Call, Rumours, the EBT-Tool, Wap and more...

[avij]

The problem is that Philippe is interested in making money off EBT, by running ads on the site and such. When we first heard about these plans we (I, Nerzhul and Gauss) objected strongly -- this is a hobby for all of us, not paid work. He suggested that we'd split the revenue so that I'd get paid for hosting the site, Nerzhul would get paid for implementing new features on EBT and he'd get paid for being the founder of the site. We stated that this scheme wouldn't be suitable for a project run by volunteers -- there are dozens of volunteers who do their own share to keep EBT functional, it wouldn't make sense to pay some of them as it'd cause problems in the community at large. We simply refused to get paid for our volunteer work. This apparently annoyed Philippe, who wanted to get part of the revenue just because he founded eurobilltracker.com

Philippe made the switch on 24.12. morning, without telling us anything in advance. We immediately sent him an email asking what's going on. He replied late in the evening, stating that he "will no longer take contributions to the site code & maintenance from Marko and avij". Although he didn't explicitly state it in his latest message, by moving the site to his own server he conveniently avoided the entire profit splitting problem -- if he's running the site all by himself, he can keep all the possible profits, right?

This wasn't a decision made only by Nerzhul and me, we discussed the options quite extensively on IRC with a larger group of people on Christmas Eve and we had overwhelming support for our plans. Unfortunately we couldn't publish our plans on the forum at that time, because we didn't want to inform giro about our plans. If he knew about our plans, he could have made various changes to ebt.com to make the switch much much more difficult.

For the record, Philippe has not been blocked from the forum so he could freely tell us his opinion of the situation if he wanted to. Philippe also claims that I've hijacked the forum from Craco. This is simply not true, Craco is still the forum admin and my relations with Craco are still healthy.

I've been running the server and paying the bills for about four and a half years now. For the last few years the combined cost of hosting+hardware has been around 200e/month. I'm paying this out of my own pocket, just for the love of this EBT community. Please note that I'm not asking for money from anyone. I also invest a very significant amount of my spare time for running EBT. It's true that I haven't dealt with some of the fakers as effectively that someone might have hoped, but on the other hand, Philippe hasn't removed those fakers either, so he isn't any better in this regard. He has had access to the EBT database, but has chosen not to react to these wishes of the community. I also believe Philippe isn't really a part of this eurobill tracking community, having entered only three notes this entire year.

If some of you still believe Nerzhul and I are the evil dictators.. well, think again.

[ErGo]

Here is a statement from Giro which you can found at the News-site of the .com-site.

http://en.eurobilltracker.com/press/defacing.html

But as you can see, on the .com-site will be no discussion about this thing and here it is allowed - so you can make your own view.

[Zjonbelz]

Here is a statement from Giro which you can found at the News-site of the .com-site.

http://en.eurobilltracker.com/press/defacing.html

But as you can see, on the .com-site will be no discussion about this thing and here it is allowed - so you can make your own view.

Can somebody copy and past this message here as I and more users have been banned from .com by our friend..

[Cinnamon]

Here is a statement from Giro which you can found at the News-site of the .com-site.

http://en.eurobilltracker.com/press/defacing.html

But as you can see, on the .com-site will be no discussion about this thing and here it is allowed - so you can make your own view.

I am banned, so can't read it... Could someone tell what the statement is saying.

[jovada]

Philippe may indeed be the creator, but to me, he is a very mysterious and UNKNOWN person. He didn't seem involved in any way.

A little story:
When the second Disney themepark opened in Paris (the Walt Disney Studios Park), I created a website (http://wds-music.be) that contains a list of all music that is played inside the different park areas. Right after the opening of the park, it was a huge success.
Now, the site is as good as dead. I don't have the time, nor all the knowledge, to update the track list or the graphics to include the new additions to the themepark.
That's why I've started looking for someone capable of taking over my website.
I'm no longer able to make any useful contribution, so I quit and leave it to the fans who really care about the fantastic music that Disney is using.

And that's something Philippe seems to have missed here.

... in my humble opinion

I just hope this won't be the end of EBT...

[ErGo]

Can somebody copy and past this message here ...

I don't know if this is allowed, because he wrote this thing so it is his property

Ok here it come:

A few words about the defacing the site is being put through at the moment.

How I created the site
I created Eurobilltracker 6 years ago : I created the look & feel, I created the code, I created the database, I bought the domain name and I hosted the service.

From the start, I made it a "user-generated content" site like youtube, myspace, etc : people helped moderate, answer support requests, helped locate cities, etc. From the start, I gave it the focus on statistics that it still has today.

That is why, the site came out the clear winner among the 7 euro bill tracking sites that opened at the start of 2002. The spirit of the site has lived on since then.

Anssi and Marko volunteer to help
A few years down the road, Anssi J. (Avij) offered to host the website on a server he owned and operated. I accepted under those terms because he was already an active member of the community and had thus gained my trust. Anssi made sure the servers ran, corrected bugs here and there, answered emails, etc.
Fast-forward to 2005, Marko S. (Nerzhul), the creator of EBT Tool, wanted to contribute to the code to add even more stats to the site.
Anssi asked for my permission, I agreed.

From then on, things went downward

* I discovered that I was not being consulted for additional features, changes to the site design and the database
* A parallel governance that did not include me or the channels I had created, was put in place that focused around Anssi and Marko
* upgrades I wanted to make to the site were being dismissed as not important or problematic (especially a much needed redesign)
* I was to follow unspecified rules some of which were never explained even when I asked.

To put it simply : they could do without me.

But what really got to me was to have an upgrade I made to Babel removed without discussion : it was then I really realized that Anssi and Marko acted as though they embodied the site and owned it.

Safegarding Eurobilltracker

From then on, my focus has been on safeguarding the site from them and the way to do so was to simply move the site to new hosting while providing exactly the same service to everyone with absolutely no changes. The switch was made on Dec 24th with links to the forum and the WAP site unchanged, the passwords to the administration sections were changed so I could monitor the site the first day. I notified Marko and Anssi and asked for information to complete the switch cleanly.

The next day, the forum was hijacked to a new domain owned by Anssi, eurobilltracker was running on another domain owned by Anssi and an incensed message was posted by Marko to the Annoucement board, calling for people to deface the site. This is a called a coup d’état since the rightfull owner of the Forum domain has now totally lost control.


Anssi and Marko call for defacing the site

So people have been creative at defacing the site but with no real damage : changing their countries, adding comments to bills, changing the names, adding fake bills, fake cities, etc. I have implemented a restrained response: first cleaning the mess, then blocking some keywords and finally blocking accounts. Unfortunately this is continuing so I am now banning computers. I will continue to do so as long as this is necessary, "user-generated content" is a double-edged sword ! One day I’ll post the screen shots and we’ll all laugh at how childish it was.


A new beginning

I lay no claim to the WAP site and I lay no claim to the Forum. I am appalled at the tactics used by these people. Eurobilltracker will survive as it has when it faced similar attacks from disgruntled competitors in 2002. I look forward to adding features in the upcoming months.

I will simply end with a question. Do you want to give your time to a site run by people who:

* openly violate someone’s intellectual property (my site design)
* steal someone’s property (site database)
* knowingly violating the license of software they use (Babel is GPL and they did not contribute their changes back)
* have no respect for people who create things from scratch
* portray people they don’t know as "greedy businessmen"
* advocate defacing another site and do so themselves


I am a man of peace, if you have been duped to attack Eurobilltracker by these people; stop and I'll restore your access to the site. Let's keep this site a fun place for everyone.
If you disagree with these tactics, let people know.

Philippe Girolami
Creator of Eurobilltracker
2007-12-26

[jovada]

double post, deleted

LOL, we've both deleted our posts

[Zjonbelz]

I will simply end with a question. Do you want to give your time to a site run by people who:

(...)
* steal someone’s property (site database)
(...)

Hmmm.... isn't that just what Giro did to us; he stole my note database and is denying me access to my own data...

[ErGo]

* advocate defacing another site and do so themselves

And just for the records:
avij and Nerzhul never set any action which approve defacing. Both are trying to calm down the situation!

[-STAR-]

* advocate defacing another site and do so themselves

Au contrair, Monsieur!

avij and Nerzhul never set any action which approve defacing. Both are trying to calm down the situation!

Even more, Nerzhul asked the community on several occasions to not enter any fake notes to the .com site.
Rgds, Franz

[GP]

And people who still play .com don't know the other side of the story so they believe the story from Giro..

[jovada]

And people who still play .com don't know the other side of the story so they believe the story from Giro..

And that's why I fear that this will be the end of EBT. There will never be one consistent EBT database again, it will be scattered over .com and .eu.
I'd like to repeat that Harry Potter statement that someone made

[mike.foxtrot]

My personal and humble opinion, for what is worth...

I've read both the news from the "Empire" and the "Alliance": for what I can read, they both make sense.

As it is, ".com" is a commercial suffix, owned and run by someone, which has full power over it. Like it or not: HE is the owner, HE makes the rules. So it's up to you: stay with HIM at HIS rules or go somewhere else.

This is a sort of maximalist approach; anyway the internet has never been a fully democratic place...

As it is, ".eu" people is a little bit too frantic right now... For what I can remember about copyright, too look-a-like sites usually mean infringements of someone's rights... And also "Hit Bombing" isn't a very effective way to help fix things diplomatically... I agree on the "Moral Primacy" of ".eu", due to the great effort over the years; still I'm afraid that property laws still apply?

I'd suggest to take advantage of the situation to straight things up a little: what about going for a GPL-GNU statute (maybe something Wikipedia like) to definite and fix bases of an actual free EBT?

So, let's go for a policy, statute and domain that is totally user driven...

[ErGo]

try google and enter : eurobilltracker
There eu stands first in line and anybody can place a link to domainshift

Not any more ?!?! Is the adword-entry canceled?

I think its important to change all (old) .com-Links as far as possible to .eu-URL, so the new site climbs up to the first position!!!

[avij]

try google and enter : eurobilltracker
There eu stands first in line and anybody can place a link to domainshift

Not any more ?!?! Is the adword-entry canceled?

Oh, they're still active, no worries. Google may occassionally limit the number of times an ad is shown due to daily budget constraints. I've now raised the daily budget a bit so it should be visible more often.