Thunderer wrote:That still does not answer why it has to be included in the package in the first place.
If we have a choice, which it seems with this we do not, why does phpbb insist on bundling it?
To remove it causes unnecessary work for the admin team.
As far as underhanded goes, yes, it is underhanded as forum members will be unaware of the viglink injection unless and until an admin member informs the forum users by making a post about it. Again, causing more unnecessary work for the admin team.
The knowledge alone would be enough to put some forum members off clicking any links.
Still awaiting the answer of why it has to be bundled (removing initial choice of inclusion) and why phpbb has not recognised the extra, unnecessary work that the removal causes.
You have a clear choice. If you do not enable it, the VigLink service will be completely disabled. This has been answered many times already. It has to be bundled because it would have to be downloaded to your server upon enabling it otherwise. That will not work on a lot of installations and has the potential to open up your board to injections that are way worse than VigLink.
Stop pretending like there is no choice. You make it sound like we're trying to take your liver after you fell asleep.
gotwings wrote:Has the phpBB team considered offering a choice of several different support options to board admins when installing/upgrading phpBB?
For example: (A) Please help support phpBB with a PayPal donation. (B) Please help support phpBB by enabling VigLink. (C) Please help support phpBB by allowing a donation link on your forum's homepage. (D) Insert-latest-support-idea-here. (E) No thanks, I will just be a jerk.
I get it : Those of us who are not contributing to the codebase, or who are not donating monetarily, are (essentially) leeches. Sadly, I'm one of the leeches.... And I'm not offended if someone identifies me as such. I get it. I could/should be doing more (personally; not my users) to support the project.
But wow. Dumping this whole VigLink idea on everyone, without pursuing alternative (and less weird?) support ideas? That is taking me aback a bit.
Have I missed something here? Previous efforts that didn't amount to anything? Naivete on my part?
gotwings wrote:And how strange... The
Get Involved page doesn't seem to have any mention of providing monetary support to phpBB.
Is there a reason for that?
Is phpBB a non-profit? I don't see anything about that in a front-and-center location.... If it is, then that could provide tax advantages to donors, at least in some countries.
And if it isn't a non-profit : How about a non-profit "Friends of phpBB" organization?
Sorry, probably all crazy ideas that won't work for one reason or another.... But if so, it would sure be nice if the topic regarding VigLink provided the relevant background.
The sarcasm aside, I think most of your questions have already been answered in this topic. phpBB is not a non-profit (a status that is rather hard to acquire and takes a rather long time as well) which will cause a significant burden to phpBB and any donators. We were already looking into this and at the current point there is no good way for us to accept donations as was already noted in this topic. So yes, accepting donations was one of the alternatives we have evaluated.
VigLink is a way of being able to support both your boards and phpBB if you're willing to use it. We're providing you with another means of supporting phpBB, a completely free and secure bulleting board software, in an unobtrusive way and that's it. No ads or any other obtrusive changes to how your board looks or interacts. If you don't want to support phpBB through enabling the VigLink service, don't enable it, don't use it, delete it if that makes you feel better. Nobody is dumping anything on you.
Ger wrote:*snip to mention*
The goal was to bundle this sooner which would have also given users more time to read about it prior to a final release. Unfortunately, it wasn't done in time for earlier releases like RC1 and we plainly didn't want to hold up releases for it. I don't think anyone would have approved of that.
We also have extensions that were created without special topics about them. There was no special development topic as the goal was not to release it separately in the customisation database. I do understand that you might feel like we've left you out of the information loop regarding this, however, the actual general implementation of this was not finished until a few weeks ago.
With the blog post we're trying to be as open as possible about this now and also explain to you the why and how. The current implementation is apparently still a bit buggy and will be fixed as was already pointed out.
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On a more general note to everyone in here:
Please try to keep it civil and refrain from using sentence structures that might come of as aggressive to some readers.