Ecosee, discussion about copyright, licenses and their plans

[EcoSee]

austriaka

Okay... I like your thoughts on this... I'll keep at the drawing board until its perfect. I have every intent of donating... if it ever makes money... and what a lot of other free software sites like yours do is to put links to hosting companies they approve of where the link is tracked with an affiliate code. I have that ability to do this if Pixelpost wanted to add a section about hosting opportunities to their site. The affiliate link would pay the pixelpost team 20% recurring revenues... which could go into the "donation" account for further development. I don't know if that is even something you might be interested in... but I would be happy to set this up if it is...

[Dennis+]

Ecosee, I really like the way your picking this up. I compliment you on your willingness to do things right. As for me, I see no problem in using my addons on your site. I wrote them after all to get used by Pixelpost users. It would be nice to be appreciated in some way (This can be a donation or a link back to my page with the mention of my name (or both ))

Are there any plans to give the paypal addon to the public? I for one am very interested (I can obviously build my own, but free time is hard to come by these days).

[austriaka+]

Right now we have no affiliated hosting companies, no affiliates at all. It is an idea we have to discuss in the team of course.
First thought is that Pixelpost should stay completely independent.
But on second thought it might be reasonable to consider.

Ecosee, I want to say that too, your good will to respect the limitations and value of an open source project is very much appreciated!

[dakwegmo+]

Let me echo what Dennis and Karin have said as well. It's good to see that you're willing to make everything right. I really like the idea of the service you're offering, and as long as every gets the credit they are due, then I would have no problem recommending your services to friends looking to get a photoblog setup without the hassle of having to deal with hosting.

Originally Posted by EcoSee

As for pricing... Eleven2 charges $83.64 per year for their "small" plan. At $49.95 per year, we are priced much lower than that and our Paypal Version is priced at $79.95 per year which is still lower. Other paypal powered, advertising free, professional photo portfolio sites charge anywhere from $200 to $400 per year... so really... EcoSee is way under priced in comparision. Even Smugmug charges $139 for their pro version. And we do do all the leg work of the install!

Doh! I'm so used to seeing price per month for hosting that it didn't even register that those were annual prices not monthly. In that case, I think it's a very good deal.

[EcoSee]

Thank you for the open discussion on the logistics and licensing of this project. I have been working on it for six months... obviously in my spare time as well as I have to do the paying job thing too. Dennis... I'm gonna work on the link backs... do you think that they should be in the addons page or somewhere on my main site... ??? And donations to individual authors or the team will certainly come in proportion to any success I have with this... whether I simply donate on some interval or you guys decide to go the affiliate route and create a "hosting" section in the menu or something like that....

As for releasing my custom addons... There is an About Addon that lets people enter their about page information from the admin screen so they don't have to edit the file. There is the Print Service Addon and the Paypal Addon. I have been debating whether to release them to the whole community or keep them as my "carrot". That decision has not been finalized as of yet...

[jaywilliams+]

EcoSee, just to let you know, according to the GPL, you CAN charge a fee for copies of a GPL program. That is not an issue. The issue is simply that the copyright notices were removed and nowhere is it stated that the source code is under the GPL and is available upon request.

Now as for the addons & templates, that's a different story. If the authors haven't specified a license in their code, you'll need to contact them individually to make sure they give your their consent.

Of course, I'm no lawyer, so I'd recommend you read the GPL for yourself:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.php

[EcoSee]

Thanks Jay~

I'll work my way through it tonight...and certainly make everything right... how do you feel about the plugin?

[Dennis+]

Well, you could put the links on a separate page, sort of a credit page.

As for the paypal addon, to bad you haven't decided on it yet. Looks like I need some free time then. Normally with all the addons on the extend we do some kind of peer-review to either check for malicious code or security flaws.

Please remember that stuff posted on Extend does not make it Public Domain and code is still copyrighted. (Same goes for code posted on the homepage (e.g. my page)).

[jaywilliams+]

Originally Posted by EcoSee

... how do you feel about the plugin?

As long as as you state somewhere that I'm original author of the plugin and provide a link back to my company site (myd3.com), I'm happy.

[EcoSee]

Thanks to both Jay and Dennis for your permission. I will start working on the best way to credit authors and continue to get permission from the remaining contributors etc.