We should *not* be grateful that a service that was previously completely open source from the start and then closed down for no reason other than greed is considering open sourcing again.
That choice should have never happened, and we are in no obligation to clap for a project that has been anti-competitive and an outright slap in the face of preservation since the new ownership.
NINA was never open source.
Finally we get codes. Where’s the code at?
Or not.
Another interesting thing:
The ToS and Privacy Policy for Escargot are majority plagiarized from Bolt, a 2000s social networking service and the owners of BadassBuddy.
ToS (From the seperator in Account Activation onwards): Terms of Service - Legal Information | Escargot | MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger , Wayback Machine
It appears they just Find+Replaced Bolt with Escargot, e.g.
The service marks and trademarks Escargot, Escargot NOTES, Escargot REPORTER, TENBUCKTEES, 10$T, Escargot LAB, MEMBERMADE, Escargot EVERYWHERE, MODSPOTTERS, TAGBOOKS, Escargot BUS and the Escargot logo
Escargot receives zip or postal code-based data about demographics and income levels from third parties such as Nielsen and the US Census Bureau.
Funny considering their history of going after others for “plagiarism” i.e. using their server implementations as a reference as they’re the most complete, and because they refuse to write proper documentation on them.
Privacy Policy (From Policy Overview onwards): Privacy Policy - Legal Information | Escargot | MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger , https://web.archive.org/web/20011005082540/http://www.bolt.com/apps/reg/privacy/terms_text2.asp
Yeah, the website engine started off as a bolt clone like 20 years ago which had gone totally defunct by that point, but guess I forgot about the source of privacy policy over time. I just copied the Apple Computer, Inc method, instead of using one for a stereo, I used one from a social media company some years prior. Not great, but hey, not all of us can afford lawyers to write up new stuff.
Yeah, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, I’ve never said anything about people “plagiarizing” the implementation, that’s just nonsense but sure find some bullshit to just make up. Also I don’t think you know what plagiarism is. I was always clear that I wanted to go open after we got federation done but also was clear that if we were forced to shutdown, I was releasing stuff. Unfortunately the latter happened first.
Second, we did document a lot more than literally anyone else until we were forced to take down the Wiki, so again, you’re just making shit up, but then again I didn’t see you documenting anything anywhere other than gossip nonsense.
Third, we’ve been going open source, if not for a busy week at work, I would’ve pushed out more source code, we’re releasing everything.
Let me know when you write some code and put it out rather than trying to dig up dirt so you can praise yourself on a job not-done. Then again, it’s easier to sit there and act superior, show what kind of dirt you’ve dug up so you can feel like you’ve accomplished something, rather than do much of anything at all.
here’s one account of escargot staff going after a project’s maintainer for something as simple as using the same site IDs
The IDs I used were IDs unique to Escargot for the What’s New feature.
They could use any other ID, the ID was made by me, wasn’t an official Escargot one, so it means they just took the thing I made.
I’m fine with that, I just asked if they could use another ID, since it wasn’t an official Microsoft ID. The ID was made so it wouldn’t clash with other stuff, or be somehow cached; and I was just asking for them to not use the same ID?
^ ^ ^
Escargot was.
No. It wasn’t. It was source avaliable. I am actually rather annoyed that this little lie has spread so far.
Do you people actually understand what kind of license the Creative Commons 4 Non-Commerical is meant to be used for? Not software, at least.
Openly avaliable? Sure. Openly reusable? Not for profit motives, which I guess makes sense for the project’s original ideals (Don’t get caught?), but still.
Even if it isn’t that bad as some of the more restricted versions of CC4, it still isn’t what it’s intended to be used for.
Flirb?
yeah, the accusation came from their discord server
as someone who previously had the “escargot/nina fucking sucks because closed source and greedy >:(” mindset a couple of years back, theyre just retelling the whole situation while adding bullshit and bitching about how “theyre greedy”, which is just petty.
god fucking forbid a team can profit off their reverse engineered work to keep hosting afloat. while it may be legally dubious (because copyright), i personally dont see the problem. well unless if you shove a lot of ads down people’s throats, which a certain popular OIC website does.
(for those wondering wtf flirb is, its apparently a twitter revival that works with the old mobile api?)
I dont see people donating a problem. What I see is a problem is people being told they have to donate 2000 dollars for projects that dont need that amount of money. The server costs 100 Dollars per month (estimated as its DigitalOcean and screenshots they have posted) so I dont see why they need that amount of money for Reverse Engineering and other means. I see the reasons for the accusations as a fair point on Flirbs behalf.
I forgot to add, This is from my opinion and anyones opinion can be different from what I have said above.
id assume it was probably surplus patreon money
i feel like i remember them asking for like ~600 dollars several times, because they were behind on some payments or something cost them more suddenly, or they needed larger servers or something. I dont remember completely, and it’s hard to know now that the discord is gone and no money trail. But I remember it was asked for quite large amounts many times (donations, and asked of course, not forced.)
I dont know how many patreons there were or how much was gained from that. I also didn’t get the feeling that they were rolling in cash/doing it for the money/greedy. But I did have this feeling of, how can this be so expensive for this project when other, larger projects have never asked for donations/or have patreons/etc.
