Yep... by the sounds of this add-on system XF are building, I think it has great promise to be independent to the author and a nice legal UK disclaimer should cover it, especially if devs are entering their paypal emails in their add-on page, keep XF out of the equation.
Thinking about the add-on features... one could go further to allow:
- free download
- donations
- payment for download to appear
- payment for copyright removal, requiring URL to be entered
- Any combination off...
All independent of XF itself, but a real system for devs to run their mods from, and users are harsh when given rating and feedback system against dodgy developers, so I think that alone will quickly handle it. Just need to make sure devs don't have the ability to turn such features off, and are forced to be scrutinized.
I think that is the best single aspect of the system outlined in the announcement, because everyone covering negative experiences here will be able to enter them against the developer and mod directly... which will affect the developers status for XF users to use them in the future or not.
I am really getting tired of all these independent sites being linked to mods, go here, register here, download the mod... support disappears, etc etc... that is driving me nutty compared to the devs having a full featured, all-in-one solution here, so they get critiqued by their users. I know that would keep me in line if I wanted to sell further products here or pay for copyright removal, etc.
There are some really good developers here, then there are some average ones, and then some dash for cash and disappear ones. I trust that this new add-on system will sort this out quick smart.