Originally Posted by kkot
It sounds like you are agreeing with me.
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In the case of Amazon/Twitch's acquisition of Curse, absolutely. But I'm fairly certain CF's rewards program was in place prior to that. Your claim that rewards programs are "exploitative", etc, was made with no qualifiers so is inherently false.
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If we are to follow that logic the user will not install add-ons from WoWI and the add-on manager will not incur any costs. The exact wording that I used was "drive traffic back" to WoWI - the intention is not to showcase add-ons or generate "clicks" but to compel users to seek information from the source if they are interested in installing an add-on or if they want to browse around, etc. In other words, the search function is intentionally gimped out of respect for the host.
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I understand the logic you're using here, but the average user is less likely to see information about a project if viewing that information requires an additional action that removes them from their current context.
Additionally, any information that an author includes in their project's description, etc, needs to be readily available to the user. That is why this information
exists.
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Add-on managers employ a variety of other mechanisms to minimise their impact on the host. instawow in particular caches the WoWI catalogue for one hour; will not retrieve the catalogue unless the user is attempting to install or update a WoWI add-on; it will perform batch requests when resolving add-ons and cache file details for five minutes; and it will cache downloaded ZIP files indefinitely. It also identifies itself with a custom user agent string so that the host is able to rate limit requests originating from instawow as they please.
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That's great. But it doesn't mean that
all AOMs follow similar protocols.
Originally Posted by zealvurte
I imagine a future with API authentication tokens being used for addon managers moving forward, but probably also on a host's own website when downloading. This would entirely prevent the direct access currently exploited to bypass a host's terms and monetisation schemes. That part is really on the hosts to sort themselves out.
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Most users already have an account with WoWI. Having to login via their preferred AOM wouldn't be that big of a deal. That said, you're right that it's on the hosts to figure out how to best handle things on their end. But it's more beneficial if everyone works together.
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I agree user logins aren't something I'd want to see become mandatory, but optional support for it would be ideal, allowing for premium access where it exists.
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A fair point.
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I would love to see a future of many addon managers and hosts, where addon managers are selected by users for good UX, and hosts are selected by authors for best offering of services and by users for UX too, but that's not viable if everyone continues in this manner and repeating mistakes of the past. It's a future I envisioned 11 years ago and had to abandon, and the recent situation is why I decided to reach out now to see if my past work could contribute in any way.
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Agreed.
Originally Posted by kkot
I also fail to see why this keeps getting brought up unless the intention is to denigrate add-on manager authors.
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I doubt anyone's going through every AOM's code to see if they're
technically "scraping". "Scraping" just happens to be shorter than, "using a host's API to provide direct downloads without the permission of the host or authors". Not sure why that's something you'd take personally.
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Evidently, developers who've spent years working on freely-licensed software for no compensation are worth less than add-on authors (who at least get to benefit from CF's rewards programme) or host staff because of some ingrained capitalist notion of impropriety.
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On the contrary, it's more beneficial for everyone to work together. I'll happily promote any host or AOM that is willing to work with the community to get this all sorted out amicably. But ranting about "capitalists", etc, isn't helping anyone.