Curse Author Rewards, earn rewards for developing cool plugins!

Discussion in 'Community News and Announcements' started by EvilSeph, Feb 2, 2013.

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  1. Offline

    EvilSeph

    Since August of 2011 Curse has been integral with helping our project and community out with hosting and resources. We chose Curse to help us in providing a much needed service, BukkitDev, primarily because they have a proven track-record with their success in hosting WoW add-ons. It is thanks to them that we can offer a complete project management suite for all manner of plugins, mods, worlds, and texture packs, entirely for free.

    Along with providing free hosting for the WoW add-on community, Curse has developed a cool "rewards" program that provides developers of popular plugins with the opportunity of earning rewards for their hard work with some add-ons being popular enough for the developers to earn a living off of them. To date, Curse has given back more than 1 million dollars of ad revenue and Curse Premium income to WoW authors. Luckily for the Minecraft community, Curse's commitment to the BukkitDev service means that they've been working towards expanding their Curse Rewards program to support the Minecraft community too, along with all the other games they've been supporting.



    Signing up for the Curse Rewards program is quick and easy! Just follow these steps:
    • Sign in on BukkitDev.
    • Click on your username in the upper-right corner.
    • Click the link “Sign up now” under “Rewards points”
      • If you don’t see this link, you’re already signed up!
    • Check the option to “Enter the rewards program”.
    • Click “Update”.
    • Done!
    To make way for the Curse Rewards program, we'll be shifting downloads from BukkitDev over to curse.com. This change is necessary to make the Curse Rewards program and its tracking manageable and consistent to ensure we are able to reward everyone that deserves it, as well as make it easier to protect and detect against statistic padding. Curse.com is also the more user-orientated part of the BukkitDev service geared towards the needs of server admins, providing favourites and ratings for each project.

    Once you've signed up for the Curse Rewards program, your project begins accumulating reward points after it has had at least 1,000 downloads. As an extra bonus, you're rewarded with a free month of Curse Premium for every 1,000 downloads too. Once you’ve accumulated enough points, there are various rewards you can redeem them for from the BukkitDev Store. See this Curse.com article and the Curse Rewards Program FAQ for more information.

    With this change to how BukkitDev operates, we'll be in the awesome position to reward developers for all their hard work creating and supporting their popular projects. We're really excited for what the future has in store with the addition of Curse Rewards support for BukkitDev and think you'll be happy with what results from these changes.
     
    Skyost, TheDom102, juampi_92 and 33 others like this.
  2. Offline

    ralphbell

    where do you go to make a plugin
     
  3. Offline

    Gravity

    Click BukkitDev or link
     
  4. Offline

    zolcos

    I'm happy about the possibility of getting a small cut of the ad revenue my plugin generates for Curse, but...

    1)
    I can't help but think of the effect this will have on the scene as a whole. Most of the biggest plugin developers have traditionally embraced the open-source model, encouraging 'forks' and independent takeovers of inactive projects, since the code is all there. But this rewards system is bound to make developers more jealous and possessive with their projects. Consider this: if you fork someone's project to add a good feature that the original developer doesn't want in his version, you're forced to compete with him rather than contribute, which is fine really -- but now, when you split his users between his plugin and yours, you could be considered 'stealing' his users (and thus, his money!) and doing it with something that is probably still 95% his code! It most likely violates every TOS as well ("must be the original developer" yadda yadda).
    But doing this is undoubtedly beneficial for server admins. I can see legitimate derivative works getting reported and easily removed for no other reason than this. Think about it from the server admin's point of view: A plugin important to their server gets removed, and they are now forced to use the version that doesn't have their favorite feature, because of decisions ultimately having to do with money, in a community where previously everything was done freely.

    2)
    for the WoW add-on community, Curse has developed a cool "rewards" program that provides developers of popular plugins with the opportunity of earning rewards for their hard work with some add-ons being popular enough for the developers to earn a living off of them

    I know you're just stating a fact here, but you're making a very unfair implication -- WoW add-ons generate lots of ad revenue because every individual player is in the potential audience for them. In contrast, Bukkit plugins need only be downloaded by the server admins. People who run their own Bukkit servers are vastly outnumbered by the entire WoW subscriber base so it's literally impossible to get similar financial results
     
    poiNt_3D likes this.
  5. Offline

    Gravity

    zolcos
    1) A non-issue. We do not allow people to upload unauthorized continuations of a plugin as long as that plugin is active.

    2) BukkitDev hosts client mods as well as server mods.
     
  6. Offline

    obnoxint

    Hello zolcos ,

    I personally understand your concerns but don't agree to them.

    The plugin developers who used an open-source license for their projects (like you said, most them) will also keep doing that in the future because of their mentality. The rules for taking over inactive projects didn't change. In most cases the agreement of the previous manager is still necessary. I also didn't notice any jealousness because of the reward program between developers so far and also don't expect something like that in the future.

    You are right about what you said about publishing a forked project: it probably won't last long on DBO because according to our guidelines it is basically "stolen", even if it contains new and useful features. But people are free to write their own plugin from scratch and provide an alternative, which is a good but not a new thing.

    In my honest opinion, the statement about the WoW community doesn't make an implication at all. When we as members of this community would try to compare Bukkit with WoW, we would try to compare apples with pears. From Curse's point of view it's different because they are able to look at the matter from above: both communities are services. Now they made them even more equal. And like Gravity said: don't forget the many client-mods!

    The changes we are experiencing will result in new challenges. But they also result in new chances for everyone and will increase the quality of the service. It's always been like that.
     
  7. Offline

    zolcos

    That doesn't make it a non-issue. Bukkit is GPL which requires all plugins to be GPL (I know that's a whole separate argument). But what's the point of GPL if you're going to lock developers out of the Bukkit ecosystem for not reinventing the wheel with every project? It's a moral misstep akin to Tivoization.

    BTW, most plugin developers who cover the GPL requirement to release their source do it by providing a github link. But bukkitdev forbids linking to outside sources of content. It's a contradiction that I bet less than 1% of plugins suitably resolve.
     
  8. Offline

    Gravity

    It's not that they have to reinvent the wheel for every project submitted, a quick search for a tnt blocker will prove that. The issue is that we do not allow people to simply fork and upload their project that has a couple of changes that they think are better because almost always they are people who have little to know knowledge of the API itself and are simply trying to make a splash or become a household name. These projects clutter BukkitDev and cause more work for us staff because of their very nature.

    If you want to make a project that accomplishes the same task as someone else's plugin, that's fine. However, you can't just fork their source, change the packages or whatever you feel like doing, and then reupload. It's not fair to the developer, the staff, or our users. Especially not when there's a perfectly good project already being maintained which you could submit changes to or have a conversation with.

    What I'm trying to say here is that it's not a licensing issue at all. This Bukkit, not Curse, GPL, etc, policy has existed since before BukkitDev and it's purpose is to protect the aforementioned individuals. This rule persists to BukkitDev because of it's initial purpose, not for any other reason.
     
  9. Offline

    Sleaker

    Fixed that for you, as I've been told Bukkit plugins are the only server-related mods allowed at this time ;)
    Don't want to have.. you know, conflicting statements from staff about that.

    Nice to see the ad-revenue being passed on though.
     
  10. Offline

    TnT

    It is called BukkitDev after all. This should not be a surprise.
     
  11. Offline

    Gravity

    I didn't say that we hosted non-bukkit server mods, it was only pointing out that we don't only host plugins; client-mods are something that would be needed per-player so the point is invalid.
     
  12. Offline

    tmiester

    yeah you got a point there....
     
  13. Offline

    jorisk322

    They can choose how the points are split in their project settings.
     
    lDucks and Gravity like this.
  14. Offline

    eamon12

    Wait, does this work as of now o-o? sorry i havent read all the posts ;p
     
  15. Offline

    Gravity

    Yep. You can enable rewards on your profile.
     
  16. Offline

    eamon12

    wooop, thanks
     
  17. Offline

    xXCryptoFreakXx

  18. Offline

    Brettflan

    Redeemed 2000 points for the $100 through Paypal reward on the 6th (5 days ago). I'm curious to see how long it takes to be fulfilled.

    I only today noticed the note in the reward info that says it may take up to 2 months to receive it from them through Paypal. :eek:
    If I'd noticed that I might have just gone with an Amazon gift card instead as 10 days max is a lot better than 2 months max.
     
  19. Offline

    KingKongC

    Well when i can get my DxApplications system up and running i'm going to let my points keep going up with each download ect i don't care much for them but if i can get around 50,000 points this year then i don't see why i can't redeem 30,000 for the following year to keep the projects i do up and the server up
     
  20. Offline

    Brettflan

    Paypal payment just went through, so it took a hair under a month. At least it was quicker than the 2 month maximum.
     
    D00py and drtshock like this.
  21. Offline

    Deleted user

    No more $10 gift cards. Damn.
     
  22. Offline

    chaseoes

  23. Offline

    Deleted user

  24. Offline

    Ne0nx3r0

  25. Offline

    mbaxter ʇıʞʞnq ɐ sɐɥ ı

    I don't think the entirety of BukkitDev combined has that many. I guess he is using an html editor to mess with people. Odd choice of things to edit, but to each their own.
     
    Deleted user likes this.
  26. Offline

    Ne0nx3r0

    [​IMG]
     
    D00py likes this.
  27. Offline

    mbaxter ʇıʞʞnq ɐ sɐɥ ı

    Looks like they're back in stock :)
     
    Deleted user likes this.
  28. Offline

    zack6849

    How does this work? is it if you get over 1000 downloads you get a year of curse premium, or is it you get a year of curse premium for every 1000 downloads your project gets?
     
  29. Offline

    Gravity

    *month, not year.
    zack6849
     
  30. Offline

    zack6849

    So one month of premium per 1,000 downloads?
     
  31. Offline

    Gravity

    Yes
     
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