Addons free from now on, per Blizzard: KeyClone okay?

[Bigfish]

Psychologically speaking, we (boxers) are a group that thrives on our ability to pay for an advantage. In the market of what you can pay out of game to improve yourself ingame, watching the first step of the supply getting shut down is going to get people on edge. Today, its pay for use add-ons (which I would hope have a significant quality above free ones). Tomorrow, they start listing boxing software as a bannable application.

Is it likely to happen? Not in the slightest, but it's the reaction that the first event evokes that is riling everyone's feathers. There is a shift in policy at Blizzard, and such things naturally make people nervous, wondering if something they do or use is on the chopping block.

[zanthor]

[quote='Inate',index.php?page=Thread&postID=188975# post188975]Half the time the addons in question are absolute garbage anyways and tend to automate things in a way that blizzard never intended or wanted. It's the SAME as asking for money for a botting program, or asking for money for gold in game, it is all on the same principle.[/quote]You demonstrate exactly how experienced you are with ForPay addons right here.

[b]Quality: [/b]I've been a subscriber to two paid mods, RDX and Carbonite, both are a step above any other addon I've ever used. Well written, low memory use for what they accomplish, well documented, well supported.

[b]Automation:[/b] No addon can automate more than blizzard allows it to - Blizzard has complete control over their API and as such complete control over how automated an Addon can be.

[b]Replaced by OSS:[/b] Not only will these mods be replaced by OSS - but they already have been - there ARE other solutions for both RDX and Carbonite as well as any other mod you can think of - however people pay for the quality, for the support, and for the confidence that the MOD will be there next patch and not just fade away into the history of MODS. RDX for example stopped development and released his code - OpenRDX was born - a great mod with a great team - and a horribly slow development cycle. I saw more innovation in 3 months than I have since OpenRDX went Open over a year ago... is it the fault of the guys at OpenRDX? Hell no, they rock. They just have jobs, school, lives, etc.

Oh, and if you look around, I'm not the only one saying this is bad news, unknows like [url='http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15864749872&sid=1']Mikord, Venificus[/url] , Cogwheel and Zorba are on the same page as those who think this is a bad thing... only one of which was ever selling an addon subscription.

[algol]

HARDWARE 4 LIFE!

If it ever comes to that, we can and will.

Not that it will ever come to that.

[Bigfish]

If it ever comes to that, we can and will.

Some can, and some will.

Keyclone single handedly opened up multiboxing to the masses. Sure, other software is out there, but Keyclone did most of the work. If software boxing dies, most of the boxers will die with it.

This.

[algol]

Keyclone single handedly opened up multiboxing to the masses. Sure, other software is out there, but Keyclone did most of the work. If software boxing dies, most of the boxers will die with it.

Well, I know I will, if only because I'm a stubborn bastard.

[Souca]

Maybe Microsoft / Intel should prohibit Blizzard from makeing a profit off of the use of their products.

Although "WoW" is a popular addon to Windows, seems that Microsoft has full control of what runs on THEIR software.

Blizzard paid for the right to develop their software. They paid for the compilers, which even if not written by MS, paid for the right to include runtime libraries to let them run on Windows. Anyway, the analogy is far from a good fit.

I write software for a living, I'm stating this upfront so my bias is clear.

I look at it this way, without WoW, the addons won't work. So someone pays for an addon, which requires WoW to work, what does the addon developer pay to Blizzard for making WoW? It's isn't your monthly subscription and it isn't the developers if they even have one. No where did the developer recieve rights to make profit off of a derivitaive work.

Keyclone and HotKeyNet and all the other MB programs work outside of WoW. This only affects programs that rely on WoW's internal APIs to even exist.

Edit: Replied before I saw this was 80 bazillion posts long. Still stand by my statement.

- Souca -

So you are saying it's OK for Microsoft to mandate no one can charge for .NET applications and that they all must be free and unobfuscated?

No, you are implying that's what I said. Please don't.

.NET is a free API and tools are available to develop entirely for free... just like LUA and the interface UI.

I never mentioned .Net and neither did the post I replied to. Please provide a source for your claim that the Blizzard UI and it's APIs are free.

Windows is to .NET Applications as WoW is to WoW Addons.

(An Operating System) is to (An application framework) as (A game) is to (Said games adons)?

There is an open source project to provide a .Net enviornment, I'm pretty sure there isn't and can't be an open source implementation of Wow. It's a flawed analogy anyway.

Dangerous.
Slippery.

And while IANAL I would say dancing on non-compete laws.

You're welcome to your opinion, and I'm welcome to mine. Neither will have much effect on Blizzard though.

- Souca -

[Gadzooks]

If it ever comes to that, we can and will.

Some can, and some will.

Keyclone single handedly opened up multiboxing to the masses. Sure, other software is out there, but Keyclone did most of the work. If software boxing dies, most of the boxers will die with it.

Which is why I was wondering if this could effect KeyClone - his work is crucial to so many people. I don't use KeyClone myself, as I'm a Mac user, but I'd buy it if he made a Mac version!

The only addon I could see paying for would be a quest helper type, the work behind those (if you don't rip off other addons) is immense! Worth the $20 or so that they charge, IMHO. But the advertising in game needs to be blocked, imagine if couple of addons spamming your chat box with donation requests or ads for other addons start fighting it out! Not good.

[RobinGBrown]

I'm hesitant to mention this but there is an easy way for addon developers to get around those rules.

If they develop the addon as a two part system where one part is an in-game addon and the other part is a 'data tool' that creates and updates the data used by the addon then it would be very easy to charge for data updates but not the addon. WoWEcon does something similar to this already.

There are clear business precedents for charging for the data that works with a free tool. It's the data that takes time and effort to create compared to the tool.

Thus Questhelper could charge to download the quest data, WoWEcon could charge for subscription access to their data, etc, while still falling just within the rules.

Edit: Just wanted to add that I'm very happy with the 'no ads in game' rule, I really like it that Blizzard actually try to enforce the RPG aspect of their MMO, as a long time roleplayer I really hate stuff that breaks immersion, and ads from addons would piss me off no end.

[zanthor]

[quote='RobinGBrown',index.php?page=Thread&postID=1 89144#post189144]I'm hesitant to mention this but there is an easy way for addon developers to get around those rules.

If they develop the addon as a two part system where one part is an in-game addon and the other part is a 'data tool' that creates and updates the data used by the addon then it would be very easy to charge for data updates but not the addon. WoWEcon does something similar to this already.

There are clear business precedents for charging for the data that works with a free tool. It's the data that takes time and effort to create compared to the tool.

Thus Questhelper could charge to download the quest data, WoWEcon could charge for subscription access to their data, etc, while still falling just within the rules.

Edit: Just wanted to add that I'm very happy with the 'no ads in game' rule, I really like it that Blizzard actually try to enforce the RPG aspect of their MMO, as a long time roleplayer I really hate stuff that breaks immersion, and ads from addons would piss me off no end.[/quote] The data part was thought of by Blizzard ([i][b]emphasis mine[/b][/i]).
[quote][b]1) Add-ons must be free of charge.[/b]
All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create "premium" versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on,[i][b] charge for services related to the add-on[/b][/i], or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on. [/quote]While I whole heartedly agree with no ads in game - I also don't see any problem with an addon asking the user for donations to the author. If this offends you or breaks your immersion so much - simply don't use the addon - once again it is your choice as the consumer which products to use. Blizzard has taken that choice away.

[quote] Please provide a source for your claim that the Blizzard UI and it's APIs are free. [/quote][url='http://www.lua.org/about.html']Lua is free under the MIT license.[/url] It can be used for any purpose, including commercial purposes, at absolutely no cost.

The Blizzard API's are documented and published for the end users to utilize. I don't need to source this as if it were not true, no UI mods would work and this discussion would be completely moot. The Blizzard UI as it natively exists is copyrighted.

That said - the works created by authors are theirs - they may be written to leverage an outside tool - but the work belongs to the author and the author can do as he wishes with said work. The work isn't DERIVED from anything Blizzard has done - it may INTERACT with it, but it's not derived. For that matter an author could quite easily write a UI mod without ever running WoW.

To clarify what offends me -
Section 1 of the new policy is simply anti-competitive and well beyond the scope of what any company has power to dictate. It will hurt the community in the long run - fuck it's already hurt the community as members such as Cogwheel have already pulled up camp and left.

Section 5 goes overboard - if they wanted to stop advertisements such as what Carbonites free version was doing they should have specified - but there is no harm at all in asking for donations for your UI mod or having a link on your configurations page to take you to a donations page.

The rest is great, I think the clear text rule would certainly limit commercial mods - but RDX was cleartext and many users subscribed to it for months. Carbonite is obfuscated, I've unwrapped that package and it's not rocket science to work your way around the obfuscation (it is a royal pain in the ass, but not rocket science at all.)

[BW~Merlin]

Just a point of clarification for some people. You (the addon author) are still free to license your addon how ever you want ie. all rights reserved, BSD, freeware etc. Blizzard is in no way making you make your addon open source all they are is making you do is show your source code (think of a book you read, you are reading the "source" code but you can not copy the "source" code because the licensing say you can't without permission or referencing the work etc).