Droidmod has ethics!

[banden]

What kind of impression does this post at Droidmod leave on you?

http://droidmod.org/news/we-have-eth...our-timetable/

[Adrynalyne]

A hypocritical one.


Don't give me ethics, when you illegally distribute Google apps.

[banden]

Here's what I posted there:

I appreciate what you guys have done in putting together a straight forward application that roots, installs the recovery, renames the stock recovery and installs busy box which anyone can use. I was impressed with your ability to recover from the whole sholes.info fiasco and get some tools posted under the new banner quickly. I also had no problem with your schedule. But this news post is in bad taste and does nothing but further segment the Modding community as well as isolate droidmod from it.
Motorola never provided root access. Root is only garnered by a hack that has now been patched in the source (by a real white hat developer.) If you were white hat you wouldn’t even dabble in the Motorola rooting community, you would do as Motorola has already suggested and work with the HTC developer phones that permit root access. This holier than thou post is truly disappointing, I wonder what the rest of the Droid modding community feels about being indirectly accused of lacking ethics.

[Adrynalyne]

Yeah I saw. I was going to reply and I probably will in support, but the reality is, the folks posting in those comments are blinded, and refuse to see any side but the DM team. In other words, they need to brush the brown off their nose and realize that this was not only a BS response as to why they haven't released anything, but also a load of crap as to preaching ethics when they in fact rooted, and are illegally distributing Google apps.

Wonder how long until Google serves and CnD order?

Edit: and you are right, they just single handedly gave the finger to the entire Droid modding community.

[bsweetness]

Agreed. That post is quite a d**k move on their part. Now, if they had just said that they have high standards in their releases that they hold themselves to, that's one thing. But trying to equate what they're doing with ethics is just plain stupid.

[Adrynalyne]

They have had this attitude before though. It doesn't surprise me. The (people who speak for the team) are very elitist, and its sad.

[gardobus]

Their DMUpdater is a nice piece of software and the ROMs they've released (as Sholes and DM1.0.0) have been pretty solid, but refuse to use the most recent leak? This is what ROM cooking is all about. Finding the latest pieces and building a BAMF puzzle with them. Whether it is a leaked ESE53 or some leaked apps from a newer phone, these are the things that people look for in ROMs.

I don't know. I agree with everyone else in here so far.

BTW I quite enjoy the current "non-ethical" ROM that I am using. It's better than the DM 1.0.0 I had a while ago.

[tvandyck7]

Have you all read this???...
Apparently their ex-fans are returning the favor for pissing everyone off.

Taken from the DM site:
"I’ve been getting a number of chargebacks over the past few days for the SMUpdater application, so I’d like to explain what chargebacks are, and why you should only ever send them as a last resort.
When you purchase something with a credit or debit card, you give authorization for that purchase by signing off (electronically or otherwise) on the transaction. If someone were to steal your payment information, it would be trivial for them to fool the seller and the payment processor in to accepting and approving fraudulent payments. To protect you against this type of fraud, there is a thing called a chargeback. If you choose to dispute a charge, the payment processor will take back the money from the seller, and tack on an additional fee (that the seller has to pay) for the service.
The most important thing to know about a chargeback is that it is fundamentally different from a refund. When you are refunded, the seller credits you the amount you were charged, and everyone goes home happy. When you send a chargeback, your bank forcibly removes the money from the seller’s account, and fines them for making an unauthorized charge. If an account receives too many chargebacks, these fines can get huge (hundreds of dollars per chargeback).
There are a number of legitimate reasons to send chargebacks, but none of them are applicable to this post, so I won’t go in to detail. These include identity theft, duplicate billing, items returned but not refunded, and advertised services not being provided. What I’m focusing on here is simply buyers’ remorse, which is not a legitimate cause for sending chargebacks.
It’s actually very common for people (*******s) to abuse the chargeback system in this way. People will purchase items, change their minds about wanting the product, and send chargebacks to get their money back instead of dealing with the seller in an equitable way. Disputing these illegitimate chargebacks is nearly impossible for online services (it is usually impossible to prove that services were rendered), and when it is possible, it is almost always cost prohibitive.
In the case of the Andriod Marketplace, the chargeback fee is $3.00. As the number of apps that cost more than $10 in market can be counted on one hand, it typically costs more money for a seller to dispute a chargeback than it does to pay the fee, so there is really no point in trying. Because of this, Android application developers bend over backwards to grant timely refunds, usually with no questions asked. It’s simply not worth the risk of having to pay a fee that, usually, is many times more than their profit margin was to begin with. If an app costs $1.00, the developer only takes home $0.70 after Google takes its cut. That means that for every chargeback the developer recieves, they have to sell the app more than 4 more times to make their money back on the chargeback fee – just to get back to zero.
In the case of the old SMUpdater app that I pulled off of market, I have not once refused a refund to anyone that has asked for any reason, and it was made clear in the application description that the money was a donation to the project (Read: buyers’ remorse is not even a legitimate feeling). By sending me a chargeback, you are not only taking your money out of the pool, but you’re taking an additional $3 out of my personal income. It is a completely unnecessary and insulting step.
Chargebacks are bad for everyone – it’s a lose-lose scenario. They make you (the buyer) look back for sending them, because fraudulent charges mean you were not careful with your personal information. They make the seller look bad, because they approved a fraudulent charge. They’re even bad for Google, because if they receive too many chargebacks, Google will end up making less money (Visa or whoever will rapidly increase the fines associated with each chargeback).
So, the next time you think about sending a chargeback over a tiny charge, you ought to give the seller a chance to do the right thing privately. It will not hurt to ask, and if the seller still refuses to refund you, only then should you consider taking such a hostile action.
PS (from trevorj): If you do request a chargeback, it is legally considered bank fraud, as it was a donation, not a payment for any sort of service or product in any way, shape, or form. It was a donation, get over it."

People are serious about their $5, huh?

[nerdherd]

Ouch, hitting them with chargebacks isn't nice, no matter how much they upset everyone.

[ronaldheld]

I have to agree with this.