I respect when respect is due.


There are a number of people who I've had confrontations with in the past.. pretty much all of them can tell you that it was nothing personal and I've given them respect when resepct was due.


You've been more than disrespectful to me and the other devs COUNTLESS times. Generally when I am not respectful, it's because the person I'm disrespectful to was disrespectful. No necessarily toward me, but toward something I think deserves resepect.. such as the CoC, the CoE, the ToS, etc.


Even with you, it's nothing personal.. you just disrepect a lot of things a lot of the time. I don't think that deserves respect. Therefore I do not show as much respect towards you. I have nothing against you personally other than your lacking of respect to things that deserve respect (once again, I'm not talking about me specifically.. I don't deserve respect any more than anyone else does). I'm talking about the rules. Some people respect the work that the Decal Devs do (and we appreciate it). Some people appreciate the difficulty that is being a Decal Dev. Now I can't speak for the other devs, but I personally never demand personal respect. If you respect me, then that's great. If not, I don't particularly care. As long as you respect the rules. If you respect the rules and aren't personally disrespectful to me, I have no problems with you.

Taking someone's open source code that they've labeled not for profit and using it to profit is stealing.


That would hold up in court just fine, don't know why you don't think it would.

 

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Again read up.. No one said ANYTHING was final.


How many times do I gotta repeat it before it sticks in your un-open minds?

Lil-Blub.. check the post date..


you think -Isabela- read the whole thread and your reply within 3 minutes before posting her own?


chances are, you posted right after the thread was loaded, and then by the time -Isabela- got to the end, your post wasn't "shown" and so she posted her own.


although as you pointed out, before you said it wasn't for sure, but you sure made it sound like it was your intention to charge for it.


As for the name-calling.. why do you need to do that? what did -Isabela- do to you other than disagree with you? It seems like every time someone disagrees with you, you lash out and call them names or insult their intelligence in some way.

/Further Devil's advocate on


"Not for profit" doesn't mean that you can't make money at it. In the strictest sense of the term (and I use that word "strict" loosely, as it is how ALL "Not for Profits" work) it could easily be said that they aren't making a profit off the use of the plugin, but rather just offsetting the loss ... I'm sure you know that the amount of time that it takes to keep a program going, even one you are just doing maint on and slowly expanding it (in addition to your time, you have web site hosting, bandwith, etc) and that the costs that a person MAY charge (since this is all an exercise in speculation since it hasn't actually happened) pales in comparison to the what COULD BE charged if he charged just $15-25 an hour (which is squat for a paid programmer).





I agree, but unless the Decal Devs require that all Decal App programmer submit their source code (which I don't think they do) and they compare the old vs the new, then it would just be one huge assumption. As for the original owner, sure he could take the person to court, but he would have to initiate the action.


All I was saying, is that if a person put their mind to it, a crafty person could exploit things ... but then again, when hasn't that been the case?

Arch_Magi: I think that's where we disagree on "for profit"


I have no problem with Lil-Blub or anyone else putting up a "PayPal Donation" button that is optional use.. If people feel the need to donate, they can do so. Technically Lil-Blub could profit from it, but that is a "could" and not a "would". If the plugin went subscription only, you know what would happen in terms of money. People need their LifeTank, and I'm sure many are willing to pay whatever. Look at what happened when ELTank initially went "Subscription" based. I don't know the figures, but I'm sure Elgar made a pretty penny in the fraction of users who signed up. If he would have kept it subscription, I'm sure he could have made even more. But it is unethical, and we're all glad that Elgar decided not do keep it subscription based.


What I do not agree with however is the forced option of "subscriptions" where people HAVE to pay to use any plugin. I don't care if it is LifeTank or "Joe's Item Finder". Forcing people to pay money to use a plugin is just not acceptible in any case. Doesn't matter who's code it is. Technically it all hinges on the DECAL code because without Decal, all the plugins would be useless. You don't see us forcing payment, or even providing a single link for people to donate to "Decal". That's because we don't think it's fair or acceptible. If people want to donate to particular devs for any reason, that is their decision. But forcing any sort of payment is just not acceptible.

Hey I am just conveying words from the person's developing this. LTX Dev's.


Remember... I am just the "Voice of Lifetank".


So no one is suing me.

But that is the rub, no one is "forcing" you to pay anyone anything. Ultimately, if you don't want to pay $x dollars to use "Bub", then don't use "Bub".


That goes with Decal itself. No one is forcing me to use it, if you guys started charging for it, I would look at the cost and make a self determination as to if it is "worth it" to me. If I deem it worthy, then I would pay it, if not, then I wouldn't.


People are free to "vote with their feet".


Further, I see it as improving the quality of the product for all. As it stands now, with world populations dropping, the programmers are finding it harder and harder to justify paying $13 a month to keep an account just to test their program that more than often takes much of their free time and they get nothing back in return. As a result, they get bored with the game and the plugin and leave.


For lack of a better term, "Greed is good", maybe if a programmer was making a little "scratch" they would stay motivated and the plugins would stay around, thus keeping more players around. It is my firm belief that if Decal and/or ElTank folded up shop, AC would be even further dead inside of two months. I know for a fact that I would shut down all but 1 account (down from a high of 19) if Decal/ElTank folded (as it stands now, my other account is only there for when I get bored and wanna play my sword toon, but 99.5% of the time, it is a Buff bot for the guild.

Over the years, I've done plenty of mods to existing code. To be honest if I had the time and desire taking public code like Lifetank and updating it. I have no problems with charging to cover my development expenses, hosting costs, support forums and time answers questions.


Lets say I had to change 100 lines. A nice low figure for that kind of service is $100 per line = ten thousand dollars. Software is expensive... Got to sell a lot of copies at 20 dollars a pop in a small target customer base like AC to recoup part of the expenses.


Most of you folks have no idea what it costs to pay a real software engineer or programmer to do any useful customer application.


You want to get drilled be in the wallet. End up like I was. I needed mods the publix Linus kernel and had to hire folks to do changes. In spite of it not being that much work, it still cost 50k.

If you are just the voice... I think they need to find a new voice...


Personally I think your an asshat and need to jump off a cliff...

 

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