XF 2.0 | There needs to be better management of copyright notices from addons

[Ridemonkey]

XenForo already puts an area to add copyright notices. If developers choose to ignore this, or to make it big and ugly, it's not on XF to control in my opinion.

I also don't think it should be incumbent on the XenForo developers to make sure you can use add-ons cheaply or for free.

An add-on is a small software package. The developer controls it. Part of using it is the branding - if you don't like it, or if it's too expensive to remove, then you might want to consider a different add-on.

Some guidelines to protect the safety of their customers (such as the guideline to not have external code executing as part of an add-on) are good, but extending that to trivial cosmetic issues like branding notices is getting a little too heavy handed. If developers insist on using terrible branding notices, everyone needs to stop using that add-on. See how fast those ugly copyright banners go away then.

 

[51463]

I don't mind having any branding on my forums. I think developers could get more business from their branding which is good for them and us. They could eventually even offer some affiliate % program.

But right now i think the current branding is really lame looking. It's so boring and ugly and long and it's doesn't look nice on anyones forums. XenForo should of made a cool looking branding.

Here's something i made on paint. It's cool looking! It's a "branding button" it always stays on the footer. When you click on the button an overlay would pop up showing who's worked on the forum with an avatar, small description and a link to their website. Then we wouldn't have all those long ugly branding links at the bottom of the website.

Frankly i don't even know what a LCC or some of that other stuff developers write on their branding. At least this way it would be more organzied and cool looking.

 

[Naz]

Frankly i don't even know what a LCC or some of that other stuff developers write on their branding

I think you mean LLC and if so, it means limited liability company.

 

[Coop1979]

XenForo already puts an area to add copyright notices. If developers choose to ignore this, or to make it big and ugly, it's not on XF to control in my opinion.

I disagree. I think it's entirely XenForo's responsibility to keep developers under control. This is not the era of vBulletin or PHPBB. This is the era of Google Play and iTunes, where developers have to adhere to basic standards to have their apps work on a platform.

Like it or not, it is and will increasingly be in the future XenForo's responsibility to apply standards to their developers.

 

[Paul B]

The only control we can exert is over those who list their add-ons on our site, which we have done so with some resource guidelines.

We have absolutely no control over third party add-on developers who offer their add-ons elsewhere, away from this site.

Comparing to an app store is not relevant in this context.

 

[Ridemonkey]

I disagree. I think it's entirely XenForo's responsibility to keep developers under control. This is not the era of vBulletin or PHPBB. This is the era of Google Play and iTunes, where developers have to adhere to basic standards to have their apps work on a platform.

Like it or not, it is and will increasingly be in the future XenForo's responsibility to apply standards to their developers.

Oh yes, a developer team of four or whatever they are now is entirely comparable to a multi-billion dollar company's desire to create an entire worldwide mobile ecosystem.

Are you going to be personally responsible to install and audit every add-on submitted? I hope you're going to do it for free because I'm not going to be willing to pay an inflated licensing fee just because I'm apparently not capable of looking at someone's branding and deciding whether it's visually appealing or not.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I disagree. I think it's entirely XenForo's responsibility to keep developers under control. This is not the era of vBulletin or PHPBB. This is the era of Google Play and iTunes, where developers have to adhere to basic standards to have their apps work on a platform.

Like it or not, it is and will increasingly be in the future XenForo's responsibility to apply standards to their developers.

I agree (in the context of this thread and copyright notices). All XenForo have to do in XF 2.0 is add a stipulation for addon developers to hook their copyright to a specific part of the footer.

This benefits everyone. XenForo sites look neater, Admins are happier, skin developers can make neater looking skins, addon developers get full credit.

Who loses out? No-one.

The only control we can exert is over those who list their add-ons on our site, which we have done so with some resource guidelines.

We accept that but it would be helpful to most webmasters if copyright notices were hooked into the same location in the footer as part of the terms of releasing an addon via XenForo.com

XF leads the way on a lot of things which have made life easier for Admins, this would just be another one on the list.

 

[FredC]

Sad something so easily fixable is met with such ridiculous resistance..

 

[Paul B]

A specific location has been provided for third party add-on developers to add their own branding.
We can't force them to use it.

Just as we can't force them to use the default classes, etc, which makes their add-ons seamlessly work with all styles.

As I posted earlier, perhaps when we are as big as Apple we can introduce our own AddStore and all add-ons will be vetted and those not meeting the criteria will be rejected.

 

[HWS]

As I posted earlier, perhaps when we are as big as Apple we can introduce our own AddStore and all add-ons will be vetted and those not meeting the criteria will be rejected.

Just want to mention that Apple only got so big, because they first invented the App Store and required developers to follow their rules.

It will be hard to try it the other way round.

 

[Lone Wolf]

A specific location has been provided for third party add-on developers to add their own branding.

We can't force them to use it.

I somewhat understand the reluctance but all it takes is to add a line to the conditions to uploading an addon to the RM and if a developer forgets or doesnt comply then I'm sure Admins will remind you to remind them.

 

[Paul B]

We simply don't have the resources to police add-ons at that level.

 

[RobParker]

We can't force them to use it.

But you can recommend they do and 99% of them then will.

If it's not already in the resource guidelines, put it in as a recommendation.

 

[rainmotorsports]

Just want to mention that Apple only got so big, because they first invented the App Store and required developers to follow their rules.

It will be hard to try it the other way round.

Not sure which way you are approaching this. If its from the fact they decided to trademark App Store okay. Otherwise they didn't invent even the smallest detail of the concept. A third party had an app store for Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian smart phones years before the iPhone. Apples success really had a lot to do with the previous success of the iPod and Jobs was brave enough to think they didn't need an app store at all when they launched.

Apple makes more money off one product than all of Microsoft And I'd be willing to bet they expend more on their App Store division than Xenforo Ltd brings in.

 

[Mike]

Standardization of -- or at least formally recommending -- a position is something we will consider for the future. There is a position that people can easily attach to in the footer now (either inside the existing copyright div or immediately after it).

We have intentionally avoided putting any recommendations (or "shoulds") in the resource guidelines, keeping those explicitly limited to MUST requirements to ensure that they are kept as concise as possible ensure that developers are able to follow them (and hopefully be clear that they aren't violating any of them).

 

[FredC]

A specific location has been provided for third party add-on developers to add their own branding.
We can't force them to use it.

Just as we can't force them to use the default classes, etc, which makes their add-ons seamlessly work with all styles.

As I posted earlier, perhaps when we are as big as Apple we can introduce our own AddStore and all add-ons will be vetted and those not meeting the criteria will be rejected.

To be clear i wasn't speaking of XenForo, i just think the third party addon devs could come up with some standard on their own that doesn't look like a case of ego wars..

 

[Lone Wolf]

Standardization of -- or at least formally recommending -- a position is something we will consider for the future.

Thnaks Mike, it would really help make sites look better.

 

[JoshyPHP]

I agree that some standardisation in that area would be nice. I posted a thread wondering about that a little while ago.

There should be a section provided in the footer called credits (or whatever) where addon developers can put their copyright notices.

As an add-on author I'd be happy with just a "Credits" or "About" link to a page that lists all add-ons and links to their resource page.

 

[digitalpoint]

I don't believe third party add-on 'copyrights' provide any benefit to anyone.

You would be surprised how much real user traffic they can bring.

Most of my add-ons don't have attribution notices, but some do (depending on what the add-on is and more much effort really went into making it vs. how much money you make on it).

But as an example, here's the user traffic brought by a single add-on for the last year:


So 88,343 total referrals for the year works out to an average os 242 visitors per day. A single day's traffic isn't much, but when you compound that with multiple add-ons over time, it's a significant amount of traffic. As far as that traffic being "useless" traffic, some of the users referred end up registering for the site and become contributing members. Some of them go on to become advertisers on our site, etc. So it's not just fluff traffic either.

Standardization of -- or at least formally recommending -- a position is something we will consider for the future. There is a position that people can easily attach to in the footer now (either inside the existing copyright div or immediately after it).

A formal recommendation would probably help at least somewhat.

 

[Dad.]

A copyright is our main form of advertisement. We put a lot of work into what we build, so I dont know if I agree with it should be grouped into the cost. You can think of it as a Free/Basic version and a Pro version, every software does this to some extent.