2 hours ago, RALF9636 said:

https://flightsim.to/help/website-related/frequently-asked-questions-terms-of-service

Here is an excerpt of what flightsim.to themselves say. I think it speaks for itself - unless someone wants to claim they are openly lying to our faces.

 

 

As I said earlier, the whole thing is an unnecessary drama started in this thread and now spreading fake news and false accusations. 

13 minutes ago, omarsmak30 said:

As I said earlier, the whole thing is an unnecessary drama started in this thread and now spreading fake news and false accusations. 

Are you a developer?

7 minutes ago, qqwertzde said:

Are you a developer?

I have a couple of uploaded add-ons on fs.to. And if you mean if I am developer as if software developer, yes I am.

 

Edited February 19, 20233 yr by omarsmak30

53 minutes ago, omarsmak30 said:

As I said earlier, the whole thing is an unnecessary drama started in this thread and now spreading fake news and false accusations. 

What fake news exactly? 
They changed some of their ToS (several times) because of all this, so at least not everything was "fake".
While the "drama" was probably unecessary, a clarification from them wasnt. And they did just that, clarify. 

Always good to keep the big guns on their toes.
As far as im concern, i think their reaction was decent enough. 

1 hour ago, omarsmak30 said:

I have a couple of uploaded add-ons on fs.to. And if you mean if I am developer as if software developer, yes I am.

 

I was more wondering about your fs.to activity. I am also a scenery/livery/checklist/.. freeware developer and feel quite left behind by them. For years they hinted at benefits for developers. Now that they ask for money to download under reasonable circumstances, they don't even let their freeware developers download 10 seconds earlier, or without ads. We are just the same to them as normal users. That's their decision. Mine is to become a normal user of their platform, instead of distributing my creations there. 

5 minutes ago, qqwertzde said:

I was more wondering about your fs.to activity. I am also a scenery/livery/checklist/.. freeware developer and feel quite left behind by them. For years they hinted at benefits for developers. Now that they ask for money to download under reasonable circumstances, they don't even let their freeware developers download 10 seconds earlier, or without ads. We are just the same to them as normal users. That's their decision. Mine is to become a normal user of their platform, instead of distributing my creations there. 

Honestly I don’t care if they ask for money, one thing I know for sure, hosting and maintenance cost are expensive and got more expensive recently, plus someone gotta feed his/her family, isn’t? Nothing is for free and most probably I would have done the same to sustain the website. 

Suppose it's no different to Avsim asking for donations to continue operating.

Unfortunately uploading to the file library is such a chore.

3 hours ago, edu2703 said:

About the 'controversy' of not being able to delete mods, it's another overreaction. Honestly what's the practical difference in being able to permanently hide your mods instead of deleting the files? Why do you care so much about the files? It's not like they can unhide your addon without your permission as that would be a ToS violation by them. If flightsim.to wants to keep defunct addon files in their database, that's their problem. Your addon will no longer appear on the site, and for me that's all that should matter.

Honestly, I think not having the option to delete your addons is a d*ck move and the devs are right to boycott the site for that. I don't think it's an overreaction.

If you cannot delete your own addons, then the site is lying about you having 100% ownership of your own content. That's logic. There is indeed a notable difference between hiding and deleting. If I were a developer I wouldn't feel comfortable keeping on the site the addon files that I don't want anyone else to download. It's imagining the possibilities the site can do with these files.

The 'Limited ability to delete your file' article says that even hiding it, it's still possible to access the addon through a direct link. That is, addon page will remain up, only with a warning saying that it's no longer possible to download. And the developer will still have to endure people asking why or requesting a download link. That's the main difference between this and deleting the content.

Article link: https://flightsim.to/help/uploading-at-flightsimto/limited-ability-to-delete-your-file

Just now, John_Tavendale said:

Suppose it's no different to Avsim asking for donations to continue operating.

Unfortunately uploading to the file library is such a chore.

Exactly, the difference is, well if you donate/buy, you get extra benefits, where is the problem with that?

i think we are becoming a “greedy” society who wants everything for “free” without considering the other side of the picture. 
 

well if you have an issue with file delete, just upload a txt file and we are done, I think the whole outrage here is because of premium paid plan, without it, I bet nobody would have cared for the delete file policy.

7 minutes ago, madman320 said:

Honestly, I think not having the option to delete your addons is a d*ck move and the devs are right to boycott the site for that. I don't think it's an overreaction.

Correction, you can delete it your file if you override it with a txt file. You just can’t delete your addone profile page and hence is overreaction 

To me the elephant in the room is move to monetize and a possible sign of things to come.

Leaving fs.to's T&Cs to one side, they obviously think they have a big enough market share to now offer a paying service to customers; fine, whatever.

People are naïve if they think that MSFS won't also consider moving to a subscription based service in the future. Currently there are too many things that need fixing for them to justify it (the last update fixing the G3000 proves that in my opinion), and I feel XP and P3D have enough of a share to keep MSFS on it's toes. In 3, 4 or 5 years that outlook could be totally different and then MSFS could say to themselves, maintaining servers for the entire world is costly, let's offer the customers free scenery of North America, and if the customer wants Europe they have to pay $5 a month. Throw in Asia, South America, Africa and Aus/NZ as well for another $4 each per month. If you pay for the whole world you get a small discount and only have to pay $15 a month.

Then you'll get the aircraft developers thinking the same thing. PMDG could offer one of their 737's for a few bucks a month, but for only $10 a month you can own the whole 737 fleet! What about airline companies, if it's good enough for fs.to to offer a premium to download a livery, why don't Lufthansa or Qantas send out cease and desist letters and then sell their own liveries for a few dollars, maybe even a dollar a month subscription service.

Airports would be next. Sydney is owned by a private company, what if they want a slice of the pie from FlyTampa's YSSY scenery?

Have some people/developers/livery designers over-reacted to fs.to's policy change? Possibly, but if we don't nip this in the bud now and instead show that the flight sim community is not prepared to be nickel and dimed everyone will be putting their hands out asking for a few coins.

4 hours ago, RALF9636 said:

Why can't I delete my file if I want to delete it?

You can still delete your file, you only need to request it. Although you can request to delete your file, there is a possibility that the deletion may be denied, especially for popular files that have been previously featured or advertised by us.

...and this alludes to what I mentioned earlier: It's too difficult for the flightsim.to team to delete files. I'm not a web developer, nor am I a database admin, but I know enough about each to throw a hypothetical scenario out there. Every time you download a file from fs.to, your download is tracked, which lets you get notifications when that file is updated. That information is stored in a database. If 20k people download your file, that is likely 20k database entries. What if the history is saved as well, and you downloaded 3 different revisions of the file? Now you could have up to 60k database entries. What if the fs.to team doesn't have an automated method to delete content? Well, someone will need to do a manual query on the database to find those 60k entries. And once they are found, they all need to be purged, which hopefully doesn't break anything else on the site.

Not to mention all of this querying and purging has a performance impact, which could cause performance issues for anyone browsing or searching the site. It also takes time from someone on the fs.to team. "Well, why didn't they design this better from the start???" Maybe because they're doing this for free and relying on ad revenue, which obviously wasn't enough to sustain things since they're now adding the premium tier?

I won't go out of my way to search for freeware outside of flightsim.to, the same way I refuse to purchase products that aren't available on the MSFS marketplace. If the developers out there who are taking the kneejerk reaction and pulling their content are fine with limited exposure and limited downloads, so be it. Feel free to give fs.to the middle finger on the way out the door for hosting and promoting your content for free. And if your freeware does gain prominence on its own, with tens of thousands of downloads, I'm sure you'll be more than happy to pay for your hosting fees out of pocket unlike the money hungry folks at fs.to.

4 minutes ago, Funky D said:

...and this alludes to what I mentioned earlier: It's too difficult for the flightsim.to team to delete files. I'm not a web developer, nor am I a database admin, but I know enough about each to throw a hypothetical scenario out there. Every time you download a file from fs.to, your download is tracked, which lets you get notifications when that file is updated. That information is stored in a database. If 20k people download your file, that is likely 20k database entries. What if the history is saved as well, and you downloaded 3 different revisions of the file? Now you could have up to 60k database entries. What if the fs.to team doesn't have an automated method to delete content? Well, someone will need to do a manual query on the database to find those 60k entries. And once they are found, they all need to be purged, which hopefully doesn't break anything else on the site.

Not to mention all of this querying and purging has a performance impact, which could cause performance issues for anyone browsing or searching the site. It also takes time from someone on the fs.to team. "Well, why didn't they design this better from the start???" Maybe because they're doing this for free and relying on ad revenue, which obviously wasn't enough to sustain things since they're now adding the premium tier?

Not a good enough excuse, in my view.

A deleted file is a deleted file. If they have a database that can't track that a mod has been deleted (or renamed), then take down the update notification system until such time as they create a database that can.
Especially so if they are asking for membership fees for a higher tier of performance and interaction with their website.

No, I suspect the real reason for not deleting files is because content brings users through to the site.
The more great add-ons, the more clicks on ads, and/or more importantly, the greater the likelihood of making a purchase through the flightsim.to store.

No problem enticing people to come to the site and making money from that, so long as a free membership tier continues to exist for freeware downloads *AND* creators are permitted to retain full control (upload/modification/deletion) of their own content.

57 minutes ago, madman320 said:

Honestly, I think not having the option to delete your addons is a d*ck move and the devs are right to boycott the site for that. I don't think it's an overreaction.

If you cannot delete your own addons, then the site is lying about you having 100% ownership of your own content. That's logic. There is indeed a notable difference between hiding and deleting. If I were a developer I wouldn't feel comfortable keeping on the site the addon files that I don't want anyone else to download. It's imagining the possibilities the site can do with these files.

The 'Limited ability to delete your file' article says that even hiding it, it's still possible to access the addon through a direct link. That is, addon page will remain up, only with a warning saying that it's no longer possible to download. And the developer will still have to endure people asking why or requesting a download link. That's the main difference between this and deleting the content.

Article link: https://flightsim.to/help/uploading-at-flightsimto/limited-ability-to-delete-your-file

This!   I'm more than willing to donate and I appreciate FS.TO,  but at the end of the day I have to stand with the developers who make our sim so interesting.

Edited February 20, 20233 yr by Waldo Pepper