BTW I wasn't planning on redistributing any add-ons myself, and I don't think OF/OHM holds sole rights to these files. I politely ask OF admins to let add-on authors make their own decisions as to whether or not
their files can be on my repo or not.
EDIT:
For what it's worth, I have offered my services to OHM. I just want to contribute and give back to the sim that's made such a power impact on my life. Because I didn't get a response, and because I don't think using the forum resource manager for add-on distribution is good UX, I decided to create my own thing.
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Yes you did. And, as I've said to you privately, you're free to create
your own thing. That's absolutely your perogative, and I have watched the thread with some interest (and mild concern) to see your progress. Since we're speaking publicly about it, I'm going to break this response into two parts; the first, my official position as a forum administrator here, which is a position I've discussed in staff channels with the other administrators and moderators, and secondly my personal response which is, as you might expect, my own.
So, let's begin by reiterating, as we've laid out in the update to the Terms of Service and as
@jedidia summarised above - the add-ons uploaded to OHM do not belong to OHM. They belong, legally, to the authors of that content. OHM has an
implicit right of redistribution of those add-ons by virtue of the fact that the content creators who own absolute creative control of their content
chose to upload them to OHM in full knowledge and with the express purpose of using OHM as a distribution point for their content. That's what grants OHM the
right to distribute add-ons, and why we've enshrined something similar into the forum's TOS now to reflect that so that uploaders to the service understand what uploading content to a repository
means and to formally agree between the two parties what rights they
do and
do not confer to OHM by the act of uploading content.
Edit to add: No such right exists in transference, which is to say that an addon uploaded to OHM does not become re-uploadable to another repository - the implicit right does not transfer.
Our concerns as forum staff, and the curators of this repository of addons, is of consistency, of user fragmentation, of confusion around
where certain add-ons should live, around what sites can and cannot be "trusted" as curated sources of what is, effectively, arbitrary software created by unknown people, often (pretty much always) unsigned. We feel that users should have the protections afforded by a team of curators and a well-proven product to ensure that what they download is not malicious, is fit for purpose, and is obtained in compliance with appropriate copyright law. The systems we have produced and provided, both OHM and the Xenforo Resources section alike, meet those needs well, allowing good transparency and allowing our moderation team to quickly and correctly respond to issues that come up in the operation of a repository such as this.
We benefit directly from the generous donations that our members give to us in order to operate the site, and the infrastructure behind the forum makes use of Digital Ocean's distributed network for file delivery. The files themselves aren't actually served by the forum server, they're offloaded to an edge CDN, which makes concerns about "stress" on the forum server far less significant or relevant. While this isn't necessarily public information, it's also hardly a secret, but you should perhaps understand that our administration and moderation teams largely comprise industry professionals who manage and operate large-scale sites on a daily basis for commercial purposes, and we understand how to manage them correctly.
As has been made clear, if users choose your platform to upload their content to, that's their choice. Our concern is entirely your site's "scraping" of the resources located
here, and offering up what
appear to users to be "alternative" downloads, regardless of where the content itself resides.
Well I am not going to upload anything, it'll be users that upload. I'll offer a claim system to give add-on devs full autonomy over their work. I am going to simply offer a repo, it'll be the uploader's responsibility to ensure proper rights, and add-on devs will be able to claim any work uploaded without their permission. Just like youtube. Also the site is under construction and it's not currently redistributing anything at all.
So yes this statement is indeed very werid.
Once again, it'll cost me less per month to not have to support file storage. I can simply fetch whatever I want from OF. I want to help. With the resource manager in its current state and lack of search I thought I can do something quickly to help and built search, for which I needed to pull the resource manager index. It was done with utmost care to not stress the OF server.
Your statement is confusing. If you are going to permit content creators to upload their own work, why do you need a "claim" system at all? We need one for the OHM content here to resolve the disparity between old add-ons uploaded by people without an OF account. Are you planning to permit users to upload works they don't own the rights to redistribute?
What follows this point is no longer a viewpoint expressed in discussion with other forum staff, and should be regarded as my personal opinion alone:
With the utmost respect, the
best way in which you can help the community is by being a considerate member of it, and by contributing your development talents to Orbiter itself, or content for the program. When you reached out to me most recently, the OHM project was already shelved, and work had already begun laying the groundwork towards this migration. It would have been inappropriate to bring you into that development effort as you are not staff here on the forum, and the work requires some privileged access to the backend here which, quite honestly, I don't feel comfortable granting you given your previous history.
Your site is embryonic and I appreciate that, but you should understand that the technical challenges that face managing a repository such as OHM are the
easy ones to overcome. The current backend for the site is, by necessity, complicated (and, for what it's worth, open-source) - I have been reminding myself just how much hard work went into producing it as I make changes to it to better enable us to move away from it. When I look at what you've posted here, I do not in honesty believe you have an adequate grasp on the problem you're trying to solve, and have some misgivings about your current efforts towards solving them. Your current site is
extremely insecure, and if you were to be offering uploads at this moment I would be cautioning people to be mindful of the evident security issues before considering doing so.
Our efforts are directed solely towards finding and providing the
best experience for people, both for add-on developers and consumers alike. What you're doing here, however, runs contrary to that, and rather than providing assistance, has been a distraction to those efforts.
The index changed due to migration. I have rebuilt, please hard refresh.
