VBazillo, has his home blog (https://20-100-video.blogspot.com/) since many years so it is possible that he would use it 😉

On FSDevelopers.com (https://www.fsdeveloper.com), a post has been open since February 18th and you can find a list of theses developers.

 

Edited February 23, 20233 yr by lagaffe

1 hour ago, hansb57 said:

If I look at GF discord the published a statement (feb 19th) that the remove their stuff from FS.to and after that (feb 22th) there is a statement that  they got cancelled. So as far as that time line is correct it's GF's choice to leave and it's payware

The way I saw it was that GF withdrew their freeware at first in concern about the changing TOS, and then FS.to reacted by giving them a complete ban from the site, including their payware.

It's all cause and effect, and we can argue who is wrong and who is right for ever.  And unfortunately, we could use the meme, "Well, that escalated quickly!".
Although I don't like to joke about it too much.  It is all very sad.

Edited February 23, 20233 yr by bobcat999

I wish some folks had put a timer on their rage quitting to see how it all played out. That said, at the least, a lot of folks are learning they should be in control of their distribution. However, being in charge of your own distribution AND making it easy to be discovered are different things. FS.to was the easiest way to discover content. I type in "Pan Am", choose from the pulldown for the airplane I want to get liveries for, and I get a list of available options. That said, Googling a version of that brings me to some stuff, like Clink's mega pack.

From my experiences with truck sims, a lot of the mod sites rehost paid content. On fs.to, I knew it was a for-real freeware option.

19 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

We've already heard proof of devs being removed, from the Got Friends folks.

Here is proof of a freeware mod being "undeleted", and re-published with the author credited as "flightsim.to."

 

This has absolutely happened, and I sure don't blame creators for not wanting to use a site with such practices.  I agree with an earlier comment: it is disheartening to see some in the community rally around .to because they value their convenience in finding a free mod for a video game, over the ability of the creator of that mod to control their own work.

Hopefully, the changes .to has become willing to make after the exodus will fix things for the site.  If not... Oh well, it's the Internet. I can click on one site just as easily as another!  😁

This was already mentioned. Not the best example. In fact, one of the worst examples as this was a payware product at one time. It was changed to freeware from the original owners permission. Also, this is a pretty bad example altogether as this freeware mod was nothing but problems and hardly updated.

19 minutes ago, Sonosusto said:

This was already mentioned. Not the best example. In fact, one of the worst examples as this was a payware product at one time. It was changed to freeware from the original owners permission. Also, this is a pretty bad example altogether as this freeware mod was nothing but problems and hardly updated.

Maybe you missed it:

 

1 hour ago, lagaffe said:

On FSDevelopers.com (https://www.fsdeveloper.com), a post has been open since February 18th and you can find a list of theses developers.

Interesting read. Thanks!

I feel like there is just a lot of overreaction to things that really aren't that big a deal.

We are really close to throwing the "baby out with the bath water"in this.

Whatever issues people have, its hard to argue that there is a good option waiting in the wings to take over.  I already bumped into object library owners pulling their stuff last night which makes all of the addons that used them obsolete if you hadnt already downloaded the library.  This is all going to come crashing down fast if calmer heads dont prevail.

19 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

Here is proof of a freeware mod being "undeleted", and re-published with the author credited as "flightsim.to."

This has absolutely happened,...

18 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

You literally saw photographic evidence of a freeware mod, re-published after being removed, with the ownership changed to "flight sim.to."

What more proof would you like?  

1 hour ago, guenseli said:

Regarding the ATR: I got an answer from the original modder (which converted the ATR FSX payware with permission), kychungdotcom:

"This is a special case, when I gave up this addon and I asked flightsim.to for deletion, they suggested me to transfer the ownership of this addon to them, and I permitted them for it, but only for the ATR"

 

 

So all that was proven here is that someone wanted to make up a story out of nothing and enough people were biased enough to willingly follow, putting all common sense aside.

 

After all, to me it seems all this flightsim.to drama can be summed up like this:

There has been an ongoing controversy between flightsim.to and some of their more important freeware developers about the ToS. When flightsim.to came up with their premium program, the developers took the chance to bring the controversial ToS to public attention to increase the pressure on flightsim.to. Then "that escalated quickly".

Just a normal business case where conflicting legitimate interests clash together. No need for drama.

 

I guess most of the smaller freeware developers will be smart enough to stay with resp. return to flightsim.to when the dust has settled.

The freeware (/payware) developers who are big enough will be doing their own thing where they expect to get a bigger slice of the pie for themselves, be it monetary or recognition-wise.

 

The only way the users would benefit from all this fuss would be, when the exited freeware developers would get together and come up with a single new public sharing platfom on the same level as flightsim.to. Then we would have two great sites for all the freeware. 

 

 

12 hours ago, guenseli said:

How often will the "ATR case" will come up again?

The ATR is listed under flightsim.to as uploader since June 2022!

 

This is part of the reason why I thought some things felt overblown. The ATR is a bad example and frankly not worthy of use in any argument IMO. You made some good points here.

2 hours ago, guenseli said:

Regarding the ATR: I got an answer from the original modder (which converted the ATR FSX payware with permission), kychungdotcom:

"This is a special case, when I gave up this addon and I asked flightsim.to for deletion, they suggested me to transfer the ownership of this addon to them, and I permitted them for it, but only for the ATR"

 

 

So, also on this case a lot less drama then some hoped it is.

So, all of the hype in this case was pretty much unfounded.

Thanks for clarifying.

3 minutes ago, Sonosusto said:

This is part of the reason why I thought some things felt overblown. The ATR is a bad example and frankly not worthy of use in any argument IMO. You made some good points here.

After reading all the hassle I kind of expected there would be many more add-ons taken over and more recently as well.

Would probably serve FS.TO to add some form of comment as to how they "became" the author of freeware they have taken on. Lots of snarky comments against it as well.

G

1 hour ago, bobcat999 said:

The way I saw it was that GF withdrew their freeware at first in concern about the changing TOS, and then FS.to reacted by giving them a complete ban from the site, including their payware.

It's all cause and effect, and we can argue who is wrong and who is right for ever.  And unfortunately, we could use the meme, "Well, that escalated quickly!".
Although I don't like to joke about it too much.  It is all very sad.

This seems more on par what I am seeing. It's a shame so many wanted to just delete their files without taking a breather. This makes more sense now.

4 hours ago, Sonosusto said:

So, all of the hype in this case was pretty much unfounded.

Thanks for clarifying.

I really wouldn't say unfounded, at all.  It's good that the author gave .to permission to re-uoload it... But listing themselves as the author is straight plagiarism, no?

Then of course there's the all the issues with creators needing to "request" removal of a mod, vs having direct control of it etc.  

There really still seems to be more focus here on "but what about me and all the mods I want for free?!". Instead of "wow, these folks who create stuff I really enjoy and generously share it aren't being treated great here."

Guys, you have no "right" to freeware access.  If you have to look across multiple sites for it instead of one place... You're going to complain about that, really?  About folks still sharing their work for you to use, for free?  You're just mad because it might take an extra 10 seconds to track down this free work?

Yikes.

I'm surprised a thread about a fee increase only has 30 pages of messages. 

30 minutes ago, Stearmandriver said:

I really wouldn't say unfounded, at all.  It's good that the author gave .to permission to re-uoload it... But listing themselves as the author is straight plagiarism, no?

It sounds like he did transfer ownership of the mod since he had no intention of maintaining it.