flightsim.to premium

[Sonosusto 681]

3 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

I'm not sure anyone has even mentioned the fee lol.

A voluntary premium membership isn't what bothered anyone in the first place.  It was that, concurrent to this being announced, some changes in their ToS came to light that restrict an author's control of their own freeware content.

The folks who claim this is just standard ToS that has to exist for any hosting site have obviously been proven wrong by the speed with which .to became willing to modify these portions of their ToS once the backlash began. What did it take, about 4 days?  Sure, those ToS were necessary...  😁.

 

This has been discussed several times already.

Flightsim.to Terms Of Service have been the same for over a year now. It was not new. Well over a year ago. There are several posts discussing this. In fact, if those developers were so frustrated with FSTO's decisions then they should have stopped updating their mods well over a year ago.

Not to mention that GotFriends would never had the exposure they have now (the deserve all that exposure as their products are awesome). Not to mention we have only heard one side of the story as of yet.

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by Sonosusto

[HiFlyer 9,360]

2 minutes ago, Sonosusto said:

Not to mention that GotFriends would never had the exposure they have now

Nah. I heard of GotFriends, and was downloading from them before Flightsim.to was even a thing for me. Gotfriends was one of my first MSFS related bookmarks.

 

[Sonosusto 681]

2 hours ago, VFXSimmer said:

I have to wholeheartedly agree with Funky D.

I absolutely appreciate and am grateful for all of the developers out there who have made amazing content and then shared it to the world for free.  I've donated to them more times with "buy me a coffee" to demonstrate that gratitude then I could count.  At the same time, I am also very grateful to the payware developers who have also put forth tremendous effort to improve the experience of this very niche hobby of mine - I've spent (cough, choke, ehem) quite a bit showing them "gratitude" as well.

All that is to start by saying that I dont have ANY lack of appreciation for the effort shown by freeware developers, but I also live in the real world.  Despite anything a ToS implies, or copyright laws allow, for all intents and purposes, you (and by "you" I also include 'me' because I have shared a few sceneries I've made) are making your mod Public Domain the second you upload it to a website for free download.  National copyright laws might imply different things where you are, but the internet is unfortunately a world wide phenomena last I checked, and those copyright laws are definitely NOT enforced equally everywhere you go.  If you truly had some future interest in protecting your copyright, you should NOT have uploaded it and offered it to the world as a free download.

Speaking for myself, I uploaded my contributions with the full intent for them to be shared and enjoyed by whomever wanted to try them out.  I could care less what happens to the files after that.  It might look a little obnoxious were a site to directly sell my specific uploads as a payware content, but that is absolutely NOT what is happening here.  I see a lot of developers leaving in a dramatic fashion all about a hypothetical future scenario where they'ld suddenly want to assert control over the horse they let out of the barn.  Legally you might still hold the IP rights to the content, but be real here - if your content is popular its most likely already on host sites in foreign countries that dont care much for IP protection.  That horse is out to pasture and probably hooking up with other horses by now.

Like Freaky D said, the contributors (bless them all - my harddrive is loaded with your generosity) are not coming away empty handed.  There are payware developers now that started making freeware (on.. /cough flightsim.to) and who gained enough of a following to make a payware business viable.  This is a two-way street of benefit here that is being overlooked.

I like flightsim.to, have been using it since the start of MSFS and will keep using it because its the most convenient place to find a ton of great addons, makes it easy to keep up with updates, search scenery maps etc.  I feel bad to see some good developers go, but if I had to make a bet I would go with the website coming out of this ok and that the developers who choose to go their own way will be the ones who suffer .. loss of revenue of thats what they hoped for, or obscurity if their aim was just to share the fruits of their labor with the world.  Of course, if they really dont want anyone to have their mod, thats their right too, but weird way of showing it after having offered to the world for free in the first place.

I truly hope rational heads will prevail here.  The freeware community for MSFS has been outstanding and it would be a shame to see it recess over such an overblown issue.

 

 

This is by far the most solid argument made here IMO.

And Funky D.

We are not "apologists" but realists here. They uploaded content, benefited immensely in many ways (or just enjoyed sharing for all of us) including exposure etc but yet there is still a boycott over this incredibly generous website? Over a terrible once-payware ATR? Or a development team that requested deletion and we only heard one side of the story so far?

I love GotFriends but I want to see more answers from Flightsim.to.

[Sonosusto 681]

1 minute ago, HiFlyer said:

Nah. I heard of GotFriends, and was downloading from them before Flightsim.to was even a thing for me. Gotfriends was one of my first MSFS related bookmarks.

 

Great. Most of us haven't even heard of them if it weren't for FSTO.

[HiFlyer 9,360]

Just now, Sonosusto said:

Most of us haven't even heard of them if it weren't for FSTO.

I myself hesitate in attempting to speak for most of anybody. Too many ways for that to go wrong.

[Der Zeitgeist 1,575]

5 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

But... Creators never materially benefitted from it. 
(...)
But no, there's no biting the hand that feeds, because freeware devs were never getting fed anything.  Why would it matter to them where or if you download their work?

A lot of the creators now up in arms around this thing have a big fat donation button in their fs.to profiles.

Edited February 24, 2023 by Der Zeitgeist

[PuffinFlight 302]

Yeah. If something is available on the internet for free, it's done. No way of controlling it further. I don't know why payware devs are up in arms about all these "piracy" sites. Oh, wait, we're talking about freeware?

Btw, I strongly believe that no freeware dev cares much about donations in monetary terms. They are much appreciated and it still amazes and moves me that people decide to share they hard earned money for something available for free. But amount of money compared to the time people spend working on their add-ons is tiny. Iirc all my donations sum up to around $1200. That's over 2 years, hundreds of hours of work and with quite popular add-ons. But yeah I guess having a donation button means greed.

Disclaimer: I have absolutely nothing against premium memberships and ads on FS.to or any other sites serving freeware, as long as there is still free download option.

Edited February 24, 2023 by PuffinFlight

[JabbleWok 96]

29 minutes ago, PuffinFlight said:

Yeah. If something is available on the internet for free, it's done. No way of controlling it further. I don't know why payware devs are up in arms about all these "piracy" sites. Oh, wait, we're talking about freeware?

That's not correct.  If it were, then any payware software given away free for a limited time would no longer be subject to copyright laws and conditions, which is clearly not the case.  Look at the Epic Store (https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/) - every week they give away a game or two for free, until the following week when they go back up to normal price.  Even during that free week, the givaway game is still subject to all the terms and conditions as when a price is charged, including copyright.  Price has nothing to do with terms and conditions.

Hence anyone providing freeware is entitled to impose terms and conditions on their products; if you don't like them, don't download them.

[Der Zeitgeist 1,575]

34 minutes ago, PuffinFlight said:

But yeah I guess having a donation button means greed.

That's not what I was saying. I don't have a problem with donation buttons or donating for free mods, I do so myself.

My point was that the notion that creators don't benefit at all from a site that hosts their mods and gives them maximum visibility is a bit short-sighted. If that were the case, we wouldn't have such a massive argument about this entire issue, and creators would have just left without looking back.

[PuffinFlight 302]

Just now, JabbleWok said:

That's not correct.  If it were, then any payware software given away free for a limited time would no longer be subject to copyright laws and conditions, which is clearly not the case.  Look at the Epic Store (https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/) - every week they give away a game or two for free, until the following week when they go back up to normal price.  Even during that free week, the givaway game is still subject to all the terms and conditions as when a price is charged, including copyright.  Price has nothing to do with terms and conditions.

Hence anyone providing freeware is entitled to impose terms and conditions on their products; if you don't like them, don't download them.

That was a sarcastic remark for one of the previous posts that suggested that if it's free it's basically public domain. I absolutely agree that author should have control over their creations, not matter payware or freeware. Is it possible with all shady sites around? No. But it doesn't really matter.

[JabbleWok 96]

1 minute ago, PuffinFlight said:

That was a sarcastic remark for one of the previous posts that suggested that if it's free it's basically public domain. I absolutely agree that author should have control over their creations, not matter payware or freeware. Is it possible with all shady sites around? No. But it doesn't really matter.

Aha!

[MarcG 2,981]

14 minutes ago, PuffinFlight said:

That was a sarcastic remark for one of the previous posts that suggested that if it's free it's basically public domain. I absolutely agree that author should have control over their creations, not matter payware or freeware. Is it possible with all shady sites around? No. But it doesn't really matter.

Have you followed the raging herd and taken your (brilliant) work down from flightsim.to? I for one, hope not 🙂

[PuffinFlight 302]

4 minutes ago, MarcG said:

Have you followed the raging herd and taken your (brilliant) work down from flightsim.to? I for one, hope not 🙂

First of all thank you.

I wouldn't call them raging herd. Among those who removed their work were also very rational people who just reacted more firmly than others. And mostly thanks to them FS.to had to revise their tos.

I was considering pulling out of FS.to but for now decided not to. Mostly for users convenience. Yeah, you can call me "useful word not allowed". Still waiting for the final form of tos, but it looks like it's going in the right direction.

I will however make my add-ons available from other sources and move support from comments at FS.to to discord and email.

[vbazillio 2,234]

    

16 hours ago, Nemo said:

Do we have a comprehensive list of the developers who have actually left fsim.to?

I'm aware of GotFriends, Henrik Nielsen (GAIST) and vbazillo (KSEE etc.) have announced it.

 

16 hours ago, B777ER said:

 

He did? Where was this announcement and were did he go?

 

16 hours ago, bobcat999 said:

I have seen an airport posted up since, so he may have changed his mind after the TOC's were being looked at.

Hey guys, you're going to put too much light there... c'mon, I'm just a passionate and really (really) amateur freeware scenery developer 😉 At first, I was suspicious on how regular users would get treated on flightsim.to (premium), then was concerned by the ToS. AFAIK, I never announced anything 😉. For those interested: I've decided to stay on flightsim.to.

I benefit widely of the exposure, publicity, features and ease of use of the fs.to platform. Part of my dedication and passion of sharing my amateur work is also having the simmers feedback and building a community (other developers build object for my own scenery for free). Flightsim.to played a big role there, as well as forum like AVSIM, official MSFS forum and Facebook groups, just to name a few. All participate to create a new exciting momentum to give back to the sim. community. For example, I receive a message from within flightsim.to platform from a passionate simmer asking me to continue to share my sceneries on fs.to. 

I fully understand that some freeware or payware developers decided to leave fs.to. Fair enough. I respect their choice. No misunderstanding, I also benefit from this buzz allowing some room for improvement on fs.to. Personally, I can easily make all my uploads at fs.to, useless and outdated.to. And I really pay attention to the users of my work via fs.to and was initially much concerned by the Premium access which seems finally a no brainer. But I’ll keep paying close attention there.

All this story, burn off too much of my spare time, yet sparse as I have to work to pay the bill (and the flight hours), nor I have ambitious to make a sim. business 😉. I prefer getting back to my Blender/MSFS Scenery Editor/Gimp and continue my future Page, KPGA airport. 

[Dominique_K 10,149]

15 minutes ago, vbazillio said:

    

 

 

Hey guys,

A great and refreshing post, Vincent  !