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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

#81

Post by nerdponx »

PeterisP wrote: post #35
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.)

The point is that licenses and license offers are self-sufficient, a "clarification" from another document simply does not constitute a binding clause in a license. If you have an offer of the MIT license from the author (as in the LICENSE.txt), then no clarifications or restrictions linked from the home page affect it, and other offers of other licenses are possible but not relevant if you like this particular offer…

The MIT license also clearly states that the software comes with NO WARRANTY (in all caps) and that you use it at your own risk. I don't see what the MIT license has to do with this at all.

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

#82

Post by Hasz »

Ha, caveat emptor. Oh, wait, OP isn’t even a buyer and paid nothing for the code and blindly built it into the app. No reading, no understanding, just copying.

OG plug-in author has a problem with people abusing license key system, builds in code to detect it. Disclaims it vaguely, OP gets bitten and has the gall to call it stealing. Author offers to help OP out, OP puts him on blast.

Zero sympathy, even at 30%.

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

#83

Post by javajosh »

Kvirkvelia wrote: post #68
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…

Thank you for your comment! I don't think taking 2% is theft. Maybe it's a dark pattern, but it's definitely not theft. In the article, I say that I calmed down after explaining with 2%, which means my agreement with the situation. The way the increase to 30% is made and the number of users with such a percentage says that the author deliberately increases the percentage without warning the user, which is theft

I think it also speaks highly of you that you engaged with him, signed your name, and made rational arguments. These are not the actions of a thief, but of someone who has thought about their business model and is willing to stand by it.

That said, if you really wanted to impress, you'd improve the visibility of your practices for each individual developer, by providing a dashboard that fully discloses revenue-over-time, along with proactive notifications when your terms change. The MVP here would be a single email sent when the 2% term changes.

This business model where the providing party retains the right to change terms arbitrarily has always concerned me, in the same way something like an indentured servitude contract would, and yet they are all too common. But its everywhere, and no self-interested business would take steps to reduce it's power against the counter-party. There is a whole set of problems here that neo-liberal capitalism not only cannot solve, but actually seem to make worse. It's easy to point the finger at a single dev, or a small team, and say "you're unethical!" but in truth I think the statement is more informed by the ability to identify the actor than the action itself, which is endemic. (To take two examples: variable rate mortgages, and credit card debt, neither of which are modeled by consumers and both of which are certainly gamed by the counter-party.)

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

#84

Post by colejohnson66 »

InsomniacL wrote: post #63
teddyh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you call it Open Source? The plugin itself does not call itself Open Source, and clearly links to another project for those people who want an Open Source program.

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.

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

#85

Post by GraemeMeyer »

jscheel wrote: post #19

I'm confused, where in the license does it give them the permission to randomly assign an ad-share percentage? This seems highly suspect, and probably illegal in most jurisdictions. In fact, reading the actual license agreement here https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/wiki/Lic... seems to suggest that they will stop serving ads, not randomly start increasing ad share.

I think this is the closest bit:

“Kindly reminder, do not use a fake license key or a license key from others, do not share your license key with others. Abuse of the license key may cause negative impact.”

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

#86

Post by putlake »

yesimahuman wrote: post #76
Beltalowda wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, sin…

(Ionic CEO here) I think regardless, it's something developers don't expect so we're removing it from our site right now to avoid confusion and surprises (we’re going to be changing the whole design of this list soon anyways so it’s moot). The plugin description came from another project we support and trust plugin authors to write their own descriptions but we're realizing we need to scrutinize those more closely. I…

The plugin author seems like a standup guy who responded cordially and even returned money, which is something no scammer would ever do. Your platform, your rules. But I feel you're being unfair to him with this knee-jerk reaction.

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

#87

Post by yesimahuman »

putlake wrote: post #86
yesimahuman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Ionic CEO here) I think regardless, it's something developers don't expect so we're removing it from our site right now to avoid confusion and surprises (we’re going to be changing the whole design of this list soon anyways so it’s moot). The plugin description came from another project we support and trust plugin authors to write their own descriptions but we're realizing we need to scrutinize those more closely. I…

The plugin author seems like a standup guy who responded cordially and even returned money, which is something no scammer would ever do. Your platform, your rules. But I feel you're being unfair to him with this knee-jerk reaction.

Unfair to the plugin author? It's moot anyways because we're making a design change to the site and changing how we reference community plugins. We aren't stopping developers from finding and using whatever plugin they want to use, just changing how "official" they look on our website.

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

#88

Post by deeviant »

Hasz wrote: post #82

Ha, caveat emptor. Oh, wait, OP isn’t even a buyer and paid nothing for the code and blindly built it into the app. No reading, no understanding, just copying. OG plug-in author has a problem with people abusing license key system, builds in code to detect it. Disclaims it vaguely, OP gets bitten and has the gall to call it stealing. Author offers to help OP out, OP puts him on blast. Zero sympathy, even at 30%.

There is a huge divide between "oh hey you didn't read the license and missed the fact that this OS addon takes 2%" and "the license said 2%, but it's actually 30%, oops my friend!"

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

#89

Post by w0mbat »

I am a native Mac/iOS developer with a lot of experience. I did a contract where they wanted me to make some improvements to a large company's barnacle encrusted multi-platform Cordova app. I wouldn't normally touch that kind of thing with a bargepole but I was slated just to add some features to the Mac native app shell, beyond the scope of the embedded JavaScript app.

Those Cordova apps over a certain age and complexity are terrifying. Random plugins, ancient Cocoa Pods, abandoned JavaScript libraries, several different build systems (somehow all being used), Node.js modules with version conflicts that can never be resolved, pulled from all over the internet and all over time.

I am not surprised this guy had no idea what one 3rd party ad plugin was doing, if the app I saw was typical.

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

#90

Post by wizzwizz4 »

joshstrange wrote: post #51
PeterisP wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> In fact MIT protects the creator from any of those consequences.

Eh. For something like a keylogger, not really; there are laws against writing and distributing malicious software. In the UK, you can write malware for educational purposes, but woe betide those whose malware escapes or “escapes”: no MIT license disclaimer will save you.

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