To all who will listen (or read anyway),
The problem isn't in dowloading one addon. It's when you have over 30, and you need something to speed that process up. If you can write a better app than WowMatrix, please be my guest. Until then, stop crying.
The updater provided on this site no longer functions, and
has been "in development" since February. If you had focused your efforts on that, rather than this holy war, it could be done by now.
As a Linux user, I have no other viable option than WowMatrix. I've tried using the Curse Client
via Wine, and it worked for 1 day, until they decided to create a Premium version, and now their popup ads (Forced to run in IE) crash the application, unless you upgrade to Premium. If they released a client that ran natively in my OS, I just might, but not until then. I submitted a ticket, and provided
as much info as humanly possible, and got ignored, as I am not "officially supported". Curse and WoWInterface have effectively alienated their Linux user base (and probably Mac's as well). Anyone who is concerned with profits would know that is a mistake.
As to the ads displayed on WowMatrix, there are
3 very small and unobtrusive links to "gold farming" and "powerleveling" guides (that only an idiot would click anyway). I am very doubtful that profit is generated by this, unlike the popup windows that Curse would have us endure.
Your anti-WowMatrix propaganda is something akin to the MPAA & RIAA's cries about the big bad internet pirates. QQ moar. The statement that WowMatrix causes additional stress on your servers on patch day is completely false. What it actually does, is delivers only content that users need, without all the images, flash ads, javascripts, and html code. If anything, it actually relieves stress from your servers. A few years ago, before there were updaters, sites like Curse and WowInterface would not load at all on patch day. You should be thankful.
As to developers rights, you only care because it serves your interests.
Commercial addon development is a thing of the past. If you want to make money off World of Warcraft,
go work for Blizzard. I believe in Open Source, and will no longer be using any addon that isn't distributed with one of the following liceneses:
GPL.
LGPL,
BSD,
MIT,
Apache,
Academic,
Creative Commons, or
Public Domain.
Sincerely,
James Dunn