This my response regarding tekkub response on his website http://tekkub.net/2010/02/18/clearing-the-air.html regarding the sellout to Zygor.
First of all I’m glad to receive any sort of closure from Tekkub, there’s something about me that makes people never want to contact me directly.
Now I finally understand the series of event that lead up to this, I can only describe it as a series miscommunication which I think both me and Tekkub are at fault, I have learned from it and will move on.
Tekkub’s Comment on his website
http://tekkub.net/2010/02/18/clearing-the-air.html Tekkub: Our first contact was back in Jan ‘09. He asked me if he could sell “tourguide data”, specifically citing his own guides which he was translating into another language. He wanted this guide to plug in to TourGuide. I told him his addon is his property, he can do whatever he wants with it. I shamelessly included a link to pledgie, and he made a donation some time later. Around this time he also used my static HTML generator, which was publicly available on GitHub, to convert his guides to HTML. I understood that he would probably sell access to those pages, but as it was generated from his guide data I really didn’t pursue the matter.
Before we started I conctacted Tekkub
Dugi > Tekkub : Hi Tekkub, I was planning to translate my leveling guide into a different language and have it setup to use with tourguide, you don’t have any condition of use with tourguide, but I though I ask you anyway first, so I was wondering if it is ok for me to resell tourguide data commercially.
Tekkub > Dugi: Your addon you write is yours to do with as you please, just don’t sell TG alone. I.E. you can include it with yours since it’s needed, but you’d be better off pointing people to the official download so they get the most up to date version.
And if you want to donate back a bit of what you make, that’s like good kharma or some shit.
My original intent was only to sell a translated guide for TourGuide, since the english version would conflict with his free version. He also said I can even inlcude TG with it. So my conclusion was Tekkub seemed ok with it, so I though if the english version was also different he’d be ok with it too.
My initial impression of Tekkub response was that he was a pretty relax I mentioned specifically mention that there was no TOS that comes with tourguide, and that I will sell it or commercial use. I though if there was specific issue or that he’d want to licence it for commercial use he would have told me then.
Few weeks later we release our version of leveling guide using TG, however due to the popularity of WoWMatrix (also because we recommended WoWMatrix to our own customer in the past) many of our customer would use WoWMatrix to update TourGuide and every time they do this the default leveling guide that comes with TG would be re-installed and confuse our customers.
Renaming the TourGuide addon was our solution, we did this not out of disrespect to Tekkub and his work or to label it as our own brand but to prevent our guide be confused with the build in TG guide. My mistake was that I should have cleared it with Tekkub first, later Tekkub contacted me
http://tekkub.net/2010/02/18/clearing-the-air.html Tekkub: Naturally, I contacted Dugi and asked him to remove the modified version and link people to the official TourGuide downloads. Dugi expressed concern over the included guides “confusing” his users and did mention licensing, but I did not pursue the matter. I was not interested in doing business with someone that would rebrand my code without permission, or without even asking. Simply put, he should have come to me about licensing before he started selling his guide.Dugi never removed his viewer, even after I asked him. He now asserts that he had permission to do so from me. He did not.
Tekkub > Dugi : It looks like your site is hosting it’s own version of Tourguide (The base addon, not guides for it) with a modified name. I ask that you remove this and simply link to the real Tourguide download on wowinterface. Tourguide is not licensed for you to redistribute it in that way, and I really don’t want to be a dick and pull all that copyright bullshit.
Dugi > Tekkub : Hi Tekkub, The reason we did this, is that to prevent our members to download the default tourguide files via wowmatrix and confuse it with the guide they purchase from us.
I’m not in a position to make request and it is up to you but it would be great if the tourguide base is seperate from the guide. This makes it easy for them to select and deselect guide they want to view.
or can I offer you a donation or license fee, to keep it the way it is, and I will remove the public link as I have already, and make the base addon download members only, to prevent confusion.
I apoligize for any distress
Tekkub > Dugi: It’s certainly a possibility for me to put out a version without the guides, I just don’t want “unofficial” versions of TourGuide out there.
UltimateWoWGuide had a public link to download the addon from the front page, after tekkub contacted me I removed it and the final above statement was all the response I have received from Tekkub regarding the matter. I was waiting for him to release a TourGuide without build in guides in Curse or WoWInterface or further instruction from him or whatever it takes for us to be able to use it the way that we’re currently using it.
Time went pass and I still received no response or further instruction from tekkub, the issue kinda got forgotten about. I made the assumption that he no longer care about the issue. I was wrong.
I didn’t know Tekkub have held some sort of grudge towards me because of this but I did ask for his permission, I did send him donation to support the addon before we begin selling. I did ask for Licencing.
What I didn’t ask is to rename the addon which obviously really pissed him off and now he is punishing me for it.
Overall this is my mistake for not making things 100% clear with Tekkub before I do anything, he seemed like a relaxed guy judging by his attitude in his email, I made too many assumption that everything was fine between us and Tekkub.
Our final donation to Tekkub was on 12 Dec 2004 and it was a considerably more than our first very close to the time of Tekkub selling TG to Zygor. I swear that everything that I have just written are true, I still have the original emails and I doubt Tekkub would disagree.
From this point Tekkub was friendly and helpful. He tried to help me work out a problem regarding waypoint arrow not working in the Deathknight starting zone. So if there was still any problem he certainly didn’t make it clear.
