Textpattern Gets Ripped Off?
It’s one thing to re-brand and sell, quite another to call it your own, disable features and charge for adding them back, then heave support back onto the open source community.
Legal (if they provide the source to all their clients under GPL), but positively shameful.
Update
It turns out that we have a combination of two misunderstandings:
- money was paid for a site’s design two years ago, not a content management system or extended support
- a misunderstanding of what the proper way to go about branding is
I consider this fully resolved. If you have any questions, please contact me privately.
Explanation of the Update
For those that have been following this from the beginning, and are a little confused…
As stated above, it was a misunderstanding. I talked with them personally, and there was not only a reasonable explanation but a sincere apology. They have also made corrections to their site to clarify what it is they are actually offering, and they now understand the correct way to go about offering a customized Txp install for their clients.
Hence, the links were removed. If I believed that their corrections were only the result of “getting caught” (which is what actual thieves/site rippers tend to do), I would not have removed them. I am fully satisfied that it wasn’t intentional.
Posted 29 February 2008, 04:44 by Mary Fredborg
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Hateful thing to see :( And shameful, indeed. Those rippers, curse them, curse them! :-)
— Gocom · Feb 29, 05:16 AM · #
My favorite part is that their login page still reads “Textpattern”
— Nathan Smith · Feb 29, 05:37 AM · #
That’s incredible, what scumbags.
— pfctdayelise · Feb 29, 05:54 AM · #
I think these guys are seriously missing the point here too. One of the main selling points we communicate to our clients’ about using Textpattern for their site build is Textpattern’s scale of use, support and community surrounding it.
We even give away Nathan’s ‘Textpattern Solutions’ book with each and every site as part of the initial training we provide. This provides them with confidence that we’re serious in the choices of professional software we make on their behalf and also that if they need to upgrade or change their site at a later stage and for some reason we’re not around, they can take their system and their book to another developer and keep on trucking.
I have a case in point to illustrate the importance of this – we’re quoting a site currently for a client who paid good money for an asp-based site elsewhere whose developer is now trying to charge them again to move them to Joomla (of all CMS’) as they no longer support the CMS they sold them less than 12 months ago.
Client confidence is a big issue in the world of web design and these cowboys do us all a dis-service.
— Damien Buckley · Feb 29, 06:01 AM · #
They’ve now taken down the ‘screenshots and tour’ and other links… :-(
The login page is still there, complete TXP source.
Bleh…
— Philippe · Feb 29, 06:29 AM · #
At least these shady characters have been exposed.
— Manfre · Feb 29, 08:24 AM · #
did you remove the link to the site you’re talking about or I“m really tired?
— me · Mar 1, 03:07 AM · #
me, the website is called Pixelcorestudio.com
And yes, it’s removed from the post. Also the Pixelpattern’s storepage is removed from pixelcorestudio, and also other pages are modified, plus screenshots are deleted from server.
But you can view them from google’s cache or by visiting some blogs.
— Gocom · Mar 1, 07:19 AM · #
As stated above, it was a misunderstanding. I talked with them personally (they contacted me), and there was not only a reasonable explanation but a sincere apology. They have also made corrections to their site to clarify what it is they are actually offering, and they now understand the correct way to go about offering a customized Txp install for their clients.
Hence, the links were removed.
— Mary · Mar 2, 03:54 AM · #