ich finde es so scheiße das wowmatrix nicht mehr geht macht es wieder so wie es war und gut ist was soll der müll jetzt eigendlich

  Quote:

The admin's word is final. This isn't a democracy, it's the internet.

Owned.

  Quote:

So what your saying is that Curse is a dictator ship and we should all shut up and our opinions are irrelevant?

By no means should you "shut up."

But keep in mind that yes, the admins' word is final.

  Quote:

you know greed is one of the 7 deadly sins.

So is wrath. Could we try to remaina bit more civil?

. . . and in all honesty I doubt this is a case of simple greed. I'm not seeing any proof they are hoarding or misusing the money they receive. I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are using the money wisely unless there is proof otherwise.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by gwonk190

Lets be 100% clear on something... WoW Matrix is a hack and a half!....2 months after me and my friends started using it suddenly all of us on the SAME day suddenly lost all our toons gold and gear. Do not use it! WoW matrix will take your acounts and make swisscheese of them!

My advise would be to stop visiting gold selling and porn sites. WoWMatrix has never hacked anything on your computer. LMAO

  Quote:

Originally Posted by DWSR

  Quote:

Originally Posted by tyfavre004

  Quote:

Originally Posted by CobraA1

. . . and while we're at it - if Curse and WoW interface are putting their heads together, why is WoW interface creating a separate updater?

Own'd. Thread over.

You've obviously not read the announcement on WoWI. If you did, you would have noticed that the updater is extendible, meaning that a plugin can be written to support Curse very easily.

 

Lots of flames in this thread. All I have to say is this:

 

The admin's word is final. This isn't a democracy, it's the internet.

WOW! Sorry to inform you but the admins may think that they have the final word but in fact the final word belongs to the customer (end user).

  Quote:

Originally Posted by psbaker

  Quote:

Originally Posted by gwonk190

Lets be 100% clear on something... WoW Matrix is a hack and a half!....2 months after me and my friends started using it suddenly all of us on the SAME day suddenly lost all our toons gold and gear. Do not use it! WoW matrix will take your acounts and make swisscheese of them!

 

My advise would be to stop visiting gold selling and porn sites. WoWMatrix has never hacked anything on your computer. LMAO

Agreed.  WoWmatrix is not responsible in the slightest for anything that happened to you and your friends.  You're quite misinformed. 

As for my take on the WM situation, I've been around long enough to have seen it all.  I used to monitor Curse, WoWI and ui.worldofwar.  Then ACE mods became the rage.  Slowly ui began to slip behind WoWI and Curse in popularity and the WAU was created.  WAU was great as it handled most of the mods I had after converting to the lighter weight ACE based mods.  Once WAU died, I was informed about WM and despite the issues surrounding it, I used it with 95% success.  yes it's better for you to visit a site to see about an update.  The author might have something to tell you that is important.  However for things like the omen update rash where one happened 2 times a day basically, you didn't need a site for it.  In all honesty, if the demand is there for a WAU/WM type product (and there is . . obviously), one should exist.  To all those who say WoWI and Curse should broker a deal, yes they should.  I believe they even tried but from a lot of reports, WM was not as responsive as Curse and WoWI liked.  I would like to see another tool go live like WM/WAU that reaches the major addon sites *AND* the sites authors use like atlas, lunar sphere, gatherer, DBM and more.

WoWI, Curse, WoWAce, WM need to stop dividing the community and work together to provide us a valid link

What few of you seem to realize is that this wasn't a choice between letting WoWMatrix continue to steal bandwidth without compensating curse for it indefinitely or blocking WoWMatrix.  This was a choice between Blocking WoWMatrix (which has consistently refused to work with Curse or WoWI, despite efforts to bring this about), and still being around so people could get addons, and not blocking WoWMatrix and disappearing entirely because they couldn't pay for the bandwidth that WoWMatrix was consuming, and then WoWMatrix users would be out of luck anyway, because Curse and WoWI wouldn't be around to leech off of any more.  WoWMatrix's ability to steal bandwidth from Curse and WoWI would have ended either way, the only question was one of whether it ended when the sites it was stealing from failed, or when they finally stopped its abusive behavior in an effort to be able to continue to provide their services at all.

WoWMatrix may have been a slick program, but it was 100% bad for authors and the hosting community in general.  No amount of "It was a better program" justifies their habit of giving an UFIA to people who asked them to change their behavior. The WoWMatrix updater was not efficient in the way it did things.  It generated much more traffic per user than visiting sites directly or using the site's own updater.

Addon authors have approached them, only to be ignored or lied to, while WoWMatrix continued to distribute addons without permission and even after being specifically asked not to, continued to edit the code of addons, and continued to display ads for Goldsellers and Powerlevellers to make money off of other people's bandwidth while exposing their users to risks (yes, those ads have resulted in distribution of keyloggers to some WoWMatrix users). 

Curse and WoWI approached them, and WoWMatrix never made any real effort to work with them.

This wasn't out of spite, jealousy, or a desire to force users into a specific solution.  The decision was made because it was the only way for these sites to be able to continue providing addon hosting at all.

I'm guessing that this is a reply to me, since it's directly after my post.  At this point, I don't host my own addons -- but I have hosted my own software in the past, so I am fully aware of the costs involved.

Is it morally and ethically right to pass the cost on to Curse?  Sure.  <I>They</I> asked <I>me</I> and the other addon developers of the world to upload addons to them, in return for which, they promised to distribute them.  Now, because someone has introduced a different way for people to get to the addons they host, without seeing all the crud, they want to block it.

From my point of view, Curse has violated the contract that I understood myself to have with them -- they've decided that, because someone found a way to exploit their business model, they can one-sidedly decide to prevent people from downloading the addons using a particular client.  What's next?  Will they decide that if someone is using Firefox with ad blocking, that person can't download addons from them?  Will they decide that if you're coming through an anonymizing proxy, you can't download addons from them (because then they don't know what client you're using)?

Where would I host my addons without Curse?  I already host them on WoWUI as well, which has <I>not</I> blocked WoWMatrix.  And I've just now asked WoWMatrix to host them as well.

And, if it comes down to it, I'll host them on my own web site.  I've done it before, with other software.

I'm not worried about Curse going away.  If you are, maybe you <I>should</I> get the premium version of their software.  For my end -- well, I gave Curse my support by uploading addons I made.  They've chosen to block the way I download them.  Therefore, I am removing my addons from Curse.

I hope curse makes a program just like wowmatrix. it checked my addons for updates, updated them, offered me more addons, told me if i already had it installed, and supplied a link to the homepage it came from for me to have access to more information. The curse systyem doesn't do any of that. i'm a mac user. The curse system does not work.

Quite frankly I'm an end user and the add-ons make Wow a little more fun and less tedious. The curse updater does not work and all it brings up is a "not found" page error. I don't want instructions on how to fix it or what my be causing the error because quite frankly I don't care. Wow Matrix worked just fine without any fiddling on my part or jumping through hoops. At this point this will be the last time I update any addons that I can't get from Wow Matrix. I just don't care enough about any of them to spend another three days of my life trying to figure out where the heck windows hid the darn zip file on me or trying to get the curse updater to work. I'll learn to play the game without any add-ons or I'll quite the game and find another.

You can talk money, integrity, copyrights or whatever. It boils down to one thing - If it's not easy for the normal everyday people to use they won't use it. Period.

Agree with above

But you wont get a sensible reply, every few pages you get lies and inconsistant statements regarding WM. also note the lack of constuctive posting from admins.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Hirsute

Addon authors have approached them, only to be ignored or lied to

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Hirsute

continued to edit the code of addons

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Hirsute

continued to display ads for Goldsellers and Powerlevellers

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Hirsute

Curse and WoWI approached them, and WoWMatrix never made any real effort to work with them.

So once again, addon developers cannot force anyone not to modify or stop distributing their addons or they would be violating the addon policy Blizzard started using. Yes, they can ask to not distribute or modify but there is no legal way to force them to stop it.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by nckswt

In case you haven't heard about this, you can read about what happened here.

It's shameful that Curse and WOWInterface should be forced to band together AGAINST WOWMatrix instead of trying to broker a partnership with WOWMatrix's developers. Curse has always stood as a unifying force in the WOW community – I hate to see them devolve into a nasty, divisive entity that puts its own agenda above that of the WOW community.

WOWMatrix has the best Addon-updater out there. Curse is the best resource for hosting addons. Don't make us choose – work TOGETHER.

Thank you for this post now all we can do is hope curse gets with it.

What I'd like to know is:

Does Curse get the revenue from ads if the ads, or the scripts the ads use are blocked?

If so, Curse wouldn't be getting any benefit from people who use Firefox + NoScript like we all should.

The longest period I'm ever on an addon database website for is when I'm searching for new or better addons.

I'm already having issues with the Curse Client not catching all my addons, and so far, I have about 20%-40% of my addons that aren't functioning due to being out of date.  Now I can assume in part that the mod writers haven't come up with a functional update, but I don't recall having this issue with WM.  The Curse Client is sufficient for what it is, I just think Curse and WoWInterface should pull in the developers of WM to all together use one unified updater with ads from their respective websites.

By the way...To the person claiming that WM has ads for Gold Sellers....I provide the following.

I see four text ads on the top of the client..."PC Registry Cleaner", "Alliance 1-80 Guide", "Horde 1-80 Guide", "Make 297g per Hour Video Proof!"

Please detail to me which one is the gold seller

  Quote:

Originally Posted by efindel

I'm guessing that this is a reply to me, since it's directly after my post.  At this point, I don't host my own addons -- but I have hosted my own software in the past, so I am fully aware of the costs involved.

It wasn't, it was a general reply to everyone who feels that Curse was acting maliciously here.  They weren't.

  Quote:

Is it morally and ethically right to pass the cost on to Curse?  Sure. They asked me and the other addon developers of the world to upload addons to them, in return for which, they promised to distribute them.

Which they are still doing (with the exception of your addons, it seems).  Nowhere did they make the promise to allow someone else to distribute them in a way that prevents them from paying the bills.

  Quote:

Now, because someone has introduced a different way for people to get to the addons they host, without seeing all the crud, they want to block it.

No, because someone introduced a program that stole bandwidth from curse, refused to work with them through many attempts at cooperation, and was abusing Curse in a way that would end either with Curse going out of business, or Curse blocking them to prevent that happening, they decided to block them.

  Quote:

From my point of view, Curse has violated the contract that I understood myself to have with them -- they've decided that, because someone found a way to exploit their business model, they can one-sidedly decide to prevent people from downloading the addons using a particular client.

Again, nowhere does Curse communicate any intent to let people obtain the addons they host via any means they want.  They never had.  If you thought they did, you failed to actually read anything they publish regarding the services they offer.

  Quote:

What's next?  Will they decide that if someone is using Firefox with ad blocking, that person can't download addons from them?  Will they decide that if you're coming through an anonymizing proxy, you can't download addons from them (because then they don't know what client you're using)?

If doing so would enable them to continue to provide addons to those who are willing to play nicely, and failing to do so would result in costs of operation that they couldn't cover, they'd be perfectly within their rights (and not at all unethical) in doing so.  I doubt it would ever come to that, however.  There are fundamental differences between what WoWMatrix did and visiting the site through an anonymous proxy or with an ad blocker running.

  Quote:

Where would I host my addons without Curse?  I already host them on WoWUI as well, which has not blocked WoWMatrix.  And I've just now asked WoWMatrix to host them as well.

Which is perfectly within your rights as an addon author, asking WoWMatrix to list them is a good thing, because then WoWMatrix is distributing your addons without stealing from anyone.  If they'd been operating this way all along, this conversation wouldn't be happening. Considering that there are a lot more people that use Curse and WoWI than just you, however, Curse's responsibility to continue to provide services extends beyond you.

  Quote:

And, if it comes down to it, I'll host them on my own web site.  I've done it before, with other software.

Again, perfectly within your rights, but not at all germane to this discussion.

  Quote:

I'm not worried about Curse going away.  If you are, maybe you should get the premium version of their software.  For my end -- well, I gave Curse my support by uploading addons I made.

I support Curse by visiting the site, and makeing sure my Ad blocker is off when I do.  That's my way of making sure they can continue to provide what I consider to be excellent services.

  Quote:

They've chosen to block the way I download them.  Therefore, I am removing my addons from Curse.

Perfectly within your rights, and not an unreasonable approach.  However, my comments weren't about this.  My comments were making sure that people understood that this wasn't a matter of "WoWMatrix competes with us, so we're going to block them," on the part of Curse and WoWI, but rather a matter of, "We can't afford to continue to pay for WoWMatrix's bills in addition to our own, so we're going to stop doing so."  The only way to accomplish this, as WoWMatrix had rejected multiple attempts at resolving the problem some other way, was to prevent WoWMatrix from stealing their bandwidth.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Hirsute

What few of you seem to realize is that this wasn't a choice between letting WoWMatrix continue to steal bandwidth without compensating curse for it indefinitely or blocking WoWMatrix.  This was a choice between Blocking WoWMatrix (which has consistently refused to work with Curse or WoWI, despite efforts to bring this about), and still being around so people could get addons, and not blocking WoWMatrix and disappearing entirely because they couldn't pay for the bandwidth that WoWMatrix was consuming, and then WoWMatrix users would be out of luck anyway, because Curse and WoWI wouldn't be around to leech off of any more.  WoWMatrix's ability to steal bandwidth from Curse and WoWI would have ended either way, the only question was one of whether it ended when the sites it was stealing from failed, or when they finally stopped its abusive behavior in an effort to be able to continue to provide their services at all.

WoWMatrix may have been a slick program, but it was 100% bad for authors and the hosting community in general.  No amount of "It was a better program" justifies their habit of giving an UFIA to people who asked them to change their behavior. The WoWMatrix updater was not efficient in the way it did things.  It generated much more traffic per user than visiting sites directly or using the site's own updater.

Addon authors have approached them, only to be ignored or lied to, while WoWMatrix continued to distribute addons without permission and even after being specifically asked not to, continued to edit the code of addons, and continued to display ads for Goldsellers and Powerlevellers to make money off of other people's bandwidth while exposing their users to risks (yes, those ads have resulted in distribution of keyloggers to some WoWMatrix users). 

Curse and WoWI approached them, and WoWMatrix never made any real effort to work with them.

This wasn't out of spite, jealousy, or a desire to force users into a specific solution.  The decision was made because it was the only way for these sites to be able to continue providing addon hosting at all.

In a free market where one company fails in any aspect, there is always another to take over with a better business model.

I am a mac user and I love wowmatrix. Please stop wasting my time curse-gaming and either make something as good as wowmatrix for the mac or better yet just unblock wowmatrix.

I keep hearing that curse and wowI approached WM many times? where is this documented?

When is something acutally factual going to be posted that justifies Curses behaviour?

If it wasnt malicious or spiteful in anyway why was it done on patch release?

No one can argue that point its indesputable it was done at the time to cause the biggest disruption to the end user as possible and have the maxium impact and force the download of there own software for greed and nothing more.

If any one  actually has any FACTUAL negative coments regarding WM program or behaviour please feel free to add your coment but i personally would refrain from making sweeping statments based on assumption.

Hirsute you have an agenda its quite clear from your post if its all true please give evidence.

I have made repeated posts in this forum asking for truth and as of yet a havent seen a shred of truth from a single supporter of curse in fact i am coming to the conclusion that any and all posts made even remotley in favour of curse's behaviour are on the payroll and so if i were you i wouldnt burn my bridges.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by doncorneo

Curse was most likely looking for WM to pay for the bandwidth use. On the one hand you can say that is reasonable, but I'm sure that Curse was probably asking for more than actual cost. Curse's bandwith use has gone down, but so has its revenue ad traffic. A good portion of that traffic was from WM.

None of which (traffic from WM) generated any revenue to pay for the bandwidth it was using.

  Quote:

Curse is spreading the lie about the modifying of the AddOns. All WM did was unjumbled .toc files so it was line-item readable. It did not change/modify .lua or .xml files. I have checked all my AddOns and the ONLY changes/modifications was to the .toc file. Name the AddOn(s) that were modified (besides the MINOR change to the .toc file) and explain exactly how the Author(s) was affected.

Curse hasn't done that at all, that I've seen.  And I'm fairly confident it isn't a lie. I've known a number of authors that have verified this has occured, beyond chanes to the toc, and have no reason to doubt them.

  Quote:

And don't mention the "Donate" bit since WM's client linked the Author's donation site and CC doesn't.

The linking to the Author's site within the WM client is a fairly recent development, that happened only after a lot of noise from addon authors.

  Quote:

CC is the one that prevented Authors from receiving any possible donation because it did not link the Author's donation site or notify client users that the Author requests donations, yet Curse benefited (gained revenue but did not compensate the Author) from that author's work when a user click the link in CC to visit the AddOn's site page.

And when users clicked that link to visit the addon's page, if the author was requesting donations, it was present on the page.  I call bull on this.  Particularly because authors who submit addons to Curse and WoWI do it knowing the services that these sites provide, and knowing what they can and cannot expect.  Until recently, WM has never sought permission of addon authors to distribute their work, so addon authors had no say at all regarding those circumstance.  I know of more than a few addon authors who have asked WM to stop distributing their addons, and WM has refused or ignored them completely.  WoWMatrix has never acted with any sense of ethics up to this point in time.

  Quote:

Curse has failed to identify 1 AddOn that was requested to be removed. It was most likely Curse requesting the removal of AddOns it hosts and not the Authors. Name the AddOn(s) and/or Author(s). Back up your accusation.

There are a number of authors who have come forward describing this exact situation on the official forums, those same authors have been the ones putting for the claims of WoWMatrix altering their addons.  I don't need to regurgitate all of that here.  You can discount the argument as a result if you'd like, it wasn't central to the initial point of my post, which was that Curse and WoWI's actions were out of self-preservation, not malice for WoWMatrix.

  Quote:

Some of the AddOns that WM linked are covered under the GNU which means WM does NOT need the Author's permission to redistribute because it was given under this License automatically. I think (READ AS: NOT MAKING A STATEMENT OF FACT) Blizzard requires AddOns to be Licensed under GNU. I don't write AddOns so I may be wrong about this.

Blizz doesn't requite addon authors to license under any specific licenses, and you're right, many addons that WM linked were licensed using the GPL, which does allow redistribution rights to anyone in posession of the code.  Many were also under All Rights Reserved licenses, or others that do not extend this right beyond hte author of the work.

  Quote:

I have yet to see a Gold Seller ad or Power Leveler ad in the WM client. Maybe WM did this before I started using its client, but it certainly does not do it now. And for the last 2 years (at least), WM has not allowed a key logger to be downloaded. If someone is stupid enough to click a gold seller ad or Power Leveler ad, then they deserve to get a key logger, but don't blame WM for their stupidity. About 2 years ago or so, Curse had to pull its client because it was downloading key loggers (and trojans I think), so if this did happen with WM, by your assessment, CC is also 100% bad for the Authors and hosting community.

As far as I'm aware, Curse has never had to do any such thing.  Regarding Gold Seller/PL ads, I've seen them, but then, I've seen them on the official Blizz forums as well, so it's something many people struggle with.  If WM has improved that situation, good!

  Quote:

By the way, UFIA = Uniting Friends in America; so yeah, WM has been trying to get everyone to play nice together, but Curse is having a hissy fit because WM is a better client, and it is totally free.

No, UFIA = Unsolicited Finger In the Arse.  WM has never made any efforts to play nice, and has repeatedly ignored efforts on the part of those people it was stealing form to find a mutually beneficial arrangement.  No one at Curse has had any sort of a hissy fit, they just took measures to stop the abuse that they'd tolerated for far too long already.  Which was the central purpose of my initial post: That this wasn't a decision made out of malice, if it was, they'd have taken action a long time ago.  This was a decision made out of a desire not to be driven under by a program that was stealing bandwidth and raising costs beyond the level that they could be covered.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by flimflan

If it wasnt malicious or spiteful in anyway why was it done on patch release?

No one can argue that point its indesputable it was done at the time to cause the biggest disruption to the end user as possible and have the maxium impact and force the download of there own software for greed and nothing more.

Or, because that is the day that it costs Curse the most to allow WM to steal from it.  It was not out of a desire to punish users, but again, out of a desire to prevent further abuse.

  Quote:

Hirsute you have an agenda its quite clear from your post if its all true please give evidence.

What agenda is that?  An agenda to bring people to understand that WM did some really, really, bad things?  Okay, if that's my agenda, I can live with that.  It did do bad things.  If nothing else, stealing bandwidth from other sites was bad, and it's obvious that occured, because if it didn't, this block would have had no effect.

  Quote:

I have made repeated posts in this forum asking for truth and as of yet a havent seen a shred of truth from a single supporter of curse in fact i am coming to the conclusion that any and all posts made even remotley in favour of curse's behaviour are on the payroll and so if i were you i wouldnt burn my bridges.

You can believe whatever you want, but "truth" is a funny word.  Fact: Curse's blocking of WM cause a lot of addons to be inaccessible to WM users.  Fact: The only way this would happen is if the WM client was downloading those addons from curse.  Fact: WM did not provide any reimbursement for the bandwidth they used to Curse.  Fact: WM did not have permission from curse to do this.  Add all those facts together, and you've got really bad behavior, abusive behavior, that Curse and WoWI finally decided they had to stop, or risk being driven under.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by psbaker

In a free market where one company fails in any aspect, there is always another to take over with a better business model.

Sure, but any company is also free to take measures to prevent others from stealing from it, which Curse did.

Besides: Using someone else's bandwidth without paying for it and without permission while profiting from displaying your own ads in the process isn't a business model, it's theft.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Haydan0308

yeah stop whineing about something that realy BITES. Curse downloader has yet to Allow me to download it. I am sorry Curse.com But i am useing you only becuase i have been forced to. Ever seince the new patch i have not been able to download my Auctionier Addon and i have manualy downloaded it MANY TIME. I have done Everything that i have done for all the other downloads that i had and they work fine. All i am saying is that WoWmatrix was a lot EASYER TO USE and realy i dont care if u critsies me for it. KILL WITH HONOR

WoWMatrix wouldn't have continued to be easy to use when it ran the two largest sources of the addons it distributed into the ground and became unable to use them as sources any more.  WM users would be in the same situation they're in now, except that instead of being able to bitch and moan while still downloading their addons from Curse and WoWI, they'd get to bitch and moan while having to hunt down somewhere else to download their addons.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by hohoukn

All addons are under GPL license and that means anyone can distribute them. You simply cannot say to anyone to stop doing it or you would be violating the very same license you use on your addon and making it not be a true GPL-licensed addon that goes against the new addon policy.

I suggest you read the UI and Addon policy again.  There is no requirement that addons be released under the GPL.  Many addons are not released under the GPL, but under much more restrictive licenses.  The new Blizz policy does not require addon authors to allow their addons to be distributed in any way any one pleases.

edit: I see you've realized this too, now.

Stop whining.... because the convenience is OVER as we know it?? Because I have to manually update addons now that even Curse can't find - Addons that theoretically "belong" to Curse?? Because I now have to go to 3 updaters to do what WoWM was able to do??? Because Curse is quite obviously jealous at the number of uber satified clients for whom WoWM was able to cater?? Never - it's my right to speak up when a company puts their own agenda ahead of it's customers. 

At least Curse has tried to replicate the greatness of WoWM... what a shame that it's still substandard. I use it now. because I'm forced to. If ANYTHING should happen where I have an alternate choice... it will be so long Curse - only because of this selfish decision. 

FOR ALL THE MOD DEVELOPERS OUT THERE! PLEASE DISASSOCIATE YOURSELVES FROM CURSE AND WOWINTERFACE. THEY DON'T HAVE YOUR BEST INTERESTS IN MIND - ONLY THEIR OWN!

Hirsute let me address your responses:

of which i may add are quite selective and have ignored many points raised.

Regarding Bandwidth:

WM doesn't steal bandwidth this particular issue has been dealt with previously and the use of the word steal is slanderous. To steal and I quote from the Oxford dictionary "Take something without permission and with out intending to return it" Well as curse does not make any request from me to pay in anyway shape or form for the services they offer it cannot be stolen so therefore WM cannot perform theft. The only theft that could occur from curse is if they trade mark there logos or artistic content.

WM itself does nothing if i install it and it remains on my PC till the end of time it doesn nothing. It is I that makes a choice to use a program to automate a job i do not wish to spend my valuble time doing.

No matter how you say it WM DOES NOT STEAL ANYTHING FACT!

Addon Modification:

If you do not wish to regurgitate what is on official forums and no one in this forum has seen any proof of this Addon Modification that is being committed by WM link the Thread. By the way its only an issue if the particular addon that has been altered falls under a restrictive license. Otherwise its a non issue and a statement made for no other purpose than to make the end user feel concerned about security which is just another way of flaming the competition.

And just to confirm any changes to an addon that WM does make are once the addon has been downloaded to MY pc as i have not accepted any end user licence from the author of the addon it is in there best interest to make there addon GPL otherwise they could have be liable for any legal action i deside to take if there addon in anyway damages my PC. But more importantly i can change the code of any addon on my PC to my hearts content if i have not accept any end user agreement.

So WM may or may not do this, it doesnt matter if they do unless its for malicious purposes and of that there has been no proof. Also to make a point this has nothing to do with Curse and is certainly no reason for Curse blocking WM.

Donations:

Again the term donation means donation it is not mandatory WM does offer a link and did do proir to being blocked so again this has no place in this thread.

Playing together:

How would you know what has or hasnt been said between Curse and WM? You would only know this if you are operating from the inside otherwise its an assumption on your part that negotiations have broken down and that it is the fault of WM. So unless you have evidence of this you must caviate your statement.

Being Mailicious:

As we all know the general player cannot get an upto date addon prior to patch day. So please point me in the direction of the post/warning/announcement made by Curse that come patch day they would be blocking WM. Oh maybe you cant becuase it doesnt exsist. So its not about tolerating or any other such nonesence its plain and simple it was done for the sole purpose of forcing the majority of user to attempt to use there own software.

So in actual fact your "FACT" statements arnt facts at all they are your opinion and assumptions. Lets recap shall we? :)

Fact: Curse's blocking of WM cause a lot of addons to be inaccessible to WM users.

True and that is the dispute made by users of WM but not really helping the pro curse cause.

Fact: The only way this would happen is if the WM client was downloading those addons from curse.

Again no one argues this point its a bit like saying Fact the sun shall shine at some point in the future. 

Fact: WM did not provide any reimbursement for the bandwidth they used to Curse. 

Now it gets interesting as this is slanderous as it isn't WM using bandwidth it is the user using bandwidth which is me and i do not have to reimburst anything as there is no request for monies. If the website was password protected and you had to pay in order to gain access and WM was enabling "me" to avoid this then its stealing but as it isnt doing that WM isnt stealing by very definition.

Fact: WM did not have permission from curse to do this.

Again WM needs no permission as it is following instuctions from the user which is me and curse do not request i make any kind of application to download addons.

Add all those facts together, and you've got really bad behavior, abusive behavior, that Curse and WoWI finally decided they had to stop, or risk being driven under.

And here is the agenda! you cannot add fact to the above statement unless you are on the payroll and are acting on behalf of Curse otherwise its opinion.

Bull! Come on be a man say it like it is! Curse have lost out to advertising as the worldwide economic conditions have meant a drop in ALL advertising revenue so the guys at curse think they can bully and monopolis to protect there mula as the all had savings in iceland.

NEXT PLS!

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Hirsute

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Haydan0308

yeah stop whineing about something that realy BITES. Curse downloader has yet to Allow me to download it. I am sorry Curse.com But i am useing you only becuase i have been forced to. Ever seince the new patch i have not been able to download my Auctionier Addon and i have manualy downloaded it MANY TIME. I have done Everything that i have done for all the other downloads that i had and they work fine. All i am saying is that WoWmatrix was a lot EASYER TO USE and realy i dont care if u critsies me for it. KILL WITH HONOR

WoWMatrix wouldn't have continued to be easy to use when it ran the two largest sources of the addons it distributed into the ground and became unable to use them as sources any more.  WM users would be in the same situation they're in now, except that instead of being able to bitch and moan while still downloading their addons from Curse and WoWI, they'd get to bitch and moan while having to hunt down somewhere else to download their addons.

Again, please see my post above.

Do you truly believe that if Curse and WowInterface closed their doors today that there would not be a site up and running within a week that did the exact same thing, only better?

They do have authors' interest in mind, something that is clear to most authors.

And absolutely, it was selfish for Curse and WoWI to do what they needed to do to ensure they'd still be around to host addons at all.  Very, very selfish.

Im so confused.  Wowmatrix was so easy to use... I use it because I suck at adding stuff into my folders and it never worked right.  Curse...If you get my business its because you kicked wow matrix out of the market..not because you are a good product.  This sucks. WoW matrix was so damn easy to use.  ARGH I HATE THIS SIGHT IT SUCKS

JUST LET THEM HAVE THE INFORMATION BACK >>>AND STOP BEING SELFISH your product is nothing compared to wowmatrix

  Quote:

Originally Posted by gwonk190

Lets be 100% clear on something... WoW Matrix is a hack and a half!....2 months after me and my friends started using it suddenly all of us on the SAME day suddenly lost all our toons gold and gear. Do not use it! WoW matrix will take your acounts and make swisscheese of them!

Hmmm, you're the first one in 17 pages on this thread to make that accusation.  Me thinks you are either a Curse troll or you gave your account name and password to someone.  Either way if what you are alledging is true you would not be the only one complaining about it.  But you would use the curse installer even though they force you to register and openly state that data is collected on remote sites.

I vote for troll

/agree

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Hirsute

What few of you seem to realize is that this wasn't a choice between letting WoWMatrix continue to steal bandwidth without compensating curse for it indefinitely or blocking WoWMatrix.  This was a choice between Blocking WoWMatrix (which has consistently refused to work with Curse or WoWI, despite efforts to bring this about), and still being around so people could get addons, and not blocking WoWMatrix and disappearing entirely because they couldn't pay for the bandwidth that WoWMatrix was consuming, and then WoWMatrix users would be out of luck anyway, because Curse and WoWI wouldn't be around to leech off of any more.  WoWMatrix's ability to steal bandwidth from Curse and WoWI would have ended either way, the only question was one of whether it ended when the sites it was stealing from failed, or when they finally stopped its abusive behavior in an effort to be able to continue to provide their services at all.

WoWMatrix may have been a slick program, but it was 100% bad for authors and the hosting community in general.  No amount of "It was a better program" justifies their habit of giving an UFIA to people who asked them to change their behavior. The WoWMatrix updater was not efficient in the way it did things.  It generated much more traffic per user than visiting sites directly or using the site's own updater.

Addon authors have approached them, only to be ignored or lied to, while WoWMatrix continued to distribute addons without permission and even after being specifically asked not to, continued to edit the code of addons, and continued to display ads for Goldsellers and Powerlevellers to make money off of other people's bandwidth while exposing their users to risks (yes, those ads have resulted in distribution of keyloggers to some WoWMatrix users). 

Curse and WoWI approached them, and WoWMatrix never made any real effort to work with them.

This wasn't out of spite, jealousy, or a desire to force users into a specific solution.  The decision was made because it was the only way for these sites to be able to continue providing addon hosting at all.

You post a very compelling argument and I would love to see WM respond to it.  I assume you are an employee or officer of the curse site to have access to this information (assuming it's true).  I would, however, have more sympathy if curse had posted their position far in advance and also not pulled the plug the day of the 3.1 patch.  Providing a viable free updater would also have prevented most of this.  Curse's actions and timing do not support your accusations and I, for one, find them reprehensible and untrustworthy.  If there is any updater I would be afraid to use it would be the one from curse.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by flimflan

"Take something without permission and with out intending to return it" Well as curse does not make any request from me to pay in anyway shape or form for the services they offer it cannot be stolen so therefore WM cannot perform theft. The only theft that could occur from curse is if they trade mark there logos or artistic content.

WM itself does nothing if i install it and it remains on my PC till the end of time it doesn nothing. It is I that makes a choice to use a program to automate a job i do not wish to spend my valuble time doing.

The definition you cited made no mention of a need for a request for payment for something to qualify as theft.  As such, most of the above statement isn't pertinent to the argument.  If Curse has a resource, and that resource is used (or taken) without permission (used bandwidth cannot be returned except in the case of monetary compensation for its use), which has been done by WoWMatrix (or, if you want to be more specific, through the use of the WoWMatrix client) is theft.  Or, at least, the facilitation of theft. Kaelten has publically stated that Curse has attempted to work with WoWMatrix, and I take him at his word.  I'm not inside, but I'd call my statements more than just my opinion.  The story, as I see it, is that conversations have taken place between Curse and WoWMatrix, but a satisfactory resolution was not obtained.  WoWMatrix's continued producing of a product that uses Curse resources without their permission, then, and without an intent to reimburse Curse for those resources, again, qualifies as theft, or the facilitation of theft on the part of those who use their product.  In either case, Curse and WoWI's actions are the logical approach to cutting their losses.

  Quote:

Addon Modification:

If you do not wish to regurgitate what is on official forums and no one in this forum has seen any proof of this Addon Modification that is being committed by WM link the Thread. By the way its only an issue if the particular addon that has been altered falls under a restrictive license. Otherwise its a non issue and a statement made for no other purpose than to make the end user feel concerned about security which is just another way of flaming the competition.

And just to confirm any changes to an addon that WM does make are once the addon has been downloaded to MY pc as i have not accepted any end user licence from the author of the addon it is in there best interest to make there addon GPL otherwise they could have be liable for any legal action i deside to take if there addon in anyway damages my PC. But more importantly i can change the code of any addon on my PC to my hearts content if i have not accept any end user agreement.

So WM may or may not do this, it doesnt matter if they do unless its for malicious purposes and of that there has been no proof. Also to make a point this has nothing to do with Curse and is certainly no reason for Curse blocking WM.

You're right, this is not central to my initial point, and would have been better left for a different post and different conversation.  My intent in stating it was not to make those who used it feel unsafe, but to express one reason that many Addon authors were frustrated with WM.  Your comments regarding legal liability and the GPL, that's simply not true.  An addon released under an All Rights Reserved license would not put any liability on the initial author for changes that others made to the program. 

You may not have accepted an EULA of any sort, and you may not be under any specific liability because of your use of a modified addon, but that's too, not germane to this discussion.  An ARR licence allows the Author to determine how his work may be distributed and thus, to refuse permission for distribution through the WM client.

However, you make one point about a few of the arguments I initially posed and have continued to discuss with which I can fully agree: They don't really have much to do with the decision made by Curse and WoWI to block the WM client.  So, while you're welcome to respond to these points again, many of the points I won't directly respond to in this discussion from here on out.

  Quote:

Donations:

Again the term donation means donation it is not mandatory WM does offer a link and did do proir to being blocked so again this has no place in this thread.

Agreed that it's not germane to this thread.

  Quote:

Playing together:

How would you know what has or hasnt been said between Curse and WM? You would only know this if you are operating from the inside otherwise its an assumption on your part that negotiations have broken down and that it is the fault of WM. So unless you have evidence of this you must caviate your statement.

I've mentioned this above, but I'll just post quickly: I know because I've been present while Kaelten and Cairenn have discussed these efforts on more than one occasion, and I take them at their word.  The evidence I have is their statements to this effect in threads on the official Blizz forums.  I'll make no effort to go find links, nor will I thus blame you if you choose to disregard the argument coming from me.  We can call it a difference in belief/understanding concerning the efforts that may or may not have been made to resolve this problem prior to taking this step, if you'd like.  I see little point in continue to bring it up, however.

  Quote:

Being Mailicious:

As we all know the general player cannot get an upto date addon prior to patch day. So please point me in the direction of the post/warning/announcement made by Curse that come patch day they would be blocking WM. Oh maybe you cant becuase it doesnt exsist. So its not about tolerating or any other such nonesence its plain and simple it was done for the sole purpose of forcing the majority of user to attempt to use there own software.

We also all know that that rush to update generats massive amounts of traffic.  I can't point you to a posted advance notice regarding the blocking of WM, but I choose to believe that this was not done out of malice for WM or WM users, but out of a concern for the costs that would be incurred if they were to allow WM updating of their addons on patch day.   I've seen no more convincing arguments from anyone to the contrary.  Was it an effort to force people to access addons they host in authorized ways?  Sure.  I don't see that as wrong.

  Quote:

So in actual fact your "FACT" statements arnt facts at all they are your opinion and assumptions. Lets recap shall we? :)

Sure

  Quote:

Fact: Curse's blocking of WM cause a lot of addons to be inaccessible to WM users.

True and that is the dispute made by users of WM but not really helping the pro curse cause.

Fact: The only way this would happen is if the WM client was downloading those addons from curse.

Again no one argues this point its a bit like saying Fact the sun shall shine at some point in the future.

We don't disagree about these, and I only stated them for the sake of completeness.

  Quote:

Fact: WM did not provide any reimbursement for the bandwidth they used to Curse. 

Now it gets interesting as this is slanderous as it isn't WM using bandwidth it is the user using bandwidth which is me and i do not have to reimburst anything as there is no request for monies. If the website was password protected and you had to pay in order to gain access and WM was enabling "me" to avoid this then its stealing but as it isnt doing that WM isnt stealing by very definition.

I think "slander" is a bit overboard, but, for the sake of precision: Curse provides a service that is supported via the inclusion of ads on webpages that are used to access their content.  WoWMatrix produced a client that used the resource without permission (and continued to do so after express requests not to, if you trust Kaelten, Cairenn, et al, as I do), and offered no compensation for the costs that would be incurred by their users using their client to access Curse's resources, even after (again, if you trust the statements made by Kaelten, Cairenn, etc, as I do) reuqests for compensation.

  Quote:

Fact: WM did not have permission from curse to do this.

Again WM needs no permission as it is following instuctions from the user which is me and curse do not request i make any kind of application to download addons.

I disagree.  I would say that anyone that produces a product that consumes a resource provided by someone else needs the permission to use the resource.  Regardless of whether the law is on "my side" in this regard, I believe it is the "right" way of doing things.

  Quote:

Add all those facts together, and you've got really bad behavior, abusive behavior, that Curse and WoWI finally decided they had to stop, or risk being driven under.

And here is the agenda! you cannot add fact to the above statement unless you are on the payroll and are acting on behalf of Curse otherwise its opinion.

You bring up this "agenda" again.  I've openly admitted that I have a specific "agenda" or intent in mind in posting here.  If you believe my intent is other than I've stated, I'd be happy to have you explain what you see it to be.

  Quote:

Bull! Come on be a man say it like it is! Curse have lost out to advertising as the worldwide economic conditions have meant a drop in ALL advertising revenue so the guys at curse think they can bully and monopolis to protect there mula as the all had savings in iceland.

NEXT PLS!

And... I don't know where to begin here.  Was this an effort on the part of Curse to protect an income stream? Yes, I've never said anything to the contrary.  I've simply said that they're perfectly within their rights to do so, especially considering that income stream is what supports their ability to provide their services (which WoWMatrix users were using as well). 

So again, I'll return to my initial point (which I had strayed from by the end of my initial post), the choice presented to Curse, as they've stated it (and I choose to trust their statements) is essentially:

1)Continue to allow people to use WM to update addons from Curse, and eventually fail and have Curse go away entirely because the cost incured through the use of WM to update addons was not offset by its use.  This would result in neither WM user nor anyone else being able to update addons that had been hosted by Curse.

2)Block WM updating of addons, and preserve their ability for everyone else to update Addons from Curse using an authorized method.

That #2 is the better choice seems fairly clear to me, and was the initial intent of my original post.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by psbaker

Again, please see my post above.

Do you truly believe that if Curse and WowInterface closed their doors today that there would not be a site up and running within a week that did the exact same thing, only better?

That is irrelevant to the argument, as this is about the choice on the part of Curse and WoWI to take measures to stop use that was driving them out of business. Whether someone else would provide a service to replacement has nothing to do with it.

However, that's the opportunity WoWMatrix has now: to provide a service themselves that is better than that provided by Curse and/or WoWI, and to do it using their own resources.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Yellowcrown

You post a very compelling argument and I would love to see WM respond to it.  I assume you are an employee or officer of the curse site to have access to this information (assuming it's true).  I would, however, have more sympathy if curse had posted their position far in advance and also not pulled the plug the day of the 3.1 patch.  Providing a viable free updater would also have prevented most of this.  Curse's actions and timing do not support your accusations and I, for one, find them reprehensible and untrustworthy.  If there is any updater I would be afraid to use it would be the one from curse.

See my posts above as to where I have gotten my information.  You're welcome to disagree with me, but honestly, I'm surprised they waited as long as they did.  It's been a problem they've been discussing for some time.

Ok read through your response and as most of the issues raised are now put to bed in a agree to disagree sort of way (which is acceptable imo)

The one thing i cannot agree to is the fact that WM steals anything.

If Curse has a resource, and that resource is used (or taken) without permission (used bandwidth cannot be returned except in the case of monetary compensation for its use), which has been done by WoWMatrix (or, if you want to be more specific, through the use of the WoWMatrix client) is theft

Only If permission is requested from everyone. what next? only American people can obtain addons everyone else needs to ask permission or there branded a thief?

I am fully aware how outlandish the above statement is and i am sure it would never come to that but it is a valid point you cannot call some one a thief for taking something you are offering for free to others just because they are bypassing your attempts at marketing to them.

I have mentioned that if i go directly to there website and download manually at no time do i have to ask for permission to download an Addon So the statement that WM steals Bandwidth is wrong and inaccurate by definition it cannot be any other way. the service provided by curse is given freely so therefore it cannot be stolen.

It can however be abused in some way and in some eyes maybe WM is abusing Curse's good nature but this is an opinion/emotion not fact. To call any one who uses WM a thief is wrong and should not be tolerated.

And one thing i am sure you cannot argue with is that Curse's handling of this from a PR standpoint is certainly lacking.

After all this the bottom line for me is no different than when WM was blocked.

I want a reliable, unintrusive, free, clean method of managing my addons.  WoWMatrix was (and still is for the most part) just that.  If and when CC and WI can provide a similar solution (without collecting any data from me) AND if WM no longer does the intended job I will probably but reluctantly switch.  Until that time, however, WM and manual downloads (from the developers site when possible) will be my addon manager of choice.

In the end it's the user community that has suffered by this.  Whether curse has a business case or not most users that endure needless pain from a company have long memories.  You might recall the Sony rootkit, I do.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by flimflan

The one thing i cannot agree to is the fact that WM steals anything.

If Curse has a resource, and that resource is used (or taken) without permission (used bandwidth cannot be returned except in the case of monetary compensation for its use), which has been done by WoWMatrix (or, if you want to be more specific, through the use of the WoWMatrix client) is theft

Only If permission is requested from everyone. what next? only American people can obtain addons everyone else needs to ask permission or there branded a thief?

I am fully aware how outlandish the above statement is and i am sure it would never come to that but it is a valid point you cannot call some one a thief for taking something you are offering for free to others just because they are bypassing your attempts at marketing to them.

An interesting point, and though I still feel what they did constituted theft, I can see your argument that it didn't.  My response is as follows:

Curse provides a service that is freely available to anyone who accesses it in an authorized way.  Two modes of access have been explicitly authorized: Web Browsers, and the Curse Client.  WoWMatrix provided a program that depended on the ability to access that content directly in order to perform its intended function.  This was not an authorized mode of accessing the content.  Up to this point, I can concede that what WoWMatrix had done was at most abusive to Curse, and possibly only functioned the way it did because it's producers didn't consider the ethical dubiousness of their actions.  However, Curse contacted WoWMatrix, specifically expressed that the current arrangement was unacceptable.  When attempts to comprimise were fruitless, Curse expressed their wishes that WoWMatrix stop using Curse resources to provide its services.  Beyond this point, in my mind, it was clearly unethical for WoWMatrix to continue to allow their client to retrieve addons from Curse.  I believe (though IANAL, so I certainly could be wrong on the legal aspects of this) that at this point, it constituted theft.  It was, at best, use of a resource in a way that was specifically disallowed.

The point at which I'm willing to make a concession here is that no official word from Curse came to their users prior to last patch day, that the WoWMatrix Client was an unauthorized mode of accessing their services, though I do know that at least one of the admins here has been vocal about his stance regarding WM in the Blizz forums on multiple occasions.  One could say that this generally absolves the users of WM from an blame here, as they had not been approached.  It does not, however, absolve the makers of WoWMatrix from blame, as they knew that what they were providing a product that relied upon the ability to access Curse resources in a way that had been specifically disallowed for its functioning, as evidenced by the disruption when access to those resources was denied.

So, can the users be accused of theft, no, not really, as no one has been able to use WM to download addons from Curse from the moment that Curse specifically publically made clear that using WM to download addons was not permitted.  I would say that should WM try to circumvent the blocks that Curse put in place (which, to their credit, they don't seem to be doing, but rather have started an effort to host their own addons), and users knew that the addons they were getting through the WM client were coming from Curse, that they'd put themselves at risk for being guilty of theft, though that would have to be tested by the courts, and I doubt such a test would ever accur.

Did WoWMatrix act in a way that was at best abusive?  Yes, particularly once Curse had asked them to stop.  Do I feel that WM's persistence in acting contrary to the wishes of Curse constitutes, theft, I truly do, though I can see your argument to the contrary.

  Quote:

I have mentioned that if i go directly to there website and download manually at no time do i have to ask for permission to download an Addon So the statement that WM steals Bandwidth is wrong and inaccurate by definition it cannot be any other way. the service provided by curse is given freely so therefore it cannot be stolen.

As I stated above, it is freely given provided it is obtained via authorized means.  An example: A local grocery store has a bakery that advertises that all their baked goods are made fresh every day.  At the end of the day, they take the unsold goods out back, and anyone that's there is welcome to them, free of charge.  Now, say they have a particular type of roll that never completely sells, and thus is always available to anyone coming to the back of the store at bakery closing time.  Now, these rolls become freely available to people who obtain them by authorized means.  However, if I walk up to the bakery counter prior to closing, and take one of those rolls that never completely sells, it does not matter what I do with it after that, I've committed theft, because obtaining the goods under the circumstances I obtained them under was not permitted, and would normally have incurred a cost to me.  It makes no difference that the same goods are freely available to anyone under other circumstances.

WoWMatrix does the same thing, it accesses a resource that is, under specific circumstances, freely available to anyone, but it does so in an unauthorized way.  If that way has been specifically forbidden them, I believe it truly does constitute theft.

  Quote:

It can however be abused in some way and in some eyes maybe WM is abusing Curse's good nature but this is an opinion/emotion not fact. To call any one who uses WM a thief is wrong and should not be tolerated.

I don't think it can really be argued that continuing to use someone's resources after having been told not to is abusive, and unethical.  At least, I've yet to see anything that resembles an honest argument to that effect.  Again, I still believe that what WM does constitutes theft.  You may disagree, and at this point neither one of us is likely to change the other's mind.

  Quote:

And one thing i am sure you cannot argue with is that Curse's handling of this from a PR standpoint is certainly lacking.

Lacking? Sure.  Could advanced notice have been given?  I believe so.  I don't, however, believe it would have changed anyone's behavior.