoW, my life, and even kittens.) Reaching out to individual addon authors privately? (Seems like a slow and ineffective approach.) Are there any websites where this kind of thing could be announced that addon authors actually read?

Fizzlemizz 08-06-14 01:54 AM

Nope but Ron and Co. have a site that addon users visit. Asking users to ask authors to upload addons might have been an idea outside the box.

Annoying or not that might have gotten author attention to their site.

Sadly their original approach has pewd the scrooch.

Please delete if this is considered counter productive to WoWi.

Edit: Hi Ron.

Edit2, idea, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED!!!

Cairenn 08-06-14 03:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phanx (Post 294838)
You may have a point there, though I'm not really sure what the alternative is... Walmart and Costco can put ads on TV and radio, put up billboards, etc. but those aren't really practical options for a WoW addon site. An announcement on the official forums? (Not sure how many addon authors read anything there; I certainly don't, as 5 minutes of reading posts there makes me hate WoW, my life, and even kittens.) Reaching out to individual addon authors privately? (Seems like a slow and ineffective approach.) Are there any websites where this kind of thing could be announced that addon authors actually read?

Putting posts on the O-forums was how we started. It's how we start all of our sites ...

Torhal 08-06-14 03:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phanx (Post 294838)
<snip>Reaching out to individual addon authors privately? (Seems like a slow and ineffective approach.) Are there any websites where this kind of thing could be announced that addon authors actually read?

That's what TenTonHammer did, via PMs here and on Curse. Going back to my competing stores analogy; it's basically the same thing, but in whispers from the next aisle. I actually banned the guy who was (mass) PMing authors on Curse, and Cairenn did the same here IIRC.

Resike 08-06-14 03:35 AM

The real question is that who the fuck are these guys to earn money for my work, which is a free product. Even if it's a BSD or GPL licensed.

Phanx 08-06-14 04:10 AM

Guys who think having written one successful addon means they're the next Curse Inc., obviously! :rolleyes:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Torhal (Post 294842)
That's what TenTonHammer did, via PMs here and on Curse. Going back to my competing stores analogy; it's basically the same thing, but in whispers from the next aisle. I actually banned the guy who was (mass) PMing authors on Curse, and Cairenn did the same here IIRC.

I was thinking less "spam everyone" and more personally contacting just a few authors of popular addons who are active on forums to begin with... a kind of "hey, I know your addons are popular and you are very active in the community, we are thinking of launching a new site, what do you think?" I was contacted that way (by email) once, and I gave the sender my honest opinion -- much like this latest site, they had absolutely nothing to offer me or any other addon author. I never heard back, and as far as I know the site never even launched.

Also, after looking around a bit more, I can't even imagine why this particular site was launched at all, in its current state. There are literally no addon management features. You can't even upload a file! I'd be better off uploading my addons on any old generic file-sharing site! And they've explicitly stated that they don't even have an estimate of when any of these so-basic-it's-really-a-bare-minimum-requirement-to-even-exist features will be available!

Using your analogy, they're at Costco trying to lure shoppers to Megamart, when Megamart hasn't even broken ground on construction yet. I'm just really confused now as to what could possibly have been going through the minds of the people responsible for this incredibly foolish and poorly-reasearched move...

Lombra 08-06-14 04:28 AM

I believe Tiny thought he and his oQueue was too good for anything else (he was originally on Curse afaik, I don't know/remember the full story), so he launched his own site, and that's basically why it exists.

Didn't that TTH site launch because of GearScore or something, too?

Also, there were definitely All Rights Reserved projects on Solidice yesterday, but by the time I read that there supposedly weren't, they were gone. (or at least mine) Creds for actually removing them, I guess, but it shouldn't have been necessary to confront you about it for that to happen. It's nice that at least you seem to be reasonable about it, Ron. However, if this is how all sites are going to do - steal first, apologise later - then that's not really acceptable.

semlar 08-06-14 04:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lombra (Post 294845)
I believe Tiny thought he and his oQueue was too good for anything else (he was originally on Curse afaik, I don't know/remember the full story), so he launched his own site, and that's basically why it exists.

He refused to comply with blizzard's addon policy and the addon sites removed it.

Rather than upload a non-offending version, he decided it would be simpler to have anyone who wanted to use it go to his website.


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