Blacklist - Forums hiding the Vanilla text.

Mark

Update: the studio that made the gnarles barkley forum have changed it to give credit to Vanilla.

Re: licensing

I am considering changing from GPL to something else. But Vanilla will remain a free product at least for non-commercial use as long as I'm in control of it. If I do change the license, I will just re-release it as Vanilla 1.1 and have it apply to the new version only.

As far as "The Future" goes, I just had a bad day. It happens to the best of us, I just made the mistake of blogging about it.

Burke Prefect

Man. I really need to get back on the css bandwagon and fix up a template.

Minisweeper

I'm not so sure that's a mistake at all, mark. One of the things that interests me most about blogging and the philosophy behind it is that it tends to occur at extremes of emotion (or so it seems in my extremely limited experience). You tend to get people posting about stuff that really matters to them at the time and not much about 'hmm my life's extremely average at the moment everythings alright .....'. That's part of what's drawing me to set up my own blog - while i enjoy expressing myself in certain ways at certain times (even if noone else reads it) it's just as interesting (to me, atleast), to look back over x days/months/years and consider what was happening when and where stuff's going. Straying a little, though...

Jake

Sure does, we all have bad days! I think thats a pretty good idea Mark, go for it!

quinthar

Hey there, David from Red Swoosh. Great to hear you like the style we put together on our forum; we're very happy with it. To address a couple points: Re: Our use of Vanilla - It was entirely accidentally to remove the props to Vanilla. Sorry! It was fixed as soon as it was pointed out to us. - As for the login feature, we've integrated across our back end (custom authenticator), and it took us a bit to get password change sync'd across all systems. - As for the new discussion button, that was a bug on our side (now fixed). Re: Us being supercool or criminal masterminds - We're not spyware, but proving a negative is just really hard. Check out: http://www.redswoosh.net/learn_more_red_swoosh_client_srs.php - I didn't realize it was bad form to remove the NSIS message; I'll make sure it's updated in the next release. - We're Windows only for now, but ports are on the way. Anyway, thanks for the fantastic forum Mark; it looks and works great!

Daniel_L

Re: licensing according to your blog, you asked whether open source projects are doomed to fail because of the lack of "financial support". but what about donations? i mean, the people who work for/on mozilla or open office surely get paid a little bit, or not?

Mark

Donations as a source of revenue will not work. The volume just isn't there.

3stripe

Agreed, you'd be wanting something like the equivalent of a MacBook a month I guess...

Krak

I would bet that projects like Mozilla and Open Office get their donations from corporations and big business. Not your average user.

ithcy

props to quinthar.

Bergamot

Mozilla actually makes quite a bit from the Google search field alone.

deel

here's an idea:

Sell Swell for a fair price, have it include any new upgrades for Vanilla which will only work if you have a registered version of Swell.
Setting up Swell and upgrading Vanilla past v1.0 would require a lookback to a registered user dbase on lussumo unlocking the upgrade.
Or just have a fee to pay for the Vanilla upgrades.

lech

I think the sixapart model used for things like moveable type might be more usable.

Evdawg

dear mark, it would seriously suck if you started charging for vanilla. a lot of people stopped using movable type when they switched to their current model and it was one of the reasons wordpress became so popular (because it was open source). what I would do if I were you is offer official, ad-supported free vanilla hosting, and provide a pay-for model to remove the advertisements. people will use it vs. competitors because it will be official, and shiny.

AlisonMooreSmith

Ah, good. I was hoping for something a little more shiney...

Polo

Yeah I agree, maybe charging for Vanilla is a bad idea. I think a blacklist is a good idea, if they "steal" they get there, which gives bad reputation.

Polo

So, please list forums that brakes the rules here.

Ben

The Steorn Forum

Polo

Nice find Ben! I have added the URL to the list. Mark, don't you plan reporting these websites breaking the rules?

Mark

I could spend my whole life chasing these people down. I think it's more important to keep getting Vanilla out there to people who aren't going to do that. That way it will be recognizable to anyone - whether they leave the credit line in there or not.