Reagent Restocker

[CobraA1]

Hey everybody,

Just getting the word out that Reagent Restocker is in the final stages of beta testing, and I'm hoping to have a stable release for tomorrow, before the patch hits on Tuesday.

The beta releases are on Curse/Curseforge, but the final version will be released on both Curse and WoW Interface.

[CobraA1]

Reagent Restocker 3.0 is released! I've pushed it to Curse and WoW Interface.

This contains all of the bug fixes necessary for playing on the Mists of Pandaria beta, and should be ready for the 5.0.4 patch tomorrow (today, in some time zones?).

The biggest change is a new window that pops up with the vendor. It's pretty ugly right now, but functional. There have been some reports of issues with the main window during the beta, but I'm pretty sure I have that fixed. It will be getting a LOT of graphical work in the near future.

[Phanx]

Originally Posted by CobraA1 World of Addons (I've decided to start using them as well - Ten Ton Hammer is well known as the people behind Player Score / Gear Score)

Why would you want to support a bunch of douchebags who distribute other people's addons without permission, freely admit that they have no legal right to do it, and then make the owners jump through hoops to get their work taken down, all the while making money on ad impressions?

[CobraA1]

Well, Reagent Restocker is under the MIT license, so they are free to do so in my particular case, and I'm actually powerless legally to do much except claim ownership, thanks to MIT being a very liberal license. I have not checked the licenses of other addons. I'll take a look after work today.

Can you point me to a thread where this is being discussed?

EDIT: If you can provide a link or other evidence of your claim that they "freely admit that they have no legal right to do it," I will pull all of my endorsements ASAP. I do not tolerate breaking the law, especially knowingly.

[Cairenn]

http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=43892

They've pulled their comment thread and the producer's letter, but I've got screenshots of them from before they pulled them. Plus you can just look at the fact that you can "claim" your addon in the first place (generic usage of 'you' in this instance). How did it get there in the first place? I know this doesn't apply to Reagent Restocker, since you have it under the MIT license, but look at all the ARR addons on there that aren't 'claimed'.

[Talyrius]

Relevant thread: /sigh ... Here we go again

They blatantly violated the license terms for a majority of the addons on their site by rehosting them without the authors' consent. The license of your addon may permit such behavior, however, they would have rehosted it regardless.

EDIT:
Late, again. I really have to stop letting myself get distracted while replying.

[CobraA1]

Sigh. Thanks for the info. It's really too bad that somebody who has been around for a while does something like this. When I'm back from work (currently on lunch break), I'm withdrawing all of my support.

You'd think somebody who has been around for a while would know better.

[Cairenn]

You'd think so, wouldn't you? It's not like they weren't around to witness the Wowmatrix debacle. But instead of learning from it, they just repeated it.

[CobraA1]

Okay, I've pulled support. Shouldn't really be anything out there with my support anymore.

Before this, the worst they really did was to reduce players down to a single number. Which is annoying and teaches players a really bad habit, but wasn't illegal. Worst case, it could be argued to be somewhat unethical.

However, now they've crossed the line. The irrefutable proof lies in Carbonite.

• Carbonite is listed as "All Rights Reserved" in Curse.
• Carbonite includes a license agreement as a part of the download, which reads like a standard copyright notice. No GPL, no copyleft, nothing similar. It reads very much like a proprietary agreement.
• Carbonite is listed as unclaimed in World of Addons. Which means they copied it without permission, and without a liberal license like what Reagent Restocker uses (MIT).
• Thus, they made a copy without the rights to do so.
• Thus, they are violating copyright law.
• Thus, I cannot support them.

If they limited themselves to things like the MIT license and public domain stuff, what they are doing could perhaps be defensible.

However, they did not. They copied addons like Carbonite without permission (if they had permission, they wouldn't have a link to claim the addon).

Thus, I'm pulling support. If the request to claim Reagent Restocker goes through, I will simply pull the download files, leave a description saying why I have done so, and point them to Curse/WoWI.

[Cairenn]

In a word: yup

[CobraA1]

Still bums me out, though. They've been around for a while, and they're well known. Over 10 years, no? You'd think they'd at least consult a legal expert, if not a full copyright lawyer. Any legal expert worth his/her salt would know this was going to be problematic.

And it's not as if WoA is merely pretending to be a part of TTH - there's a link from TTH to WoA at the top of TTH's front page. So unless TTH's website is being defaced without their knowledge (which I doubt), it's clear that WoA is a part of the TTH network.

If they know what's good for them, they should fire the guy responsible for the uploads and do an immediate takedown of the entire thing. And issue a public apology.

And if they ever, ever, want to do this again - they should consult some copyright lawyers first.

[CobraA1]

Anyhoo, back on topic: Just got an error that wasn't showing up in either the live servers before the patch or in the beta servers . Will fix when I have the time.

[Cairenn]

Dunno if you read the thread we linked or not. If you haven't, you probably should. A lot of the things you're questioning (who at TTH knows about it, their stance on all of it, etc.) are answered in it.

[CobraA1]

Pushed out 3.1 update for Reagent Restocker, fixing that error I was getting. Not a complete fix, but stops the error.

[CobraA1]

So a bit of an update on that World of Addons thing . . .

. . . they did in fact contact me, and we had a conversation.

Unfortunately, they seem to be of the mindset that copyright infringement is okay if you set it up as opt out and try to contact people.

Which I cannot in good conscience accept.

I should note that they have claimed that they are going to pull Reagent Restocker from their system, although I should note at the time of this writing it's still up and claimable.

Their website was down for a bit, and is back up containing this:

"Please note: We attempted to contact as many authors as we could prior to site launch (via PMs and three separate emails, the final one being an opt-out). In the absence of reasonable means to contact some addon authors, we've received several takedown requests. Please accept our apologies if we're hosting your addon against your wishes, and we hope you'll reconsider in time."

I've underlined the parts that IMO are in violation of copyright law (authors should have to opt in to hosting not opt out of it, and under no circumstances should they be hosting if there's a chance it's against the author's wishes). I'm not a lawyer, but I can't in good conscience support anybody who would knowingly violate copyright law.

[Phanx]

That blurb from their site is also a big lie, as they made no attempt to contact me. My email address is plainly written near the top of every single file in every single one of my addons, and every one of my addons includes a README file that spells out in plain English how to contact me by email, and by PM on WoWI and Curse. I never saw a PM from them on either site, and though I know their PMs got flagged as spam on WoWI pretty quickly, I get instant email notification of PMs on both sites, and since I never got any notifications, I'm pretty sure that means they never sent me any PMs in the first place, and they definitely never sent me any email. If they can't even bother to send a message to an author whose contact information is that available, I find it hard to believe they really made much of an effort to contact "as many authors as [they] could".

[Talyrius]

It seems as if they gave up on attempting to get into contact with addon authors at the very first sign of resistance. Illogically, they decided it would be easier just to proceed without their permission and, consequently, alienating the very people they needed the support of in order to be successful.