This my response regarding tekkub response on his website http://tekkub.net/2010/02/18/clearing-the-air.html regarding the sellout to Zygor.
First of all I’m glad to receive any sort of closure from Tekkub, there’s something about me that makes people never want to contact me directly.
Now I finally understand the series of event that lead up to this, I can only describe it as a series miscommunication which I think both me and Tekkub are at fault, I have learned from it and will move on.
Tekkub’s Comment on his website
http://tekkub.net/2010/02/18/clearing-the-air.html Tekkub: Our first contact was back in Jan ‘09. He asked me if he could sell “tourguide data”, specifically citing his own guides which he was translating into another language. He wanted this guide to plug in to TourGuide. I told him his addon is his property, he can do whatever he wants with it. I shamelessly included a link to pledgie, and he made a donation some time later. Around this time he also used my static HTML generator, which was publicly available on GitHub, to convert his guides to HTML. I understood that he would probably sell access to those pages, but as it was generated from his guide data I really didn’t pursue the matter.
Before we started I contacted Tekkub
Dugi > Tekkub : Hi Tekkub, I was planning to translate my leveling guide into a different language and have it setup to use with tourguide, you don’t have any condition of use with tourguide, but I though I ask you anyway first, so I was wondering if it is ok for me to resell tourguide data commercially.
Tekkub > Dugi: Your addon you write is yours to do with as you please, just don’t sell TG alone. I.E. you can include it with yours since it’s needed, but you’d be better off pointing people to the official download so they get the most up to date version.
And if you want to donate back a bit of what you make, that’s like good kharma or some ****.
http://tekkub.net/2010/02/18/clearing-the-air.html Tekkub: Naturally, I contacted Dugi and asked him to remove the modified version and link people to the official TourGuide downloads. Dugi expressed concern over the included guides “confusing” his users and did mention licensing, but I did not pursue the matter. I was not interested in doing business with someone that would rebrand my code without permission, or without even asking. Simply put, he should have come to me about licensing before he started selling his guide.Dugi never removed his viewer, even after I asked him. He now asserts that he had permission to do so from me. He did not.
Tekkub > Dugi : It looks like your site is hosting it’s own version of Tourguide (The base addon, not guides for it) with a modified name. I ask that you remove this and simply link to the real Tourguide download on wowinterface. Tourguide is not licensed for you to redistribute it in that way, and I really don’t want to be a **** and pull all that copyright bullshit.Dugi > Tekkub : Hi Tekkub, The reason we did this, is that to prevent our members to download the default tourguide files via wowmatrix and confuse it with the guide they purchase from us.
I’m not in a position to make request and it is up to you but it would be great if the tourguide base is seperate from the guide. This makes it easy for them to select and deselect guide they want to view.
or can I offer you a donation or license fee, to keep it the way it is, and I will remove the public link as I have already, and make the base addon download members only, to prevent confusion.
I apoligize for any distress
Tekkub > Dugi: It’s certainly a possibility for me to put out a version without the guides, I just don’t want “unofficial” versions of TourGuide out there.
47 replies to "Re: Tekkub response ‘Clearing the Air’"
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“I did ask for his permission, I did send him donation to support the addon before we begin selling. I did ask for Licencing.
What I didn’t ask is to rename the addon which obviously really pissed him off and now he is punishing me for it.”
tbh as programmer i can even understand that this pissed him off
its something to sell “guides” but giving out somebody elses viewer under own name is ********.
i can understand that Tekkub made a deal with a “company” (in this case zygor guides) to get this sorted out, cause they have lawyers so solve such problems…
btw. i’m a customer from dugi and zygor, both have nice stuff, i like zygor lvling guides and dugis dailies,
but when i did know before about tourguide and that dugis viewer its a renamed piece of free software i would have never bought dugis one, that something my moral as programmer forbid
Sorry but as a programmer then you should know better what an open source software that is in the public domain really means. This permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified forms unless otherwise stated by the original copyright holder.
please point me to a statement that shows the condition of use with TourGuide, I can’t even find it in his website tekkub.net . My asking for permission to sell commercially was infact a courtesy out of respect of Tekkub, and he gave me permission without conditions.
TourGuide source code itself was contributed by multiple programmers but Tekkub made the bulk of it, you can see this in his github. He received donations for the purpose of delevoping TourGuide for the community and the TourGuide guide itself was contributed by the community. So for him to turn his back on the community to sell out for money is a bit off unless he can explain himself further.
So Tekkub not without faults and is unable to further comment because he is somehow under legal obligation with Zygor. But I think renaming the the guide itself is not even the issue, it seemed that he would have preferred if I took it a step further and renamed all the variables inside the source code aswell so it doesn’t conflict with TourGuide.
Now there is some sort of Double-Standard against us which I think influenced by Zygor, as wow-pro.com did exactly this and they distributed freely renamed as their own guide and addon and as of today they’re still distributing TourGuide without any DMCA notice from Zygor.
“What I didn’t ask is to rename the addon which obviously really pissed him off and now he is punishing me for it.”
me dont know if there was a licence in the tourguide files and cant check it ofc afterwards, i had my infos from this blog,
and YOU said you asked him to use it first cause of respect,
but simply renaming somebody work, isnt a sign of respect, especially after the person wrote that he dont want unoffical versions out there. (as you posted also above) And getting no answear on other questions, isn’t a yes in my opinion.
to the point i should better know about licening a programmer, sure i learend the licence stuff in my education but thats a bit ago 😉 (i pherhaps even should know more about it)
but tbh i dont care about it, cause i work as employee for a company atm and everything i develop there is their property. thats also the same with projects i made in past for others, they pay me for it = its theirs after i finished.
my 2 cent
thats your opinion and you’re entitled to it. but its not a fact, no one can really speak for Tekkub other than Tekkub himself.
Fact is that lots of unofficial version other than ours is out there and Tekkub know about all of them and as he said on his website chose not to pursue it. Terms and Condition of use should be made clear before download and/or included with the files, as we are not mind readers.
You say “Sorry but as a programmer then you should know better what an open source software that is in the public domain really means. This permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified forms unless otherwise stated by the original copyright holder.” There is a bit of a problem with this:
…..
Sometimes people use the term “public domain” in a loose fashion to mean “free” or “available gratis.” However, “public domain” is a legal term and means, precisely, “not copyrighted”. For clarity, we recommend using “public domain” for that meaning only, and using other terms to convey the other meanings.
Under the Berne Convention, which most countries have signed, anything written down is automatically copyrighted. This includes programs. Therefore, if you want a program you have written to be in the public domain, you must take some legal steps to disclaim the copyright on it; otherwise, the program is copyrighted.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html
…..
and for reference:
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
……
While Tekkub didn’t state an explicit license to you, his work is copyrighted and to use it outside of the bounds of how he chose to release it, a license agreement would have to be obtained with regards to re-branding and selling for profit his work before you could legally do so. Regardless of what miscommunication you may think occurred, “I didn’t get an answer so the answer must be yes” is not a valid position to take.
You claiming that he turned his back on a community is rather disingenuous as well. Even if there were some community collaboration in part of the work, he still holds the copyright to the piece as a whole. Legally, each member of the community that contributed holds copyright only to the specific code that they wrote. They could, if they so chose, assert their rights to those specific pieces of code. I doubt, however, that they would be more forgiving of your misuse of that code than Tekkub has been. Some of them may have been even less inclined to be lenient with you than he was.
The situation here is that you and any of the others that used his work could have gotten a license from him to obtain a “clean” version of his TourGuide core to use with your guide files. If you didn’t wish to deal with the hassle of this, you could also have written a tie-in addon similar to FlawsGuides worked and sold that to your customers while providing a link to download TourGuide to use it with.
The problem seems to be that you not only distributed TourGuide in an unlicensed fashion, but you re-branded it under your own name and then sold it as your own product. You may, in fact, have originally disclosed that your guide was using TourGuide to be usable. It seems that Tekkub was willing to ignore transgressions until you (and some others) started re-branding the TourGuide core under your own name and selling it as your own work for profit.
Ultimately, I don’t blame Tekkub for the choice that he made. Contracting an exclusive license to Zygor, who had never used his work, is a smart move as it solves his problem of dealing with the multitude of people illegally misusing his code by allowing Zygor to handle that aspect for him.
Your crying foul at having the consequences of your own illegal actions abruptly thrust upon you is much like the thief that fell through the skylight of the house he was attempting to steal from and suing the owner for the medical bills. Quite frankly, you are lucky that Tekkub didn’t pursue legal action himself and let a court decide what his share of the profit that you made off of his work should be. Given how you claim to “give until it hurts”, you might find it difficult to come up with the money to pay him what you owe him. Don’t bring up donations, either. Donations are a completely separate mechanic from a licensing fee or royalty shares.
I like how you were smart enough to cite copyright facts with websites followed by false statements that my actions are illegal and comparing me to a thief without knowing the full facts. Again luck have nothing to do it, Tekkub didn’t purse legal actions because he smart enough to knows that it would be without merit. Zygor on the other hand is… not as smart as Tekkub.
1. Tekkub gave me permission to specifically sell TourGuide with my guides commercially (I chose those words for a purpose) with the only condition to not sell TourGuide ‘alone’.
TourGuide was also hosted on GitHub.com if “forking” wasn’t allowed then he clearly sent the wrong message by hosting it there and allowing the public to fork his work.
2. Tekkub was upset regarding the “forking” of TourGuide, I took action with removal of the public link and clearly stated I was still distributing it in my members area. I offered solution such as licencing, and modification of TourGuide, he said it was a ‘posibility’ but he chose not to pursue..
We were reasonable by offering solution and we were still within our rights to continue distributing as we still have permission, if our final email was unacceptable to Tekkub, then he should clearly state it. Which he didn’t and he admited “chose not to pursue it“.
3. Tekkub continued to take our donations, and also help us further in modifying TourGuide for our distribution in Dec 09. This further proves that there was no problem with us modifying and distributing the guide.
4. If there was limitation to modifying TourGuide such as renaming then it is not clearly stated that’s what a license are for, wow-pro.com have done the exact same thing I did and infact took it a step further by renaming the function names. Tekkub also encourage the renaming “In short, you **** with it, find a new name for it.” . Arguements that wow-pro is not a commercial or non profit website is invalid, the large amount of free traffic that wow-pro received by distributing tourguide adds to their profit of banner advertising. Trust me there are profit to be made with banner ads. Further Proof that Tekkub is not oppose to people modifying and distributing TourGuide.
I’m not against wow-pro in anyway but there’s a double standard between us and wow-pro. Even now Tekkub is not opposed to wow-pro distributing TourGuide but completely against to what we have done.
Also further proof that Tekkub is not oppose to people modifying and distributing TourGuide.
There is a good reason for the double standard against us and that reason is Zygor anyone will defend their new boss or risk getting fired and not get paid.
“3. Tekkub continued to take our donations…. This further proves that there was no problem with us modifying and distributing the guide.”
You probably shouldn’t use the donations as a defense. You chose to donate. It wasn’t any sort of licensing fee or royalty. It’s like a thief claiming that he wasn’t stealing because he left money behind. I’m not saying that’s the case here, but this particular defense makes it sound like it.
As for WoW-Pro, they’re not receiving money from their users in exchange for the addon (i.e. selling it), which you were (and which Tekkub had accepted).
Please quote the complete sentence, the donations is not our defense. The fact that tekkub helped us with modifying tourguide is.
WoW-Pro receive money from their users indirectly, each click on their banner earns them anywhere from .05 to .50 cent per click or more, its just a different way of earning.
But why mention the donations at all? It makes you sound like you’re justifying a crime after the fact, which IMO you have no need to do, since you had fairly explicit permission.
WoW-Pro receives money from their advertisers, not from users. The guide is free to download, and they don’t get paid per download. If Tekkub’s issue is commercial use (I don’t know if it is, but that’s the only explanation I can think of), then they’d in the clear. But they’re apparently developing a new addon thanks to Zygor, so this point is moot.
But there is no crime committed, and you’re too focused on one thing when there are also ton of other evidence. Its judgement of character that Tekkub would have to answer if it comes to it. “why would he accept money and assist in modifying if he was against ultimatewowguide modifying and distributing TourGuide” , and the donation is worth mentioning.
Saying wow-pro is not a commercial site is like saying that wowhead is not a commercial site. I’m not trying to get wow-pro into trouble because that’s not possible as wow-pro is already in the clear, both Zygor and Tekkub already said that they have no issue with wow-pro at all, I’m simply pointing out the double standard against our site and wow-pro because clearly we’re both commercial website. WoW-pro is just a different business model. I’m an internet marketer and I have several website just like wow-pro, it creates passive income without the hassle of dealing with any customer or any obligation to provide support.
That’s my point, the donation thing sounded like a justification for a crime that you didn’t commit anyway, at least the way you phrased it. As to why he would accept your money, that’s because it was a donation, with no obligation for him to do anything in return. Or do you think he helped you as a direct result of your donating?
I don’t think ad-supported sites are considered commercial sites, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it argued either way. I couldn’t find that WoW-Pro was selling anything (while Wowhead has an online store), but I haven’t spent much time on the site at all.
Thank you Tekkub for a great add on that you let others use (please keep up the good work.
Thank you Dugie for helping us with the game (all though we paid for your service) nonetheless it was very helpful for my lava ling in the game. (when no one helped me)
For all the things seed and dun hope you make something ground up. Will put this behind us and move on. Hope to have a kick *** guide to level my 2nd toon Hopefully you will have something for newcomers how to obtain gear without buying it with gold 😛
Good luck on all of you to resolve this matter with no loss of life
After reading Tekkub’s post and this reply, I have to agree with Dugi that there was miscommunication on both sides. Dugi didn’t make clear exactly what he wanted to do with TourGuide, and according to the emails quoted here, Tekkub sounded willing to let things go. I’m not sure either party is more to blame than the other; they both should have been more proactive, in my retrospective opinion.
I haven’t looked into Zygor’s side of the story, but I can’t believe they’d go straight for the DMCA claim and, as Tekkub once put it, “be a **** and pull all that copyright bullshit.”
Wow! Sounds like a lot of drama. However simply put you CAN NOT sell someone’s code with out express written permission. Period! Something needs a signature on it. Not an email that says something vague. When you got any email that you felt was permission you should have asked for a hand signed document. Something legal that would hold up in court. I hate to say it but you were in the wrong Dugi. Zygor seems to have done everything legit here. Its not uncommon for a company to keep things under wraps until everything is signed, sealed, and delivered, before making an announcement. Sorry man. Good luck with your new viewer which I am sure will be fantastic. You should have come up with it from the start. Original work that you can’t get anywhere else is always more appealing anyway.
As I have pointed in the my post here https://www.ultimatewowguide.com/blog/2010/02/leveling-and-daily-guide-sales-are-now-closed/ we were operating legally until a few days ago which Tekkub posted his notice.
Look, bottom line, even if Dugi was in the wrong, which is debatable, he at least had the brass balls to post his side of things complete with emails in public instead of hiding like a scared little girl (Zygor).
As for Tek, his deal is his deal, but hiding behind a veil of silence after implying several things WITHOUT clarification is chickenshit!
Thanks for the guides Dugi, you’ll always have my business.
Dugi, just put out the same quality you are known for and don’t sweat the past. Look forward to the new guide.
I find it interesting that given implied consent in an email to Dugi “Tekkub > Dugi: Your addon you write is yours to do with as you please, just don’t sell TG alone. I.E. you can include it with yours since it’s needed, but you’d be better off pointing people to the official download so they get the most up to date version.” including the request for reimbursement “Tekkub > Dugi: And if you want to donate back a bit of what you make, that’s like good kharma or some ****.” and acknowledging the receipt of funds ” I told him his addon is his property, he can do whatever he wants with it. I shamelessly included a link to pledgie, and he made a donation some time later.” then why wouldn’t this be considered a contract. Permission given, money requested, money received ~ sounds like a contract to me. And if so, though Tek owns the property (no contest there) is he legally allowed to sell the property without notification to those folks contracted to use the property? Lawyers will have a field day.
Unfortunately all that matters in court is a legally binding contract, not a few emails and a donation. Plus, Tekkub eventually requested that Dugi remove any “modified” versions of TourGuide from the site. Even changing the name can be considered a modification, so Dugi did the right thing by shutting down sales until he has his own addon.
Lets put something straight:
The only reason why Tekkub has made some good money out of this, is because Dugi’s website was getting very popular and successfull.
This is the only reason to the problem.
It has never stopped anyone downloading the “original” with free guides, and not stopped them to put together their own guides.
If people like me are happy giving some money to Dugi for his environment, the tiume he has spent in presenting the information he offers, it’s just down to us.
If Tekkub is taking so much “ombrage” of this, he should probably have taken more time into “protecting” his addon.
It looks to me like he most likely just changed his mind, you know: “Show me the money”
.
Thank you Dugi.
I disagree,
Dugi’s giude is a built in gide to use when playing wow with waypoint arrows etc.
orcspasm
It’s kind of hard to feel bad for Dugi when, had he secured a deal with Tekkub in the first place, Zygor wouldn’t even have been able to gain the rights to it and take it away from Dugi. I understand there was a misunderstanding, but in business there’s not roo for misunderstandings. Without a written contract, Dugi was in the wrong here, and now we as customers have to worry about being emailed files not owned by Dugi.
Also, I seriously doubt that Dugi’s Lunar Festival guide was hard to create when it’s an exact replica of WoWHeads Lunar Festival guide: http://www.wowhead.com/?guide=lunar-festival
I’m starting to see a pattern here and I’m starting to wonder if there is anything that Dugi didn’t take from someone else.
Thats not a secret and we give away the events guide for free, while linking back to wowhead, the in-game guide however was made by us.
“you don’t have any condition of use with tourguide, but I though I ask you anyway first”
I must be reading english wrong because most here are bashing Dugi for bad business and whatever…but this statement here…says Dugi apparently looked for any conditions and Tek’s response was essentially “I don’t care.” Why not, he’s getting donations and he can just make a fuss later when he needs more cash and he did just that. Way to milk the cow Tek!
I have dealt with enough guides and Dugi’s is by far my favorite and the only one I look to for updates since he’s the only one that wants to keep up to date. He’s taken some blame and I applaud it. I will continue to follow Dugi.
Thanks for everything Dugi
Medy
Dugi and team any ony one else interested,
I have nothing to gain by what I say in this message, I have Zygors and dugie’s guides Zygor you have done this for your own gain “has to be” but with all this you have chucked at dugi Dugi still worked on the Luna festival guide and got it put out on his site. Following it I completed the Luna festival in no time thanks Dugi. “ I better add here that I didn’t download Dugi’s version 3 guide for Dugi’s site I thought it was strange that it was unavailable at the time but now I know why” so if any one is doing something wrong here it’s me for using old version of dugi’s software.
I have dealt with both distributors Zygor and Dugi via email, my own experience I think it’s best I kept to my self but I’d be happy to deal with Dugi any time he is a very nice generous person I know this as fact.
Dugi you have impressed me ones with your generosity and I’m sure you will empress me again with a solution to this problem which has been put upon you.
Yours Orcspasm
He has the right to shut down communication, it’s his code afterall. Rebranding it as Dugi’s Viewer, was bullshizz. If you had renamed it TourGuide-de, for German peeps, I am sure he wouldn’t have had a problem. But by stripping it, and renaming it as your own, thats a copyright violation.
On a side note, can you email me a copy of the last “official” release? I can’t seem to find a copy of it now, lol.
Email me, and I will share with you, a secret you will find interesting and useful.
We didn’t know this was still a problem until recently. Tekkub created an addon without terms of use, and I did in fact ask and follow up his enquiries.
Hey Dugi,
I’m just posting to say that im glad you made the guide you did. It was so easy and helpful for me. But, why does this guy think, after whatever the amount or reason Zygor gave him, how does he think he can just shut off all communications with you?
Thats just my opinion. Hope you sort this out so we can get more updates!
Dylan
How could you misunderstand hes last mail?
“I just don’t want “unofficial” versions of TourGuide out there.” seems to clearly state that he ´want you to link and not to include it.
Seems like you have been bad in making bussines and are trying your best to blame others for it.
If I was you I would have digged a hole and put this whole case in and then started over. And do it the right way this time and real contracts if you need to borrow/leand some others products. I hope you have learned your lesson and will make better bussines in the future. Good luck with the new guide!
In his earlier email he states that he was fine with me including it but linking is what he recommends. We had further conversations after that, he helped me with some code editing to try and fix waypoint arrow issue in the Death Knight area, he was friendly and helpful, even thou I didn’t really succeed with editing the code.
If there was still an issue with the way we distributed TourGuide, he certainly didn’t make it clear enough.
In my opinion, the problem is, that you modified and renamed the guide:
“Dugi was distributing a modified version of the TourGuide core on his site. Upon investigation I found that his modifications were simply rebranding the addon as “Dugi’s Guide Viewer” and removing my own free guides.”
That was not nice, and ist the reason, why i have removed your guid from my addonfolder. To bad, that i have spend money to a fraud.
There’s a response to that statement and its on this blog.
I do find it funny that now Tek had to release the “***** laundry” so to speak on this issue AFTER having money thrown at him by John and really it comes at some convenient timing on the whole thing.
Overall I think its all miscommunication between Dugi’s and Tek’s part over naming the addon and obviously Tek didn’t emphasize enough that the name change was actually pissing him off as badly as it did. He came off to me as someone that wrote an addon but seemed pretty cool in how he licensed his work and as long as people knew it was tourguide then all was good even if the name was different.
I want to believe Dugi but I’m starting to have my doubts. You says Tekkub only had to say the word, but according to his blog post he told you to remove it. Now it sounds like Zygor has asked you stop sending out TourGuide but you’re still sending it out in emails. This isn’t looking good.
Tekkub didn’t leave me a clear response that is exactly what he want. I removed the public which what I though what he wanted, and suggested a solution. However his response was short and brief as if that’s all there is to it. I expected him to follow-up if it was still an issue
OK so let me understand this….
“I did ask for his permission, I did send him donation to support the addon before we begin selling. I did ask for Licencing.”
So just because you ASKED it’s ok to sell someone else’s stuff without their permission – even after they say no?
WOW I should ask Microsoft to sell their stuff!! WOOT!!!!
He didn’t say no, or give me a clear response. TourGuide doesn’t come with any written Licence or Terms of Use, it’s all up to the owner’s discretion. If there was a problem I would fix it. Tekkub only had to say the word.
If I’m reading your response right you say “it’s all up to the owners’s discretion” is that not in fact Tekkub since it is his code that you were/are using.
So you knowingly moved on with using his code for your own personal gain without getting anything in writing. That my sir is very bad business sense.
On a side note, I’m wondering what the ratio of your donations to tekkub vs your profit is. I mean after all your making money off his code which you didn’t have rights to at least you could is throw a lil green at the guy.
Bad business sense yes, I’m sorry for being a trusting person its in my nature. I suggested additional money or licencing, Tekkub seem uninterested, from then I though money wasn’t Tekkub’s motivation. I was wrong.
I would have appreciated a little heads up, otherwise the whole wouldn’t have bothered me at all. I understand Tekkub hands were tied until Zygor let him off the leash to speak out. So Zygor agreement with him must have been quite clear to keep the matter private, so that they can unsuspectingly sprung something this big in attempt to damage our business.
Thats the ***** part.
Tekkub did not say it was ok for you to RENAME the addon, REPACKAGE it as your own creation, and then SELL it. He specifically said you could not repackage it as your own…
“Tekkub > Dugi : It looks like your site is hosting it’s own version of Tourguide (The base addon, not guides for it) with a modified name. I ask that you remove this and simply link to the real Tourguide download on wowinterface. Tourguide is not licensed for you to redistribute it in that way, and I really don’t want to be a **** and pull all that copyright bullshit. ”
I cannot believe I actually purchased this guide. Never again will I purchase anything from UltimateWoWGuides.
Did you ever stop to think, Dugi, that the reason why Zygor purchased a licensing contract with Tekkub’s TG was because it did expose the underhandedness of OTHER guides? Perhaps Zygor purchased TG because they have the resources and means to protect another person’s original work? Sometimes a larger corporation (larger in resources that is) “buys out” smaller companies to protect their copywrites.
Very disappointed that I could have just gotten TG for free instead of actually buying it. How would you feel if someone re-coded Dugi Viewer back to TourGuide and then offered this as a free leveling addon over WoW Interface?
Its not a secret that we use TourGuide, when we released it to our customers we told them that it was TourGuide, our guides are completely different and much more polished. TourGuide was missing the BC + WOTLK and most of Horde side guide when we started selling it as a complete guide. You need to read my blog more carefully, we offered a solution to which we though tekkub was going to do as he did said ‘its a possibility’ because making the change back would affect the business.
Lets not kid ourselves as to what Zygor real intentions are, you know it and we all know it. If Dugi, TeamIdemise, Spugnort, Penns, Gavin, WoW-Pro didn’t use tourguide. Would Zygor still have spend the money to buy rights to it ? would Tekkub have received as much money from Zygor?
Its a good move by Zygor, but immeadeate filing of DMCA is a bit low. All they had to do was ask and show us proof and be reasonable with allowing us time to re-structure our business. We are suffering loss of income and this is a full time job for me, Zygor always goes on about them being a family oriented business well hello we are also real people, I’m a young father with a wife and 2 children to feed, And we have never told anyone this but a substantial amount of our profit also goes to charity such as Make a wish, Oxfam Haiti foundation, SAFE, SPCA. We donate even when we still have our own mortgate debts to pay off and some people would call that financial suicide but that’s just the way we work, and we have no regret in doing it.
Neither Tekkub or Zygor have suffered any loss of income, So for them to continue take some sort of moral high ground that its ok for them to do this kinda makes me sick inside.
It doesn’t matter at all who you give to or why you give. What matters is that you took a completely free addon, repackaged it and sold it as your own. You destroy your own credibility and business ethics by doing that. Just count yourself lucky that Tekkub didn’t pull out the copywrite stuff. I would have immediately.
It’s like selling oil to an oil company on your property, but the person who sold you that property still had the deed to the mineral rights. Legally, the owner of the mineral rights would be completely entitled to all profits. The same is true when you use someone else’s ‘addon’ for your own profit.
Luck has nothing to do with it, you intentionally miss out the fact that before we started we did ask for permission to resell the addon to which the owner said yes without any conditions. read the blog here carefully https://www.ultimatewowguide.com/blog/2010/02/leveling-and-daily-guide-sales-are-now-closed/