An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't even notice

Re:An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't... by teddyh on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @10:29AM (#30086642)

He called the 2% “stealing”, too. Sure, the slow increase to 30% was not documented, and I can see a good argument being made there.

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Re:An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't... by tobltobs on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @11:43AM (#30087801)

Could you please hint us to the sentence where he calls the 2% “stealing”, too?

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.

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Re:An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't... by labcomputer on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @01:59PM (#30090089)

> What is "questionable" about that? Maybe that is not stealing but it is an obvious fraud.

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.

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Re:An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't... by op00to on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @10:34AM (#30086726)

The 2% is stealing because no reasonable person would expect to see such a clause in an open source software project. The 2% clause was hidden, all the way at the end of the doc. The plugin author is a conman.

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Re:An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't... by teddyh on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @10:47AM (#30086905)

Why do you call it Open Source? The plugin itself does not call itself Open Source, and clearly links to another project for those people who want an Open Source program.

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Re:An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't... by InsomniacL on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @11:24AM (#30087476)

https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/blob/mas...

> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files

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Re:An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't... by colejohnson66 on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @12:37PM (#30088692)

The code being free does not mean usage is free. Qt’s code is free to look at, but you still need to pay them for certain things. Licenses apply to the code, not what it does.

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Re:An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't... by InsomniacL on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @02:10PM (#30090243)

Firstly, I was addressing the claim in the comment I replied to that it's not open source. It's licenced under MIT

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..?

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Re:An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't... by abofh on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @02:51PM (#30090750)

They used the software, it did what it was programmed to do. The breach seems entirely on the licensee

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Re:An ad plugin was stealing revenue for a year and I didn't... by ipaddr on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @11:38AM (#30087713)

This is used for popular game engines. It's not a bad model. If you make nothing you pay nothing if you profit you pay a %. It removes the need to buy upfront.

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