JavaScript source code

Great to hear you have enjoyed the plugin. One of our core objectives this year was to get our GitHub repos updated and active for the community, since the WP SVN is not the best place to host the code. As you have noticed we contribute several plugins to the .org community.?

It’s been a unique year and our focus has been on product development for the community surrounding features that allow Small to Medium business to operate during these times. This resulted in delaying our developer type initiatives internally for GitHub to focus on the product roadmap and all the users relying on the core functionality free to the community.?

Right now we don’t have the resources to immediately audit our GitHub footprint for the plugin and add any additional code not checked into WordPress SVN until we have our GitHub repos active, which we hope will be available in the future allowing us to continually be updating and posting to our Github repos with the code for the community to enjoy.

Hi Bizswoop,

Thank you for your response. I appreciate that you want to focus on your customers and that source code compliance is not your highest priority at the moment. However, as you mentioned that you have several plugins contributed to the .org community. Some are found to be currently in a state of non compliance to both the www.ads-software.com plugin guidelines and the GPL v2 itself in section 3 or the GPL v3 in section 1. As this is the cornerstone and foundation of the WordPress community and your source code is found not in compliance with both the GPL and the www.ads-software.com community plugin guidelines as stated in my previous message, I believe and request that your compliance to the license you agreed to are more important than product development or product roadmap at this point. Please make available immediately the full source code of your plugin and the other ones not in compliance. If you fail to comply with this community request, it would sadden me to report your works as they are in breach of the guidelines of www.ads-software.com. This is the very foundation Matt and others have fought so hard to create and maintain.

My concern (and I’m sure others) is this, apart from preventing developers and other businesses to thrive through the WordPress open source community by allowing their own customisations and enhancements, it also posses a security concern as we have to take your word that there are no security issues or miscellaneous code within your mangled and obscure source code.

I trust you understand the urgency of your compliance and I look forward to your prompt response.

Thanks

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by pietvvv.

We’ve raised the concerns you expressed by officially notifying the plugins@ www.ads-software.com team to request they evaluate and audit our code submissions for the listings in question for compliance. We’d prefer an active dialog on the topic versus the approach you outlined, using the threat of reporting as leverage to demand we perform an immediate action, especially in our circumstance.

We are extremely proud to be an active member of the WordPress community empowering the use of code to build and run users’ businesses. We’ve committed thousands of lines of code to our www.ads-software.com repos, contributed and supported community users on hundreds of support forum posts as a free plugin resource, we’ve even provided additional functions/hooks, code and code snippet references to developers who are building and customizing around or on top of our code.

Strong statements have been made by you against our intentions in a copyleft request referencing www.ads-software.com terms and licenses using an account which is only weeks old. You’ve cited the community, passionate leaders of the community and contributing efforts of others without any clear history of commits, contributions, raising bugs, requesting features or code improvements which you state you represent under this account and post. These types of forceful approaches to a complex discussion of www.ads-software.com terms, open source, GPL, derivative license work and the current discussion on marketplaces listing terms for mainstream platforms directly affect the foundations of a community vision. You are correct, the vision is a cornerstone of the entire community, but the active members’ discussions are fundamental to maintain a thriving environment. Direct forced requests with no discussion or grace of timelines are often not productive and harmful to the health of those with the same shared visions. Fundamentally we are all stewards and owe a responsibility to actively participate in a positive manner, not only benefit from the results or forcefully request outcomes under a guise of terms enforcement.

We have been good stewards and contributors in the community to date. Per your request, we will allow the plugin moderator team to provide guidance to us on our compliance and timelines in the matters you raised. As a member of the community, we encourage you to contact them or take any additional action as you see fit.

Hi bizswoop,

Thank you for your response to this matter so promptly. First, please accept my apology for your interpretation that I am a forceful or threatening requester by asking for your source code to be made open and not just free as an immediate priority and not a future one as you stated previously.

My history and who I am has nothing to do with my request as being part of the community to have your source code made available to the full according to the license and guideline terms of www.ads-software.com. I had no malicious intend in my approach but I merely followed a similar support topic approach where a favourable outcome was reached.

It saddens me that I am left with no choice but to take up your suggestion of taking additional action. I wished not to report your works as you guys are doing a great job and your plugins are fantastic as I previously stated. As a developer of WordPress and an active participant (hence me raising this request) of the www.ads-software.com community, not being able to audit, customise or enhance inside your code base of your plugins and not just on top or around as you mentioned, I will now have to proceed with the review team of the www.ads-software.com community.

A deeply disappointed user of your plugins.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by pietvvv.

We would like to address a few of your comments, specifically around our interpretation and behavior in the www.ads-software.com community.
?
In your original request, we responded in a timely manner, acknowledged?your request and committed?to review any violations to address them according to the terms of being an active contributor to the community. We did not deny your request nor argue against your request. We only acknowledged?due to our development resources and unprecedented?world circumstances impacting our resourcing, we may require time to review and address the?request, but we could not immediately commit code updates or GitHub repos.
??
From this response, you decided to use bolded text with direct statements to threaten we address this immediately and or be at risk?of you submitting a formal complaint about a violation. You also made acquisitions?about the state of our code having a malicious intent behind it and I quote:?

“My concern (and I’m sure others) is this, apart from preventing developers and other businesses to thrive through the WordPress open source community by allowing their own customisations and enhancements, it also posses a security concern as we have to take your word that there are no security issues or miscellaneous code within your mangled and obscure source code.”

Based upon your request to further review the code, we expect you have knowledge of REACT, you understand that minification?and obfuscation?by Webpack are two development practices that are not related to malicious code intent or intentional behavior to prevent developers building on top or around the code. In some circumstances projects exist in www.ads-software.com with some level of code minification and obfuscation. Making open ended accusations could be interpreted by non-technical www.ads-software.com members wrongly at face value.?

We, our interpretation without doubt, find this to be unacceptable behavior as a community member of www.ads-software.com, especially in a circumstance?where we acknowledged your request and we were evaluating it seriously to understand the requirements and our code contributions on the project.

Under the community guidelines, our interpretation is that behavior was not in the spirit of the forum guidelines and user expectations:?“Above all, users are expected to be kind, helpful, and respectful. Assume the best of people and try to make things better. Beyond just seeking solutions, users are encouraged to help others. If they know the answer to someone else’s question, it is greatly appreciated that they offer assistance. This is by no means mandatory, and no one is compelled to help anyone else.”?https://www.ads-software.com/support/guidelines/#user-expectations

Overall, our desire is to not disappoint?the community of users, you included. If you take a few minutes to review our support forum posts and reviews, you will quickly see we dedicate a lot of time in responding, engaging and fulfilling requests with the community at an expense to our time and resources.

The behavior you demonstrated?in this request and your apology associated to only our interpretation is the reason we have at times questioned our commitment to being an active member and evaluate our continued contributions?to the www.ads-software.com community. Especially as many of us developers are only trying to help support the?community we serve with our own investment of time and resources. We are hopeful you continue to be active in the community and expand your contributions.

Together with the plugins@ WordPress team, we are reviewing the requirements associated with the terms you highlighted on both projects. We will make a decision on how compliance would be completed, or if we will decide to no longer provide the projects in question on www.ads-software.com directory at this time.?

We will consider our follow-up here as our last post on the discussion, but we will leave the topic open until we have evaluated our next steps and post for the community our decision and outcome.

I’m from the plugin review team, and we have spoken with @bizswoop about this.

First and foremost, the encrycpted Javascript code must be either decrypted, a non-minified version included in the code, OR the build files linked in the readme. This is not optional, and Bizswoop emailed us about this, and we informed them as such.

Secondly, I’m closing this post since you’ve both devolved impolitely here. I recommend you each step back and remember there are humans on the other side of the computers.