Unfortunately there are numerous people out there making profit from MediaPortal by selling it on e-bay.
The unfortunate reality is that we cannot stop them. Under the GNU General Public Licence anyone can sell MediaPortal for whatever fee they wish.
General practice in this area is to usually charge enough to cover the cost and or some profit to donate to the source project to help development.
What is dissapointing is that these people selling MediaPortal never seem to 'donate' any funds or for that matter ask us if they can sell the product.
What you can do to help...
1. Give the user a bad rating, pointing to www.team-mediaportal.com for other potential users to download it for 'free' if they offer no value-add manuals or installation guides.
2. Complain to e-bay and reference this news article. Hopefully they will fight your case if the seller is charging too much for the software whilst offering no value-add.
To users who have already purchased MediaPortal all we can say is that we're dissapointed by these sellers actions but it is one of the unfortunate complications for providing 'free software'.
With free software, users don't have to pay the distribution fee in order to use the software. They can copy the program from a friend who has a copy, or with the help of a friend who has network access. Or several users can join together, split the price of one CD-ROM, then each in turn can install the software.
So with that please...
3. Pass MediaPortal onto your friends to try and learn and contribute to the project.
4. Send a letter to your local computer magazine publication for them to review the software and maybe even include it their magazine for more users to enjoy.
Why don't Frodo sell MediaPortal over EBay himself ? He could sell it for the price of the CD + a small amount of money and clearly announcing that MP can be downloaded freely here.
I would be more then happy to either sell MP for nothing on eBay (using pretty much the same title so when people are searching for MP, they would find my auction) or actually selling it (Making cd's and sending it out) with all the proceeds going to MP. I feel this is just one more way to get people turned on to MP!
I can see your point in that people are getting essentially suckered into paying for what is free. However as MP uses the GPL anybody can charge anything for it without any recourse. Essentially what you're gripe is (from what I can tell) is that they're making money from other people's hard work, which is completely true.
Suggestion #1 would break eBay's feedback rules, so I wouldn't advise it. As far as #2 is concerned, you won't have much of an argument about lobbying for them to remove completely legitmate items that they make money on.
The idea above for somebody to put their own copy of MP on eBay is probably the only option that would directly compete with the current sellers. What you have to decide on is if it's even worth the bother, because in a glass-half-full MP is at least getting more users from the auctions, directly and indirectly.
Personally I wouldn't be fussed over the screenshots theft (Khris' watermark idea is spot on too), nor eBay selling in general - any MP advertising is good MP advertising.
Complaining about this is, for lack of a better analogy, beating a dead horse. The whole post comes off less official-stance, more annoyed rant, and is a sour-note to an otherwise great community and development.
Well im sorry to say this but ive bought a copy of Media Portal from ebay without realising that it was FREE !!,all because ive never heard of it until finding it by accident on ebay.I wish I had googled it before I bought it instead of afterwards :( Ah well we live and learn.
By the way,will this program work inconjunction with Windows Media Centre Edition without any conflicts ? as I have not received Mediaportal yet in the post.
It seems very misguided to have your software run under a software license that it does not agree with. If you do not want people distributing MediaPortal then why use a License that ALLOWS and ENCOURAGES such promotion of GNU Open Source software?
There are many software license alternatives that can suit the communities needs.
Then to suggest that users of your community act in ways that will Violate eBay policies and put their account in jeopardy of being suspended without warning them of the potential consequences is not a very smart thing to do. View the policy: http://pages.ebay.com/help/
policies/transaction-
interference.html
eBay should be a good place to allow such transactions to take place. Any user who purchases the software will have a chance to leave their comments on the Seller and their transaction. It will quickly become very apparent to see who is providing a quality service and who is not.
Each person who buys a copy is a brand new user to the community who otherwise most likely never would have found the project. This is the point of Open Source distribution, to promote the project and Open Source in general.
RedHat, one of the leaders in Open Source software, who has done a lot for the Open Source community, co-founder Robert Young, started RedHat as small business (ACC PC Unix and Linux Catalog) selling Open Source software.
You could say RedHat got it's start selling GNU software like MediaPortal. Not to mention the long list of other Fortune companies who make Millions of dollars every year selling Open Source software.
Is it time for MediaPortal to come out of the closet and show it's true software license?
I saw one jerk that pasted his company name on the screenshots and actually claimed that they were his property and he was not breaking any law.
Are the screenshots gpl? If not, you could actually threaten to sue or complaiin to ebay that the seller was doing something illegal. The software is GPL, the screenshots do not have to be.
You should've considered the license a bit better beforehand. GPL allows people to do this, and as you said, you can't stop it, because you actually allowed it in the first place.
So, choose a different license from next version or write a license of your own. The world doesn't consist only of GPL or BSD license for what it's worth...
Is Media portal classed as a complete software package or would it fall under the category of beta software as it is continually being developed and is distributed by developers? If it falls under the beta category eBay will remove the listing if informed as it is prohibited to sell such software. If the seller continues to list the software and is caught there account will be suspended.
Guys, the simple solution to this is list your product on EBAY as FREE with a link to the Mediaportal Website and a blurb of the dodgy b@stards out there taking advantage of such a great product.
Fact is that I was one of those suckers but I paid a small price to find the best Media Software ever. Unitil then I was still trying to get Media Centre to work Keep up the great work
