The second i realize that Curse will be doing something "bad" to the Community, i'll leave with my addons, and i won't be alone. But personally, i do not see that happen.
"You understand that whether or not such User Submissions are published, Curse does not guarantee any confidentiality with respect to any submissions."
...
"In connection with User Submissions, you affirm, represent, and/or warrant that: (i) you own or have the necessary licenses, rights, consents, and permissions to use and authorize Curse to use all patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights in and to any and all User Submissions to enable inclusion and use of the User Submissions in the manner contemplated by the Website and these Terms of Service"
...
"In connection with User Submissions, you further agree that you will not: (i) submit material that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third party proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to post the material and to grant Curse all of the license rights granted herein;"
Well obviously you need to grant curse the right to redistribute your work, or them hosting your addons would be illegal? :)
I'm not a lawyer, but i had my fair share of law at university, so i can try to clarify that a bit
and authorize Curse to use all patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights in and to any and all User Submissions to enable inclusion and use of the User Submissions in the manner contemplated by the Website and these Terms of Service
This part authorizes Curse to include the "User Submissions" in their website, but only for the specific manner already described in the terms of services - so essentially, you just allow them to host and redistribute your addon.
"In connection with User Submissions, you further agree that you will not: (i) submit material that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third party proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to post the material and to grant Curse all of the license rights granted herein;"
This second part only makes sure that you actually own all the rights specified above that you are granting to Curse now.
I'm not sure whats meant with the confidentiality in your first quote, but my guess would be, that they are just securing themself against someone claiming that they posted a unreleased ("confidential") version of your addon.
If you search the US WoW Forums on this topic, there have been a lot of discussions about the new ToS/ToU of Curse (some while ago, when the new version was posted), and in return both had been relaxed to fit the needs of the Community, and the community agreed, that it was acceptable now.
Well obviously you need to grant curse the right to redistribute your work, or them hosting your addons would be illegal? :)
I agree, but then all you'd need to grant is a non-exclusive right to display and redistribute the user submission as is. Without being familiar with US laws (only with European law), I see little reason to authorize them to use all proprietary rights, which would include selling, altering the code, copying the code, merging addons, releasing them with a new name (or a different license), etc. - and I'm slightly unsure how this complies with the various licenses addons use (GPL,...).
Any addon that's e.g. using a "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works" license (e.g. from CreativeCommons) can not be uploaded to Curse under these Terms of Usage.
I agree, but then all you'd need to grant is a non-exclusive right to display and redistribute the user submission as is. Without being familiar with US laws (only with European law), I see little reason to authorize them to use all proprietary rights, which would include selling, altering the code, copying the code, merging addons, releasing them with a new name (or a different license), etc. - and I'm slightly unsure how this complies with the various licenses addons use (GPL,...).
Any addon that's e.g. using a "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works" license (e.g. from CreativeCommons) can not be uploaded to Curse under these Terms of Usage.
You don't grant them all those rights.
"authorize Curse to use all patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights in and to any and all User Submissions to enable inclusion and use of the User Submissions in the manner contemplated by the Website and these Terms of Service"
You only allow them to use your addon for a specific task, which is hosting, redistributing, and advertising on the Curse Main Page.
"You understand that whether or not such User Submissions are published, Curse does not guarantee any confidentiality with respect to any submissions."
"If you submit something that is secret, you can bet your ass it will no longer be secret once you submit it! And you don't get to sue us if you do!"
Quote from maia »
"In connection with User Submissions, you affirm, represent, and/or warrant that: (i) you own or have the necessary licenses, rights, consents, and permissions to use and authorize Curse to use all patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights in and to any and all User Submissions to enable inclusion and use of the User Submissions in the manner contemplated by the Website and these Terms of Service"
"You promise us that it is alright for us to make the addon available for others to download, and display information about the addon to visitors."
Quote from maia »
"In connection with User Submissions, you further agree that you will not: (i) submit material that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third party proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to post the material and to grant Curse all of the license rights granted herein;"
"You promise us that you're not submitting someone else's work... unless you have the rights to! (Because we'll make it available for download, display info, etcetc)"
The rights mentioned are "privacy" (we'll make it available for download, it'll no longer be "private") and "publicity" (we'll display info about it -- which is much the same as advertising it, hence publicity)
They really should put up a non-lawyerese version of this. It needs quite a bit of getting used to.
Thanks for that Mikk, and yes, I agree.. A non-lawyerese version would be awesome. Not all addon writers are native speakers, or familiar with US laws, and the law-speak. It would be beneficial if a laymans version would be available, it might help get rid of some misconceptions from past, present and future (not pointing fingers, though I have to admit, I totally read something different in the lawyer terms there, so thank you Mikk for helping me understand)
Mikk, I'm now very, very negative, but these terms coud also be interpreted as:
"You understand that whether or not such User Submissions are published, Curse does not guarantee any confidentiality with respect to any submissions."
If we decide to publish your name and email address, we can do so. And if the CEO of XY calls and offers us $10.000 if we disclose all SVN submits and forum postings from email addresses with the domain XY.com (as he'd like to fire a few people who code addons while at work), then we can pass along that information too.
"In connection with User Submissions, you affirm, represent, and/or warrant that: (i) you own or have the necessary licenses, rights, consents, and permissions to use and authorize Curse to use all patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights in and to any and all User Submissions to enable inclusion and use of the User Submissions in the manner contemplated by the Website and these Terms of Service"
If we change the "manner contemplated by the website", we can use your proprietary rights in any way. All we need to do is shift the focus of the website.
"In connection with User Submissions, you further agree that you will not: (i) submit material that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third party proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to post the material and to grant Curse all of the license rights granted herein;"
We're reminding you again: we can do whatever we want with the addon, in case we decide to do so. We can sell it, we can alter the code, we can remove your name from the code, we can restrict its availability to paying users or IP addresses with the US as origin (you'll have to understand that, our ad's don't sell well if you live outside the US, and we'd waste the bandwidth), and we can also add a splash screen containing an ad ingame (in case we can come up with a deal with Blizzard/Vivendi, but as both Vivendi (owning Blizzard) and AGF (the VC company that funded Curse) are french, we might find a solution). Oh, and we can also alter the 'donate' button you added to your addon, so that we get the money and not you. After all, you should be happy with free hosting.
Yes, this is an extreme interpretation, and obviously Curse would be stupid to do the above. But the problem with your interpretation is: it won't 'stick'. It's as good as mine. That's what I'm trying to show.
All that counts is the legal text.
PS: I'm still wondering how we'll deal with addons that use a license which does not grant commercial usage. I can only assume that displaying an ad next to its overview on the website or inside the new addon downloader can be a problem.
I wouldn't be too worried about addon sites "stealing" addons. People visit these sites to get updates to their addons, and unethical sites would find themselves not hosting updated versions of anyone's work the next time a major patch rolls around.
Mikk, I'm now very, very negative, but these terms coud also be interpreted as:
If we decide to publish your name and email address, we can do so. And if the CEO of XY calls and offers us $10.000 if we disclose all SVN submits and forum postings from email addresses with the domain XY.com (as he'd like to fire a few people who code addons while at work), then we can pass along that information too.
Except any lawyer would laugh at that - seeing as how the agreement is about SUBMISSIONS. I believe you will also find a privacy policy for the kind of informaiton you're talking about...
Quote from maia »
If we change the "manner contemplated by the website", we can use your proprietary rights in any way. All we need to do is shift the focus of the website.
No, noone can modify an agreement after the fact, ever. That's not how law works.
Quote from maia »
We're reminding you again: we can do whatever we want with the addon, in case we decide to do so. We can sell it, we can alter the code, we can remove your name from the code, we can restrict its availability to paying users or IP addresses with the US as origin [...]
No, no, no, no, (all of this is regulated by what YOU license your code under) and then a final yes: Curse could restrict its availability. Curse can also shut down entirely. I don't see how that would be harmful to you though. If you don't like what they're doing, un-host your work.
Quote from maia »
All that counts is the legal text.
Indeed. But no lawyer nor court anywhere in the world will read it as you do.
Quote from maia »
PS: I'm still wondering how we'll deal with addons that use a license which does not grant commercial usage. I can only assume that displaying an ad next to its overview on the website or inside the new addon downloader can be a problem.
Charging for an addon is very different from charging (or display ads to compensate) for a transport/hosting cost. Even GPL, the omg-must-be-free diehard license, specifically explains that it's OK to charge for shipping & handling GPLd software. - What's the difference, you ask? The difference is that you can still make copies of the latter.
Seriously, the legal system isn't as boneheadedly stupid is you try to make it out to be; and if nothing else, copyright law is pretty universal.
And, again, if Curse WERE to try and pull something like what you describe... what do you think would happen when the next major rev of WoW rolls out? It's not like they can keep touting out-of-date addons and make a profit.
And, as a closing thing here: I believe you will find that ALL hosting sites are commercial entities. They all have servers and internet links that cost money. Every last one of them. The only way you'll get around using a hosting site is to run your own server. But god forbid your addons get popular, because then you can't pay for the hosting costs. WoWAce sure couldn't.
I dont really see the problem in the Client gathering non personal system information.
Those information you already made available anyway:
WoW collects and submits "non personal Hardware Information"
almost every other MMORPG does it aswell
Steam does it and even publishs Studies about it which are really important even for every(even non steam using) publisher
Every bigger Websites does it if possible
I dont really see a bad thing behind it. Websites have to be financed, the amount of money by ads raises if you can specifiy what User group are viewing your content and the AdProvider can specifically provide Ads targeted to the consumers. Even projects generously hosted by someone(lets say Google) have "hidden" ways to finance themselves, almost always by gathering statistic Data for the given Hoster.
Aslong as they dont start to gather personal Information its not really a bad thing.... You could argue that starting to gather such information ends in gathering Personal Information by checking which URLs are browsed etc., but I dont think in this community this would be done long...
2) The current WAU will cease to exist (stop working basicly)
3) To install addons on the WowAce repository we need a client called "Curse Updater"
Now the questions:
1) Will the CurseUpdater be shared repository with CurseForge.com ?
2) Who will we pay to? Curse or WowAce ?
3) Will the "premium" membership for the CurseUpdater, be shared with Curse's other services? or be explicit for WowAce.com and not CurseForge.
4) Can we ask, that Curse clarify themself more as a buisness, before we give them our money?
I really dislike paying to some company where I cannot find who's the director, I cannot find what city/country they got headquaters in, and I cannot figure out who to call regarding Billing support.
Basicly, you want our money, that's fine. But then I expect as a paying customer, to have all the legal rights I need.
Now, alot of your users, soon to be customers, are located in Europe.
You ready for handling this? You ready for handling billing support cross ocean, without being able to relay on US scrub laws?
Important issues, I really think needs clarification before you start the show. WowAce is being turned into a something professional, thus we expect it to behave like so.
My name is Hubert Thieblot, i'm french and i'm the one that started curse.com
1/ yes, shared repository
2/ Curse
3/ You will get a premium membership across all sites http://about.curse.com/network/ , with added values on each site.
4/ Curse Inc, a Delaware company, HQ in San francisco CA and in Huntsville Alabama
I am the CEO/founder of the company.
Yes we have been thinking of Europe, and we will try to accept the most possible varieties of payments method. (i am myself European)
We will be ready next month, we have most of our ressources dedicated to Curse/Curseforge/Wowace/Premium.
I'm sure alot of people (atleast the communities I normally hang around in) is unaware of how widespread the Curse Network is (I was as well, untill I clicked the link).
With such a large back benefit, besides from supporting our local addon-dealer (read: wowace), it seems much much more interesting to buy the premium membership.
Regarding payment, I'll be happy with VISA support. Personally I cannot stand paypal and their expensive fees.
OK - all this talk of ways to pay for it is marvellous - but first you need a product.
The new Curse client is, at the moment, only slightly more tangible than vapourware (ah the good old days).
Why not concentrate on getting a product out there and sort the finances out afterwards - say let it run for a month or two with the strict understanding that it will have chargeable options / features later, or will even become a pay or don't use it product.
That will give you plenty of time to work out how people can pay for it and also to gauge what sort of paying user base you can expect to have. If the product is crap (and so far it's not looking good) then your beancounters will soon realise that there's no point in ploughing money in to working on a wonderful payment system for something that isn't going to sell.
I'll throw this out at risk of being completely thrashed by mods and editors, but here goes:
a business model designed to rake in big profits on the backs of independent programmers working for free is not an illegal business model, but is entirely underhanded.
Im not aware of any 'we just want enough revenue to pay the bills' statements from either Curse of VC.
Im also not aware of any 'any profits above those needed to pay the bills will be shared with the mod authors who have made these profits for us even possible.' statements.
In the absence of both of these, its a pretty sleazy business model.
a business model designed to rake in big profits on the backs of independent programmers working for free is not an illegal business model, but is entirely underhanded.
I wouldn't call it underhanded. Many authors enjoy coding, do it as a hobby, and do not expect any returns. All some authors want, is just a place to host their addons to share their creations, and do not want to worry about money.
I'll throw this out at risk of being completely thrashed by mods and editors, but here goes:
a business model designed to rake in big profits on the backs of independent programmers working for free is not an illegal business model, but is entirely underhanded.
Im not aware of any 'we just want enough revenue to pay the bills' statements from either Curse of VC.
Im also not aware of any 'any profits above those needed to pay the bills will be shared with the mod authors who have made these profits for us even possible.' statements.
In the absence of both of these, its a pretty sleazy business model.
I'm an addon author. There's two ways for me to get my addons out there for the general public to use:
1. I pay someone a lot of money to host them
2. I host them somewhere where the burden is shifted to the users; via ad impressions or premium memberships
Now, see, I'm not going to pay someone a lot of money to host them, because while other people using my addons gives my warm fuzzies, it doesn't give me jack shit. _I_ can already use my own addons for free.
Guess which method I'm going to use!
Oh, and, hint: wowinterface, worldofwar, tentonhammer, etc etc are ALL commercial entities out to make money. If you ever thought differently, please let me disabuse you of that notion right now. WoWAce _tried_ to be a "just enough to keep running" thing, but that failed hard. I think you will not find any similar "only enough to keep running" from ANY other hosting site.
Oh and believe me, if I think that a hosting site is abusing its users (of which I am one for all addons I didn't write myself!), they lose the right to host my addons in the blink of an eye. Every addon developer I know feels the same way.
On a related note, sourceforge/freshmeat/google code/etc are pretty sleazy too huh? I know of no such "just enough to keep running" promises from them either. WHO KNOWS HOW MUCH MONEY THEY MAKE FROM ADS!? OMG?!?!
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Maybe you can help me understanding the Terms of Use from http://about.curse.com/terms-of-use/:
"You understand that whether or not such User Submissions are published, Curse does not guarantee any confidentiality with respect to any submissions."
...
"In connection with User Submissions, you affirm, represent, and/or warrant that: (i) you own or have the necessary licenses, rights, consents, and permissions to use and authorize Curse to use all patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights in and to any and all User Submissions to enable inclusion and use of the User Submissions in the manner contemplated by the Website and these Terms of Service"
...
"In connection with User Submissions, you further agree that you will not: (i) submit material that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third party proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to post the material and to grant Curse all of the license rights granted herein;"
Thoughts?
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Forum ModeratorI'm not a lawyer, but i had my fair share of law at university, so i can try to clarify that a bit
This part authorizes Curse to include the "User Submissions" in their website, but only for the specific manner already described in the terms of services - so essentially, you just allow them to host and redistribute your addon.
This second part only makes sure that you actually own all the rights specified above that you are granting to Curse now.
I'm not sure whats meant with the confidentiality in your first quote, but my guess would be, that they are just securing themself against someone claiming that they posted a unreleased ("confidential") version of your addon.
If you search the US WoW Forums on this topic, there have been a lot of discussions about the new ToS/ToU of Curse (some while ago, when the new version was posted), and in return both had been relaxed to fit the needs of the Community, and the community agreed, that it was acceptable now.
I agree, but then all you'd need to grant is a non-exclusive right to display and redistribute the user submission as is. Without being familiar with US laws (only with European law), I see little reason to authorize them to use all proprietary rights, which would include selling, altering the code, copying the code, merging addons, releasing them with a new name (or a different license), etc. - and I'm slightly unsure how this complies with the various licenses addons use (GPL,...).
Any addon that's e.g. using a "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works" license (e.g. from CreativeCommons) can not be uploaded to Curse under these Terms of Usage.
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Forum ModeratorYou don't grant them all those rights.
"authorize Curse to use all patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights in and to any and all User Submissions to enable inclusion and use of the User Submissions in the manner contemplated by the Website and these Terms of Service"
You only allow them to use your addon for a specific task, which is hosting, redistributing, and advertising on the Curse Main Page.
PS: CreativeCommons is for Art etc, not for Code.
"If you submit something that is secret, you can bet your ass it will no longer be secret once you submit it! And you don't get to sue us if you do!"
"You promise us that it is alright for us to make the addon available for others to download, and display information about the addon to visitors."
"You promise us that you're not submitting someone else's work... unless you have the rights to! (Because we'll make it available for download, display info, etcetc)"
The rights mentioned are "privacy" (we'll make it available for download, it'll no longer be "private") and "publicity" (we'll display info about it -- which is much the same as advertising it, hence publicity)
They really should put up a non-lawyerese version of this. It needs quite a bit of getting used to.
If we decide to publish your name and email address, we can do so. And if the CEO of XY calls and offers us $10.000 if we disclose all SVN submits and forum postings from email addresses with the domain XY.com (as he'd like to fire a few people who code addons while at work), then we can pass along that information too.
If we change the "manner contemplated by the website", we can use your proprietary rights in any way. All we need to do is shift the focus of the website.
We're reminding you again: we can do whatever we want with the addon, in case we decide to do so. We can sell it, we can alter the code, we can remove your name from the code, we can restrict its availability to paying users or IP addresses with the US as origin (you'll have to understand that, our ad's don't sell well if you live outside the US, and we'd waste the bandwidth), and we can also add a splash screen containing an ad ingame (in case we can come up with a deal with Blizzard/Vivendi, but as both Vivendi (owning Blizzard) and AGF (the VC company that funded Curse) are french, we might find a solution). Oh, and we can also alter the 'donate' button you added to your addon, so that we get the money and not you. After all, you should be happy with free hosting.
Yes, this is an extreme interpretation, and obviously Curse would be stupid to do the above. But the problem with your interpretation is: it won't 'stick'. It's as good as mine. That's what I'm trying to show.
All that counts is the legal text.
PS: I'm still wondering how we'll deal with addons that use a license which does not grant commercial usage. I can only assume that displaying an ad next to its overview on the website or inside the new addon downloader can be a problem.
Except any lawyer would laugh at that - seeing as how the agreement is about SUBMISSIONS. I believe you will also find a privacy policy for the kind of informaiton you're talking about...
No, noone can modify an agreement after the fact, ever. That's not how law works.
No, no, no, no, (all of this is regulated by what YOU license your code under) and then a final yes: Curse could restrict its availability. Curse can also shut down entirely. I don't see how that would be harmful to you though. If you don't like what they're doing, un-host your work.
Indeed. But no lawyer nor court anywhere in the world will read it as you do.
Charging for an addon is very different from charging (or display ads to compensate) for a transport/hosting cost. Even GPL, the omg-must-be-free diehard license, specifically explains that it's OK to charge for shipping & handling GPLd software. - What's the difference, you ask? The difference is that you can still make copies of the latter.
Seriously, the legal system isn't as boneheadedly stupid is you try to make it out to be; and if nothing else, copyright law is pretty universal.
And, again, if Curse WERE to try and pull something like what you describe... what do you think would happen when the next major rev of WoW rolls out? It's not like they can keep touting out-of-date addons and make a profit.
And, as a closing thing here: I believe you will find that ALL hosting sites are commercial entities. They all have servers and internet links that cost money. Every last one of them. The only way you'll get around using a hosting site is to run your own server. But god forbid your addons get popular, because then you can't pay for the hosting costs. WoWAce sure couldn't.
Those information you already made available anyway:
WoW collects and submits "non personal Hardware Information"
almost every other MMORPG does it aswell
Steam does it and even publishs Studies about it which are really important even for every(even non steam using) publisher
Every bigger Websites does it if possible
I dont really see a bad thing behind it. Websites have to be financed, the amount of money by ads raises if you can specifiy what User group are viewing your content and the AdProvider can specifically provide Ads targeted to the consumers. Even projects generously hosted by someone(lets say Google) have "hidden" ways to finance themselves, almost always by gathering statistic Data for the given Hoster.
Aslong as they dont start to gather personal Information its not really a bad thing.... You could argue that starting to gather such information ends in gathering Personal Information by checking which URLs are browsed etc., but I dont think in this community this would be done long...
When is the switch from WAU to the Curse Client going to be made, and will it be clear on the WowAce front page?
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Forum ModeratorYes, we will make clear when we have a exact time frame. As it looks right now, we're heading for about mid-end September
1) http://files.wowace.com will cease to exist
2) The current WAU will cease to exist (stop working basicly)
3) To install addons on the WowAce repository we need a client called "Curse Updater"
Now the questions:
1) Will the CurseUpdater be shared repository with CurseForge.com ?
2) Who will we pay to? Curse or WowAce ?
3) Will the "premium" membership for the CurseUpdater, be shared with Curse's other services? or be explicit for WowAce.com and not CurseForge.
4) Can we ask, that Curse clarify themself more as a buisness, before we give them our money?
I really dislike paying to some company where I cannot find who's the director, I cannot find what city/country they got headquaters in, and I cannot figure out who to call regarding Billing support.
Basicly, you want our money, that's fine. But then I expect as a paying customer, to have all the legal rights I need.
Now, alot of your users, soon to be customers, are located in Europe.
You ready for handling this? You ready for handling billing support cross ocean, without being able to relay on US scrub laws?
Important issues, I really think needs clarification before you start the show. WowAce is being turned into a something professional, thus we expect it to behave like so.
My name is Hubert Thieblot, i'm french and i'm the one that started curse.com
1/ yes, shared repository
2/ Curse
3/ You will get a premium membership across all sites http://about.curse.com/network/ , with added values on each site.
4/ Curse Inc, a Delaware company, HQ in San francisco CA and in Huntsville Alabama
I am the CEO/founder of the company.
Yes we have been thinking of Europe, and we will try to accept the most possible varieties of payments method. (i am myself European)
We will be ready next month, we have most of our ressources dedicated to Curse/Curseforge/Wowace/Premium.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Best regards
Hubert
I'm sure alot of people (atleast the communities I normally hang around in) is unaware of how widespread the Curse Network is (I was as well, untill I clicked the link).
With such a large back benefit, besides from supporting our local addon-dealer (read: wowace), it seems much much more interesting to buy the premium membership.
Regarding payment, I'll be happy with VISA support. Personally I cannot stand paypal and their expensive fees.
The new Curse client is, at the moment, only slightly more tangible than vapourware (ah the good old days).
Why not concentrate on getting a product out there and sort the finances out afterwards - say let it run for a month or two with the strict understanding that it will have chargeable options / features later, or will even become a pay or don't use it product.
That will give you plenty of time to work out how people can pay for it and also to gauge what sort of paying user base you can expect to have. If the product is crap (and so far it's not looking good) then your beancounters will soon realise that there's no point in ploughing money in to working on a wonderful payment system for something that isn't going to sell.
Two words to consider - Cart and Horse...
a business model designed to rake in big profits on the backs of independent programmers working for free is not an illegal business model, but is entirely underhanded.
Im not aware of any 'we just want enough revenue to pay the bills' statements from either Curse of VC.
Im also not aware of any 'any profits above those needed to pay the bills will be shared with the mod authors who have made these profits for us even possible.' statements.
In the absence of both of these, its a pretty sleazy business model.
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Curse PremiumI wouldn't call it underhanded. Many authors enjoy coding, do it as a hobby, and do not expect any returns. All some authors want, is just a place to host their addons to share their creations, and do not want to worry about money.
I'm an addon author. There's two ways for me to get my addons out there for the general public to use:
1. I pay someone a lot of money to host them
2. I host them somewhere where the burden is shifted to the users; via ad impressions or premium memberships
Now, see, I'm not going to pay someone a lot of money to host them, because while other people using my addons gives my warm fuzzies, it doesn't give me jack shit. _I_ can already use my own addons for free.
Guess which method I'm going to use!
Oh, and, hint: wowinterface, worldofwar, tentonhammer, etc etc are ALL commercial entities out to make money. If you ever thought differently, please let me disabuse you of that notion right now. WoWAce _tried_ to be a "just enough to keep running" thing, but that failed hard. I think you will not find any similar "only enough to keep running" from ANY other hosting site.
Oh and believe me, if I think that a hosting site is abusing its users (of which I am one for all addons I didn't write myself!), they lose the right to host my addons in the blink of an eye. Every addon developer I know feels the same way.
On a related note, sourceforge/freshmeat/google code/etc are pretty sleazy too huh? I know of no such "just enough to keep running" promises from them either. WHO KNOWS HOW MUCH MONEY THEY MAKE FROM ADS!? OMG?!?!