Not at all, I just don't think what we do "kills the competition" in any way shape or form.

If there was a way to ensure our links wouldn't show up on pages 100% generated by other peoples mods that wouldn't hurt the end user experience or cost us significant resources in man-hours I'd happily do it.

As it stands, none of the solutions anyone has come up with manage to pull that off and the issue at hand (that some coders would prefer if our copyright notice wasn't on their pages) isn't, in my mind, one that outweighs the considerations of the end users/customers.

This isn't a moral stand we're taking, it's just a practical issue. I don't disagree with the theory, we just haven't come up with a way to do it in practice that isn't unwieldy and expensive or disruptive.

Iain

Bullsh*t, even I (I'm not advanced coder) would be able to make sure where my mods code is appearing and where it's not appearing on vb pages very quickly. But you have said you have 6 quality coders there so why suddenly "cost us significant resources in man-hours".
It's funny though to read how you defeat your business and say. By the way, are you a coder/web developer yourself or you are only employing coders and web developers?

Maybe a coder's perspective will help with some understanding. I'm one of the DragonByte coders btw. If you are using the vB core system for your mod then you can't say that what is displayed is 100% yours minus the style and vB.

If you use fetch_userinfo and display the musername, then my profile hover mod will be running on your page. If you don't build your own navigation bar and use what vB provides then NavTabs will be used on your page. If you don't write your own database class and use the vB db class and vBOptimise is installed then your display time is greatly decreased by vBO's reduced queries.

I understand that you don't like the generic DBT footer. The design was really just a matter of picking the lesser evil. We needed a mod that will consolidate serveral lines of copyright into one, that does not need to be updated every time we have an updated/new release (which is just about every friday) and does not need to reach back to our site to get a list. If you can come up with a mod that only displays the mod copyright for those mods and only on the pages that they run on and doesn't need to be updated constantly or leave the users site for more information then I would be very interested in hearing it.

Dylan

I am not a full time coder for DBTech, but I am a web developer/product designer, yeah.

Iain

Oh my, don't do that.

This code in the copyright mod does exactly what I have highlighted (or something similar) from time to time to get info.
And note that there is no mention in the mod that it uses external data.

I have updated the settings for the CM mod to indicate external data :)


Fillip

That was a dumb oversight. Someone got their wrist slapped for that one. Cheers for pointing it out.

Iain

First- My personal belief is I don't find this a big deal. I personally tend not to use mods that display copyrights as I've never put any in my mods. Even ones that have their own pages.

But that said, if DragonByte was interested, as nhawk pointed out they are already reading a data file regularly for updates.

Just create and maintain a second data file. In it is only a list of THIS_SCRIPT values. Rather than trying to keep up to date with the THIS_SCRIPT values of other coders mods to disable, they could just maintain a list of THIS_SCRIPT values on which to enable their copyright.

So basically just a comma or new line separated list of THIS_SCRIPT values for every dbtech mod. When new mods are released the list gets updated.

Then once a day on a scheduled task the list gets updated to the local database of each forum with the combined copyright mod installed. The initial collection of THIS_SCRIPT values would take a little time but maintaining it should not be hard.

That would only solve the issue with the copyright management mod, it wouldn't do anything for the (rather large number of) mods that are global, have a global footer and have no callbacks of any kind.

Again there's also the issue of it cutting off the display of the copyright on pages it SHOULD still be on (e.g pages using our navtabs mod, or profile hover mod, our ads mod and many more).

That's not a huge deal-breaker obviously, but it's there in the "positives vs negatives" column for sure.

Positive points: It'll make a few other coders happy.

Negative points: It'll remove our legitimate copyright from places it should be.
It requires a bit of work to set up and regular updating.
People will still complain about our mods that DON'T call back being global.

Importantly though it shouldn't inconvenience our users/customers in any way. So, if it'll be enough to satisfy people, we'll take the hit on it :)

So, coders who take issue with our copyright, would that be an acceptable solution for you? Would you still be baying for our blood? :P

Please note this will NOT stop our global copyright footers showing up on your pages, only the copyright management mod footer if users choose to install it.

(and yes that was facetious, I don't actually think you guys are baying for our blood, take it in the spirit intended ;) )

Iain

Sorry, I thought the problem was limited to the one one copyright mod - I skipped over some posts and skimmed others. You are correct, if even 1 mod of yours alters all pages you have at least some right to have a notice on the page. People will argue over how much- that's where I tune out because of lack of interest.

Wow, 6 pages on copyright messages, clearly some people have far too much time on their hands. :erm:

If you dont like the system, dont use the mods, its not rocket science.

Moving on slightly, I suggest some members take a break and calm themselves down.
If I see any more posts in here that border on pointless language or trolling, they will be removed.

If only all I had to care about was copyrights in a forum footer, I would be very happy. :D

As Paul M wrote, 6 pages are a lot for a discussion which seems to leads nowhere. DBT wrote many times that admin is who will decide if he wants to use the global copyright or not. Following the same logic I'll give admins the choice to decide if they'll use one of my mods or the copyright manager. It will be 100% their decision depending on their needs. But for sure my mods should halt to work if they detect in the site this mod installed.
For me this thread closed and the discussion ended.-

so just so i understand if i install dbt's copyright mod and i install one of yours you are going to input code so that yours dont work with it ...

is this correct ????

Exactly. But this is for new mods or new versions of the old mods. Bug fixes for old mods will continue working on the old style. And please don't say if it's good or not, and if you like it or not, or if you should not install or not. Simple because I don't care what you'll do. If just one wants to install my mods, is ok. If nobody wants to install them should be more than ok as I'll not waste my time supporting it.

Just a quick, semi-related question. You claimed before you were going to start making mods to compete with ours to drive us out of business. Did you change your mind on that for some reason?

I was kind of looking forward to that, to be honest. If it's your sense of "fair play" that's stopping you, please be assured that we are 100% ok with you doing it.

Iain

No i wont say weather this is good or not you are the one that can make that determination along with the member base .. i will say this i thought you were better then this and to put code in maliciously is just uncalled for ... from what i can see you have a few good mods but dont count on me putting them in cause of what you plan on doing i like a variety of mods and need them all to play nice with each other ..

really like Paul said he wishes all he had to worry about is copyrights in a forum footer ...that speaks volumes thanks for that Paul ...

Let's give also a reply to you Iain as I don't want you to feel that I'm ignoring you:

1. When a party breaks the fair play, then the fair play ends for all.
2. For me there are 3 levels of corresponding with people in life. Risking that maybe I'll not find the right words to explain it, these 3 levels are:
   1. Law rules
   2. Fair play
   3. Moral values (which includes previous 2 choices). This is the level that mostly counts for me and this is the way that I follown in all my life.
3. At this moment I can't saying anything for sure. It's true that 2 choices came to my mind as a way to react:
   1. To release mods with features of your mods (but believe me totally different in coding) with the features that you count as PRO. None other feature. There is no need to waste my time to add features that anybody can has for free from your lite version.
   2. To "name PRO" the normal versions of my mods without the restriction of Copyright Manager. As you can see I also know marketing.
4. But as footer note. My moral values does not allow me to do anything right now. This is what already replied to 3 users who contacted me asking for the release date of the PM Utilities.
5. ....AND..... Even with this restriction that I'll add, I'll still feeling that I'm doing fair play. Do you know why? Because if a user choose to have just a line of copyright code, it gives a s##t for what I think and/or what I feel for this action. So, on the same way I'll send this s##t back to him.

I'll appreciate if this endless and meanless discussion ends here.

Thank you

--------------- Added 08 Jun 2013 at 18:20 ---------------

How do you dare to say something like this and offend me such a way?? What is malicious code? Malicious code is when you're trying to do something bad to the other side. What in common with what I wrote???????:

1. First of all should be a big notice in the top of my mods saying that the mod is incompatible with Copyright Manager and links to the mod and to my main post here.
2. If the user bypass this warning and tries to install it, the installation will goes smoothly, but when he will try to run the php file he will gets an errom message with a full explanation. That's all.

Please be more carefully on what are you writting. Thank you.

i think you better go back and re read

i said maliciously not malicious code

maliciously----Having the nature of or resulting from malice; spiteful:

i think this whole thread is pointless do what you want and db will do what they want just like every other coder out there we as the end user will choose what we want to install and life goes on

Sounds good to me. Closed.