Add-on Anyone else think it's a disservice to have all the XTR modifications deleted?

Chris D said:
What if paying customers have been waiting a full 45 days for support for something that they have paid for? 45 days is an excruciatingly long time in that context.

It’s not too much to ask. Log in maybe once a week, keep an eye on support and other requests. You’re using our platform to make a profit, the least you can do is check in once in a while to make sure your customers aren’t all queuing up for help.
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I have read all the discussions and as far as I understand XenForo is committed to this rule and will not change it. But it doesn't make sense to delete working plugins only with the login rule. I would like to remind @Ozzy47 's discussion about developing a system to protect add-on code quality.

If the developer does a good job and the add-on continues to work, I don't see a problem with this. 45 days should not be the only criteria. There are add-ons that cannot be supported even though the developer has logged into the forum. For this reason, I use add-ons from a handful of developers on my forums.

The element of trust is really very effective for an admin to use an add-on. And even if the add-ons deleted with this rule are brought back later, it will be much more difficult to fix the damaged reputation of the developer.

If you really want to make improvements, a grading system should be introduced for add-ons and developers. Let various criteria determine the reliability of developers. Add-on security, code quality, problem-fixing speed, etc. should be evaluated based on criteria. And add-on deletion criteria should be made on this basis. In addition, the RM reporting system should be improved and it should be mandatory to report add-on errors through the reporting system. The reliability scores of developers who do not satisfactorily correct or explain these reports should be reduced.

There are dozens of forum software and one of the reasons why we use XenForo is the availability of quality add-ons. If you really want to maintain this quality, an appropriate system needs to be introduced. But my observation is that this quality depends on the developer's skills for now.
 
Paul B said:
Previously we have not disclosed the specifics because we didn't want resource authors doing the bare minimum just to keep their resources listed.

However, as the details have now been posted in this thread, I have updated the housekeeping thread.

P

Post in thread 'Resource Housekeeping'

In light of the recent discussion, this is why resources are prefixed [Unmaintained], or deleted.

Criteria for prefixing paid resources as [Unmaintained] are, author:
  • has not logged in for 30 days

Criteria for deleting paid resources are, author:
  • is no longer licensed
  • has had forum account deleted
  • is permanently banned
  • has not logged in for 45 days

Criteria for prefixing free resources as [Unmaintained] are, author:
  • is no longer licensed
  • has had forum account deleted
  • is permanently banned
  • has not logged in for 45 days

In addition, if the author...
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I have a question regarding the Criteria for deleting paid resources are, author: is no longer licensed, what exactly does "author being licensed" mean here? Does it mean that if I don't renew our own forum license it will delete our paid add-ons? 🤔
 
mazzly said:
I have a question regarding the Criteria for deleting paid resources are, author: is no longer licensed, what exactly does "author being licensed" mean here? Does it mean that if I don't renew our own forum license it will delete our paid add-ons? 🤔
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I think it means when you don’t own a license. By selling it, not by not renewing it.
 
alfaNova said:
If you really want to make improvements, a grading system should be introduced for add-ons and developers. Let various criteria determine the reliability of developers. Add-on security, code quality, problem-fixing speed, etc. should be evaluated based on criteria. And add-on deletion criteria should be made on this basis. In addition, the RM reporting system should be improved and it should be mandatory to report add-on errors through the reporting system. The reliability scores of developers who do not satisfactorily correct or explain these reports should be reduced.
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It's a good idea but i don't think XF devs team has enough time to manage this.
 
Although the topic is about the removal of XenTR products, I see that the issue is actually being discussed within the framework of XenForo resource policies.

As XenTR, we stand behind our products. We may have been a bit distant due to our current work from time to time. @XDinc will, of course, explain his reasonable justifications on this matter. He just needs a bit of time.

As for the functionality of the products: Our current products work with XenForo 2.2.x versions. Some products have been temporarily removed due to certain policy rules. This situation is, of course, debatable. I have also seen various opinions on this matter. In fact, there are many reasonable and very good ideas. These can certainly be considered by the XF team.

Furthermore, our silence should not be interpreted as us not supporting or abandoning the products. As a result, our website is active, and we strive to support our current customers as much as possible. We are not developing new products at the moment, but we plan to update our designs and add-ons over time with the stable version of XenForo.

Thank you for your understanding... ;)
 
Chris D said:
I did have some code outstanding for this a while ago. I’ll check it over and push it up.
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There probably is a better way to handle it algorithmically vs. just delete after xx days of being online. Maybe I had an addon that no one needed support on (for whatever reason). And the act of logging in isn't a particularly great gauge of the developer actually doing support. Users have a lot of ways to be notified of the need for support (push notifications of alerts for example), so maybe it makes more sense to delete addons if they haven't logged in for 45 days and they have alerts that went unread for more than 7 days or something. I don't even log into my OWN sites every 45 days, but if there's an actual issue, I know about it right away.

Also, checking whatever the criteria is against anyone on the "team" certainly makes more sense... If someone is doing support even if it's not the original uploader seems fine. **** happens... sometimes you go to prison for 5 months, but addons keep working fine during that time. 😂
 
briansol said:
Not if it's part of the agreement when you post your software for sale.
  • maintain it
  • after 45 days of no checking in, it will transition to free/open source for that version.

seems pretty simple to me.

It's what most other 'things' do. you 'buy' the latest and greatest features, you community edition the old version. If you want to get paid again, update it to something worth buying and maintain it going forward.

just ideas.
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Actually, most software does not open source older versions.
 
Only the code owner can open source it, not to mention we don't have the code anyway -- it is not stored on our server -- so the whole conversation is moot.
 
Paul B said:
No matter what we do we can't win.

When we did nothing with add-ons which developers had abandoned we were blamed for not taking action and allowing members to download add-ons which were not supported.


It had nothing to do with that.
All they need to do is log in once every 3 months 45 days.
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What I don't understand is why you guys don't build an "App Store" like in the Admin panel, so we can easily install addons right from the admin panel, and you guys keep some kind of (quality) control.
 
Starbucks said:
What I don't understand is why you guys don't build an "App Store" like in the Admin panel, so we can easily install addons right from the admin panel, and you guys keep some kind of (quality) control.
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I suspect it has to do with the resources necessary to do quality control. Imagine if they had to do code reviews of every update release of every addon... for free on top of it.
 
It would also require a comprehensive payment system.

It's a huge undertaking.

Not to mention, it wouldn't help with resources being abandoned or unsupported - they would still be marked unmaintained or deleted.
 
Paul B said:
It would also require a comprehensive payment system.

It's a huge undertaking.

Not to mention, it wouldn't help with resources being abandoned or unsupported - they would still be marked unmaintained or deleted.
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That's more realistic (XenForo taking a cut of sales by offering it here). It's not incredibly difficult from a code standpoint and at least it's a build once, and let it run. Where code reviews would be a never ending time sink of resources.

I've always thought XenForo should build a marketplace addon that handles all the things (like sales, updates and subscriptions)... and then just use it to sell XenForo itself (eat your own dogfood), but underneath it all XenForo is just a merchant in the marketplace. I got tired of waiting for it, so I ended up building exactly that type of system for XF1 and then again for XF2. It's definitely doable (and what I use to sell my Cloudflare addon for WordPress). The new PayPal API XenForo recently implemented supports payment skimming (where the marketplace can take some amount of the sale).
 
It's definitely doable but I'm not sure the subsequent delays to every future release (due to never ending third party code reviews) would go down too well ...

Then of course as soon as there's a bug with an add-on, we are going to be expected to troubleshoot and fix it, because we are now hosting and selling it.

Without a doubt.
 
Right… I wouldn’t ever expect XenForo to do code reviews. That’s what I was saying. An official Marketplace addon, sure (maybe someday). But trying to be a gatekeeper for all addons… no way.
 
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Starbucks said:
What I don't understand is why you guys don't build an "App Store" like in the Admin panel, so we can easily install addons right from the admin panel, and you guys keep some kind of (quality) control.
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Unfortunately, that didn't go well for a competitor. And then many people were left stuck with add-on they couldn't update because they purchased the add-on through the store.
 
Would it be a good idea for xenforo to buy the addons from the person who doesn't wish to post here so they can update them and everyone can buy them?
 
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