Response from John Stephen – 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?

Only my own

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 am aware they used to be able to get them from my site but since then I've moved my addons into a registered-users-only section of my site. I haven't verified that they're unable to deep link to them from there though.

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

Yes, though ad revenue on my site amounted to a few dollars a day at best so this didn't particularly offend me.

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

No.

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

No.

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'm not sure, I'll have to fire up their client and see where it's pulling them from.

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 informed me recently that they would be re-working their site to offer hosted downloads and said they would contact me once that was in place. I haven't had a followup from them yet.

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

No, I changed my site design instead. I did contact them a couple months ago to get the "website url" for my addons changed from Curse to my own site, which they did do promptly and courteously.

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

No, but they did apply my PayPal links from Curse and WoWI to their own site. I receive one to two donations a day for my addons, most ranging from $1 to $10 each, and they come pretty equally from Curse, WoWI and WoWMatrix users.

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

No.

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

Yes, 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?

Somewhat, but not really. I'm happy they're cleaning up their act, but I think the way they've operated in the past has been abusive - like a driver who tailgates a semi because he'll get better mileage, but at the expense of the truck driver's mileage.

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

I'm ok with it if they're hosting the downloads themselves and providing donation links in their client.

Recent events hadn't changed my opinion until a few days ago with the comments they posted about Curse and WoWI. Those comments were unwarranted, didn't take any responsibility for their past actions, and fostered the belief among some users that Curse and WoWI are the villians.

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

I think they should apologize for leading people to believe they are the victims and that Curse and WoWI are the bad guys. They did add value of their own via their downloader, which they did a good job on, but their success was at a direct monetary cost to developers and hosting sites who were unwillingly funding their bandwidth consumption. Since they now offer their own hosting that problem has been addressed, now they just need to go the rest of the way towards becoming good citizens by ending these attacks on the sites they were abusing.