RE: For-pay software

blackwater · 12-25-08, 11:54 AM

A new suite of addons from Bang have been uploaded here that require BangCore to work, it is not a free addon and requires people to pay after a trial peroid.

Please remove as he just using wowinterface to advertise his pay addons.

addon author name is bangerz.

Yhor · 12-25-08, 12:21 PM

I don't know WoWI policy on pay to use addons, but it seems at the very least these authors should have to make that part known on the download page. I reported one of the files for that reason.

blackwater · 12-25-08, 12:51 PM

Its encrypted because after 2 weeks you have to pay to use them

Thats why it they should be removed besides the fact that he doesnt een make it clear that they are all trail-pay addons.

Yhor · 12-25-08, 01:02 PM

The "EULA" from the "Bang! Art of War" addon.

. Eligibility

1.1 Subscriber Agreement

PLEASE READ THIS END USER SUBSCRIBER AGREEMENT CAREFULLY AND MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND IT.

1.2 Access to the BangCraft services are referred to in these terms and conditions as ‘Addons’ is open to the following who are collectively referred to in these terms and conditions as a Subscriber.

The accompanying executable code version of BangCraft and related Software is made available under the terms and conditions of this Agreement.

IF YOU INSTALL OR USE THE PRODUCT, YOU CONSENT TO BE BOUND BY THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS HEREIN, DO NOT INSTALL OR USE THIS PRODUCT.

A Subscriber may initially use the BangCraft ‘Addons’ for free for the trial period allocated.
2. Subscriber’s Obligations

All Subscribers who are entitled to access the BangCraft ‘Addons’ must:

2.1 Have paid a subscription for the BangCraft ‘Addon’ for the allocated period.

2.2 The BangCraft Software is protected by copyright laws, trade secret, and international copyright treaties, and is being made available to you as a subscription according to the terms of this Agreement.

2.3 BangCraft grants to you a non-exclusive and non-transferable right to install and use a copy of the Software for your personal, non-commercial home entertainment use on one personal computer. The Software made available under this Agreement is a subscription, not sold, to you by BangCraft. BangCraft reserves all rights not expressly granted under this Agreement.

Except to the extent that BangCraft otherwise authorizes you in writing, the following restrictions shall apply:
2.3.1 You may not use the Software for any commercial purposes, including resale, rental, lease, display, or offering on a pay-per-play or other for-charge basis. You may not sub-subscribe the rights provided to you.
2.3.2 The Software (in both object and source code forms) constitutes valuable trade secret information of BangCraft, and you may not reverse-engineer, decompile or disassemble the Software or otherwise attempt to gain access to the source code for the Software.
2.3.3 You may make a single archival copy of the Software to the extent permitted by law. You may not otherwise reproduce the Software, or modify or distribute all or any portion of the Software. You shall not provide copies of the Software to any other party. You may not create derivative works from the Software.
2.3.4 No right, title or interest in or to any trademark, service mark, logo or trade name of BangCraft or of any third parties is granted under this Agreement. You may not remove or alter any trademark, logo, copyright, or other proprietary notice(s) on the Software.

2.4 Not disclose their Registration Key to any other person or entity or store it in any form, whether coded or unencoded, in a location where it is capable of being copied, read or used by anybody or allow arrange or cause any other person or entity to have access to the BangCraft ‘Addon’.

2.5 Not use or access the BangCraft ‘Addon’ or represent that it has any right or entitlement to use or access the BangCraft ‘Addon’ if at any time the access granted herein is terminated in accordance with clause 7.
3. Intellectual Property

3.1. The Subscriber hereby acknowledges and agrees that all intellectual property rights in the BangCraft ‘Addon’ including all moral rights are owned by BangCraft.
4. No Liability

4.1 The Subscriber agrees and acknowledges that:
4.1.1 BangCraft’s sole purpose for the BangCraft ‘Addon’ is to provide a service to users of the World of Warcraft (WoW) game.
4.1.2 BangCraft shall not be liable to the Subscriber or any third party for any loss or damage howsoever arising out of the use of the BangCraft ‘Addon’ other than in accordance with this clause 5.

4.2 Other than as required by Law* in accordance with the Trade Practices Act 1974 or any equivalent state legislation, BangCraft is not liable to the Subscriber or any other person or entity for any consequential, incidental or indirect loss or damage, including loss of profit of a consequential, incidental or indirect kind, resulting from any delay in or failure to provide access to the BangCraft ‘Addon’ or any negligence of BangCraft or any of its officers, employees, advisers or agents.

4.3 Subscribers are aware of the nature of the BangCraft ‘Addons’. BangCraft does not warrant that the software is error-free or that access to the software will be uninterrupted; potentially inhibited by changes to the WoW service which are beyond the control of BangCraft.
5. Access

5.1 Upon satisfaction of the eligibility criteria set out in clause 2 and payment of the subscription fee BangCraft grants to the Subscriber non exclusive access to use the BangCraft ‘Addon’ subject to these terms and conditions (Access).

5.2 BangCraft ‘Addon’s may be subject to upgrade and new version releases.
5.2.1 A Subscriber with a subscription for a BangCraft ‘Addon’ upgraded as a result of software ‘bugs’ will maintain their access eligibility.
5.2.2 A Subscriber with a subscription to a BangCraft ‘Addon’ that has been upgraded and released as a new version, will be required to purchase a new subscription to maintain their access eligability.
6. Term and Termination

6.1 The Access shall continue from the payment of the subscription fee and provided the Subscriber is not in breach of its obligations under these terms and conditions.

6.2 BangCraft may terminate or restrict the Access without notice if the Subscriber is in breach of any of its obligations under these terms and conditions and upon such termination or restriction if there is any unauthorized access to the BangCraft ‘Addon’ by the Subscriber, BangCraft may recover compensation from the Subscriber for all of its loss and damage arising from such unauthorized access.

6.3 The Subscriber may terminate the Access by giving BangCraft notice in writing in which case the Subscriber shall not be entitled to any refund of the unused portion of the subscription fee.

6.4 The obligations under clauses 2.4, 3, 4, 5 and 6.2 shall continue notwithstanding the termination of the Access.

6.5 Upon termination of the Subscription pursuant to this clause the Subscriber shall not be entitled to retain any copies of any materials or other resources in the possession or control of the Subscriber and shall return all copies of such materials or resources to BangCraft within seven (7) days of the termination of the Subscription or you will immediately cease using the Software and you must destroy all copies of the Software in your possession or control.

6.6 The obligations under clauses 2, 3, 4 and 5 shall continue notwithstanding the termination of the Subscription.

* This Agreement is governed by the laws of Australia.

Edit: Maybe the EULA should be posted on all the afflicted addons download pages, since it's a "legal binding contract".

Psoewish · 12-25-08, 04:42 PM

Well sure, but downloading an addon before finding out it's a trial doesn't make sense, it should be added to the description page.

Kind of like how Carbonite handles it. There's a small free version with limited stuff available for download, and it clearly states that and a paid version is available.

I don't mind people asking money for addons, but they do need to clearly state so before you download it, in this case through the addon description.

Gemini_II · 12-25-08, 06:03 PM

Agreed.

Whether you like Carbonite or not, their free version operates exactly as advertised, and is therefore allowed. They maintain two flavors, one of which can be hosted here.

I don't believe these Bang addons fall under that. I looked at few of the pages and they don't mention any sort of subscription, but when reading the EULA or visiting their main site, you get inundated with the "Subscribe Now". All of these addons appear to require a subscription to a core addon.

Bangerz · 12-25-08, 07:14 PM

Hi, just reading this thread it looks like I need to clarify a few things.

The subscription is per addon, the core module is not subject to the subscription and is always free.

Some of the addons never require a subscription, one of those is Bang! AntiSpam.As for function - if you think it's not working like it says it does, please post a bug report. However that mod has been tested and works exactly as it should in my experience and others.

For the others, it's $2 for a subscription that never runs out, and is valid for all future versions, after a 2 week trial. Compare that to Carbonite, - No trial, pay up-front, $5, re-subscribe every month (or 15 for a year).

After reading your comments I agree with one point. It should be more obvious that you are downloading a trial. I'll update my pages accordingly now.

Miralen · 12-25-08, 07:29 PM

Actually Carbonite's pricing is as follows. 4.99 for two months, 9.99 for 6 months and 14.99 for 12 months. Now regardless of the prices, Carbonite also has a free version that is totally free and not a trial version which you can download here.

Apologies if this is seen as kind of off topic just wanted to clarify carbonite's prices.

Bangerz · 12-25-08, 07:33 PM

No problem, you are correct, edited my post.

Also I have updated my trial version addon pages to make it obvious that it is actually a trial version.

The free addons I have uploaded remain unchanged, however I have removed the EULA file from the directory.

**Shirik** · 12-25-08, 08:02 PM

First things first, there is a "report addon" button you can use to report addons. Do not create threads regarding addons for reasons like these. Continuing to do that could put you in more trouble than the author -- there is no reason to generate negative publicity in a public forum like this.

That being said, there is no set-in-stone policy against for-pay addons. WoWI does not intend to be an advertising site, however we also don't have any direct rules against it, either. It generally falls under the discretion of the team as a whole over whether or not we feel it is of benefit to the community.

In the case of Carbonite, there is a free version which provides some features as a "teaser" to push to the fully-featured program. We feel that the free version is of use to the community and thus have no reason to move against it.

In both the case of Carbonite and the addons referenced here, they are still work of the author and need to be treated as such. Those authors have the right to do whatever they wish with the product, which includes requiring subscriptions.

That being said, I will be changing the title of this topic to something less demeaning, and would prefer that in the future you use the appropriate venues to address an issue of this nature.

If you wish to bring up a topic to the community, that's one thing, but if a topic is directed at the moderators of WoWInterface, then there is no reason to bring it to a public forum to do so.

Regards,
-- Shirik
WoWInterface S.Moderator

Bangerz · 12-25-08, 08:10 PM

I have sent a P.M. to Cairenn explaining my intentions and how my registration system works.

If it's decided that my current set up is unacceptable then I will modify it.

I decided against a 'teaser' version, and opted instead for a fully functioning version which will work for 2 weeks, with a low registration fee after that period.

Again, if it is nessecary I will modify how this works.

As for the encryption, I have offered to give the source for my addons to the sites file moderators.

**Shirik** · 12-25-08, 08:33 PM

Originally Posted by Bangerz

As for the encryption, I have offered to give the source for my addons to the sites file moderators.

In general we prefer not to accept things like these -- especially in the case of executables, the source code given to us has the potential to not be the same as the actual uploaded file.

If the need arises (as it does in executables always), we have several ways to verify the security of uploaded files. Without going into detail about what we do, we have two people, myself included, that specialize in testing and "tearing apart" software to ensure it is safe. With regards to executables, we go as far as fully disassembling the file and checking all of the system calls it makes (and for this reason, we do not allow compressed or encrypted executables here -- note the word "executable" and that a Lua file is not executable).

Whether or not it will be done for these files I cannot say right now -- currently I do not see the need for it, however if such a need arises everyone can rest assured that the security of our users is our top priority.

Sepioth · 12-25-08, 09:47 PM

Does the $2 subscription fee cover ALL your addon or is it $2 PER addon.

Also comparing you fees to Carbonite is like comparing apples to oranges.

Once your addons are done there done .. except for maybe a bug tweak or two. Your addons do not seem as "complex" or as large as Carbonite.

Carbonite is constantly updating adding new features to make it better, updating it with new quest info .. stuff like that.

But if you want to charge people then by all rights you can do that ... just make sure it's worth it.

Bangerz · 12-25-08, 09:55 PM

But if you want to charge people then by all rights you can do that ... just make sure it's worth it.

Thats basically the point of the trial, people can decide for themselves if they think it's worth the registration fee. If not, they got to use it for free for 2 weeks and can just uninstall the addon, all good.

Once your addons are done there done .. except for maybe a bug tweak or two. Your addons do not seem as "complex" or as large as Carbonite.

I am actually constantly adding new things to my larger addons (like Bang PVP), but even for those you do not need to pay a fee every month.

***Dolby*** · 12-25-08, 11:08 PM

Its Christmas we will deal with this tomorrow ok? This isnt allowed on our site but isnt THAT big of a deal that it needs to be delt with on a holiday we want to spend with our family and friends. If it was a virus then we would have responded asap.

Paid addons can release free versions but they must have some value (we will decide that) and can not advertise the paid version or require something paid to work.

Republic · 12-31-08, 05:37 AM

To be honest, this all seems dodgy and unprofessional. No offense, but that agreement doesn't even seem professionally-written. We already pay for a game that's constantly feeling like a beta, how do you really expect people to be enthusiastic about paying for an AddOn that's constantly being debugged (and thus imo a beta)?

These kinds of things just always seem like a couple of kids trying to capitalize on WoW's success. I wouldn't be against a commercially-produced product, but these things just seem too homemade. To each his own I guess.

Then again, I don't even consider most "release" versions to be release caliber. I'm not sure why people don't just call it like it is, given the constantly changing status of everything, a BETA. The word "release" is thrown around way too casually in the world of WoW AddOns. I especially like "release" versions of an AddOn that are released daily. What the hell makes them a "release" and not a beta?

A piece of advice for the developer here - don't develop your AddOn to the point of trying to do everything under the sun. Do one or two things, keep it simple, and do them damned well. People are more likely to reward your work for solid product rather than something wtih a christmas tree of features full of bugs. Clique is an example of something that I consider on the level of something "commercial". QuestHelper is an example of something that tries to do way too much. See what I mean?

I realize I'm just a lowly user so take my input for what you think it's worth. If it's nothing, that's fine with me. I just thought I'd offer some relevant input.