Recently Curse and WoWInterface got together to come up with a solution for an ongoing problem. The problem in question is WowMatrix. The reasons they are a problem are many:
- WowMatrix violates author copyright and intellectual property rights:
- They redistribute addons without authors' permissions;
- When they first started they would scrape the legimate sites for addons then upload them to their own site in addition to deep-linking from the sites;
- They edited authors' files to remove donation requests and links to their home sites, etc.; and
- They have failed on many occasions to honour authors' requests to remove addons from their application;
- In a lot of cases the files served to users have been many versions out of date. This leads to authors having users complain about bugs, bugs that were fixed days or weeks ago in versions that are available on the legitimate sites, causing problems for both the authors and for the end-users;
- Until the community raised a hue and cry, WowMatrix didn't even supply the authors' names as to who wrote the addon, let alone provide a link to where the addon was legitimately hosted;
- WowMatrix leeches from the legitimate hosting sites without permission, let alone compensation. Originally, they scraped our sites so they could upload addons to their own site without permission, in addition to deeplinking from our sites. They have finally stopped hosting the addons on their own site, but they still deeplink from our sites, using our resources to run their program. Curse and WoWInterface use a lot of bandwidth every month which costs a lot of money. The way we pay our bills is through site ads, which are directly dependent on users viewing them, and premium memberships. WowMatrix bypasses our download pages, and, as a result, people are not viewing the ads. Of course, this means the ads aren't generating any revenue to pay for the bandwidth. At the rate they were going, if they were allowed to continue using our resources without any compensation, they were going to drive us right out of business. Not only are they stealing our bandwidth and preventing us from being able to recoup that loss, they also have their own ads all over their site and application. They are directly profiting from the stolen bandwidth; and
- Due to the massive resource drains they put on our sites, we have all experienced heightened loads and weaker performance, especially on patch days. During those days they download so much from our sites that sometimes we have a hard time keeping up to the demands; thus causing legitimate users to experience problems accessing our sites. That's just flat out unacceptable.
For months now, both sites and multiple authors have been trying to come up with solutions to the problems caused by WowMatrix. However, WowMatrix just keeps ignoring authors' requests to remove their addons from their application, working around the protections we have put in place, and proving repeatedly that they have no intention of ever becoming responsible, legitimate members of the community. Instead, they choose to continue to leech off the community. Well we, Curse and WowInterface, have gotten together and between us we believe we may have found a solution to prevent them from pulling authors' addons from our sites to redistribute without permission and stealing our bandwidth any longer. Unfortunately we cannot release details on the solution, so as to keep it viable.
"Yeah yeah yeah, blah blah, get to the important question: What does this mean for me, your sites' user?" For the majority of users it should be completely transparent, you should not notice any difference whatsoever, other than improved site responsiveness during patch days. We hope that we will be able to revert the changes made to our sites eventually, if WowMatrix ever stops violating authors' copyright and ceases stealing our bandwidth and other resources.
If you were previously using WowMatrix to keep your addons updated, please use our official updaters (Curse, WoWInterface). You may also mark addons as favorites on both WoWInterface and Curse in order to be alerted when they are updated.
Kaelten
Administrator, Curse & WowAce
Cairenn
Administrator, WoWInterface
The sad thing is that when providers fight like this, everybody loses. The users lose, the addon authors lose, everyone, because instead of collaborating to provide a better experience for all, people divide into camps, and those camps each provide only a portion of the resources and support to the community that the whole could have provided. How many of us have a favorite addon (mine is LightHeaded) that's not supported by Curse Client? So, now, we have to manually update addons because people are drawn into camps. Furthermore, all parties in this have different public versions of the events....WowMatrix claims that they tried to resolve this situation and that they offered to help pay for the bandwidth they used. Their reasoning on their approach seemed logical. http://www.wowmatrix.com/faq/site-updates.html
One thing I've heard; never chalk up to conspiracy what can be explained by misunderstanding, or stupidity. I seriously doubt the wowmatrix guys tried to create a mess or intentionally tried to screw people. Most folks don't act that way. Most folks just get confused and forget to look at a bigger picture.
I don't care who's right or wrong in this disagreement, at this point, I cannot even tell who's perspective is closer to what actually happened, or if someone is bald-faced lying to me. The GPL doesn't really come into play, because if you read it, there's nothing that says you *have* to distribute software you use, if you *do* distribute software, you must include your changes and you must include source. So, Curse and anyone else can host a GPL addon and they don't have to use their bandwidth to share it with anyone...the GPL was designed to let people use software, and to ensure the sharing of new ideas and intellectual property, not to control behavior.
By drawing lines in the sand with each other, fighting over audience, and not collaborating, the various sites are limiting their ability to serve us, the community, and are forcing us to pick and choose as well. Its a losing, high cost struggle that ultimately demonstrates IMO a short-sighted understanding of customers.
IMO, the owners of the various add-on sites could probably better serve their users if they rethought this strategy and decided to provide the consumers, us, with the broadest, best supply of resources possible, by working together.
@ burcakb: Go to Tools, Options, and uncheck "Automatically install Curse Client updates".
I wont go into the GPL stuff. My problem isnt with the decision to disable wowmatrix. I completely understand the point of the admins & respect that.
My problem is CURSE IS ACTING IN NO DIFFFERENT WAY. Curse client updates itself. Without asking me. It also ninjaenables information gathering options that i had SPECIFICALLY disabled. In short, in my eyes curse client is leechware & no different that wowmatrix.
I can understand that hosting these addons takes a lot of money and that has to be taken care of in some way. I can understand ads etc. I cannot understand and do not look kindly into software sneaking extras onto my pc without my explicit knowledge & approval.
Until curse comes up with a client that doesnt sneak around my back AND MAKES IT CLEAR IT CHANGED, i'm going to be downloading manually via web & cursing (pun intended) every single time.
free software != open source
Just incredible to see how much ppl are putting so much energy in arguing against something legitim and normal in the only aim to preserve their lassyness.
Just incredible to see how agressive ppl get when they have to pay for something they want to have and the reasons they find to explain to the providers that they have to continue their free service.
Curse and WI are doing a great job and this for years; WM leeches and that's definitively not ok.
Honestly, i do not agree that Blizzard remains so possesive among the addon authors community instead of trying to start an "Authorized Addon Developer" programm in order to preserve their wishes without blaming authors. How many addOn author provided ideas that blizzard has build in, that's leeching too! And why do authors of addons used by a majority of wow gamers do not deserve something for their work ?
@oryriss: If there is anybody here that needs to learn to read, it's the people at dvhardware.net. Blizzard's UI policy can be found here: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/policy/ui.html
Please note that the term open-source used. It merely states that the code must be visible and not obfuscated. Again, just because something is clearly visible does not mean you have any rights to it. You can go to any library, copy a clearly readable book and start distributing it, but you'll find yourself on the wrong side of a courtroom soon enough.
Only 2 things to say:
1) learn to read. http://www.dvhardware.net/article34771.html
2) Learn about open source: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
that is all
@Aries66
It was never about the clients. It was all about the bandwidth wowmatrix wasted in the operation of it's program. Bandwidth that wasn't being recouped in advertising or page impressions. There was a significant reduction in traffic after they did this. Saving them thousands of dollars of money that they can now spend on better things.
BANDWIDTH IS NOT FREE BRO
@balding_ape
I may have to correct you on a few points there old bean.
1) Most addons aren't released under a GPL or Open source License. There was a forum thread on the O. Forums petitioning authors to do so. The consensus was that for 90% of the authors who posted there don't have a GPL or Open source license on their addons.
2) Openly readable code != (is not) open source. Open source software is covered by a specific license an author has to agree to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software
Is interesting reading here.
3) Wowmatrix can host addons on their own server sure. But only if they have the authors permission to do so. 70% of most addon authors out there categorically won't ever give wowmatrix permission to do so because of their past history with addon authors. That and they don't offer the author any tools to manage their addons
As a user - Wowmatrix worked on windows 2000. Curse client doesn't. As a developer - Wowmatrix for reasons unknown kept downloading an old version of my mods, leading people to complain to me how my mods suck.
"WELCOME TO OPEN SOURCE. Curse will be violating the GPL if they don't re-enable WM access to the programs that are released under that license."
1) Are these addons even covered by the GPL? Is that how they are released typically?
2) Open source doesn't mean any of those things you said. Open source means the code is open for anyone to see. That's all. It seems like you don't know the difference between "free" software and "open source" software.
3) Curse is not stopping WM from distributing addons. WM can download every single addon from Curse, upload them to their own site, and distribute them that way, and Curse will do nothing to stop them.
In essence, you are pretty much completely wrong.
curiosity question Osyriss, how exactly are you qualifying Curse as violating the GPL for blocking WM? they are blocking a program, not you downloading and installing the addons yourself or even using their installer. your statements 2 and 3 say distribution when you wish, not not how.
osyriss: The only "freedom" that is even germane to this discussion is #2 and even here you're wrong. WowMatrix is welcome to redistribute the exact copies. However, this requires that they host the addon themselves which is something they clearly don't do with the majority of the addons in question. Otherwise, they're not distributing anything. They're merely an interface for the distribution which is actually done by Curse/WowInterface because they're the ones hosting the files.
It's best to be silent and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.
0. Freedom to run the program as you wish.
1. Freedom to study the source code of the program and then change it so the program does what you wish.
2. Freedom to help your neighbour. That’s the freedom to redistribute the exact copies of the software when you wish.
3. Freedom to contribute to your community. That’s the freedom to distribute copies or modified versions when you wish.
WELCOME TO OPEN SOURCE. Curse will be violating the GPL if they don't re-enable WM access to the programs that are released under that license.
It obviously looks like that WoWMatrix was just better and more popular than your crappy Curse client and now you try to insult them with lies to force the people to use your crap instead of a WORKING updater that doesnt try to spy on your char or force an registration and login to update fuckin addons..
I too will kick off all the addons from your side and you definetly cant force ME to choose the updater YOU want me to.
I might not be a coder or programmer. But everything I see is " mimimi the users like them more than us. lets tell everybody they are bad so they need to play with us" Get yourself a backbone and improve your client with the things the user wants, not what you think is cool. (for example: No sign up, No character data, just a stupid plain workin updater not a battlestar of unneedet shit) If you cant do this you could at least stop bothering the users choice!
I currently write a addon for Warcraft.. It is "OPEN SOURCE". I uploaded it to curse because I TRUST them.. they offer my file in 2 ways. The client "witch is the best way for someone that dose not have strong windows skills" and a link to the file for ppl that would like to do it that way. I didn't not give concent to WM to Host my addon, nore am I inpressed that they will not allow a person to download the file from a link on there site. as for them making there client so that it can download off other sites without concent is THEFT and they should pay..
As for ppl that think that Curse is making the bandwith problem up, You should put up a webserver and host a homemade file that is 1 MB in size and let ppl download it as much as they want for one mounth and see if your ISP bills you for extra bandwidth. then the next mouth I will hot link it and double your bandwidth and see if you like me, then we will ask you if you want to be able to block me from hotlinking the file
wow, i was reading through some of the older comments and am amazed at the number of people that are against updating things manually or using the wowinterface or curse programs... personally i prefer to update manually, but think both are excellent and have much appreciation :) neither seems particularly friendly to slow dialup connections though, and after using both for a while on a decent internet connection i went back to manual updating, haven't tried 'em since i moved last and have crap for internet. perhaps i should try one or both of them out again :D props for getting rid of WM
publicly viewable =/= open source
I think the big issue is choice. We choice WAU because we tried it and we liked it. When it went away, I went with the suggested Curse Client and found it very wanting. Then one day my brother mentioned WowMatrix to me and it was what I wanted. So I used it.
Curse and WowInterface did not like the competition and killed it. WowMatrix is abiding by their wishes but I think the floodgate will re-open on May 19th when Blizzard essentially forces all addons to become Free Open Source Software and distribution becomes more open.
I know that Ace was acquired by Curse. I used to use the WAU client, and I don't believe it updated addons from curse, or WoWI, WoWUI, or any of the other sites; only Ace.
Also, the current version of the Curse Client is quite good (after a rather rocky start) - IMHO, better than WAU was. It makes all Curse addons available, and almost all Ace addons. Basically, you get a larger pool of addons with what seems to be a better client, yet I see *EVERYONE* complain about how WAU is gone. I just want to know what was so great about the WAU client?
I understand that people want a 1-click solution (a la WoWmatrix), but WAU wasn't that.