They offer what’s without a doubt and by far the BEST freeware addon site in existence today. Nothing else even comes close. And I’m not even talking about just the quantity of stuff. I’m talking about the quality of the site itself - its layout, clear and concise layout, and features such as tracking your downloads to alert of updates, the scenery map, meaningful search engine, etc. Microsobo could learn a thing or two about how to do this for their rather poorly conceived Marketplace layout.
They’re constantly improving the experience as well, adding new features, etc. This is pretty much the epitome of what one could expect. And it’s completely free for the end user and 3rd party freeware devs.
But “free” comes at a cost. There’s no such thing as free anything in this world. They’ve got to pay the bills and they have to make money. They’ve monetized via both ads and offering payware. There’s also potential legal liabilities they need to be concerned about should someone upload copyrighted content that doesn’t get caught initially. Or potentially other legalities that they’ll need representation for. Running a service like that can’t be completely free. There are always strings attached.
As long as access to freeware remains free, I don’t really see the overall problem. That goes for 3rd party freeware devs as well. You get to host your stuff at a high visibility location for free. There are conditions attached to that. You can either choose to accept or find alternatives for distributing your wares. But any site that offers distribution for free will have some kind of strings attached. Even GitHub has conditions attached to its use. You either accept those conditions, or pay for a hosting solution to distribute your wares. Then suddenly, it’s far less appealing to pay out of pocket to be able to give away something…
if a company go “commercial” and have a enough “power” then such things happens. Look at MS, or also whats currently goes on with Youtube where the company behind grows with “freeware” videos and now they earn money with all of that freeware-content ( on some days they show me Ads on my own uploaded videos ). Thus, I not wonder that such things happen…
I understand that such platforms need money to hold the platform alive and I assume we are all willing to spend a bit money that it can happen, if we use it. But on other side it is very often a little step to “maximize the profit” only.
At least we are in a free world and the developers , as we as content-users, can decide whether we want to use the service or not. ( I’am just annoyed about that they force me to create a account for a download, and so they get each time a dummy-email-login from my side - free world )
PS: a webserver costs about 3€/months.. put your extension on that , google will find it
That’s for a personal web site. Let’s see how long a service provider gives you a web server for 3€ when your storage and bandwidth requirements are measured in tens of terabytes per month, you need SSL for e-commerce, backups, redundancy, payment processing, etc, and you literally gets hundreds of thousands of hits per month.
I offered years years ago some freeware joomla plugins, and that caused also lots of download traffic and “hundreds of thousands of hits”, and that was never a problem ( okay, the costs was 9€ because of additional space/email/etc ). And of course have that servers offers backup, etc..
If you want to earn money with your product, which is then no longer freeware, there are of course different requirements.
PS: main point was , that there exists alternatives if people not agree with some of these “policies” - “free world” as mentioned. ( by the way, exact same happend years ago with the joomla ‘freeware’ hosters ).
Yes, if you wanted to host a personal site to distribute freeware you made, it would obviously be less costly. Unless it suddenly got popular and your storage and bandwidth requirements surpassed what the cheap plans’ cost.
And for personal stuff, there’s always free options like Google Drive. A lot of people use that to store / share their stuff.
The thing with signing up is it gives a little more protection to us devs.
All my uploads I make so users have to be signed up to download my add-ons.
Us devs have the choice to make our files accessible to all or only signed up users. leaves a little extra trace should someone steel our add-on.
Makes no difference as I make my files exclusive to flightsim.to anyway.
To many people think they can’t be traced even via a fake email or even using many vpns doesn’t make people untraceable.
It makes things take more effort to get anywhere though of course its not completely fool proof I’m not stupid to believe that.
It actually states in terms and conditions that should the terms be updated users are alerted via notification when logging into the site so it’s not like they are being completely silent and sneaking things in without saying not sure that would even be legal.
I think some are making them out to be dodgy without reason and see lots of hearsay.
Anyway I’m personally happy to upload there. up to people to make their own choices.
The problem with that and other “older” sites is just that. They’re old. They were built in the late 90s and early 2000s. Sure, content has been udpated, but the sites themselves never really updated to modern UX / UI standards. Likely because it would give the old guys using it a heart attack when they log in and don’t recognize their old, familiar site. lol
They look and feel like ancient relics of yesteryear and operate as such. Usability is poor and in general, it’s hard to find anything. I find them horrible to navigate and an eyesore to look at.
What was their reason for locking files? They have really good content management tools and usually everything is instant.
Most of these terms are intended to protect the company from lawsuits more so than pull anything over on content providers. They are at risk for liability of all kids otherwise. But I have a hard time with legal language speak.
I wouldn’t mind a model that had ad revenue share but there is probably no need to attract freeware developers.
I always thought the retro look was a design choice. For some reason it’s a popular look for aviation sites in general.
But when I see that, I also don’t trust giving over info or downloading from such sites either. Are the going to store my credentials and info in clear text, etc.
I understand the reluctance for change, particularly when your demographics is typically older folks who don’t adapt to changes as easily. All I need is to deploy a new style sheet to my sites at work to update the colour scheme and new header / footer (no other functional or layout changes) and suddenly the ticket queue is full of people who “can’t find Function X” that’s in the same place it’s been for years, but is now a different colour. That’s like not knowing how to drive your car after getting a new paint job. lol
Also just noticed that you can trade your Karma generated from uploading liveries and scenery for discount on purchases through Flightsim.to. Seems like Flightsim.to appreciates our work.
i dont think so, they have suggested the karma will be good for something but it shows no discount or anything on my account for payware or anything
i think your confusing the Karma they give us with ‘reward points’ that are not the same, you only get those reward points from Purchase of payware and non devs get it as well
i still have 17+k karma, its just a pointless rating system afaik
i also believe everyone gets this just for chatting, so its not ‘appreciation’ to uploaders/\devs in any manner imo
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