Quote:
Originally Posted by Telek
Ok, so here's a hypothetical then:
You've just spent 100 or so hours working on a tool to unlock people's phones. You have no intention of charging the general public, however a few unscrupulous people decide to take this software and use it to sell unlocked phones while charging $50 extra a pop. They make thousands of dollars of your hard work, and you don't get as much as a thank you from them.
Is it really unreasonable to put in place a mechanism to try to prevent these people from making money off of your hard work?
Granted their system seems to have some bugs in it, but what nontrivial system has ever worked on the first try?
Honestly when reading these forums and having to wade through the disguisting sense of entitlement from so many ingrates can you really blame them for taking a little while to respond to the support requests around Christmas time?
Also to those complaining about collection of "personally identifiable information" - how exactly do you figure that an IMEI (your phone's serial number) and an IP address is "personally identifiable"?
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responses numbered as per your paragraphs
#1, They claim they're bringing more sales to the manufacturers, which may well be true until it starts coming out there is a limit of unlocks for a particular manufacturer's phones, and the limitations sometimes prevent any unlocks at all. That will severely HINDER sales as well as all the 'behind the scenes' development we currently enjoy from all these fine folk here at PPCG and other places like XDA... So if they wanna spend hundreds of hours working on something for more than legitimate donations without the strong-arm tactics, they need to find a different hobby. Doing this stuff for donation is the way it's been for all phones for all time; do some reading.
#2 yes it is unreasonable to put a mechanisim into place to prevent folk from using your work when your work is simply an alteration of someone else's work. What they are doing is no different than cracking a copy of Microsoft Windows and making a thousand copies and taking em out and selling them on a street corner.
#3 the system for all intents works perfectly, it is their strong-arm method that is flawed.
#4, The sense of entitlement is within the creators of this crack. They think they are entitled for compensation beyond that of the goodness of the average person, for doing nothing more than altering the work of HTC...
---4.5 , If they wanna pressure folk into paying, there is nothing wrong with pressuring them for support and action on the issue (action they said was coming on the 17th). They can respond within such a time frame, holiday or not. They choose not to.
#5, you really have no clue what can be done via the internet or telephone with a little social engineering and knowledge of such information do you?