2013-07-07, 01:42
Yes, all those points have been made before, and we don't care. There's more than just XBMC's liability reasons to not want XBMC to be associated with this content.
Personally, I doubt we'd ever get sued, even if we were still hosting those discussions. Originally, I wasn't even convinced it was a problem, and tried to convince the rest of the group that things like icefilms threads were fine. Then things changed. The popularity of these add-ons exploded beyond being a gray area in just part of the forum, and it was overflowing everywhere. Users were coming to us thinking that XBMC was made just for these add-ons, and other absurd things.
It makes people nervous. More and more, people's jobs and lives are being tied to XBMC, and having this bad image doesn't help. It actually hurts us in more ways than a lawsuit could. It's complicated and we honestly don't care what people use XBMC for, but it needed to be clear that XBMC is neutral. We won't stop you from pirating or using whatever add-ons you want (software wide), but XBMC.org needed to distance itself to make it clear that this is 3rd party content. XBMC is just the player. We are neither angels or devils.
And so it went, and we parted ways on good terms with the creators and users of these add-ons. They seemed to find a home in a place called XBMCHUB. I personally helped direct traffic their way, because it helped the user and it helped establish that the content and the player are two different parts in all this.
Then things got weird.
They would present things, both XBMC it self as well as add-ons and other content, as if it was made by their community. They would copy our own posts from the xbmc.org blog, as if they has written it.
They didn't like it when you linked to other websites or forums, when you were on hub forums. The hub organizers wanted to isolate their community and present themselves as the "better" place to go. This is bizarre. Normally, xbmc.org has healthy relationships with unofficial sites.
The tipping point was when they started to release PRs to news blog sites, wording the message in such a way that most of them assumed that they had created the Android port, and that they were official. (they didn't even code their own version or anything. The "XAF" build is a lazy slopped together build that is marketed as being easier, but isn't actually easier.
(Side note: xbmchub.com, xbmcandroid.com, and jailbreakappletv.com are same owners)
(another site note: Saying "hub" or "them" doesn't mean that everyone involved in those sites are bad guys. A lot of them are great and have good and positive relations with us on xbmc.org.)
The whole point of them starting another site was to help distinguish XBMC (the player) from the content. Now they are the ones pushing harder than anyone else to say that XBMC is all about icefilms and 1channel, and they're making it sound like that's an official statement form us.
Could have been some misunderstandings, but it kept happening. It's pretty clear that they're taking advantage of the situation and are intentionally making it sound like they are some kind of official XBMC source.
We started out on good terms. Things kept getting weirder. At the same time, there's these droves of other sites doing the same thing, trying to make a quick buck by lying about being "the official XBMC partner" or box or whatever.
So yeah, that's been pretty frustrating.
Add to this that, even if we were fine with it all, IceFilms, 1Channel, and Navi-X, typically have horrible video quality and user experience (another reason we don't want people to think that those add-ons are the main point of XBMC). I mean, dang man, if you're going to pirate, at least pirate something with quality.
It's also annoying to have people blame XBMC when the file locker sites that IceFilms uses goes down.
There's some odd and unsupported things that some of these "wizards" and "installers" do that make our jobs harder, too. (troubleshooting, unsupported settings, etc)
I'm half watching a movie right now, so I might not even be making a lot of sense, but hopefully this clears it up a little bit. At least, this is my personal take on it.
Personally, I doubt we'd ever get sued, even if we were still hosting those discussions. Originally, I wasn't even convinced it was a problem, and tried to convince the rest of the group that things like icefilms threads were fine. Then things changed. The popularity of these add-ons exploded beyond being a gray area in just part of the forum, and it was overflowing everywhere. Users were coming to us thinking that XBMC was made just for these add-ons, and other absurd things.
It makes people nervous. More and more, people's jobs and lives are being tied to XBMC, and having this bad image doesn't help. It actually hurts us in more ways than a lawsuit could. It's complicated and we honestly don't care what people use XBMC for, but it needed to be clear that XBMC is neutral. We won't stop you from pirating or using whatever add-ons you want (software wide), but XBMC.org needed to distance itself to make it clear that this is 3rd party content. XBMC is just the player. We are neither angels or devils.
And so it went, and we parted ways on good terms with the creators and users of these add-ons. They seemed to find a home in a place called XBMCHUB. I personally helped direct traffic their way, because it helped the user and it helped establish that the content and the player are two different parts in all this.
Then things got weird.
They would present things, both XBMC it self as well as add-ons and other content, as if it was made by their community. They would copy our own posts from the xbmc.org blog, as if they has written it.
They didn't like it when you linked to other websites or forums, when you were on hub forums. The hub organizers wanted to isolate their community and present themselves as the "better" place to go. This is bizarre. Normally, xbmc.org has healthy relationships with unofficial sites.
The tipping point was when they started to release PRs to news blog sites, wording the message in such a way that most of them assumed that they had created the Android port, and that they were official. (they didn't even code their own version or anything. The "XAF" build is a lazy slopped together build that is marketed as being easier, but isn't actually easier.
(Side note: xbmchub.com, xbmcandroid.com, and jailbreakappletv.com are same owners)
(another site note: Saying "hub" or "them" doesn't mean that everyone involved in those sites are bad guys. A lot of them are great and have good and positive relations with us on xbmc.org.)
The whole point of them starting another site was to help distinguish XBMC (the player) from the content. Now they are the ones pushing harder than anyone else to say that XBMC is all about icefilms and 1channel, and they're making it sound like that's an official statement form us.
Could have been some misunderstandings, but it kept happening. It's pretty clear that they're taking advantage of the situation and are intentionally making it sound like they are some kind of official XBMC source.
We started out on good terms. Things kept getting weirder. At the same time, there's these droves of other sites doing the same thing, trying to make a quick buck by lying about being "the official XBMC partner" or box or whatever.
So yeah, that's been pretty frustrating.
Add to this that, even if we were fine with it all, IceFilms, 1Channel, and Navi-X, typically have horrible video quality and user experience (another reason we don't want people to think that those add-ons are the main point of XBMC). I mean, dang man, if you're going to pirate, at least pirate something with quality.
It's also annoying to have people blame XBMC when the file locker sites that IceFilms uses goes down.
There's some odd and unsupported things that some of these "wizards" and "installers" do that make our jobs harder, too. (troubleshooting, unsupported settings, etc)
I'm half watching a movie right now, so I might not even be making a lot of sense, but hopefully this clears it up a little bit. At least, this is my personal take on it.
