Ecosee, discussion about copyright, licenses and their plans

[dakwegmo+]

Originally Posted by EcoSee

I run a webhosting company and specialize in pixelpost. Email me through my profile and maybe I can help. I can't promise anything as I don't have anything to do with your current host. But when you host with my company, I do a full install of the platform for you and it prevents a lot of problems down the line. Just something to think about if you get that frustrated.

What's the name of your webhosting company? It would be cool if we had another web host we could recommend that was as big a supporter/promoter of PixelPost as Eleven2.

[EcoSee]

Dakwegmo~

The hosting site is EcoSee.com We love pixelpost so much that we redesigned our entire hosting service around it and wrote several custom addons and 50 custom templates (30 of those center horizontally and vertically). Its offered as a finished photohosting service where the user never has anything to do with the servers. We offer three hosting plans and do the install for everyone who signs up. If a user simply wants hosting without any of our customization and full access to the servers we can do a plain install of the basic pixelpost platform and step out of the picture. We offer the following plans:

"Artist's Sales Plan"
We have a custom Paypal addon that lets you enter different sizes and prices for each photo available.

"Stock Photography Plan"
This one lets you simply enter the image ID number from your stock images and it is automatically linked to the agency page.

"Friends and Family Plan"
This one has a print fulfillment service built into it, where the print facility uses Fuji Crystal Archive Paper for the prints.

Let me know your thoughts,

EcoSee.com

[austriaka+]

EcoSee, your site looks very professional and your plans seem quite convenient.

But I am completely missing any hint that you are using Pixelpost for your offer or that
jaywilliams is the orignal author of your Lightroom Plugin

[EcoSee]

I'll get right to that this evening... any other feedback is welcome!

Thank You...

[dakwegmo+]

Originally Posted by austriaka

EcoSee, your site looks very professional and your plans seem quite convenient.

But I am completely missing any hint that you are using Pixelpost for your offer or that
jaywilliams is the orignal author of your Lightroom Plugin

I was going to say...

It looks like a great service for people who don't really want to deal with the day to day management of a website. Prices seem a little steep, since hosting is cheap and PixelPost is free.

Which brings me to the other point autriaka makes. The PixelPost team is a small group of people who have put a lot of time and effort into developing and maintaining it. It is distributed freely, with the sole condition that you properly recognize the contribution of those developers.

It is totally uncool to capitalize on their work without giving due credit.

Originally Posted by EcoSee

I'll get right to that this evening...

It's the only payment we ask.

[EcoSee]

Okay~

I added the footer tag crediting Pixelpost with a link back to the main site. In the future there will be more of an "about us" page where I will expand that explanation even further.

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!

Thanks for the feedback!

[austriaka+]

Originally Posted by EcoSee

Okay~

I added the footer tag crediting Pixelpost with a link back to the main site. In the future there will be more of an "about us" page where I will expand that explanation even further.

Seems ok to me now, assuming that the copyright notice of Pixelpost team is still intact in the source code of the pixelpost package and the indication to the GNU General Public License is provided.

GNU General Public Licence states out clearly how you have to deal with copyright and license when conveying modified source versions:

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

4. Conveying Verbatim Copies.

You may convey verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice; keep intact all notices stating that this License and any non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code; keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty; and give all recipients a copy of this License along with the Program.

You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee.

5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.

You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

* a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and giving a relevant date.
* b) The work must carry prominent notices stating that it is released under this License and any conditions added under section 7. This requirement modifies the requirement in section 4 to “keep intact all notices”.
* c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.
* d) If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your work need not make them do so.

Following these terms of GNU General Public License you cannot restrict the license of Pixelpost. And your modified source code must be available for your customers, with a download link for example since you don't offer an FTP account in your plans.

Besides you should check all Addons you are offering with your package for copyright and license and make sure that appropriate credit is given.
Attention: if there is no License attached to an Addon, it does not mean that it is completely free for (ab)use, but contrariwise the license is restricted to "all right reserved". So better ask the addon authors if it is ok to offer their work in your package. As far as I can see from your website it concerns at least Dwilkinsjr for his Auto-Resize-Addon, Jaywilliams for the Adobe Lightroom Plugin and Dennis for the Google Map Addon.

And better ask Jaywilliams if it is ok for him to be mentioned like this on your site, it looks as he is part of your developer team...

[Dennis+]

Originally Posted by austriaka

Besides you should check all Addons you are offering with your package for copyright and license and make sure that appropriate credit is given.
Attention: if there is no GNU General Public License attached to an Addon, it does not mean that it is completely free for (ab)use, but contrariwise the license is restricted to "all right reserved". So better ask the addon authors if it is ok to offer their work in your package. As far as I can see from your website it concerns at least Dwilkinsjr for his Auto-Resize-Addon, Jaywilliams for the Adobe Lightroom Plugin and Dennis for the Google Map Addon.

Other than that the paypal addon sounds vaguely familiar to the buy from paypal addon/hack by RobbieMc. You also mentioned you have 50 custom templates. I assume, since there is no credit list you wrote them all yourself. I'm wondering how long this took? If you didn't write them all yourself I suggest you contact the original authors regarding the copyright and licenses.

I'm not sure if everyone would be happy about this the way it is now.

[EcoSee]

Okay... I'll keep working on making everything right. I don't want to step on anyone's toes or overstep any bounds... I just think its a great platform and wanted to expand upon it and simplify it for those who aren't quite as technical with regards to installation. The 50 templates are fine as they follow the rules provided in their use. And the paypal addon is not from the hack... that only allowed one price and or size to be set all the way across the entire site. This is far more complex and was written from the ground up as an actual addon and not just a piece of code added to the image_template. Credit has not been removed from the code at all as the pixel post team is still recognized in the code. And I'll work on the addon permissions/credit etc...

Or if this is too complicated and the authors are offened by what I have done... I could change it all to just offer pixelpost installation and the addition of my custom addons and that could solve all the issues.

[austriaka+]

Ecosee, of course I cannot speak for the whole team and for all the Addon authors. But I didn't want to depreciate your work, everybody who is successful in his own business and makes money from it has my respect.
I think you had a good idea in what you are doing but when looking into your site for the first time it looked as if you are selling the right to use your own photoblog software and this is definitely not ok.
In my humble opinion (but I'm not a lawer of course) people should know what they pay for: this is hosting, installation and using a free software on their own domain.
Right now it sounds like they have to pay for the use of Pixelpost without even knowing and this is not ok.

So a solution might be to state out clearly that your software offer is based on a free product and you sell the convenience. I guess the Addon authors won't be so strict as long as their work is still valued.
You know that there is a donation button for Pixelpost and most addon authors have one too?

Perhaps a "professional" plan could complete your product range where you offer a domain package with pre-installed (unchanged) Pixelpost together with FTP and detailed information about the free Pixelpost community values.