I don't think taking 2% is theft. Maybe it's a dark pattern, but it's definitely not theft. In the article, I say that I calmed down after explaining with 2%, which means my agreement with the situation.
The way the increase to 30% is made and the number of users with such a percentage says that the author deliberately increases the percentage without warning the user, which is theft
https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/wiki/Lic...
> 3. Win-win partnership
> And, if you don't have enough money yet to get a license, or don't have a PayPal account, here is another flexible option worth considering, no need to pay a cent. We may call it partnership.
> We maintain, support, and version update for any plugin issues, you don't worry about its update or bugfix, just use it for free, and focus on your app or game logic.
> Ship our code with yours to end-user, no need paying a cent at all, instead, share 2 percent ad traffic, so that we can both benefit and cover our cost to maintain and enhance this project.
The problem is the plugin author silently raised that "share 2 percent ad traffic" to 30%.
Also note that the software is MIT licensed. Tucking some random additional clauses on your website or somewhere else doesn't magically change the licensing, if you don't want to use MIT (and make them free to use it) then don't use MIT.
You operate in the us? You pay the irs. You operate in Brazil, you pay them.
The price was disclosed, optional and entered into freely. Dude is buying his lawyer a boat if he wants to fight it.
The 30% was not disclosed and applied unilaterally. Per the email exchange:
> "After check, we find your app in the black list, and a random higher rate will be applied. Usually when a guy is using a fake license key, or send unusual attacking request...
That said, if you really wanted to impress, you'd improve the visibility of your practices for each individual developer, by providing a dashboard that fully discloses revenue-over-time, along with proactive notifications when your terms change. The MVP here would be a single email sent when the 2% term changes.
This business model where the providing party retains the right to change terms arbitrarily has always concerned me, in the same way something like an indentured servitude contract would, and yet they are all too common. But its everywhere, and no self-interested business would take steps to reduce it's power against the counter-party. There is a whole set of problems here that neo-liberal capitalism not only cannot solve, but actually seem to make worse. It's easy to point the finger at a single dev, or a small team, and say "you're unethical!" but in truth I think the statement is more informed by the ability to identify the actor than the action itself, which is endemic. (To take two examples: variable rate mortgages, and credit card debt, neither of which are modeled by consumers and both of which are certainly gamed by the counter-party.)
So I just forked an older version of their code and ran from that. I also made a post telling the guy it was kinda shady, they didn't seem to care.
> If you have used this plugin for FREE but monetized more than $1000, you are also required to get a license, or share us some Ad traffic as stated in win-win partnership model below
> Ship our code with yours to end-user, no need paying a cent at all, instead, share 2 percent ad traffic, so that we can both benefit and cover our cost to maintain and enhance this project.
> If you have used this plugin for FREE but monetized more than $1000, you are also required to get a license, or share us some Ad traffic as stated in win-win partnership model below.
https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/wiki/Lic...
The project however includes the following the license: https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/blob/mas...
Surely releasing code under an MIT license makes their statement invalid. Why would I be "required to get a license" and offered a couple of commercial options? It sounds like they need to get some legal help to properly license the project in the way they want to.
Furthermore, pricing should be clear. It's deceptive to hide it within their so-called "license" section. As a developer, why would I read the license section if it's clearly marked within GitHub as being licensed under MIT and has a LICENSE file confirming that?
That said - you do need to actually modify the code yourself, if you instead decided to use some man-in-the-middle attack to modify the packets in flow you may still be misuing the software. There are ways you could approach a solution that would in fact violate the license, as trivial as it is to circumvent.
The very first paragraph reads:
>You can use the plugin for free, or you can also pay to get a license. IMPORTANT!!! Before using the plugin, please read the following content and accept the agreement. THIS WILL AVOID POTENTIAL PROBLEM AND DISPUTE.
If as a user you're paying 2% of ad revenue, the plugin isn't free.
> If you don't want to get a license as your apps may not earn too much, or you don't have a PayPal account to pay, here is a compromised option. You don't have to pay, we are also okay if just share 2 percent user traffic, so that we can cover our effort and focus on maintenance and online support.
They don't make clear that that's the default behaviour. That by doing nothing you're consenting to their 2%.
If a developer wants to profit from their work, they should behave like a business.
MIT allows you to: "use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software". That's it.
Yes
> includes an MIT license file
Maybe. MIT license permits additional license restrictions on top of license. For example, MIT code can be copied into a proprietary system with a different license, which will forbid copying code out.
A page titled “License Agreement”, clearly linked from the home page.
(Regarding the 30%, I agree – this was questionable at best.)
With the multiple contradictory statements, even just within the README, though, my company’s lawyer would say we can’t use this dependency at all if I showed it to them.
This code is written to share revenue with the author after a threshold, but that's merely the application/code working as intended.
You're free to fork the code, remove this sharing and republish the dependency under another name for example, that's the only thing that MIT is about
------
Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
However, blaming "e.g. any license-scanning tools" is not correct either, since that would be clearly a limitation of the license tool, encoding assumptions of location and standardization that are nothing more than convention. I mean this in the sense that if you went to court and your excuse was "my tool didn't pick that up", you would probably not be victorious, since the terms were laid out clearly for human consumption.
And I agree, a lawyer would not want to use this dependency, but it shouldn't take a lawyer to do that. You are responsible for the legal implications of using anyone else's software.
If you have an offer of the MIT license from the author (as in the LICENSE.txt), then no clarifications or restrictions linked from the home page affect it, and other offers of other licenses are possible but not relevant if you like this particular offer.
So I there's no reason for the licensor to assume that the commercial offer was chosen and that the licensee agreed to that 2% withholding, much less a 30% one.
> Fork the source code and maintain it yourself (bug fix, any future changes on Cordova and SDK, integration support, etc.); see the open source project here: https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-plugin-admob
Which I think it's clear that's not what happened here, the blog author was using AdMob Pro and thus unable to qualify for "Free and Open Source, no support".
The author has written their license poorly in a stupid manner that allows everyone to use their product for free - that's why lawyers are useful and why for small developers it's a very good recommendation to use one of standard licenses instead of trying to write their own from scratch. As of now, perhaps due to the author's legal incompetence, the license also allows free usage for commercial purposes.
Sure, based on the license, someone could fork AdMob Pro and remove the ad sharing but that's not what the blog author did.
Eh. For something like a keylogger, not really; there are laws against writing and distributing malicious software. In the UK, you can write malware for educational purposes, but woe betide those whose malware escapes or “escapes”: no MIT license disclaimer will save you.
Running that without a proper license may cause unexpected behavior, contact me to obtain a license.
If you are a licensed user, it will likely render your system inoperable.
What law did I just break?
• short enough, and non-novel enough, not to count as a copyrightable work
• explicitly described as malicious in the accompanying documentation
• not viable for use in a cyberattack (since it can only be run once you've already won)
• doesn't actually work, due to a typo
you probably haven't broken any laws. But, again, I'm not a lawyer; please seek legal advice from an expert in the laws of your jurisdiction if you want an accurate answer.
Keyloggers don't have to be malicious (e.g. you can use it for a global hotkey hook). Thus, writing such software doesn't have to be done with that mindset at all. That being the case, it is ambiguous whether or not those laws apply.
You yourself say that "the increase from 2% to 30% is way more questionable". What is "questionable" about that? Maybe that is not stealing but it is an obvious fraud.
I really don't get what your motivation could be to defend that kind of shit.
The plugin author claims that the ramp-up to 30% is an anti-abuse measure. Supposedly, something triggered the abuse abuse flag and the rev-share ramped up as a "get in touch with us" signal, with the additional rev-share refunded when the user does get in touch.
Taken at face value, I think that's not unreasonable, though the lack of logging from the plug-in author's side is questionable (asking the customer how much they wanted refunded).
Where I think the jury is out is whether that is actually what happened, or whether the plug-in just ramps up every customer to see what their pain tolerance is.
> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files
That's not what the licence states at all...
> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person ... including without limitation the rights to use .. copies of the Software.
The licence states Permission is granted free of charge to use the software, if the software is charging then that's a breach of the licence..?
Either learn to read licenses, or have a list of approved licenses (MIT, GPL, etc.) and only use software thus licensed.
EDIT: What I mean above is the 2% which is specified in the “Licence Agreement” page – the article author is clearly considering this, too, to be “stealing”. Regarding the increase from 2% to 30%, that is way more questionable, and I do not defend it.