Tefka
Member
Mind explosion.
This topic is huge to me, as a long time lurker who loves reading you guy's threads and holds a lot of you developers in very high opinion (@Mike Creuzer, @Waindigo, the entirety of the Xenforo Staff Team). I've been following Xenforo since the days of the lawsuit and have become absolutely enchanted with not only this community, but the level of dedication from 3rd party developers that maintain residence here. To give myself some background, as a lurker who has only interacted with a few of you 3rd party developers on a very private level, I design role-play/fan-fiction websites and currently am Head Administer a medium-sized Star Wars Role-play website (different software.) My next project, however, is planned using the Xenforo system and I have already purchased quite a few add-ons, as well as the core software and official Xenforo add-ons.
I am a hobbyist. I know jack about PHP. I manage my own server well enough to get by. I work full time and do not have the time nor patience to devote myself to learning it all, and for this, I thank @Mike Creuzer for starting this thread and shining light on a topic that up until now, I did not know was 1. Possible and 2. Probable.
Now I've learned it's both, and my heart has sunk, because my adoration of @******* and his add-ons was sky high until today, when I read this thread. I'm gonna add my thoughts, as a lurker, on some key points I've found within this thread to weigh in on the discussion and possibly shed some light to how some of your consumers may feel about this situation, Developers. It's my intention to hopefully hit some issues that others like me, who are lurking and usually don't engage in these discussions, as I feel to stay silent on this issue is almost as bad as the reason why this issue was brought up in the first place.
You're not alone. There's others like us, and I dare say we may represent a large minority, if not the majority, of the consumer base for these developers. However, most of my interaction with the few developers I've interacted with has been fairly positive, @******* included. So believe me when I say you're not the only one feeling down hearted and you're not the only one who feels this way about this thread's key issue.
Yeah, I'm part of that crowd, and I apologize. But we get so caught up in sifting through Add-Ons and thinking "You can do that?! Awesome! This will take my forum streets aheads of the others." I realize this response is taking your quote a bit out of context, but I wish to convey to you that we come to buy you guy's add-ons because we ARE clueless. Because we either don't want to script it on our own, or like me, can't. While I try to learn something new every day, the uphill battle one faces when trying not only to build, but to run, comes at a very steep cost. That cost is knowledge, and as a consumer, I hope most Developers walk into a new PM with patience and understanding.
Completely agreed. It's a symbiotic relationship. I wish to pay developers for add-ons, and in return, they keep making them. The more people that pay, the more add-ons are created. I do not believe in Piracy, because while you may be getting your Add-On for free, you are obviously not contributing to the community and you are not providing these developers with the continued incentive to create. So in the face of the issue of piracy, I understand @*******'s publicly stated intentions for doing what has been revealed in this thread, however wrong the method might have been.
If a Developer wants me to join their community and promises support in exchange, so long as I get the support, I have no issue joining. If I walk away happy and with my add-on working the way I wish it to work, joining their community is a small hoop to jump through to get that done.
I used to work at a grocery store when I was a teen, stocking juice. We had something called "lossage", to which I understand is a common business practice. It means you're going to accept the loss of funds for products that you expect to be involved in accidents. For Developers, I imagine "lossage" would apply to situations you would find yourself refunding an unhappy customer (can't please everyone) or, on a much larger scale, piracy. It happens. It's not going away. I agree with @Steve F when I say that the tactics employed by @******* as revealed by this thread and @*******'s following responses are completely over the line. Your first action is to remove the line of code "at your server"? You are caught potentially collecting data from my server to yours, and I'm entirely unaware what it is. While we now know what it is due to this thread (and that it exists), you have to understand that perhaps a third of your customers, or possibly even more, won't. And in response to this breach of trust, your first response is basically "Trust me, I'll take care of it on my server."
You've got to be a pretty loyal customer or even more uneducated than I am to bite that apple. I don't think any of us will settle for less than a complete removal of this method from all of your add-ons that contain it, with an adjustment of your Terms & Services.
I love your work and I'm a huge fan. I want to remain a huge fan because of your work. I want to forgive this breach of trust and move back to throwing money at my monitor, like any other uneducated customer would. But you should have made this public before someone tripped over this huge basket of worms. The fact that you're only doing so now confirms, in my mind, that you're scrambling for a defense against being caught doing something that is extremely unethical for people who have, up until now, been compensating your for your work fairly and on your terms.
Please work towards gaining my trust back by figuring out a more ethical, customer-friendly method to protect your products and protect your customers.
This topic is huge to me, as a long time lurker who loves reading you guy's threads and holds a lot of you developers in very high opinion (@Mike Creuzer, @Waindigo, the entirety of the Xenforo Staff Team). I've been following Xenforo since the days of the lawsuit and have become absolutely enchanted with not only this community, but the level of dedication from 3rd party developers that maintain residence here. To give myself some background, as a lurker who has only interacted with a few of you 3rd party developers on a very private level, I design role-play/fan-fiction websites and currently am Head Administer a medium-sized Star Wars Role-play website (different software.) My next project, however, is planned using the Xenforo system and I have already purchased quite a few add-ons, as well as the core software and official Xenforo add-ons.
I am a hobbyist. I know jack about PHP. I manage my own server well enough to get by. I work full time and do not have the time nor patience to devote myself to learning it all, and for this, I thank @Mike Creuzer for starting this thread and shining light on a topic that up until now, I did not know was 1. Possible and 2. Probable.
Now I've learned it's both, and my heart has sunk, because my adoration of @******* and his add-ons was sky high until today, when I read this thread. I'm gonna add my thoughts, as a lurker, on some key points I've found within this thread to weigh in on the discussion and possibly shed some light to how some of your consumers may feel about this situation, Developers. It's my intention to hopefully hit some issues that others like me, who are lurking and usually don't engage in these discussions, as I feel to stay silent on this issue is almost as bad as the reason why this issue was brought up in the first place.
I am one of few who doesn't know many things about coding and all that jazz so i get pretty down hearted when i end up feeling robbed from developers who more than likely take advantage of the fact i know so little about such things.
You're not alone. There's others like us, and I dare say we may represent a large minority, if not the majority, of the consumer base for these developers. However, most of my interaction with the few developers I've interacted with has been fairly positive, @******* included. So believe me when I say you're not the only one feeling down hearted and you're not the only one who feels this way about this thread's key issue.
Most people only read 20% of a web page. And most come with a pre-conceived idea of what they should see.
Yeah, I'm part of that crowd, and I apologize. But we get so caught up in sifting through Add-Ons and thinking "You can do that?! Awesome! This will take my forum streets aheads of the others." I realize this response is taking your quote a bit out of context, but I wish to convey to you that we come to buy you guy's add-ons because we ARE clueless. Because we either don't want to script it on our own, or like me, can't. While I try to learn something new every day, the uphill battle one faces when trying not only to build, but to run, comes at a very steep cost. That cost is knowledge, and as a consumer, I hope most Developers walk into a new PM with patience and understanding.
There's nothing greedy about developers charging for their products. If they have put in their own time and effort to create them, why shouldn't they receive some financial recompense?
Completely agreed. It's a symbiotic relationship. I wish to pay developers for add-ons, and in return, they keep making them. The more people that pay, the more add-ons are created. I do not believe in Piracy, because while you may be getting your Add-On for free, you are obviously not contributing to the community and you are not providing these developers with the continued incentive to create. So in the face of the issue of piracy, I understand @*******'s publicly stated intentions for doing what has been revealed in this thread, however wrong the method might have been.
It's the fact developer(s) are now resorting to PM spam to recruit people to sign up.
If a Developer wants me to join their community and promises support in exchange, so long as I get the support, I have no issue joining. If I walk away happy and with my add-on working the way I wish it to work, joining their community is a small hoop to jump through to get that done.
Just have to say that no matter the tactics you put in place only hurt the ones that support you.
I used to work at a grocery store when I was a teen, stocking juice. We had something called "lossage", to which I understand is a common business practice. It means you're going to accept the loss of funds for products that you expect to be involved in accidents. For Developers, I imagine "lossage" would apply to situations you would find yourself refunding an unhappy customer (can't please everyone) or, on a much larger scale, piracy. It happens. It's not going away. I agree with @Steve F when I say that the tactics employed by @******* as revealed by this thread and @*******'s following responses are completely over the line. Your first action is to remove the line of code "at your server"? You are caught potentially collecting data from my server to yours, and I'm entirely unaware what it is. While we now know what it is due to this thread (and that it exists), you have to understand that perhaps a third of your customers, or possibly even more, won't. And in response to this breach of trust, your first response is basically "Trust me, I'll take care of it on my server."
You've got to be a pretty loyal customer or even more uneducated than I am to bite that apple. I don't think any of us will settle for less than a complete removal of this method from all of your add-ons that contain it, with an adjustment of your Terms & Services.
We decided to public what our system do just for make sure that we don't collect any sensity informations (as listed above).
I love your work and I'm a huge fan. I want to remain a huge fan because of your work. I want to forgive this breach of trust and move back to throwing money at my monitor, like any other uneducated customer would. But you should have made this public before someone tripped over this huge basket of worms. The fact that you're only doing so now confirms, in my mind, that you're scrambling for a defense against being caught doing something that is extremely unethical for people who have, up until now, been compensating your for your work fairly and on your terms.
Please work towards gaining my trust back by figuring out a more ethical, customer-friendly method to protect your products and protect your customers.