What an excellent wall of text @Apreche. I hear you on both accounts. Just know that we listen here.
Fighting spam is something we do take seriously, but you really do need an external service to keep it at bay which is another cost to forum admins. We use akismet and stop forum spam. We do try and stay on top of the world of spam and keep our software up to date.
Supporting a decent search without a search engine such a sphinx is also difficult to impossible. There are actually a couple of sphinx plugins in the open source. What we find though that these things that require some advanced skill just kill us in support. Supporting sphinx itself can't and shouldn't be our job, but if we have a sphinx plugin it does end up being our job. This is the crux of the issue when holding back some stuff. We hold back some stuff because of our business. We hold back some stuff because we can't support it and releasing it brings down the quality of our product as a whole.
This is a difficult nut to crack really. I'd love to have a class of people that are advanced and want to try and troubleshoot their own issues get more advanced plugins while other people have to be content with a simpler product. This just isn't the case and we don't have the bandwidth to deal with it.
The good news is that we are a growing company and our team is expanding. This means more and more effort being put into Vanilla every day. We are not slowing down.
@Todd thanks for the reply. The fact that you replied at all is awesome.
Sadly, Akismet won't help with our spam issues, otherwise I would be all set. We don't have actual spam comments. We have spam registrations which we then have to sift through manually, as the forum is in manual approval mode. Akismet is only designed to handle comments. Today it was so bad I just decided to make our forum invitation only where I am the only one who has invites. Sadly, Vanilla still displays a link to the application form, but it results in a server error if it is clicked on.
As for sphinx, I don't quite understand the issue. Yes, obviously you only want to provide support for the plugin you write, and not for Sphinx itself. But in the open source version there is no support other than the community. Are you worried about paying customers trying to use the open source sphinx plugin and failing? I thought all the paying customers are hosted on your servers to begin with, so why would they need help setting up Sphinx?
Anyway, I know how to setup Sphinx, so if you want to just give me the plugin, I promise I won't share it with anyone
Looking forward to the day when these worries are behind us.
@Apreche said:
We have spam registrations which we then have to sift through manually, as the forum is in manual approval mode.
Uuuhm... I don't know which mode Vanilla is in, but the registrations from real spam users are caught by Akismet. They're really obvious though, so maybe I'm too optimistic.
You can start a topic in the discussions list, so we can all help you think of solutions for the spammer problems and the Sphinx problems.
Anyway, I know how to setup Sphinx, so if you want to just give me the plugin, I promise I won't share it with anyone
Oh, good... Can you make a Wiki page for it? Here are the Sphinx plugins:
@Apreche, I think StopForumSpam, BotStop (changing your question regularly) and Approval registration really should handle the majority of your spammers.
In regards to your more general point, you want a superior service and user experience but you don't have something of equal value (money, in this case) to exchange for it. I'm not criticising you. That expectation has become the norm.
Internet culture as a whole is going to have to address this one day. If you truly have a big community, then just 150 people paying $1 a month will cover your bills at Vanilla, Inc. When the price of a coffee is $5, this is a laughably small amount of money. What is an internet service truly worth? What is editorial or community content worth? At the moment, site operators and their end-users seem to value both sides of the equation at approximately... $0.
@50sQuiff said:
What is an internet service truly worth? What is editorial or community content worth? At the moment, site operators and their end-users seem to value both sides of the equation at approximately... $0.
The sadness of these words is incredible, especially because, often, they represent the truth.
@Apreche said:
Todd thanks for the reply. The fact that you replied at all is awesome.
Just yesterday Todd and I sat and talked about the open source community at length. I think you'll soon find we're re-entering a period where we actually have bandwidth to key a closer eye on things over here again.
@50sQuiff said:
Apreche, I think StopForumSpam, BotStop (changing your question regularly) and Approval registration really should handle the majority of your spammers.
In regards to your more general point, you want a superior service and user experience but you don't have something of equal value (money, in this case) to exchange for it. I'm not criticising you. That expectation has become the norm.
Internet culture as a whole is going to have to address this one day. If you truly have a big community, then just 150 people paying $1 a month will cover your bills at Vanilla, Inc. When the price of a coffee is $5, this is a laughably small amount of money. What is an internet service truly worth? What is editorial or community content worth? At the moment, site operators and their end-users seem to value both sides of the equation at approximately... $0.
That is a good point. I will see if 150 of my users are willing to pay $1 a month for the forum. Maybe they are. In which case, all problems solved.
@Lincoln said:
Apreche We changed Akistmet a few months back to also process applicant "Reason for joining" a while back and it's worked pretty well.
Oh, I will definitely test that out. Will it work using my free Akismet key that I use for my WordPress blog, or will I have to pay for Akismet?
@Apreche said:
Oh, I will definitely test that out. Will it work using my free Akismet key that I use for my WordPress blog, or will I have to pay for Akismet?
You can use the same code from your WordPress blog.
I would be good if we can have an explicit statement on licensing addons.
I understand there is an implied nod that we can licence addon under different schemes, as has been happening. Is it possible to get explicit nod, not a implied one, as so far I have not heard this stated.
I want to release under professional Open Source licences and permissive licences, and other people want to contribute to this, and this is essentially to reward and inventivise this sort of thing. I am stuck is a quandary where people are asking me, but I can only keep it unlicensed under my copyright till I know for sure.
GPL requires that you make a statement to that effect, or challenges to existing software licences could be made (there is case history of this). I'm not personally interested in private/property licences, however I see no problem with a mixed/diverse market. I'm not talking about challenges to copyright which are somewhat different issue, I'm talking about original works using APIs.
It is pretty much make or break. I could only contribute occasionally, to framework that don't have a diverse addon and developer market and that is allowed. This is not me being a sour puss, ungrateful, or greedy, It is just the reality of what is possible for me and many busy people. I would like to be able to make more, and also be innovative.
Yes I have researched this thoroughly especially to tailor licensing, as it is also part of a business plan, just like you have one.
@x00 The project's philosophy has been than addons are discrete programs that may have their own licenses. This is different from WordPress's line of "GPL only, all day long." That's why there's a field to define the license in the addon info array. Also, you're allowed to use multiple licenses if you wish (speaking generally about any code you write).
That said, obviously we'd take issue with a "Commercial" license in the addons directory because that doesn't make a lick of sense. Any license will do, but of course let's use an open source one.
@Lincoln said:
x00 The project's philosophy has been than addons are discrete programs that may have their own licenses. This is different from WordPress's line of "GPL only, all day long." That's why there's a field to define the license in the addon info array. Also, you're allowed to use multiple licenses if you wish (speaking generally about any code you write).
That said, obviously we'd take issue with a "Commercial" license in the addons directory because that doesn't make a lick of sense. Any license will do, but of course let's use an open source one.
I wasn't specifically talking about the addons directory, although that is a good point.
Any addon, that I upload to this site I will consider free to modify tear apart, criticize, and OS. In fact I hope to make it more permissive than GPL where I can. Obviously sometimes I will decide to use GPL software, that is fine too.
However some workflows are incremental/version specific, and cannot always be facilitated non-redistributed becuase the group involve is not a simple client relationship, or all parties in the same place or organisation. Where there is a specific support arrangement, I will not release that as and OS version until the period is over, However it is my intention to make the changes available to the OS version after. it is only fair that those the give more are rewarded in kind.
I think however I would not limit commerce too much, it is not in your interests (I' know I'm doing the suck eggs thing). Any licence such as freemium, although unrefined for my taste, it makes sense for you to allow, becuase as you know every software project has it own funding plan, and there is no general answer to how you do it, wether it be bank of mum and dad or student loan, never never, or some considered business plan.
Variation/diversity is always 10x better than some proscribed way of doing it.
OS has never really been about free as in money, it about sharing the source, and befitting from contribution It still has has to be paid for some how. In your case you have various component to your business plan including SaaS. Similarly developer have to think of that too, and contributes should be rewarded as well. As I will reward then.
OS community need to think of professional OS a lot more rather than purely ideology driven, becuase if that was the case many of the GPL protect would never be funded becuase, some even take issue with raising money through non distributed means like SaaS. I suspect they are probably sleeping in their university lab somewhere.
My position on OS is pragmatism first, idealism second. It has primarily been used in industry to get the product out there an known faster and often cheaper than with expensive promotion, then building base of contributors and developers. Every software project is different though, there isn't a licence or business plan to fit all.
The definition of OS can often be too rigid, in fact I find the GPL motto "Free as in Freedom" ironic, given that it places quite lot of restriction not only on licencee, but also licensor in unmodified form. Their argument is they are trying to protect againt real or perceived practices in the proprietary market, that is fair enough but they have come up with a licence is uncannily similar to proprietary licences in how they restrict use.
That being said it still has it place, I still use it. I'm not saying never, and I’m not I criticising your use of it, just I don't think of it in a idealistic way personally, I think of it in how it can be useful to have a licence like it, under the right circumstances sort of way.
I find that wordpress may have these policies, but it applies them highly selectively in practice. it doesn’t really want to kill off all other forms of interest. Though personally I don't agree with how they do it that is how they roll.
I do understand issues directly relating to their copyright, but I object them using the wrong part of the licence to take on the issues. Some lawyer will just do what it take to win that case, f*ck the consequences. Most likely they aren't even working in IT as developer.
The result is it showed up a little known (intended) side-effect of GPL, that is difficult to reconcile with the majority of developer programs on pretty much any of the major OS projects.
It's worth pointing out again at this juncture that per the GPL, any publicly distributed plugin for a GPL product is itself GPL-licensed by definition, except for cases where the plugin is a separate executable.
Comments
What an excellent wall of text @Apreche. I hear you on both accounts. Just know that we listen here.
Fighting spam is something we do take seriously, but you really do need an external service to keep it at bay which is another cost to forum admins. We use akismet and stop forum spam. We do try and stay on top of the world of spam and keep our software up to date.
Supporting a decent search without a search engine such a sphinx is also difficult to impossible. There are actually a couple of sphinx plugins in the open source. What we find though that these things that require some advanced skill just kill us in support. Supporting sphinx itself can't and shouldn't be our job, but if we have a sphinx plugin it does end up being our job. This is the crux of the issue when holding back some stuff. We hold back some stuff because of our business. We hold back some stuff because we can't support it and releasing it brings down the quality of our product as a whole.
This is a difficult nut to crack really. I'd love to have a class of people that are advanced and want to try and troubleshoot their own issues get more advanced plugins while other people have to be content with a simpler product. This just isn't the case and we don't have the bandwidth to deal with it.
The good news is that we are a growing company and our team is expanding. This means more and more effort being put into Vanilla every day. We are not slowing down.
❌ ✊ ♥. ¸. ••. ¸♥¸. ••. ¸♥ ✊ ❌
In ice blue font...
My shop | About Me
yes, that is because Vanilla is so cool it's hot !!
❌ ✊ ♥. ¸. ••. ¸♥¸. ••. ¸♥ ✊ ❌
@Todd thanks for the reply. The fact that you replied at all is awesome.
Sadly, Akismet won't help with our spam issues, otherwise I would be all set. We don't have actual spam comments. We have spam registrations which we then have to sift through manually, as the forum is in manual approval mode. Akismet is only designed to handle comments. Today it was so bad I just decided to make our forum invitation only where I am the only one who has invites. Sadly, Vanilla still displays a link to the application form, but it results in a server error if it is clicked on.
As for sphinx, I don't quite understand the issue. Yes, obviously you only want to provide support for the plugin you write, and not for Sphinx itself. But in the open source version there is no support other than the community. Are you worried about paying customers trying to use the open source sphinx plugin and failing? I thought all the paying customers are hosted on your servers to begin with, so why would they need help setting up Sphinx?
Anyway, I know how to setup Sphinx, so if you want to just give me the plugin, I promise I won't share it with anyone
Looking forward to the day when these worries are behind us.
Uuuhm... I don't know which mode Vanilla is in, but the registrations from real spam users are caught by Akismet.
They're really obvious though, so maybe I'm too optimistic.
You can start a topic in the discussions list, so we can all help you think of solutions for the spammer problems and the Sphinx problems.
Oh, good... Can you make a Wiki page for it? Here are the Sphinx plugins:
http://vanillaforums.org/addon/sphinxsearch-plugin and
http://vanillaforums.org/addon/sphinxsearchlite-plugin
There was an error rendering this rich post.
@Apreche Isn't captcha registration working?
There was an error rendering this rich post.
@Apreche, I think StopForumSpam, BotStop (changing your question regularly) and Approval registration really should handle the majority of your spammers.
In regards to your more general point, you want a superior service and user experience but you don't have something of equal value (money, in this case) to exchange for it. I'm not criticising you. That expectation has become the norm.
Internet culture as a whole is going to have to address this one day. If you truly have a big community, then just 150 people paying $1 a month will cover your bills at Vanilla, Inc. When the price of a coffee is $5, this is a laughably small amount of money. What is an internet service truly worth? What is editorial or community content worth? At the moment, site operators and their end-users seem to value both sides of the equation at approximately... $0.
The sadness of these words is incredible, especially because, often, they represent the truth.
My shop | About Me
@Apreche We changed Akistmet a few months back to also process applicant "Reason for joining" a while back and it's worked pretty well.
Just yesterday Todd and I sat and talked about the open source community at length. I think you'll soon find we're re-entering a period where we actually have bandwidth to key a closer eye on things over here again.
That is a good point. I will see if 150 of my users are willing to pay $1 a month for the forum. Maybe they are. In which case, all problems solved.
Oh, I will definitely test that out. Will it work using my free Akismet key that I use for my WordPress blog, or will I have to pay for Akismet?
You can use the same code from your WordPress blog.
Add Pages to Vanilla with the Basic Pages app
Thanks! I feel like it's necessary to clear up these words about Vanilla! So, thanks for posting this, @Todd
This reminds me @Todd
I would be good if we can have an explicit statement on licensing addons.
I understand there is an implied nod that we can licence addon under different schemes, as has been happening. Is it possible to get explicit nod, not a implied one, as so far I have not heard this stated.
I want to release under professional Open Source licences and permissive licences, and other people want to contribute to this, and this is essentially to reward and inventivise this sort of thing. I am stuck is a quandary where people are asking me, but I can only keep it unlicensed under my copyright till I know for sure.
GPL requires that you make a statement to that effect, or challenges to existing software licences could be made (there is case history of this). I'm not personally interested in private/property licences, however I see no problem with a mixed/diverse market. I'm not talking about challenges to copyright which are somewhat different issue, I'm talking about original works using APIs.
It is pretty much make or break. I could only contribute occasionally, to framework that don't have a diverse addon and developer market and that is allowed. This is not me being a sour puss, ungrateful, or greedy, It is just the reality of what is possible for me and many busy people. I would like to be able to make more, and also be innovative.
Yes I have researched this thoroughly especially to tailor licensing, as it is also part of a business plan, just like you have one.
grep is your friend.
This is an interesting topic, I'm just creating a showcase for premium vanilla addons.
There was an error rendering this rich post.
@x00 The project's philosophy has been than addons are discrete programs that may have their own licenses. This is different from WordPress's line of "GPL only, all day long." That's why there's a field to define the license in the addon info array. Also, you're allowed to use multiple licenses if you wish (speaking generally about any code you write).
That said, obviously we'd take issue with a "Commercial" license in the addons directory because that doesn't make a lick of sense.
Any license will do, but of course let's use an open source one.
I wasn't specifically talking about the addons directory, although that is a good point.
Any addon, that I upload to this site I will consider free to modify tear apart, criticize, and OS. In fact I hope to make it more permissive than GPL where I can. Obviously sometimes I will decide to use GPL software, that is fine too.
However some workflows are incremental/version specific, and cannot always be facilitated non-redistributed becuase the group involve is not a simple client relationship, or all parties in the same place or organisation. Where there is a specific support arrangement, I will not release that as and OS version until the period is over, However it is my intention to make the changes available to the OS version after. it is only fair that those the give more are rewarded in kind.
I think however I would not limit commerce too much, it is not in your interests (I' know I'm doing the suck eggs thing). Any licence such as freemium, although unrefined for my taste, it makes sense for you to allow, becuase as you know every software project has it own funding plan, and there is no general answer to how you do it, wether it be bank of mum and dad or student loan, never never, or some considered business plan.
Variation/diversity is always 10x better than some proscribed way of doing it.
OS has never really been about free as in money, it about sharing the source, and befitting from contribution It still has has to be paid for some how. In your case you have various component to your business plan including SaaS. Similarly developer have to think of that too, and contributes should be rewarded as well. As I will reward then.
OS community need to think of professional OS a lot more rather than purely ideology driven, becuase if that was the case many of the GPL protect would never be funded becuase, some even take issue with raising money through non distributed means like SaaS. I suspect they are probably sleeping in their university lab somewhere.
My position on OS is pragmatism first, idealism second. It has primarily been used in industry to get the product out there an known faster and often cheaper than with expensive promotion, then building base of contributors and developers. Every software project is different though, there isn't a licence or business plan to fit all.
The definition of OS can often be too rigid, in fact I find the GPL motto "Free as in Freedom" ironic, given that it places quite lot of restriction not only on licencee, but also licensor in unmodified form. Their argument is they are trying to protect againt real or perceived practices in the proprietary market, that is fair enough but they have come up with a licence is uncannily similar to proprietary licences in how they restrict use.
That being said it still has it place, I still use it. I'm not saying never, and I’m not I criticising your use of it, just I don't think of it in a idealistic way personally, I think of it in how it can be useful to have a licence like it, under the right circumstances sort of way.
grep is your friend.
I find that wordpress may have these policies, but it applies them highly selectively in practice. it doesn’t really want to kill off all other forms of interest. Though personally I don't agree with how they do it that is how they roll.
I do understand issues directly relating to their copyright, but I object them using the wrong part of the licence to take on the issues. Some lawyer will just do what it take to win that case, f*ck the consequences. Most likely they aren't even working in IT as developer.
The result is it showed up a little known (intended) side-effect of GPL, that is difficult to reconcile with the majority of developer programs on pretty much any of the major OS projects.
grep is your friend.
It's worth pointing out again at this juncture that per the GPL, any publicly distributed plugin for a GPL product is itself GPL-licensed by definition, except for cases where the plugin is a separate executable.