[nickr]

Because that will contribute to the development of xbmc. Anywhere else will contribute to someone or something else, with no idea of where it is being spent. This is, after all the xbmc forum.

[Ned Scott]

@HIGHWAY99

Change the record! You are becoming tedious! You clearly have major issues with Mikey, anyone would think he'd killed a member of your family. So he wants to make a few quid, big deal!

(I'm still waiting for you to acknowledge that code you "borrowed" from me)

is there a place where I can keep track of all this drama behind the scenes? Not saying you shouldnt have beef, but more along the lines of if I donate, I want to make sure I donate to someone contributing to the community.

This is pretty much my thoughts on the whole ad thing. I dont think these developers get that once this stops being a hobby and becomes a profit generating venture, you now have customers. As a customer, I demand that your product work and when it is not, I want an immediate fix, not when you get to it. If Sam Nazarko says his schedule is too hectic for him to monitor crystalbuntu or raspbmc like he should, I have to just take it as is because he does this as a hobby and only asks for donations. However, I have watched a support thread for Mashup not get any help or answers on their support site for a few days. That is unacceptable when I am forced to watch ads (put on my xbmc without my permission) that pays them for upkeep on these addons.

It is no different to me when playon went to a monthly fee structure or the idea of the plexpass. Once this stops being a hobby, you must now deal with customer service.

If you want to support whatever group or add-on author for their work, more power to you, but don't be fooled into believing that this is anything more than a cash grab when it comes to mikey1234. You're not paying for the upkeep. Not only that, but paying to pirate (plus the fact that mashup, 1channel, icefilms, etc have really shitty quality) is just dumb. It's totally different from Playon, Plex, and Crystalbuntu.

I've donated to Crystalbuntu, OpenELEC, and others who are 3rd parties to XBMC. There are some good people doing good work, and we encourage users to support them. Just be careful when it comes to the groups being discussed in this thread.

[nickr]

Thanks Ned. I didn't mean to imply that worthy causes like crystalbuntu or openelec do not deserve donations.

[ragedogg69]

Oh I know Ned. That is exactly my point. Once ads start lining the pockets of the developers, it is a completely different game. I just do not think they get that yet.

[munkeh]

Displaying ads is just a drop in the 'monetise XBMC' ocean. It's displaying those ads; it's the marketing company selling that ad space; it's hooking up with dodgy streaming sites to develop official addons for them and it's flogging XBMC powered boxes (like a Xunity box, maybe). It's an entrepreneurial wet dream, is what it is.

Gomadmarketing.com (partnered with TLBB, one notes) sells the ad space and offers customers millions of XBMC viewers, full GA reports* and 100% of ads watched. Those last two being interesting, given that much was made of removing GA tracking from addons and the fact that the ad devs say to just close the ads when they pop up. It's also interesting that the US contact address for the company is shared with 'FoxorBoxor.com', a site offering Android XBMC boxes that provide unlimited free TV for a one time payment of a mere 300 bucks.

But, hey, it's not like anyone involved in all this has a bit of a shady reputation or anything.

*So one would guess that, with GA tracking being removed from the addons, the addons now ping some server which enables GA tracking to be done there instead.

[Jarviss]

Has anyone seen an ad yet?

[krish_2k4]

I would pay money for a netflix integrated xbmc!

just putting that out there!

[misa]

It's soooo easy to hide the ads. I don't see any ad on my system while I am using there addons. And Ned....it's not all shitty quality. 1080 5.1 DTS is not shitty quality I think.

[scilz]

ppl will wake up one day and realize there are better ways to get everything that (hub or talk/xunity/ w/e they will be called next week) has.
and please do not pay for any of those streaming plugins all they do is get stuff that is already free. i got a sub to everyone of them i saw a few weeks ago (most by mikey1234 or at least promoted by him) they all give free content and the plugins are so unreliable it's not funny. then i got harassed by like 3 devs and other members of there forum. because there servers where not set up for use in u.s.a and i complained that i paid all this money and could not even watch shit.
then they fixed it (temp fix) and once it broke again i cancelled payment at wich time 2 other devs laughed at me and said haha we got your money already we don't care. there selling boxes there selling subscription for stuff you can get free and there still pushing ads to. it's a shame and if they where nice when someone cant get there shit to work because it's only set up for uk i would still pay them but the fact they are assholes about it was the thing that pushed me over the top. PERIOD

[misa]

ppl will wake up one day and realize there are better ways to get everything that (hub or talk/xunity/ w/e they will be called next week) has.
and please do not pay for any of those streaming plugins all they do is get stuff that is already free. i got a sub to everyone of them i saw a few weeks ago (most by mikey1234 or at least promoted by him) they all give free content and the plugins are so unreliable it's not funny. then i got harassed by like 3 devs and other members of there forum. because there servers where not set up for use in u.s.a and i complained that i paid all this money and could not even watch shit.
then they fixed it (temp fix) and once it broke again i cancelled payment at wich time 2 other devs laughed at me and said haha we got your money already we don't care. there selling boxes there selling subscription for stuff you can get free and there still pushing ads to. it's a shame and if they where nice when someone cant get there shit to work because it's only set up for uk i would still pay them but the fact they are assholes about it was the thing that pushed me over the top. PERIOD

Is it possible to write things down so everybody understands it?....What you are trying to write got nothing to do with the one or the other, so don't mix up all these things and think before you write

[Prof Yaffle]

Are people working towards the complete works of Shakespeare through the application of a very large number of semi-evolved simians, all heavily armed with typewriters?

[scilz]

yes it is impossible to write things down so everyone understands them. people speak different languages and some can't read so yes.. but at least i did not misspell a word in every sentence like other people did i would ask why you pointed me out and not them but i already know that answer.

[Eleazar Coding]

It definitely wasn't my intention to open up a can of worms when I started this thread, I was just away for the weekend to come back to six pages, can't even believe it lol.

I think the best thing that has came out of this conversation is that maybe it would be a good idea to make it so addons are sandboxed in the future, just my take though, I'm sure Team-XBMC already has something of the sort in the works.

I'm also more than a little bit concerned about how these guys are tracking illegal activity, they are tracking what pirated content you are downloading, you could go to jail or get sued for millions just for a single infringement, totally off the chain. This http://gomadmarketing.com/ site that someone brought up is just crazy, they setup a whole marketing company just to sell ads through XBMC.

Please guys don't turn this thread into a personally pissing match, let's just use the opportunity to discuss securing the XBMC community rather than bickering.

[nickr]

I anticipate that enforcing all addons to be GPL would stop the wrangling about authors being ripped off.

[Eleazar Coding]

It doesn't really matter what the licensing is, you can't sue someone over breaking a license for a software project that is meant to break the licensed copyrights of hundreds of thousands of pieces of pirated media.