I think it's clear the plugin author was/is happy to let the 2-30% stipulation fly under the radar and sit back and collect which doesn't sit great with me but also I kind of get it. I mean if you are going to take OS work and use it for your own gain (something I'm plenty guilty of myself I'll admit) then don't be surprised if not reading the license bites you in the butt.
In a perfect world OS devs wouldn't need to these methods to make it worth their time but we don't live in a such a world, people rarely donate to OS projects and expect issues/features to be added quickly and for free. People need money to exist and they don't owe you anything. Honestly if this plugin author had called out the 30% in their license I would say this blog author has no leg to stand on. As-is I'm glad the app developer got their money back and the plugin author should either stop charging more than 2% or update their license accordingly. But "stealing"? Too harsh, especially since you got your money back.
I don't think this is entirely kosher for a bunch of reasons, but I'm willing to believe that it was a naïve person doing something naïve after being burned by someone cheating him out of his cut, or something along those lines.
At any rate, since the author of this article was unaware of the 2%, it doesn't really matter if the 30% would have been mentioned or not. That they took any cut could have been clearer, perhaps – I don't know how it looked like before on that Ionic plugin site, but it's plenty clear now so that's a solved issue (if it was an issue to start with). That this was added after this exchange (and before it was published) without any pressure further demonstrates the plugin author is essentially acting in good faith.
Mistakes happen, but in this case, it's a conscious decision by the plugin author; I think stealing is the right word, especially when it turns out you've done it with thousands of apps
Either learn to read licenses, or have a list of approved licenses (MIT, GPL, etc.) and only use software thus licensed.
EDIT: What I mean above is the 2% which is specified in the “Licence Agreement” page – the article author is clearly considering this, too, to be “stealing”. Regarding the increase from 2% to 30%, that is way more questionable, and I do not defend it.
I don't think taking 2% is theft. Maybe it's a dark pattern, but it's definitely not theft. In the article, I say that I calmed down after explaining with 2%, which means my agreement with the situation.
The way the increase to 30% is made and the number of users with such a percentage says that the author deliberately increases the percentage without warning the user, which is theft
That said, if you really wanted to impress, you'd improve the visibility of your practices for each individual developer, by providing a dashboard that fully discloses revenue-over-time, along with proactive notifications when your terms change. The MVP here would be a single email sent when the 2% term changes.
This business model where the providing party retains the right to change terms arbitrarily has always concerned me, in the same way something like an indentured servitude contract would, and yet they are all too common. But its everywhere, and no self-interested business would take steps to reduce it's power against the counter-party. There is a whole set of problems here that neo-liberal capitalism not only cannot solve, but actually seem to make worse. It's easy to point the finger at a single dev, or a small team, and say "you're unethical!" but in truth I think the statement is more informed by the ability to identify the actor than the action itself, which is endemic. (To take two examples: variable rate mortgages, and credit card debt, neither of which are modeled by consumers and both of which are certainly gamed by the counter-party.)
So I just forked an older version of their code and ran from that. I also made a post telling the guy it was kinda shady, they didn't seem to care.
> If you have used this plugin for FREE but monetized more than $1000, you are also required to get a license, or share us some Ad traffic as stated in win-win partnership model below
> Ship our code with yours to end-user, no need paying a cent at all, instead, share 2 percent ad traffic, so that we can both benefit and cover our cost to maintain and enhance this project.
A page titled “License Agreement”, clearly linked from the home page.
(Regarding the 30%, I agree – this was questionable at best.)
So I there's no reason for the licensor to assume that the commercial offer was chosen and that the licensee agreed to that 2% withholding, much less a 30% one.
> Fork the source code and maintain it yourself (bug fix, any future changes on Cordova and SDK, integration support, etc.); see the open source project here: https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-plugin-admob
Which I think it's clear that's not what happened here, the blog author was using AdMob Pro and thus unable to qualify for "Free and Open Source, no support".
OG plug-in author has a problem with people abusing license key system, builds in code to detect it. Disclaims it vaguely, OP gets bitten and has the gall to call it stealing. Author offers to help OP out, OP puts him on blast.
Zero sympathy, even at 30%.
Op called 2% stealing, 30% is for basically triggering the anti cheat. OP should have paid paid the license and read the rules.
>If use in commercial project, please get a license, or, you have monetized more than $1000 using this plugin, you are also required to either get a commercial license ($20). As a commercial customer, you will be supported with high priority, via private email or even Skype chat.
Which is nigh illegible.
Does anyone know what happens when someone publishes conflicting licenses?
That's unlikely to be legally enforceable on NPM, but they might honour takedowns anyway.
You just have to, you know, work
“Kindly reminder, do not use a fake license key or a license key from others, do not share your license key with others. Abuse of the license key may cause negative impact.”
Blogging dev was too cheap to just pay $20 for a license for code that would generate him money. THAT is really the bigger issue here, regardless of everything else, including the fact that he was in violation of the agreement, i.e., >$1,000 MRR.
Here's a little pro tip for everyone, don't cheap out on paying someone $20 for the work they do, when it will be generating you significantly more income.
Frankly, regardless of whether or not the plugin dev is sketchy or not, the blogger dev violated the terms of the agreement and seems rather ungrateful that he was given back what he should not have even gotten back.
It is theft, the hidden cost in the licence agreement* states 2%, taking that up to %30 for no reason and with no warning based on some arbitrary 'black list' is theft.
* as shady as that is
How anyone can think they're entitled to assume how it should run is ignorance sufficient to shred what remains of my humanity.
He didn't demand you give him money, he said if you ran his code, it will act as he intended.
You ran his code. It worked as intended.
I did not...
> He didn't demand you give him money, he said if you ran his code, it will act as he intended.
He did not...
He said it would act one way, then it secretly acted another against the contract that was entered in to
> It worked as intended.
It did not...
Even their staff admit they never intended to charge him 30%
EDIT: The percentage increase from 2% to 30% was not posted; I withdraw my opinion on that.
Taking reveneu without a contract smells like fraud to me.
Yeah, anon is the enemy for wanting to get paid
This is the closest it gets to calling out the the 30% but I agree, it should be clearer.
[0] https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/wiki/Lic...
The blame is on you. Read the license of what you're using, and make sure what it's requesting in general. Triggering statement, so be warned: Ad Revenue supported products are generally ALL SHADY.
So, I'm astonished he gave you back some money. Probably a useless attempt to have less hassle moving forward, yet you went ahead and shared it.
At best, you're equally to blame. At worst, you just want stuff for free while you get paid for your work, the worst kind of entitlement.
Here's the license:
https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/blob/mas...
It's MIT.
Here's what they say "If you have used this plugin for FREE but monetized more than $1000, you are also required to get a license, or share us some Ad traffic as stated in win-win partnership model below"
If the MIT license is correct, they are lying: people don't need to get a license. The users already have a license that covers absolutely everything and they even have the right to edit the plugin to remove the % cut altogether.
Other things they are lying about, in their wiki https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/wiki/Lic...
"Reminder: copy the code, change a plugin name, without feature enhancement, then publish to npm, is not allowed."
This is just false. The existing MIT license absolutely allows changing the name and republishing to npm.
Perhaps they just don't understand what is open source about. Absolutely all open source licenses allow forks.
People just arbitrarily pulling in code from random people on the internet and expecting everything to be fine is hilarious. Your project, due the due diligence.
To answer the hypothetical, the author is still at fault even if was malware.
Wow, that's as explicit victim blaming as you can get.
If you hypothesize that the software did something illegal, I hypothesize that nobody would defend it.
Those Cordova apps over a certain age and complexity are terrifying. Random plugins, ancient Cocoa Pods, abandoned JavaScript libraries, several different build systems (somehow all being used), Node.js modules with version conflicts that can never be resolved, pulled from all over the internet and all over time.
I am not surprised this guy had no idea what one 3rd party ad plugin was doing, if the app I saw was typical.
I try my best to stay away from ad supported business models, if there is an app in the App Store for instance that has an in app purchase to turn off ads, I have no problem paying for it if it something I’m going to use.
It seems I'm the only one that is bothered by this.
And no I don't at the time nor the skill to audit everything or to use a static site like Hugo.
The article linked to here [0] which is a must-read for everyone who feels that adding a dependency is safe.
[0] https://medium.com/hackernoon/im-harvesting-credit-card-numb...
They're also centrally managed by Microsoft, so if there was a problem with one package they could kick it out of the Nugget repo.
But in the end you're right, it's mostly a matter of trust and finger crossed.
I kinda want that story right now lol.
1) Create a nice plugin to serve ads
2) Bury a complex revenue sharing logic in the terms of use that nobody read anyway
3) Profit
| ____ |
| |o o| |
| "" |
| O O |
| \ / |
| X |
| / \ |
| O O |If you want to use it, PAY. FOR. IT.
https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/blob/mas...
*"Or else you might be unhappy someday."*
If that isn't a threat, I don't know what is. This guy's plugin should be removed immediately for such actions.
We also take 30% of the revenue (which is around industry standard), but it's very well-defined in our Publisher Policy: https://www.ethicalads.io/publisher-policy/