I'm sure many of you use the WoWMatrix program to update your addons. I personally know many people who use it, including my roommate. However, as an addon author, the concept bothers me greatly, and I have actually requested that they stop making my addons available through their program. Why? Here are some things to think about
:
1. WoWMatrix doesn't show an addon author's name anywhere. They are making money off of providing access to an addon, and they can't even spare a few pixels of screen space to give its author nominal credit?
2. WoWMatrix doesn't show an addon's real download URL anywhere. This means that users who download an addon through their program have no way to give feedback to the author, or report problems they may encounter.
3. WoWMatrix doesn't show the author's description of an addon anywhere. On a release site, an author can place a big, bold warning at the top of the description stating than an addon is under development, currently in beta status, is not yet complete, and/or may be unstable. Users who find and download an addon through WoWMatrix will never see that warning. They'll just download an addon, deem it broken, and tell their friends that "Addon X sucks, don't use it". While the erstwhile WoWAce suffered from this problem to a lesser degree, it was generally understood that
everything on WoWAce should be considered beta. No similar understanding is attached to WoWMatrix.
4. WoWMatrix makes money off of providing access to addons it doesn't host. WoWMatrix doesn't pay the storage bills or the bandwidth bills for the addons you download through its program. If you're downloading an addon that's hosted on WoWInterface, through WoWMatrix, the file is sent to your computer from WoWInterface's servers. Prior to requesting that they remove access to my addons from their service, I inquired as to how their service works, and recieved the following:
The WowMatrix application downloads directly from
the official website of each addon.
For instance, Ace addons such as the ones you've
written are downloaded directly from wowace.com.
We do not run scheduled updates nor do we host
addons on our servers.
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Finally, when I requested that they remove access to my addons, citing the first three concerns above as well as the "no redistribution" clause in the license that ships with my addons, they didn't even bother to respond to me to let me know that they'd complied. I had to check their site to see if my addons were still available or not. This, more than anything else, makes me think ill of their site and their application, and - when viewed in light of the fact that they don't credit authors anywhere on their site or in their application - really gives the impression that they hold very little respect for the authors whose work is making them money.