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Here's one for you, plugin devs.
Ok, so while I was perusing the web the other night, I found a site in Czech about textpattern. Now, I know nothing about the Czech language, and in fact, I had to ask someone to be sure that it was Czech. Now you’re probably wondering how and why I came across this Czech Txp site given that I don’t know Czech. Well, I was looking around for people who were linking to my plugin, ako_nav, just to see how many people linked to it. (Ok, I was kind of bored…) Well, anyways, I found a few sites, such as Wilshire’s and was feeling good about myself, knowing that people enjoy and actually use something that I’ve created (granted, I’ve gotten a good bit of random help over time, but that’s not the point here).
Then, I came across the Czech site. At first, I was kind of flattered that someone would take the time to translate the help file on my plugin into Czech. Then, I was looking through the site a bit more, and found that this site was letting people download my plugin, from their site! I was kind of taken aback at seeing this, and wasn’t really sure what to do or say (although that could have had more to do with the fact that it was around 430 AM). They were also directly linking to my plugin (ie: the base64 encoded txt), which I don’t like people doing simply as I want to have a count of how many people download it, which I do using a simple script.
To make a long story longer, I looked around for a contact link on the site to see if there was anyway that I could contact the person(s) running the site, and hope that they would understand English enough to understand my request to take down their hosted version of my plugin (which also happens to be an older version than the current version 0.9.1). I wasn’t able to find a contact form on that site, although on the main domain (the txp site is being run off a subdomain) I was able to find a contact form, which I used to submit a letter to the owner(s) of the site. This was a few days ago, and I still haven’t received anything back from the site owner(s), so I figure they don’t understand English, or haven’t had time to reply to my letter.
I guess my question to you plugin devs is how do you feel about other people hosting your own work? Do you think it’s legit, or do you not give a crap, or what? I mean, I know that under the licensing scheme we have going with txp, our work is pretty much available for anyone to use / modify as they see fit as long as they give attribution (is that correct? I’m pretty sure, but not entirely), but how do you feel about other people offering your plugins as downloads from their own sites? I mean, I’m pretty sure that this site isn’t claiming to have written the plugin, especially as they link to my site, but what is getting me pissed off about this is that someone is hosting my work on their site. I’d prefer to be the only one to host it. I can understand if my site is down for a bit to have someone else temporarily offering / hosting it, but not as a normal thing.
Oh, and if anyone here knows Czech and wouldn’t mind translating my letter for me, I’d be very appreciative.
…And discuss!…
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Re: Here's one for you, plugin devs.
I’ve gone round a few times with zem on this (search the forum for ‘GPL’ and you’ll probably find it), but there seems to be a consensus that since TXP is GPL, and plugins share address space with it, then plugins need to be GPL as well. Which would mean you’d have no control whatsoever over other people distributing your plugins, so long as those people abide by the terms of the GPL.
Last edited by ubernostrum (2005-10-14 18:38:09)
You cooin’ with my bird?
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#3 2005-10-15 05:24:40
- Mary
- Sock Enthusiast
- Registered: 2004-06-27
- Posts: 6,236
Re: Here's one for you, plugin devs.
Well, hotlinking is certainly not covered by GPL, which is the part that bugs me. :) You’re well within your right to insist that they either: link to a page on your site to download it, or, they distribute their own copy from their site. (Really, how hard is it to say in Czech, “Visit the author’s site, and click the link that says “download”?) Make yourself some nice anti-hotlinking mod-rewrite. It’s not fool-proof, but its certainly discouraging. :)
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Re: Here's one for you, plugin devs.
Yeah, the author emailed me earlier today to let me know that he changed the link on the site, so that’s all good.
Still, I’m not sure as the rules and what other plugin devs feel about this issue. Do you all mind if someone is hotlinking your plugins? Do you mind if someone else is hosting your plugins?
I’ve been workin on that mod_rewrite stuff, but so far it hasn’t been working out for me too well… If any mod_rewrite experts wanna help me out with this one, I’d appreciates it a whole lot… This is what’s in my .htaccess file in the txp_resources directory…
<code>
RewriteEngine Off
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} .*txt$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !ako-k\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !www\.ako-k\.com [NC]
RewriteRule (\.*) /pub/txp_resources/download.php?file=$1
</code>
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