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Sunday, June 22, 2008

Misidentified Pirate

It has come to my attention that Danny was misidentified as the person who uploaded my theme to a software download site for pirated materials. While Danny was thanked as the person who uploaded my themes and shared them for people who feel my time and efforts are not worth anything and don't feel they need to pay, the credit should have gone to armedking.

I apologize to Danny for the misunderstanding because he has purchased a couple of my themes and was not the one responsible for uploading them.

As for armedking, apparently he does not believe in the intent behind free open source software and the general public license as he claims. He, and those who are very critical of me, like to claim that they are the ones who really understand and stand up for the principles of open source software and that is why they are obligated to take my work and distribute it on piracy sites.

Yes armedking, my work is done under the GPL and is open source but that does not entitle you to take my work and distribute it as you are. It is this exact license that allows me to create my work and distribute it as I see fit, not you. The license says that you can use my theme's code and build your own themes off of it without having to pay me license fees or royalties.

You have rationalized that what you are doing is for the common good of the Firefox community at large but you are doing nothing but demonstrating your lack of real ethics and a sense of immature entitlement.

Obviously there is little I can do to prevent people from doing what armedking has done other than hope and rely on the common decency of people who want to do the right thing and use my free version or support me in my efforts by giving $0.99 for my full versions.

Again, to Danny, I am sorry for identifying you as the person who did this.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Well Bodizzle, I DID NOT upload your free plug-in I EVEN BOUGHT 3 themes from your site. I can sedn you the pdf files with payments :D.

And then your write in your email this:

"Here is the .jar. Do with it as you wish.

Enjoy.

Brett"

So that meens i can do what i want with it. If you look in the torrent site you see that a armedking upload them, maybe he bought them also and upload them. You never know.

So don't accuse mew of being a software pirate. you don't even know what a real Software Pirate is (look this url http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bGxxrwhC38). I don't have servers at my home. Thank god not.

So please proof first that i upload it, and then email me so i can proof that i have pay for 3 themes even the 1 i get free from you.

Danny

Armedking said...

Well, .......

What can be said about this i don't know.
Anyways I'll give it a go.

First off can you make a post like that for me too :D Would really like that.

Now off to business. Indeed i posted them ;-)

Not Danny, but hey!, ArmedKing and Danny look the same i agree.

But man, Did you really ask Copyright on those themes man you realy had your hopes up them phew.

but could you please mail me a looking glass because i tried real hard to find the Copyright info but can't find it at the bottom of your page http://www.virtusdesigns.com/

So in my opinion you just don't have it.
bad luck. Why name someone Software Pirate wile there is no Copyright info :S.

I don't even c under what license it's sold.
Might as well make it GNU General Public License so you as well as we can do with it what we want ;-)

Then you can still sell it people only pay you for the work you put into it.
If thats what they want.
How's that ;-)

Again i realy appreciate your work tho I'm not into dark themes.
Make a sponsor button and i wire you a few dollars for it no problem ;-)

But get the story strait man how hard can it be.

greats ArmedKing

Kirby said...

I don't think that is is right to do this to us. Strip us from a good theme. Danny is doing a good thing about your themes. If your going to charge, at least make your future themes charged and keep the present ones to free of charge.

Armedking said...

Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it!

With that sayd

I respect the open Source movement
Dont tell me i dont.

GPL in a nutshell tells me this

you can do whatever you want with it sell it delete it ask 1milion dollars for it i dont care.

Now what else does it say.

If someone bought it dont matter who.
He has the right to do whatever he wants to do with it. as long as it's supported by the GPL.

Dont get me wrong I DO SUPPORT FREE SOFTWARE.

i allready sayd i love your work but not the theme and want to make a donation.

That is support too.

GPL is here so people don't end up getting software stuffed tru there nose.
But to give them a sense of freedom so they can decide what to do with it next.
rewrite it change it redistribute or give away for free.


here is a quote from www.gnu.org

"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech," not as in "free beer."

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).

The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Now that last one is realy interesting.

I'm not going tru this mutch more you get the idea.

Now if you still dont agree with that please let me know and i will plead the GNU project to shed some light on this.

As of now i bought the 3 themes i posted on the internet.
I made a lot of friends happy with that.

I am a Linux user for 5 years now and i donate a lot of money to great projects as i have done to yours now.

i wish you good luck with your future work.

And maby you can make the next Ubuntu Theme for Firefox and get it for the 8.10 version ;-)

C ya M8 and Good luck

Unknown said...

@ Bodizzle, apologize excepted. the way i see is this, maybe a lot of people download it true torrent, but maybe you can make a question How many of you how doenload it from torrent make donation for my site.

I have a other question, are you maybe working on a new Aero theme for Thunderbird?? I know Thunderbird 3.0Pre 2 is out so i like to see a upgrade like AeroFox for it.

Danny