> the drop was due to the Russian government blocking us in an attempt to monopolize the mobile electronic diary market. I’ll save this story for later
I kinda want that story right now lol.
An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice
131–140 of 195 posts
Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice
#132Incredibly shady percentage and even more shady way of responding. With that being said, calling it stealing is a bit much. The blame is on you. Read the license of what you're using, and make sure what it's requesting in general. Triggering statement, so be warned: Ad Revenue supported products are generally ALL SHADY. So, I'm astonished he gave you back some money. Probably a useless attempt to have less hassle mov…
> Read the license of what you're using
Here's the license:
https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/blob/mas...
It's MIT.
Here's what they say "If you have used this plugin for FREE but monetized more than $1000, you are also required to get a license, or share us some Ad traffic as stated in win-win partnership model below"
If the MIT license is correct, they are lying: people don't need to get a license. The users already have a license that covers absolutely everything and they even have the right to edit the plugin to remove the % cut altogether.
Other things they are lying about, in their wiki https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/wiki/Lic...
"Reminder: copy the code, change a plugin name, without feature enhancement, then publish to npm, is not allowed."
This is just false. The existing MIT license absolutely allows changing the name and republishing to npm.
Perhaps they just don't understand what is open source about. Absolutely all open source licenses allow forks.
Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice
#133Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
He called the 2% “stealing”, too. Sure, the slow increase to 30% was not documented, and I can see a good argument being made there.
Could you please hint us to the sentence where he calls the 2% “stealing”, too? You yourself say that "the increase from 2% to 30% is way more questionable". What is "questionable" about that? Maybe that is not stealing but it is an obvious fraud. I really don't get what your motivation could be to defend that kind of shit.
> What is "questionable" about that? Maybe that is not stealing but it is an obvious fraud.
The plugin author claims that the ramp-up to 30% is an anti-abuse measure. Supposedly, something triggered the abuse abuse flag and the rev-share ramped up as a "get in touch with us" signal, with the additional rev-share refunded when the user does get in touch.
Taken at face value, I think that's not unreasonable, though the lack of logging from the plug-in author's side is questionable (asking the customer how much they wanted refunded).
Where I think the jury is out is whether that is actually what happened, or whether the plug-in just ramps up every customer to see what their pain tolerance is.
Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice
#135How anyone can defend this type of behaviour is beyond me. It is theft, the hidden cost in the licence agreement* states 2%, taking that up to %30 for no reason and with no warning based on some arbitrary 'black list' is theft. * as shady as that is
You.. Ran... Their.. Code.. How anyone can think they're entitled to assume how it should run is ignorance sufficient to shred what remains of my humanity. He didn't demand you give him money, he said if you ran his code, it will act as he intended. You ran his code. It worked as intended.
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Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
You shouldn't overreact this way. Really it doesn't speak well of your platform.
I feel like their response is not at all an overreaction. The plugin author was underhanded in their conduct. I wouldn't want to use a platform which allowed nonsense like that to proliferate, so am happy to see dubious stuff like this removed. To me it signals that the platform owners care about what is on their platform and are concerned about their users. That is a good thing.
The article seems to be down for me. But I’ve gathered it was spelled out in the license? They even returned money? Removing a person’s revenue stream because someone wrote a blog post is by default, an overreaction. If they’re going to change it all anyway, why rush it?
Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that what WordPress is in the first place?
Absolutely, but it's still scary nonetheless! The problem is that there's not many viable alternative to WP.
Isn't any piece of software "some code written by somebody unknown and this code executes whatever it wants on your server"?
Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/blob/mas... > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files
The code being free does not mean usage is free. Qt’s code is free to look at, but you still need to pay them for certain things. Licenses apply to the code, not what it does.
Firstly, I was addressing the claim in the comment I replied to that it's not open source. It's licenced under MIT
That's not what the licence states at all...
> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person ... including without limitation the rights to use .. copies of the Software.
The licence states Permission is granted free of charge to use the software, if the software is charging then that's a breach of the licence..?
Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
MIT license does not disallow monetization or rev share. It does allow you to fork this plugin and remove the code responsible for rev share, etc. This is all above board.
From their license agreement: > If you have used this plugin for FREE but monetized more than $1000, you are also required to get a license, or share us some Ad traffic as stated in win-win partnership model below. https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/wiki/Lic... The project however includes the following the license: https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/blob/mas... Surely releasing code…
The monitization bit is the "license" for use of the code. The MIT license applies to the source code itself, not the execution of it.
MIT allows you to: "use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software". That's it.
Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like their response is not at all an overreaction. The plugin author was underhanded in their conduct. I wouldn't want to use a platform which allowed nonsense like that to proliferate, so am happy to see dubious stuff like this removed. To me it signals that the platform owners care about what is on their platform and are concerned about their users. That is a good thing.
The article seems to be down for me. But I’ve gathered it was spelled out in the license? They even returned money? Removing a person’s revenue stream because someone wrote a blog post is by default, an overreaction. If they’re going to change it all anyway, why rush it?
> But I’ve gathered it was spelled out in the license?
Just curious, is this your attitude towards other things as well? There used to be a very popular ebay scam, which had people sell large screen TVs and video game systems for very cheap. At the bottom of the auction description, in fine print, the auction also clearly stated that you were bidding/buying only a photo of the product, not the actual product. In other words, it was "spelled out", so no one was getting scammed according to your perspective here, right? It was on the fault of the buyers for not reading the license/auction description?