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An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice

kvirkvelia.com

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Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice

#51

Post by joshstrange »

PeterisP wrote: post #48
joshstrange wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to use the "Free and Open Source, no support" you also have to: > Fork the source code and maintain it yourself (bug fix, any future changes on Cordova and SDK, integration support, etc.); see the open source project here: https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-plugin-admob Which I think it's clear that's not what happened here, the blog author was using AdMob Pro and thus unable to qualify for "Free a…

AdMob Pro has the exact same license ( https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/blob/mas... ) and I see no reason whatsoever why someone using a product named "AdMob Pro" would be unable to use it as free and open source without support, certainly the name of the product does not influence that. The author has written their license poorly in a stupid manner that allows everyone to use their product for fre…

You can use it for free, that doesn't mean it won't take a cut. I could write code under MIT that is a keylogger, it's free to use, doesn't meant there aren't other consequences. In fact MIT protects the creator from any of those consequences.

Sure, based on the license, someone could fork AdMob Pro and remove the ad sharing but that's not what the blog author did.

Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice

#52

Post by teddyh »

new_guy wrote: post #42

That's what happens when you freeload. I think we're seeing more pushback now against people like this abusing free software from the developers who break their back to provide it. If you want to use it, PAY. FOR. IT.

That software is never claimed to be free software, and explicitly disclaims being Open Source.

Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice

#53

Post by liveoneggs »

Deukhoofd wrote: post #20
teddyh wrote: post #4

So he used code straight off GitHub, didn’t read the license terms, and then has the gall to call it “stealing” when the program does exactly as it says it would. Either learn to read licenses, or have a list of approved licenses (MIT, GPL, etc.) and only use software thus licensed. EDIT: What I mean above is the 2% which is specified in the “Licence Agreement” page – the article author is clearly considering this, t…

The software license is MIT, but there's a page on their wiki that vaguely says they take a cut of your earnings over 1000$. It definitely does not mention 30% however: > 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 > Ship our code with yours to end-user, no need paying a cent at al…

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.

Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice

#54

Post by Beltalowda »

joshstrange wrote: post #9

I'm of two minds about this. "Stealing" does seem to be a little too harsh given the plugin did say it would take a percentage if you make more than $1K and didn't buy a license. The 30% seems underhand (only because it's not spelled out in the repo) but I do understand the plugin author's position. Open source work, especially something like Ionic/Cordova/Capacitor plugins, are hard to make any money on and I've see…

I suspect the line of thinking behind the 30% seems to be something along the lines of "they're fiddling their numbers to reduce our 2% cut, so let's just take a bigger cut".

I don't think this is entirely kosher for a bunch of reasons, but I'm willing to believe that it was a naïve person doing something naïve after being burned by someone cheating him out of his cut, or something along those lines.

At any rate, since the author of this article was unaware of the 2%, it doesn't really matter if the 30% would have been mentioned or not. That they took any cut could have been clearer, perhaps – I don't know how it looked like before on that Ionic plugin site, but it's plenty clear now so that's a solved issue (if it was an issue to start with). That this was added after this exchange (and before it was published) without any pressure further demonstrates the plugin author is essentially acting in good faith.

Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice

#56

Post by csunbird »

jmnicolas wrote: post #46

It's what's worrying with running WordPress plugins: you mean I'm downloading some PHP code written by somebody unknown and this code executes whatever it wants on my server???!!! It seems I'm the only one that is bothered by this. And no I don't at the time nor the skill to audit everything or to use a static site like Hugo.

What is the difference between downloading a wordpress plugin and running it in your server and downloading a jar from maven/a js package from npm and running it?

Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice

#57

Post by Kvirkvelia »

joshstrange wrote: post #9

I'm of two minds about this. "Stealing" does seem to be a little too harsh given the plugin did say it would take a percentage if you make more than $1K and didn't buy a license. The 30% seems underhand (only because it's not spelled out in the repo) but I do understand the plugin author's position. Open source work, especially something like Ionic/Cordova/Capacitor plugins, are hard to make any money on and I've see…

I would love to see open source developers make a lot of money; I think it's a great future for everyone. But I don't think there is any dichotomy in this case. If the service declares its price in percentages or dollars (as SaaS does), it's terrible to charge 15 times more.

Mistakes happen, but in this case, it's a conscious decision by the plugin author; I think stealing is the right word, especially when it turns out you've done it with thousands of apps

Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice

#58

Post by InsomniacL »

How 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

Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice

#59

Post by y4mi »

vertex-four wrote: post #40
teddyh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's a page on their wiki that vaguely says A page titled “License Agreement”, clearly linked from the home page. (Regarding the 30%, I agree – this was questionable at best.)

It is listed as MIT in the package.json, the LICENSE file, and the plugin.xml file. That’s more than reasonable enough to consider it MIT, and that’s where license information would be picked up by e.g. any license-scanning tools. With the multiple contradictory statements, even just within the README, though, my company’s lawyer would say we can’t use this dependency at all if I showed it to them.

Afaik, the MIT licence grants you the freedom to do whatever you want with this code.

This code is written to share revenue with the author after a threshold, but that's merely the application/code working as intended.

You're free to fork the code, remove this sharing and republish the dependency under another name for example, that's the only thing that MIT is about

Re: An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice

#60

Post by gruez »

op00to wrote: post #25
teddyh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it a “scam” if the terms are clearly posted? EDIT: The percentage increase from 2% to 30% was not posted; I withdraw my opinion on that.

Huge red flag: they offer you some money back in hopes you don't turn them into the "authorities".

That's how settlements work, yes.
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