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by Beltalowda 1606 days ago
I suspect the line of thinking behind the 30% seems to be something along the lines of "they're fiddling their numbers to reduce our 2% cut, so let's just take a bigger cut".

I don't think this is entirely kosher for a bunch of reasons, but I'm willing to believe that it was a naïve person doing something naïve after being burned by someone cheating him out of his cut, or something along those lines.

At any rate, since the author of this article was unaware of the 2%, it doesn't really matter if the 30% would have been mentioned or not. That they took any cut could have been clearer, perhaps – I don't know how it looked like before on that Ionic plugin site, but it's plenty clear now so that's a solved issue (if it was an issue to start with). That this was added after this exchange (and before it was published) without any pressure further demonstrates the plugin author is essentially acting in good faith.

1 comments

(Ionic CEO here) I think regardless, it's something developers don't expect so we're removing it from our site right now to avoid confusion and surprises (we’re going to be changing the whole design of this list soon anyways so it’s moot). The plugin description came from another project we support and trust plugin authors to write their own descriptions but we're realizing we need to scrutinize those more closely. I have no qualms with a plugin stating they are going to have this kind of revenue share but it doesn't belong on our site and seen as “official” which is confusing, so we're fixing that right now.
The plugin author seems like a standup guy who responded cordially and even returned money, which is something no scammer would ever do. Your platform, your rules. But I feel you're being unfair to him with this knee-jerk reaction.
Unfair to the plugin author? It's moot anyways because we're making a design change to the site and changing how we reference community plugins. We aren't stopping developers from finding and using whatever plugin they want to use, just changing how "official" they look on our website.
You shouldn't overreact this way. Really it doesn't speak well of your platform.
I feel like their response is not at all an overreaction. The plugin author was underhanded in their conduct. I wouldn't want to use a platform which allowed nonsense like that to proliferate, so am happy to see dubious stuff like this removed. To me it signals that the platform owners care about what is on their platform and are concerned about their users. That is a good thing.
The article seems to be down for me. But I’ve gathered it was spelled out in the license? They even returned money? Removing a person’s revenue stream because someone wrote a blog post is by default, an overreaction. If they’re going to change it all anyway, why rush it?
> But I’ve gathered it was spelled out in the license?

Just curious, is this your attitude towards other things as well? There used to be a very popular ebay scam, which had people sell large screen TVs and video game systems for very cheap. At the bottom of the auction description, in fine print, the auction also clearly stated that you were bidding/buying only a photo of the product, not the actual product. In other words, it was "spelled out", so no one was getting scammed according to your perspective here, right? It was on the fault of the buyers for not reading the license/auction description?

LOL. That’s pretty funny, actually. Is it a scam when toys say batteries not included in small print too? IDK, maybe it’s my outlook on making sure I’m getting what I’m buying (or what I’m not getting as the case may be)! I don’t see anything shady here, but I couldn’t access the article earlier. I’ll try again here in a bit!
> But I’ve gathered it was spelled out in the license?

A 2% cut was spelled out in the license.

A 30% cut was not, but the plugin author silently upped it to that over vague assertions of abuse of the plugin.

> "After check, we find your app in the black list, and a random higher rate will be applied. Usually when a guy is using a fake license key, or send unusual attacking request..."

Further in that same paragraph, the plug-in author goes on to say that they removed the guy’s app from said blacklist and even upgraded him to a fully paid license for free. And on top of all that he even gave dude back $4000 bucks!

I really don’t see either party as underhanded here, maybe lazy in respect to both communicating and with paying attention, but I can’t see either as being shady. It’s just a series of human errors.

And ionic is now on the list of "companies that operate at the whim of one person and should not be relied on for revenue"

Harder to fit in your business card, I'm sure, but hey, you've earned it!

Please don't cross into personal attack.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I appreciate the sentiment, but whose person was attacked here?

I asserted that as an investor, if a company is largely ran as a single person's whims, it becomes indistinguishable and unusable as a revenue producing entity.

I would invest in neither the person who thinks they're a company nor a company that thinks they're a person - neither were attacked, I simply said they wouldn't ever get a dollar.

Your comment was personal because it used "you" while talking to a person, and the snark in it was definitely crossing into attack.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. The snark thing is particularly a marker of bad comments here.

Huh? See my comment below, this whole thing will be a non-issue in weeks anyways as we’re changing this list. People think these plugins are “official” and this is one symptom of that, so this is just a temporary measure to reduce confusion
No it is not. Someone was misusing a plugin, wrote a blog about it, and you take side of the one who would be able to make bad press of your platform. This is not a temporary measure. This is a whim of a one person to remove someone from your platform without any due process nor integrity.