Thread

Anyone who’s followed the owner of Devot-ee.com’s Tweets have seen his often flippant and sometimes nasty posts.  Maybe he’s an OK guy, but virtually every interaction I’ve had with him over the years has been troublesome.  This is my latest:

I posted a module to Devot-ee.com sometime in late December/early January of this year.  It sold 3 copies in the 30 or so days it was available (1 buyer asked for a refund through Devot-ee.com).  A niche module, I decided that it wasn’t going to be viable to sell, update and support the module in the long term.

I emailed Devot-ee.com’s owner, asking him how I could delete it from the website, or if he could do it.  He wrote back, condescendingly saying he didn’t understand.  I wrote back saying that I was removing it from sale and didn’t want it listed on his website, that I wanted to delete it from Devot-ee.com.

He then wrote back saying that ‘they never have and never will’ delete any module from their website.  Taken aback, and not wanting others to purchase it, I edited the listing, as much as I was able, to remove the description, link to the download, images, etc.  I could not delete the listing—no provision to do so.

Today, I dropped by Devot-ee.com to search for a module I need for a project, decided to see if the listing was still active and this is what I found:

http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/reggy

While a resemblance may be made, I think this points to a serious flaw in the business model at Devot-ee.com, as well as some pretty severe lack of professionalism by its owner.

I have not received payment for the 2 modules which were sold.  I am unable to log into the system to get contact info for the 2 buyers.  (Devot-ee.com’s owner has hacked my user account, changing my password and email address).  I am unable to respond to the comments on the page, one of whom was a buyer.

I would be happy to refund the 2 buyers’ money.  It was the plan.  I had hoped to be able to log in the my account at Devot-ee.com to view the contact info for the purchasers after receiving payment from Devot-ee.com for the 2 sales.  It looks like Devot-ee.com’s owner would rather make horse’s ass jokes than fulfill his business obligation.

Randy Brown
carvingcode at gmail dot com

I emailed Devot-ee.com’s owner, asking him how I could delete it from the website, or if he could do it.  He wrote back, condescendingly saying he didn’t understand.  I wrote back saying that I was removing it from sale and didn’t want it listed on his website, that I wanted to delete it from Devot-ee.com.

He then wrote back saying that ‘they never have and never will’ delete any module from their website.  Taken aback, and not wanting others to purchase it, I edited the listing, as much as I was able, to remove the description, link to the download, images, etc.  I could not delete the listing—no provision to do so.

Somewhat true. We catalog EE add-ons, good, bad, and discontinued. Shall I post our entire email conversation thread somewhere, and let the people decide as to who was the condescending one? Not worth it, and ultimately doesn’t matter.

I have not received payment for the 2 modules which were sold.  I am unable to log into the system to get contact info for the 2 buyers.  (Devot-ee.com’s owner has hacked my user account, changing my password and email address).  I am unable to respond to the comments on the page, one of whom was a buyer.

You will get paid via your selected payment method on Thursday, March 15, 2012, just like every other developer who sold items in January 2012. How dare you not ask me about that directly and insinuate in a public place that we don’t pay our developers.

We removed you as a ‘developer’ because you’re no longer actively developing an add-on for sale on our site. If you had taken the time to inquire, I could have switched you back to that group.

We were having some fun with a page that no longer mentions you anywhere. Even one of your customers had fun and posted a “review.”

That’s all I have to say on the matter publicly. If you have any other issues with me Randy, feel free to email.

hehe… He expects me to engage him in a conversation after I viewed the link above? He thinks I crave ridicule? Just more foolishness from this guy.

We catalog EE add-ons, good, bad, and discontinued.

I don’t know the full story here, I’ve not read what I’m sure is an interesting e-mail conversation between you both, but regardless of that I think an add-on developer should have the right to be able to remove their own add-on from a website they originally posted it to, after all, they may have a perfectly good reason to do so.

Surely the sensible thing to do would just be to allow this person to remove their add-on and that would be the end of the story? Sure, you may want to archive every add-on good or bad, but you’ve got to respect the wishes of the developers too if you want to earn any trust from them.

If this is your reaction to such a request, then it would make me seriously re-consider whether I would want to publish any software on devot-ee.com too, on the chance that I may also end up with a defaced page in place of where my add-on used to be should I come to the conclusion that my software should be removed.

Going forward, would you consider the option to remove an add-on on-request by a developer, or does your stance remain the same?

An add-on developer can easily disable sales for an add-on on devot:ee. It would be unfair to the people who bought the add-on to completely remove the record of the add-on, in my opinion. That would skew their purchase records and deny them access to the add-on’s community support forum which might be their only source of support for a discontinued add-on. No ecommerce website completely obliterates every trace of products sold on their website for reasons like this.

I think it’s probably also important to mention here, that add-ons may be added by someone other the developer. There have been several cases recently where add-ons that weren’t even meant for the public eye yet we added by third parties who had found them on Github. In this context, the lines of who should be allowed to remove content are further blurred. So I can certainly understand Ryan’s stance. As long as the author’s IP is removed, which can be done by any developer on the site, turning off sales and removing files, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to maintain a record of the add-on’s existence in history.  That paired with what Benjamin said above makes sense to me.

Maybe Ryan’s edits the the add-on’s page were a little overboard. But, we’re all a bunch of snarks. It’s how we roll. Life isn’t any fun without a bit of humor anyway.