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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.

(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!

So this scenario I proposed in another comment, you are fine with?

If on line 37, page 409, of a car rental agreement that you sign, it states that if you are an hour late in returning your vehicle, the car rental company will take your firstborn, and you sign this agreement, then it's on you, right?

Well, it would be non-binding since you can’t sign away another adult’s rights (assuming your first born is over 18). If the first-born is under 18, I guess it would depend on adoption laws as to whether this is something you can give away via a contract.

Folklore is full of this kind of stuff. Always read what you sign. Always. No exceptions. Better yet, get a lawyer to read it too.

Except that's not practical in real life. Do you get a lawayer to read the 40-page pamphlet full if liability disclaimers that comes with your coffee maker or any other appliance?

Well in the EU, those are basically non-binding by default. So not usually unless I want to go to sleep. But for everything else, yeah. If I rent a car, I read the whole thing right there at the counter. Buy a phone, same thing. If anything looks sketch I ask for a Print-out and do send it to my lawyers (this is why I pay €5 a month for legal insurance!) I usually hear back from them within a few hours. Why would anyone blindly sign a contract? Yeah there’s some dark patterns (like giving you the contract at the last possible second) but the only way to fight that is to be a dick and sit there reading the whole thing and clogging up the queue.

> 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.

I'm left wondering how many other sites are quietly getting 30% of their revenue siphoned off due to a similar "malfunction", and how much of the easy refund process is to avoid a public fuss that'd reveal that fact.

> It’s just a series of human errors.

This reminds me of a game I ported from iOS to Windows Phone, actually. It was free and ad supported. I told my contact like 50 times he needed to get me an API key for Microsoft Ads, so I just used my own while I waited. Fast forward six months and the game launched after still asking every week and informing them that they needed to get me the API key or all ad revenue would go to me.

I set up an auto email to go out once a week asking for the API key. That person would reply back for literally any other issue.

They emailed me like 2 years later asking where their money is. I replied with the entire situation, screen shots of the emails and would be happy to send them the 1¢ they earned.

I never heard back from them until their lawyer contacted me. Sent him the same stuff. Never heard back from them either. They did post a blog post about how they were going after their ex-developer for “stealing” their ad revenue though. I lol’d and went on with my life. People do weird shit for some publicity. I’m not saying that’s what’s going on here, but it sure smells like it.

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!

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.

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.

Yes, a good point. He should update the license (https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-admob-pro/wiki/Lic...) to state from 2% up to 30%.

I would love to see open source developers make a lot of money; I think it's a great future for everyone. But I don't think there is any dichotomy in this case. If the service declares its price in percentages or dollars (as SaaS does), it's terrible to charge 15 times more.

Mistakes happen, but in this case, it's a conscious decision by the plugin author; I think stealing is the right word, especially when it turns out you've done it with thousands of apps