Originally Posted by Phanx
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Please explain to me why you feel this program is OK whereas wowmatrix isn't? They're doing the same thing basically. More on this later.
Originally Posted by Phanx
I'm sorry you feel it's too much of a burden on you to spend 90 seconds a few times a month updating an addon without the assistance of a computer program.
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Computers were made to make life simpler. Are you suggesting Accountants go back to using pen and paper for writing journal entries as opposed to accounting software? Should we all walk instead of fly? Embrace new technology I say.
Originally Posted by Phanx
It's not tricky at all. Let's move out of the virtual world and into the real world. Let's say you're a painter, and you paint a lovely forest scene. You choose a local art gallery, and display your painting there, and sell prints through them. When someone in a distant location orders a print of your painting, they can choose to have the painting shipped via either FedEx or UPS. Would you, the artist, object to this and say you did not grant FedEx or UPS permission to distribute your painting? Of course not; that's absurd. In this scenario, the painting is an addon, the gallery is WoWInterface, and FedEx and UPS are the browsers users visit and download with.
Now let's say you go visit a relative in another city. While you're there, you decide to stop by an art gallery there and see what's popular in that area. To your surprise, you discover that the gallery there is also selling your painting! But instead of using FedEx and UPS, they deliver each print themselves. You did not grant this gallery permission to display and distribute your painting. Would you say that their role in this is the same as the role of FedEx or UPS in delivering prints from your local art gallery? Of course not; they are actively displaying (hosting) your painting (addon), soliciting buyers (users), and selling (distributing) your painting (addon), without involving the gallery you actually contracted with to promote your work.
Now let's go a step further and say that the second gallery, which is showing and selling your painting without your consent or even knowledge, is sneakily avoiding paying postage on deliveries of prints of your painting that they sell, by dropping their outgoing deliveries in the shipping bin of the first gallery. Now you have a relationship between the second gallery and the first gallery that is fairly similar to the relationship between WoWMatrix and WoWInterface.
Hopefully taking the "virtual" out of the situation will better illustrate the problem.
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The problem is your "virtual" world is not an accurate reflection of what is happening with wowmatrix. Again you, like many others appear to be mis-understanding what is happening.
Let me change your example slightly so it does accurately reflect the real world.
(exact copy for the first part)
Let's say you're a painter, and you paint a lovely forest scene. You choose a local art gallery, and display your painting there, and sell prints through them. When someone in a distant location orders a print of your painting, they can choose to have the painting shipped via either FedEx or UPS. Would you, the artist, object to this and say you did not grant FedEx or UPS permission to distribute your painting? Of course not; that's absurd. In this scenario, the painting is an addon, the gallery is WoWInterface, and FedEx and UPS are the browsers users visit and download with.
(corrections here to make it accurate)
Now let's say you go visit a relative in another city. While you're there, you decide to stop by an art gallery there and see what's popular in that area. To your surprise, you discover that the gallery
has a list of paintings available from the gallery you are selling your paintings at! But instead of using FedEx and UPS,
they deliver prints with their own special shipping company that specializes in delivering paintings. You did not explicitly grant this gallery permission
to list your paintings, however they give a wonderful description of it and even give credit to you! (Most likely covered under fair use in copyright law) Your gallery is still getting the sale, but this time you have to use their delivery service and not FedEx or UPS. Would you say that their role in this is the same as the role of FedEx or UPS in delivering prints from your local art gallery?
Pretty Close!; instead of shipping anything, they only ship paintings, and since they like your paintings so much, they've gone so far as to have a catalog at their gallery showing off your work!
There -- This example is now pretty close to what is actually happening with wowmatrix. I've pointed it out on the wow forums...and I'll do it again here really quick. Wowmatrix is not re-distributing. To do that, they would first need to download it to their website (ie, take it and have it in their gallery) which they don't do. They simply provide a list of addons (a line or two in a catalog) and provide a specialized downloader that only downloads addons (delivers paintings exclusively) . The distribution goes directly from wowinterface to you via wowmatrix (from the gallery to you via the specialized shipper).
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Most addons are written by a single author, in his or her spare time, for a game that is played for personal entertainment. These authors simply do not have the time and resources (one of every class, at each of many levels, on different regional servers under different client locales, running with every possible combination of available addons, through every possible situation in the entire game) to ensure that their addons are absolutely bug-free. If you think this makes these authors and the addons they write "pathetic", I hope you limit yourself to using only addons you wrote yourself.
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I think it's great that they're putting them out there. I myself have released code I've programmed in the past to the public. Personally, I'd like to see it get to as many people as possible, and if it was popular enough to get put on a specialized tool to get shown to people it was interested in, I'd be happy about it as long as it didn't infringe on my copyrights. However, wowmatrix isn't infringing according to any definition of the law I can find.
I've considered writing some addons in the past, but I haven't come up with any specific thing I'd like to do, I'd be more apt to contribute to another project honestly. And yes, I would absolutely want my project listed on something like wowmatrix to expand the audience it could reach and reach easily.
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The resources to educate yourself about US and international copyright law are readily available for free on the Internet. If you can't even be bothered to learn the laws you're breaking, please, don't bother expending the energy to type this garbage.
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I've done some pretty good analysis of the copyright issues on the wow forums although I'd be happy if you could provide support and prove me wrong. I've yet to have someone quote the correct law and provide an analysis to show me how wowmatrix is "re-distributing" (which would violate copyright law) I just see people throwing that word around without apparently understanding what it means. I've quoted copyright law, I've quoted the dictonary, and supported my arguments.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=5
(Page 5, post 89)
Basically the best I've come up with that wowmatrix is doing wrong (well not me, but what I've concluded based on other people's discussion) is that they might be going against the terms of use of the addon listing websites. Which most likely means the user is at fault and not wowmatrix.
However I'm pretty sure the Java program you linked to above would run afoul of the same lines on the curse/wowinterface TOU. The only difference I see between the two is wowmatrix was nice enough to provide the list of links to download whereas you have to manually input them into the java program.
Either would be fine for me, I 99% want a program to keep stuff up to date. For all of the new addons I go search around curse.com or wowinterface, or google it etc and do some research, look at some screenshots, and then at the end use wowmatrix to install it because I can't be bothered to save it, and navigate to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/World of Warcraft/Interface/Addons everytime I want to install a new addon.