[GET] Keyword Swarm

[Vmax]

If anyone wants to avoid this "Vas" guy like I do, here's why:
I contacted the wp-slimstat author-

Quote:04/09/2014 2:09 pm Luigi Cardelli

Thank you for contacting our support team and for your interest in WP SlimStat.

We are aware of the issue, and even posted a message on the wp-hackers mailing list. Like they said on that list, there's basically nothing we can do about it (aside from suing or sending DMCA letters around).

I was able to track their purchase. When I saw that someone had purchased ALL our add-ons, I thought it was a little strange at first, but then I interpreted it as a nice way to thank us for our work. Yeah, sure :)

They are in violation of our license policy for the add-ons, which basically forbids anyone to resell them in any form. And they rebranded our plugin on their website, which is not allowed by the GPL license. It makes me sick.

But we're really passionate about what we do, and like someone on the mailing list said, eventually they'll stop. We'll post a message in the admin to all our users, to warn them about this stuff.


04/13/2014 6:24 am Luigi Cardelli

We got Amazon to remove the zip file from their servers, but of course they moved it to a different server now. We sent a DMCA message to GoDaddy, to see if they can take the website down. We are also going to display a notice in version 3.6, upon activation, to warn our users.

Thank you again for your help with this matter

[jbrown63]

Ymax - You are right on the spot.

Like they said, they cannot do much about it.

If you read through the GPL, you'll find, that it allows for forks, if the source is mentioned. The code is free for modification and publishing, but can still be sold.

Vas simply combined all the add-ons, which probably came with at least one use of a WordPress funtion built into them. Therefore, they also fall under the GPL, even if the original authors try to sell them under a different license.

So, essentially, Vas bundeled GPL code into a new plugin and sold very low. He seems to be free to do that, but I think, we can't expect long term support from him for his creation.

Cheers, Johnny63