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[New Tobin Paradigm]

They have been at this for over three years and I have a pile of rotting decaying olive branches sitting in a corner for the number of times one has been extended. Their stinch is overpowering.

As long as they shamelessly leech off us without permission and consideration and continue to foster ignorance I can no longer abide their activities.

There can be no resolution until they get their shit together and decide who and what they want to be. I just don't see it ever happening because of the mentality they have consistantly shown and the type of people they have been exposed to be.

No one can make a legitimate arguement that our projects and services shouldn't be secured from unauthorized usage and abuse. They are our projects and services after all and we reserve the right to run them anyway we choose and to whom we provide them to. The only obligations we legally have to satisfy are those relating to open source licenses and those shall always be followed to the letter.

However, and once again it is against my better judgement, if they shape up and get into the game like the legitimate effort they and their followers claim and fail to project them selves to be.. I might be disposed to make an effort to accomidate their status and position within the broader ecosystem.

Failing that, however, then there is nothing I can do for them.

[docR11]

if they shape up and get into the game like the legitimate effort they and their followers claim and fail to project them selves to be.. I might be disposed to make an effort to accomidate their status and position within the broader ecosystem.

Well if I may inquire. Short of them being sent to Botany Bay, what would you like to see as a first step into legitimizing these forks to accommodate them into the 'broader ecosystem', as you so put?

[New Tobin Paradigm]

We all know what I expect. I am not going to waste my time rehashing it for the umpteenth time.

I mean how many times do I have to say it? Besides, are you roytam1?

[docR11]

Besides, are you roytam1?

I'm going to pretend I didn't just read that.

Off-topic:
Anyhow I can't fully understand the interest with NT 5.x class OSes myself. It's nothing like the NT 6.x/W10 dilemma now, but I like to withhold judgement for peoples choice of software (if they understand the risks involved and assume responsibility for it). 32-bit OSes in general kind of irks me tho. (there's XP x64, rather Server 2003 but client-fied. but that thing is one tough nut to crack getting installed even on hw of its time time period)

Thanks for your responses.

[moonbat]

But what about the Firefox AMO back before the webextensions apocalypse? Did Mozilla block us from accessing their domain with useragent trickery? They didn't offer us support, and the odd restrictions and introduction of extension-signing damn well felt malicious at the time. But nevertheless the website opened. No cease and desist order was handed down to Pale Moon over its users installing Firefox extensions.

Because Pale Moon is not a simple rehash of Firefox the way these browsers are of Pale Moon, nor did it ever claim or pretend to be Firefox.
And no one using PM was showing up for support on the Firefox forums the way these unofficial build users keep doing here and us only figuring out later when they admit to using XP which hasn't been supported by Pale Moon for a few major versions now.

How about entertaining the idea of adding a warning banner on all PM-affiliated websites if the useragent shows sub<NT6.1?

Implying the average k̷n̷u̷c̷k̷l̷e̷d̷r̷a̷g̷g̷e̷r̷ internet user bothers to read anything that's shoved in front of their face, as seen with the overreaction to the extension incompatibility notice in 28.12 when the fact that FF addons aren't going to permanently work without being maintained has been repeatedly reminded here over the last 5 years.

[athenian200]

And no one using PM was showing up for support on the Firefox forums the way these unofficial build users keep doing here and us only figuring out later when they admit to using XP which hasn't been supported by Pale Moon for a few major versions now.

This really seems to be the key point here. I mean, we've mostly been on the honor system so far with making sure people who ask us for support are actually on officially-approved builds or are using those builds on approved operating systems. I feel like I should note that they're also bragging about how they somehow got our official builds working on Vista through some kind of KernelEx-type hack, so they are using a supported build on an unsupported OS with potential for unique bugs.

So my question is, how much time have we been wasting triaging unofficial builds masquerading as official, or even official builds being run by unsupported methods, like maybe someone is running it on WINE or using a weird Vista hack? I mean, if people can just walk in here, claim to be using our stuff, and get support when they actually aren't, then we have almost the same kind of issues we'd have if we weren't squashing unauthorized branded builds. We disallow unofficial builds to use our branding, but the people making them can just whisper to their users "go on the Pale Moon forums and ask for support, but don't let them know you're not official." It's not inconceivable that people would happily go along with such an arrangement so long as it's allowed to continue.

I mean, as distasteful as things like fingerprinting and UA-sniffing are... it seems like we need some way to verify what operating system people are on before providing support, and we all know UA-sniffing is easily defeated so we'll have to get pretty creative with it, or else just accept the status quo indefinitely of a "tragedy of the commons" scenario that slowly drains our resources without giving anything back.

[moonbat]

I mean, as distasteful as things like fingerprinting and UA-sniffing are... it seems like we need some way to verify what operating system people are on before providing support, and we all know UA-sniffing is easily defeated so we'll have to get pretty creative with it, or else just accept the status quo indefinitely of a "tragedy of the commons" scenario that slowly drains our resources without giving anything back.

I'm all for blocking access to the addons site for unsupported builds/OSes. Tobin did nothing wrong.

[Fig Newton]

Well if I may inquire. Short of them being sent to Botany Bay, what would you like to see as a first step into legitimizing these forks to accommodate them into the 'broader ecosystem', as you so put?

Pray tell, what is so confusing about this clear statement:

If you want to do these alternative browsers based on Pale Moon properly, then either work with us in a reasonable fashion and have a dialogue, or run your own servers to provide services for your fork.

[Moonchild]

Did Mozilla block us from accessing their domain with useragent trickery?

Actually, they did. They did something very similar and restricted a usable AMO to official Firefox UAs only. And nobody exploded over that.

Even so, the situation is quite different here, as already pointed out. And, no, it isn't necessarily about the amount of money involved for running the addons server which they "of course" make a point with to pretend we're some greedy corporation, it is more so about the principle of the matter. As stated by Tobin we reached out plenty of times to help these people getting on track, from hosting to even offering branding design if they felt unable to do it properly themselves, but time and again no dialogue was opened and we've even had to apply pressure to make them state clearly they are unaffiliated (prior to that we had plenty of people come in thinking the builds were official and endorsed by us) and that people should not ask here for support.

But I personally won't go so far as to call it abusive.

So where exactly would you draw the line?
At one service?
At multiple?
When they also display arrogance and entitlement towards you, personally?
When they take your work and just publish a copy with temporary branding for months or years, causing confusion among users?
More that I'm forgetting here?
Any combination of the above or all of them?
Think about that.

We're not even asking them to completely strip everything out (which they won't do anyway, if they can't even bring themselves to apply their own branding) but to at the very least have the decency to identify themselves properly and to not use services that were not set up for them, at least not without asking.

No cease and desist order was handed down to Pale Moon over its users installing Firefox extensions.

And we're not doing so either. If MyPal or the yet-to-be-branded-other-rebuild want to install Pale Moon extensions then they can go right ahead, but at their own risk, and without our support.
But: that doesn't imply they can also use our servers and services related to them. Every other 3rd party developer, publisher and embedder has shown the courtesy to have at least a brief conversation to align their efforts with ours. As project lead I've always been charitable and flexible to allow third-party use or services, but it's not so strange that I ask to not be a bum, is it? Especially not a mouthy bum that kicks and screams when we deny access to the soup kitchen for a day.

Despite all that, we are still willing, against better judgement, to accommodate them with a proper part of their efforts in our ecosystem. But our patience is almost gone.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

My patience were gone 3 years ago when his people threatened my person on this very forum for countering their laziness and abuse of our brand and infrastructure and I think the situation today is a case of extreme advantage taking that I have warned and yelled about since day one. What have I gotten for my troble? Constant infrengements of our rights and property that I have to take an aggressive stance to defend on a constant basis.

It takes an extraordinary amount of time and effort to get them to even make even a token change and it always ends up with an era of begrudged and retaliatory wraped acquiescence along with their little group's harrassment in response. That was until their friends and supporters in MSFN Administration banned me from further being able to defend my lawful rights in their official discussion venue. Backed up by the instant deletion of a post by BalooRJ.

Now I have no way to notify them of blaintant rights violations not only of my or our intellectual property but cannot issue proper notification of what I am sure will be more violations of the Mozilla Public License of which they have violated two to three times already. While right this second they SEEM to be in complience two weeks ago they were not AND they attemped to use a file in source that was clearly marked as proprietary that also contained a paid api key for the geolocation service. Had I not said anything they would be using it right now even though the unbranded equivalent file had the freely useable version in it.

The abuse is there and it is real and only the harshest threats and actions will get them to stop. Friendly and kind requests are routinely ignored or simply talked to death and never resolved. It has been tried over and over again. Now that they seem to think they have an advantage they are, as publicly documented, celebrating their supposed victory with some extremely disparaging remarks well beyond and worse than my casual or liberal use of "fuckin moron" I am known for. This clearly shows what kind of people we are dealing with and also illistrates how this one day experiment is not a victory for them but exposes them to the scrutiny of more than just those who dislike me.

I leave the judgement to all of you. Still, despite all that, regardless of if I think or they actually are the crap people I believe them to be, I remain willing to ignore that aspect of them if they get their shit together and fly right technologically and legally.

[Moonchild]

What I meant to say was that there is a limited window of time here. And whatever happens within that window of time (even if it is silence) will shape the future.

[moonbat]

What I meant to say was that there is a limited window of time here.

Sooner you can block them the better.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Several of them including roytam1 have read the thread. The ball is in their court. However, moonbat, let them go for their play. There is still time on the clock.

[docR11]

As stated by Tobin we reached out plenty of times to help these people getting on track, from hosting to even offering branding design if they felt unable to do it properly themselves, but time and again no dialogue was opened and we've even had to apply pressure to make them state clearly they are unaffiliated (prior to that we had plenty of people come in thinking the builds were official and endorsed by us) and that people should not ask here for support.

Goddamn, of this I was unaware. I retract my earlier statement then. Thanks for clarifying

[New Tobin Paradigm]

For clarification the last proper olive branch was simply talked to death with no positive result.

[Суки читают]

a pile of rotting decaying olive branches sitting in a corner

Off-topic:
Made my day, really.

[Fedor2]

It is you right to block mypal if you consider by using your site is abuse, i never demand and shall stay fine. As of the respect i did not break it, but tell me, you know i willingly help if i can, even being discouraged in all ways.

Tobin we reached out plenty of times to help these people getting on track, from hosting to even offering branding design

Remember my cause, did he help a little, no, i did all myself.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

You have done barely anything, sir. Let alone the minimum. Don't even THINK you can lie to us. You and roytam1 are the worst prevailers of deception and pandering to people who don't know any better I have ever seen in my life, except maybe JustOff. It is a disgrace to have any part of you two.

[Fedor2]

Your caustic opininons is empty as usually, because you probably have nothing to tell about the topic. I know it, if your have nothing to tell you call others liars fools... and you want after that the respect does it not sick?

[New Tobin Paradigm]

I believe I had said a lot on the topic.. Repeatedly and clearly for years. The only real disappointment is that my role as a vaguely Cassandra analog remains in effect. Oh it is easy to make a rational argument to rational people who tend to come to similar if not the same conclusions as your self.. But the radicals, the trolls, the unbelievers, the panderers and leeches such as yourself will never be convinced. That is the choice you made three years ago. You and your followers and look at where we are today.

Can you counter my arguments against you? Can you counter my accusations and conclusions regarding you? Or are you just too concerned with how much it burns to face someone who is capable of the same level of fanaticism as your self but is able to wield it effectively and justify it completely?