Ads on the main site, premium subscriptions, payware sales - these are legitimate ways to generate revenue to pay the bills. But making money from one individual product that you or someone working for your company did not create, without paying royalties to the creator, would be unheard of, and possibly illegal in just about any other industry.
But the ads you are talking about are not on his page and no one elses. Those ads are on every page, even the addons that have been on the site for 2 years and only ever downloaded 10 times. How can you say that ads are ok, but if they are on Tommys page, then they are ripping him off? The ad template is literally on every single page.
3 Likes
From my understanding there is no plans to charge a fee for anyoneās freeware. As a creator on there myself I have no problems with them placing ads on the pages of my add-ons. They need to have some income to pay for the site.
They make a great accessible easy to navigate website to upload/Download add-ons I canāt see why anyone would have a problem with that.
I would only have an Issue if they was actually charging a direct fee for my freeware and not giving me a cut. But Iām pretty sure they have said that isnāt going to happen.
4 Likes
Thanks going to grab it now!
1 Like
I would only have an Issue if they was actually charging a direct fee for my freeware and not giving me a cut. But Iām pretty sure they have said that isnāt going to happen.
ā¦ exactly. I think there is a lot of hysteria about things arenāt actually happening. Everyone needs to take a deep breath here.
4 Likes
@tclayton2k @ImmersiveVR I use Brave sometimes, but youāre better off using an ad blocker like Ghostery. Brave does some super sketchy things at times, and canāt really be trusted: Brave (web browser) - Wikipedia
2 Likes
Yea Iāll check out Ghostery instead.
A lot does seem to be just people jumping on it and some false comments and issueās that donāt really exist.
Really the only issue is the point of being able to delete your uploaded add-on at will.
The rest, complaints around making money from advertising and the new subscription option. Which isnāt compulsory, is silly.
Some people seem to want full control of everything, all their files hosted for free and the website to make no money but cover the costs of running the website and paying staff and legal feeās.
It would only be an issue if they were directly charging for the actual freeware upload but they arenāt.
Iām all for them making money to keep this website going as long as they arenāt charging for my freeware. It is super convenient clean and easy to navigate. The main reason why I chose to place my add-onās there.
There will be those upset that they replaced other add-on websites and just having a dig because they have become so popular.
People love to try bring anything down that is doing well.
8 Likes
Reality check: It wasnāt the developers that started this dumpster fire.
3 Likes
This ācontroversyā wouldnāt exist if flightsim.to hadnāt announced its Premium subscription. And I donāt say this as if Iām putting the blame on flightsim.to for all this. Itās the fault of the people who didnāt read it properly or refused to read the annoucement and started a mob against the site because of fake news.
The annoucement was very clear. Absolutely NOTHING would change for core users. Those who donāt want to pay for Premium would continue downloading content normally. Even so, there were a lot of people claiming without proof, that the site would throttle down download speeds, limit daily downloads and even put the entire site behind a paywall. If they had at least read the announcement, they would see that none of this would happen, but they preferred to remain in ignorance.
People engaged in the mission of painting flightsim.to devs as āGreedy people wanting to make money off the othersā workā. And in their eagerness to look for something to criticize and create a controversy, they found something ācontroversialā in their ToS, which was there since the beginning and became the discussion we are seeing today.
After carefully reading flightsim.toās explanations, Iām fully convinced that boycotts are massive overreaction. So far, I havenāt been able to find any evidence the site is in any way undermining the intellectual rights of content creatorsās work and seeking to transfer it through shady means to them. And no, the fact that they make it difficult or impossible to delete content on their site is not indicative of that.
6 Likes
This and fsx org cn are very funny to me, i know most of my items that i put on the flightsimto website were mirrored on others (i am ok with in general if they are kept free). i know many alternatives are legitimite but this type of site also hosts illegal paid content where they charge users points to promise access to their copies of addons, and the way users earn these āpointsā is by boosting their website traffic in their forum or paying a certain amount of RMB iirc.
Thatās not true. Seriously, please do your research properly.
Nobody would deny fs.to a right to monetize, it costs to run a site like that.
The issue is completely different to what you are portraying it as.
Itās important to keep this focused on what the core issue really is, and stick to the facts.
This was a dumpster fire lite by fs.to, from the burning embers of the content house that Nexus Mods burnt down.
Itās up to fs.to to put it out and rebuild trust with content producers.
Lets not mischaracterize it by redirecting blame onto other people.
The ToS is the same since the site was created and ācoincidentallyā someone read and found a ācontroversialā term days after the Premium announcement. OK thenā¦
I know very well why this term has only now been highlighted. It has everything to do with announcement. Itās impossible to think that there isnāt a connection. No one has enough free time and patience to read ToS unless they are desperate to find something to criticize.
Thatās a slanted portrayal of the real issue, and you are attempting to redirect the issue away from what is an actual problem for content producers.
In any event, it really doesnāt matter what you think because fs.to is attempting to address the core ādevs should be free to delete their own content (with leadtime warning)ā issue now (finally), so weāll see how that works out for all parties concerned.
2 Likes
Wrong
The most controversial part of the TOS changed in autumn 2022
Thatās a fact
Because when is on the internet you canāt remove it, this is the TOS in 19 August 2022
**Articles 4.6 and 4.9 granted to remove content, and without the ability of .to transfer the content to another username **
Developers (me included) are upset since than, because already happened, prior to the drama
For anyone still not believing,
There was a long discussion in this forum too
Thanks to the drama, we (Devs) finally have a way to protect the very hard work and countless hour of free development
11 Likes
I, as many others, have a tremendous library of add-ons that currently resides at 3.4TB. Thatās correct, 3.4TB. That was only possible due to the hard work of not only the freeware developers, but FS.to as well. Running a site of this magnitude is not free and a lot of consideration needs to go into the layout, UX/UI and flow. There is a huge cost to this. Itās not free.
FS.to got it right and continues to create innovative ways for its customers to be able to manage their add-on libraries. As such, when they announced a subscription, I was first in line to pay up because they provide a service to me as a customer that allows me to manage my library which would not be possible otherwise and I think they have done a tremendous job and service to the FS community as a whole.
That being said, I do somewhat understand the concern from Devs, but honestly, I feel itās been a huge over-reaction from a few that do not completely understand the TOS. Of course, once the genie is out of the bottle in a society like we have today where everyone is an expert, it takes on a life of its own, gets blown out of proportion, and in the end, hurts everyone. And that is very unfortunate.
I read the TOS several times to see what the hubbub was all about, because as having the huge library I have, many things in my sim now are going to be broken. And, although Iām not a lawyer, I didnāt see anything in the TOS that granted them rights to content. The intent, from what I understood, was to make sure that ārageā deletes didnāt affect the content on the site, understandably. Low and behold, what was the result? Rage deletes based on what I view as absurd reactions from some developers who donāt know how to read. If your content needs to be deleted, why did you put it out there in the first place? Whoās going to pay the other Devs that wasted their time promoting your content through its use in their content? Whoās going to pay .To for all the work they did promoting your content, giving you exposure as a dev? What about the countless sims you will, and have, broken because you didnāt clearly understand the TOS? Itās sad really, and was totally unnecessary in the end. As my mother always said, āThis is why we canāt have nice things.ā Our society today is āme, me, meā with zero consideration for others. Sorry, thatās the way I see it.
Now, before anyone out there says, āhow would you feel if it were your content?ā Well, Iāve done content creation for a long time too. I have approximately 176 skins for DCS alone that took me, in some cases, over 100 hours per skin, and released them to the DCS community. Once I put any content out there, regardless of the sim, I donāt care what happens to it because that was the intent. Iām sharing them. Never would I think to hold the community hostage with my whims to delete them for whatever reason. Thatās just not cool. If you put it out there as freeware, whatās the problem? Seriously? Some hypothetical control issue? Look, just let the file sit out there and it will eventually become incompatible down the road and no one will use it any longer. Itāll kill itself off for you without updates. But, at least give people the opportunity to find a work-around to your mod. Thatās not in the cards though right?..me me me me me.
Iām just a normal user that has been simming since the mid-80s, but I can tell you this. Go ahead and quit the site, I can assure you , I will not, and cannot with the library I have amassed. FS.to provides me an extremely user friendly way to manage my sim with all the great mods that once comprised this site. After the dust settles and those that imposed their will have departed, the site will continue to be used by folks like me. There is simply nothing better out there and IMO, warrants a subscription from me. Iām glad to oblige.
Thatās just my point of view. We all have one. Whether you think it is right, wrong, left, or center doesnāt matter. At the end of the day, end-users have to suffer because some Devs got all bent over things that were never a thing in the first place, IMO.
7 Likes
Well now they updated their TOS to allow deletion.
1 Like
Subject to their opinion on whether your files are worth keeping, which they will do for up to 3 months, and they reserve the right to re-upload your files under a different name. Pirates.
https://twitter.com/flightsim_to/status/1629063137856045058?s=20
News about their new TOS albeit presented in a manner which might possibly stir things up againā¦
1 Like
Itās comments like this that inflame and exacerbate the issue. Partial information with what appears to be the explicit intent of stirring the pot. Pirating what? You agree to this with the understanding of why BEFORE you upload your content. How is that pirating?
Furthermore, you agree that you understand and will abide by the contract and if you donāt, their remedy is not to sue you, but to make the content available for their customers and other Devs to find a work-around for a documented period of time in the TOS before it is eventually deleted, not infinity. They have a website and database to mange. Someone has to care about your deletion from a work perspective. You think the automation runs itself?
2 Likes