Jon W's Premium Upgrades are Confusing

[Hoffi]

It's a mess and I will replace all of his AddOns in the near future.

 

[rexxxy]

what amazes me is his reaction to people asking for clarification. if that's your reaction from a customer service aspect looking in from the outside I wont even touch your addons

 

[Dakota Storm]

Jon seems to have a distinct lack of business sense. I honestly believe he's going to put himself out of business before long.
He'd be a lot better off working for a more 'tangible' boss.

 

[Brent W]

I don't think members is a good method to charge people branding free. We may have 300k members on one site but only a couple of thousand have been active over the last few years.

 

[Slavik]

I don't think members is a good method to charge people branding free. We may have 300k members on one site but only a couple of thousand have been active over the last few years.

This was my thoughts, ive got a migration coming up with close to a million members as they've been around for a very very long time, yet their active user base may only be ~1000-2000.

 

[oman]

From reading back, it seems as though Jon is insistent on the cash grab and this structure for his business. @Lawrence made some valuable points on one of the previous pages.

 

[Carla Birch]

I personally don't understand a few things.

1) @Jon W lack of wanting to explain the system to a core group of his target sales area, we after all might just be willing to buy some of your add-on's and your lack of support to explain the price system makes me wonder just what level of support i would get if i had a problem with a add-on, your not wanting to support something that might gain you sales, so to me you sure not going support when you already got my money.

2) Why forums have to pay more if they have more member, the hours of work gone into making the add-ons does not get bigger or smaller based on the size of the forum willing to buy. If it was a chat system or a system that used your server, then yeah thats fine, because the user count affects the running cost. Here its got no effect at all.

Adding on to that, a forum might have 40k users and be non profit and another might have 40k and bring in a good bit of money, why should the non profit be hit, the same way why should a forum with 40k have to pay more than a forum with 4k, its the same lines of code they both using/installing.

3) Last yeah i don't understand the pricing system.

I really think it's time that users here have some way to rate/give feedback on addon dev's, kinda like how ebay works.

 

[Alpha1]

I really think it's time that users here have some way to rate/give feedback on addon dev's, kinda like how ebay works.

Freelancer.com has a good system for this. Something similar would be very useful here. But thats a different discussion.

 

[Sheldon]

I really think it's time that users here have some way to rate/give feedback on addon dev's, kinda like how ebay works.

We've already started on that.

 

[Newt]

May I suggest this

 

[BassMan]

May I suggest this

 

[|Jordan|]

Jon seems to have a distinct lack of business sense. I honestly believe he's going to put himself out of business before long.
He'd be a lot better off working for a more 'tangible' boss.

He did admit that his last 3 companies folded; one of them being a charity! On top of it, based on his interview at the admin forums, he isn't paying any rent for his office or very little at the least (he's in a back room at a church! the one place you would think someone who acts like this wouldn't be!). The church is housing a wolf in sheep's clothing. Perhaps the Sheppard should be notified?

 

[Mouth]

I do have a concern about his callbacks. Maybe it's unfounded, but out of curiosity:

So, if I release a paid add-on, Jon can track how many forums purchased it, and how well it sells, say on a monthly basis? And use this data to decide to create a competing product? If he is tracking add-on id's, it is very easy to figure out what the add-on is, and the number of installs there is.. It would be a rough estimate but still...

If the above is possible are the developers here, that sell add-ons comfortable with the fact that that the number you sold could be tracked, and could be used to create competing products?

However, tracking other developers add-ons is a breach of privacy, IMO.

@Mike has already said here that XenForo's position is that it's OK for add-on developers to track usage of other developers add-ons (and your sites statistics/data), as long as the tracking add-on developer declares it to the end user. Privacy, and other developers work being tracked without their approval, was the reason I started that topic. I don't know if XF has a private developers forum, but if so I would expect/hope that developers are up in arms over this precedent and the potential to expand it much further. The potential to be malicious with add-on tracking, of add-ons that are not your own, is just too large IMHO, and I was gob-smacked when Mike said it was OK.

 

[Paul B]

I don't know if XF has a private developers forum

There is no private developers forum.

You have access to the same forums as all other members.

 

[|Jordan|]

I found out some more information as to why Jon W is so flippant about our reactions.

*Text Removed by valid point of Sheldon*
*I wasn't bashing, i was pointing out a curious observation in Jon W's lastest interview with the admin zone. Find it yourself to see what i mean*

 

[Sheldon]

C'mon now, really?

Let's not turn this into a religion bashing thread. Just keep to the facts of the upgrade/licensing confusion and that's it. There isn't need for all this outside nonsense being brought into the discussion.

 

[Mouth]

Thanks to ******* I had to add the disclaimer to my add-ons that they install and uninstall as one would expect; no callbacks, nothing left to show they were ever installed. And now I'll have to modify it again.

I've wondered if add-on developers will include a check for JonW's install/upgrade being installed, and refuse to install/run if so because they do not want a 3rd party developer tracking how many, and what type, of forums are using their add-on(s).

 

[|Jordan|]

Is the check only in his install/upgrade because man am i happy i didnt install (and never installed) that piece of bloatware.

As a precaution i scanned all my installed Waindigo addons (im currently in the process of removing ALL of them) and didn't notice any other callbacks.

But if you are a user of Install and Upgrade and you want to continue using it without the ability for Jon W to see your addons, add the following to your server's hosts file*:

0.0.0.0  waindigo.org

In windows this is located in:
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

In linux this is located in:
/etc/hosts

This doesnt change anything in Jon W's addon so you aren't going against his EULA. If you're using a shared server host, then you won't be able to do this but if you're on a dedicated or VPS, then go to town on it!

*For those who don't know what this does, whenever your web server tries to query waindigo.org, instead of the query reaching it, it loops back onto the web server itself and fails. So nothing is transmitted to waindigo.org!

EDIT: I read the other thread in this forum (the one about install and upgrade) and my method for blocking communication renders the addon useless since it can't check the latest versions anymore, so if you dont want E.T. phoning home, you're better off uninstalling it.​

 

[Xon]

We have 24,600 or so users registered but in reality we only have 5-6k active/regular users. There are a lot of instances with the licensing where something simple like purging banned accounts from your stats could save you thousands a year and that seems ridiculous.

Spacebattles is the same, only 1 in 9 of the total users signup have actually been active in the last 6 months.

 

[gfc]

Spacebattles is the same, only 1 in 9 of the total users signup have actually been active in the last 6 months.

That is the case with all forums of a certain size. I'm registered in approx. 80-100 forums, but visits only 3 of them daily and further 10 more than once a month.