Getting emails from random people.
VizionStudios
New
Hello you can see from the Title me and my friends been getting any email like:
From: adrian@plushforums.com
Dear team,
My name is Adrian Flitcroft and I'm the founder of PlushForums, an online community hosting service.
I can see from VanillaForums.org that you've experiencing issues with your Vanilla installation, and now you're looking to host your own server. As you know, hosting your own forum is economical and rewarding, but there can be a lot of hassle involved. Perhaps you might consider a hosted service like PlushForums, which is an enhanced real-time version of Vanilla.
PlushForums is exceptionally user-friendly, works well on mobile devices and requires no technical management on your part. It also costs just $49 per month for a fully-hosted service. Industry website CMSCritic.com recently awarded us the title of "Best Commercial Forum Solution 2014".
You can find out more and take advantage of a 14-day free trial at PlushForums.com. I appreciate your time and I hope you'll consider building your community site with us. Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.
Regards,
Adrian
Adrian Flitcroft
Founder, PlushForums
@PlushForums
Comments
When you make a topic about hosting, you attract hosting companies like flies to shit. This one I have seen before it is an alternative to the vanillaforum.com cloud.
I'm not suggesting they is anything wrong, but if it is persistent it is spam.
If you have problem with unsolicited mail here you should PM a moderator.
grep is your friend.
Kind of a shady business pratice there, unless you have actually signed up to get advertisement from them.
I've stumbled upon them a few times in the past.
Their design is nice, but it looks really limited in terms of plugins and functionality, especially since it is a 2.0.x fork.
What does that even mean?
My themes: pure | minusbaseline - My plugins: CSSedit | HTMLedit | InfiniteScroll | BirthdayModule | [all] - PM me about customizations
VanillaSkins.com - Plugins, Themes and Graphics for Vanillaforums OS
Just reporting it because a lot of people who report bugs on here gets this email a lot;
you don't need to refresh the page. presumably websockets/comet.
grep is your friend.
But they are quite clever about handling the GPL restrictions of Vanilla. They offer their modified Vanilla as a service only, i.e. they do not distribute their modifications and thus are not required to publish their sourcecode by the GPL. Vanilla should probably update to an alternative to the standard GPL, e.g. the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License.
@VizionStudios
Do you mean email or PM?
If email, how did they get your address?
How do you know that a lot of people on here get this message a lot?
No its a email
I don't know how he got my email address could be from my website
My friends told me> @whu606 said:
No its a email
I don't know how he got my email address could be from my website
My friends told me
AGPL is by far and way the dumbest Licence around. if you want to use it fine, but make sure you absolutely need it. If vanilla used they would have to distribute all the cloud site code, completely invalidating their funding model. Not least they would require all the sites that use their code to distribute their code.
Open Source doesn't grow on trees it has to be funded from somewhere.
Sorry what is the problem with someone running a service based on a fork?
GPL2 has its place, but you should think long and hard before using it. "Free as in Freedom" is not an accurate tag line. GPL3 is also a minefield.
On github the most popular licences are the permissive ones and for good reason.
Infectious licences have side effects most people don't think about.
grep is your friend.
@VizionStudiosMc
Sorry, I don't think 'my friends told me' is a satisfactory basis for claiming that
It seems like a lot of work, for a person to come here to find a post, and then find your website to email you about it.
It was not my choice to release Vanilla under GPL2/3.
What? They could very well dual-license their own code. That is probably the main reason why contributors have to sign http://vanillaforums.org/contributors
Sorry, but the only difference between AGPL and the current GPL would be that copyleft provisions will be triggered just by using and not only by distributing Vanilla. The community would profit as well as Vanillaforums Inc. Maybe another license that would close this SaaS-gap 'exploited' by Plushforums might be better suited, though...
It hasn't been released GPL3 thankfully.
AGPL would restrict enterprise, something the generates a buzz around frameworks like wordpresss. Define use? Technically your users are using the software, you could argue that that anyone with administrative access to the forum has control over it, at least to a similar level ad SaaS forum would. Site and service are pretty much the same thing in this content.
Why would you try to stop Plushforums? Why do people always revert to protectionism, this is somehow morally superior to proprietary licences? I think not.
Sure they should not be sending unsolicited mail but that is not reason to try an restrict competition, on the basis you are somehow being more "libre" becuase you are not.
AGPL is a bad idea, dual licensing would not make any difference.
grep is your friend.
Contributor's agreement is about contributing to their code base (e.g. pull requests), there is no such agreement need for forks. It is completely different thing to licensing.
grep is your friend.
@x00
you seem to read way too much between the lines... our opinions might be closer in line than you think: I see no problem with someone running a service based on a fork and I certainly don't try to stop Plushforums or anybody else for the matter.
However, I wonder why Vanilla allows itself to have low-cost competition for their own product?
Also, it is in my own best interest to want to see those 3rd parties who use the Vanilla codebase commercially to give back to the community.
And just for the record: Vanilla is GPL2 or GPL3 licensed (or any later...). Also, according to my understanding, the contributor's agreement's sole reason of existence is because of licensing (avert mixing of GPL and proprietary code).
Vanilla is GPL2, you can licence a fork as GPL3, but Vanilla itself is not GPL3, the licence is clearly included. GPL3 is more restrictive than GPL2.
The contributor agreement is not the licence the and the licence doesn't require the contributor's agreement. The contributor agreement is not relevant to forks which is a big part of what the licence is about. Contributor may contain guidance on OS, but that doesn't make it the licence.
grep is your friend.
@x00: I disagree with your first and agree with your second paragraph, never said anything else
How can you disagree with the first?
https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla/blob/master/LICENSE.md
GPL2. You are saying becuase it can be upgraded to GP3 it is somehow GPL3? No it isn't. The direction of travel as far as upgrading GPL is mostly one way.
GPL3 has more stipulations, so that means by definition it is more restrictive. Probably the only way it is less restrictive, is use with licences like Apache. However there is still an issue
http://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html
The idea that these licences or any licences are somehow automatically better for everyone is quite naive and ideological, in practice what works for an OS is more often determined by many other factors besides licensing, and a poor choice of licence can come back to haunt you.
grep is your friend.
Check out the link
http://pastebin.com/HyRENd3b
@VizionStudios: Perhaps you should state on your contact form that you don't want to receive advertisement. Then you at least have a legal argument
@x00:
No, I am not.
Also: https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla#legal-stuff - seems Vanilla didn't update its licensing information everywhere.
I'm just explaining that vanilla core is GPL2, yes you are free to distribute under a later licence. It is that copy that is licenced under that.
grep is your friend.
Yes, you are explaining that Vanilla core is GPL2, but Vanilla says on its github repository that all content including core is GPL2 or any later (i.e. GPL3). I think this is something Vanilla should clarify.