Originally Posted by petrakid
Do you think that we're the only ones? WowI won't last much longer if it continues as it is now. Nor will Curse. If lack of business doesn't cause that, Blizzard WILL.
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Blizzard will not open a huge can of worms by implementing an addon distribution service and thus indirectly getting involved with support issues. Their official stance has been very clear for years. They allow addons to run on their platform but they will not (and in all honesty cannot) handle support.
Part of my plan for the new site/service I am going to offer IS NOW putting curse and wowI out of business...they've ripped off enough people.
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I wish you luck in your crusade to put the legitimate addon hosts, with a long history over the years as being supportive to the community, "out of business". It's funny that you speak of the "i'm right, you're wrong, and I ain't standing down for nothing" mentality, because its the same mentality you are posting under. You are referring to WM's FAQ and take everything they have written as truth while at the same time dismissing anything that has been stated here as a "scam". I'm sorry but any form of scam only exists in your mind.
And speaking strictly as an addon author. We have explained on numerous occasions, that some of us are not in this for the money. We simply don't care, writing addons is something that gives us pleasure doing in our free time, but if we had a choice as to anyone making money off our addons, you can be damn sure that we would select the people that are providing us with the tools to get our work out to the public (addon pages, version control system, tickets, forums, notices, the works) and actually have the courtesy to ask if that is ok with us.
You refer to open source as if its the holy grail. Regrettably though, open source licenses
with no restriction on redistribution are the worst possible licenses to use for WoW addons. The reason is simple. If an author decides at some point that he wants his addon(s) accessible to certain people or wants to limit redistribution and changes the license, it creates a mess as the old "free" versions are still being distributed and the author has to deal with support issues on bugs that he has already fixed.
Curse and WoWI are both businesses. This was never denied. WM is also a business, in case you missed it and contrary to popular belief they are into this purely to make money, as their shady history indicates, while at the same time coming out "looking good" and stomping on the good reputation of the legitimate hosts. Back to the days of Ace, WoWI and Curse were supporting the project by paying out of their own pockets, one of the main reasons why the old model was not sustainable and eventually died out. That's how much greedy they are. Oh and if you come across any "copies of emails and letters" that WM has sent to WoWI, I'm sure the admins will be very interested to see those non-existing letters. WM has contacted Curse, it is true that Curse offered to buy the product (again this was never denied but on the contrary, it has been confirmed by Kaelten himself), they offered a solution that would not cover the expenses induced by their updater and the case was closed. The WM announcement did not really state anything we didn't already know. You are very much free to believe otherwise. In addition their statements as how they "respect" the right of WoWI and Curse to block them, then calling them "childish" a few lines below, are at the very least contradicting each other.