Response from Urs "Urbin" Beeli – site

Does your site host your own addons, or ones created by other authors? If you host other authors works, who is allowed to submit addons to your site? How do you handle questions of copyright or license violations?

I host my own addons and two "spin-offs" that I created from other's author's work (see below; and I clearly give credit to them).

On my own site I host a fan's update of Dsanai's "AuctionFilterPlus" and an extension of Fubar_Alarm that I call Fubar_UrbinAlarm. I am the only person submitting addons to my site.

I don't. My addons are published without explicit license but considering they are written in LUA I consider them to be in the public domain.

I was once contacted by a site hosting addons that somebody apparently published one of my addons (GuildGreet extended) under a different name. As the succession in maintaining the addon, the other person could plausible explain that he had not realized that I had taken over the addon. I was fine with him developing a spin off, all I wanted was to be given credit and the other person agreed to that.

Were you aware that WowMatrix is scraping your site for new versions of your addons, and allows users to download directly from your server without visiting your site?

I was aware that they did this with other addons. I assumed they also did it with my addons but was uncertain whether they scraped them off their "official homes" on curse or from the mirror on my private site.

Were you aware that WowMatrix shows ads in their client, but potentially bypasses the ads shown on your site?

Yes, I was aware of that. I don't have ads on my site, so the question is academic in my case :)

Did Wowmatrix ever contact you to tell you they did this, or ask permission?

No, they did not.

Are your addons licensed for free distribution (for example, GPL)?

They are not explicitly placed under the GPL or any other license. I neither encourage nor discourage redistribution of my addons.

If the addons are licensed for free distribution, did they ever ask or inform you that they were providing them through their client? Do they host it themselves, or pull from your site?

I was not informed that they were providing them through their client. I do not know.

If your addons are NOT licensed for free distribution, did WowMatrix ever come to you and offer to host your addons on their server?

They did not.

Did you contact WowMatrix and ask them to remove your addons or stop scraping your site? Did they respond? Were your addons removed?

I did not.

Did you ever ask WowMatrix to compensate you for the bandwidth their client uses, or did they ever offer? Do they compensate you?

I didn't ask. They didn't offer.

Have you seen significant bandwidth increase that you believe is due to WowMatrix, especially since patch 3.1?

I can't say, as I do not monitor bandwidth used on my site.

Do you agree with Curse and WoWI blocking WowMatrix from their servers?

Absolutely.

WowMatrix says: "Although we do not agree with their actions, we respect their position in this matter, and so WowMatrix does not currently download AddOns from either Curse or WoWInterface." Do you feel they've respected you, your site, and your addons?

I don't know enough details on how my site (or my projects on curse) are offered as links within WoWMatrix or how credit for my authorship is given. Nor do I know the impact their offering my addons has. Being a very small site, I doubt the impact is heavy.

Judging from their behaviour in the past (especially with regard to donations, leeching bandwidth from others etc, I'd be skeptical.

Do you want your addons available through WowMatrix? Do you feel this decision has been influenced by the recent events?

I'm of two minds about it. As a service to users to allow easy installation and updating: yes. As a means of income for a third party (WowMatrix): no.

I have considered asking them to remove my addons but considering I write my addons for fun and appreciation I hesitate to potentially make them unavailable for a wide group of WoW players.

Yes, certainly. But despite the recent events the benefit of the users outweighs the borderline-ethics of the WM providers.

Do you have any comments you would like to make about the current situation with WowMatrix?

While - being a small site - the behaviour of WowMatrix has not put a noticeable strain on my site, I can certainly understand the arguments of Curse and WoWInterface.

I do not consider the practice of providing a client to get addons from third party sites deplorable per se (I was a fan of WAU) as long as the sites concerned are happy with that.

The moment Ace had to close down (not exclusively due to WM, I guess WAU was just as big or bigger a problem), such a practice was no longer acceptable.

Circumventing measures to stop WM from leeching from Curse is a NO.

Making money from your own ads while keeping users from seeing the hosting site's adds is a NO.

I cannot judge whether the rumours are true that WM stripped donation code from addons or modified license and/or credit information. If they are true, that is a big NO NO, but as I said, I have no evidence to support or deny those rumours.

The fact that WM now has a donation support mechanism, only after a huge uproar of addon authors shows that this was not added because they truly want to support those authors but that it was added for damage control.

Over all, I remain very skeptical of the business ethics of the operators of WM. Despite this I will not (yet) ask them to remove my addons in the interest of the users who like them.