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

[ttk74]

Giro gives his point of view here, in French. If someone could translate it for non-french users... I am too weak in English to do it.

[Dakkus]

Here are two machine translations of his text. Both ones are bad. The first one is better, the second one worse.
I still would like someone to give a human translation in order to avoid fatal misunderstandings!

http://72.14.203.104/translate_c?hl=en& ... Ft%3D10461

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfis ... Ft%3D10461

[jovada]

Giro gives his point of view here, in French. If someone could translate it for non-french users... I am too weak in English to do it.

To avoid misunderstandings, I won't translate the text, but I did post this reply underneath:


Your point de vue is too much blabla about things we (= the 118.000+ users) just don't care about. I even didn't know who you were, and I'm around since a very long time...
The only thing you should care about is the project and the community of users, who have entered almost 1 billion worth of euros. The site was in very good hands and was still growing. It was fun to do and we all loved it.
And then this happens...
Your idea to start EBT was a very good one, I don't think anyone will disagree, but you're not the dictator, the boss, the whatever of this project anymore. It's in the hearts of thousands of people and we feel betrayed. Your opinion is not the only one that counts, it's nothing more than 1 part of the whole 118.000+ community.

[tomaz79]

I've been following the discussion for days now and frankly I still don't understand all the mumbo-jumbo about licenses, copyright, legal issues etc. But in the end, it doesn't really matter.

The way I see it, even if Giro has some legal rights to the site, code or whatever, I don't really care about that. He doesn't have the moral rights. A guy who for the last 4 years hasn't been involved in the site now wants to use his original idea to turn the site into a commercial one, while a hundred or so volunteers worked their asses off for the last few years to improve our EBT experience. After all, it is up to US, THE USERS to decide where we want to insert the bills and if we want to do that on a commercial site or not.

Even if Giro wins some sort of legal battle or something, I'll stick with the people who invested huge amounts of their time (and MONEY!) to run and improve all the aspects of EBT. And I'm also willing to donate money to make that possible (I don't think it's fair that avij should be paying for the server from his own pocket)

Had to get it out of my system...

Happy new year!
Tomaz

[yli]

Doesn't «Je viens de lire les messages en anglais et en Français sur ce forum» means that there will also come an english version of the Giro post ?

[jovada]

Doesn't «Je viens de lire les messages en anglais et en Français sur ce forum» means that there will also come an english version of the Giro post ?

No, he says:
I've just read the English and French posts on this forum

[Economist]

To avoid misunderstandings, I won't translate the text, but I did post this reply underneath:

Well, do as a favour and translate it then, we all know whose side you are on by now

[WinstonSmith]

If the problem is just with the relevance of future updates, why don't we just open a forum section to discuss new features with polls? Every member could choose what they see as a "priority" for the site, whether it is the language codes wanted by Giro to improve our google rating or anything else which is more important according to the other developers. Everybody could have their say on their relevance.
If it's just a matter of "I wanted to to these things but they don't listen to me", let's just write it straight: these three people are our developers, no one of them can force the others to do anything or forbid them access to the database, and no one of them can put forward an improvement to the site if the community is against it.
This would somewhat diminish Giro's role as the "founder", as he would then work as a 'colleague' to Avij and Nerzhul. On the other hand, this would mean that Avij and Nerzhul could no longer differ the improvements wanted by Giro; if he *PUBLICLY* proposes language codes and the community finds them reasonable and useful, Avij and Nerzhul won't be able to do anything to prevent him from implementing them. What's more, no one would risk being locked out of the database.

[Pole Doctor]

Not sure that's much better than an automated translation but anyway ...
Here we go :

---

My point of view, for those interested for it. I thank those who stay cool and try to find a conciliatory position.

I have read posts in english and french on this forum. Why so late? To cool things down, to let some time to conciliators to be able to do anything, to prevent emotive people to make things worse, etc., etc.

I’ve been highly criticized since last week: I’ve been qualified a “greedy businessman”. Honestly ... if that were the case, I’d make a porn site ... that would be simpler to me. I prefer to laugh about that, but the situation is very bad indeed and I take it very seriously, believe me.

So what did happen? I switched eurobilltracker.com hosting to a new server. That’s it.Nothing else changed, as I stated in my first message. That’s my right because I own the domain and the database, that’s for the legal side. As for AJ’s or MS’s intellectual property, see below.
That’s my moral right because I have the duty to protect the site, and I considered AJ and MS were a threat. Because I couldn’t come to an agreement with them every time we discussed, because they subverted the ways to rule things, switching to ‘Past, present and future’ to IRC, because they rejected the evolutions I submitted, because action plans were never started to guarantee EBT’s subsistency and its independance from AJ, because they never answered very important mails I sent them, because they didn’t respect Babel license arguing “there wasn’t any community around this software” (so what? Downloads occur, see http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/?g ... de=alltime). And to be honest, every time (rarely) I received a message after contacting them, I was wondering what was going to happen ... there wasn’t any pleasure anymore.

So about ads ... what a wonderful way to ruin my reputation, congratulations ... they’re very smart, I couldn’t have done this myself ... well, let me dare : why do the user conditions they did elaborate (and about which they never asked me to validate anything) specify that only emails won’t ever be sold to any third party ?

I told Avij I would bring ads in december, 2003 (and no, he wasn’t seeing any drawback because casino ads were out of question, etc.). I never did it because that wasn’t important at the time, our positions were clarified and we had took date.
I asked again about it in 2006 with concrete arguments to get a real discussion and because I was embarrassed to see him pay 69 € a month. Discussions took place with AJ via IRC and I have a final mail confirming we had an agreement at the time. One month later, MS indicated they didn’t quite agree, but well ... to guarantee the site’s subsistence, it could be done but there wasn’t any hurry. Obviously, MS had a decisive influence on AJ.
Seeing history rewritten by them gets a little bit on my nerves. If AJ and MS are OK about that, I’m ready to post these mails to testify to the community, or what remains. Why to use this argument to attack me? Switching doesn’t have anything to do with money, this seems clear to anybody.

Why domain prefixes since 12/24 ? To improve Google referencing. It’s a subject I tried to evocate with AJ and MS last july in a mail which didn’t get answered ...

Now the real reason for switching is that I didn’t want anymore the site to be maintained in operational condition by AJ and that MS doesn’t contribute to any intellectual property since I couldn’t work with them anymore. To prevent them to draft all the users to another site, as they did for the forum, I did act preemptively and the fait accompli was a lesser evil. Their following actions, redirecting forum.eurobilltracker.com to a *.eu they bought 2 years ago, show I was right : they would have done the same thing with www.eurobilltracker.com and there’s NOTHING I could have done.

I’m wondering about something: why to have bought .eu ? All they had to do was email me if they considered that to be crucial. Ah well no ... they certainly weren’t considering me as having any authority or responsibility ... QED.

So for all those who were disagreeing with me ... what was the fair and legal ways of action they had? Simply to export their bill data (by using the site function), ask for their account to be closed (removal of all their personal data), import their bill data on another existing tracking site (but they all display ads : http://www.eurotracer.net/, http://eurotraq.com/, etc) or on new sites, created by people disagreeing with me.
Instead ... well, you all know.

Ma claim is clear : .eu is a theft and must be stopped. The site was hosted on a server belonging to AJ, which doesn’t give him property rights on what is hosted. A proof that all this is clear for him ? He asked for my permission before allowing MS to make modifications.

About community, I’ve always been careful to distinguish the site and the community. I never claimed any leadership : I created a site to which people did adhere, craco created a forum and part of the people meet there. There is no confusion between both in my mind. This guarantees the site’s impartiality.

I’m no crisis communication expert, sorry for those who believed I was “away”, but I’m there indeed.
About the question : does he have time ? I can’t guarantee the same data quality since for now the number of moderators has dramatically decreased, and new moderators should be designated (this is a volunteer call). Same goes for translations. About technical matters, there won’t be any problems (well, not any more than before ...).

There I am, I tried to bring you facts, not implying things or lauching unfounded attacks. Their technique bear a name : this is FUD (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_unce ... _and_doubt).

I hope these last days show AJ and MS have performed illegal actions. I respect the fact that some people disagree with what I did, but this certainly doesn’t justify in any way what happened.

Best regards, and thanks to those who wrote me and supported me.
Philippe

[philgelico]

In France, several french EBTers have added to their nickname those words : "wants EBT unified".
Perhaps it's a good idea and it can show our disagreement, disappointment, and it can express to the two opponents that they are obliged to find a quick solution for reunifying EBT .
Perhaps it's a good idea to add those words - in particular for the most active EBTers ....

[jovada]

In France, several french EBTers have added to their nickname those words : "wants EBT unified".

Well, my account is now called javada instead of jovada and I can't login anymore.
I've asked again to remove my account and 70.000+ bills entirely instead of renaming it. I think this is what we should do: ask Philippe to remove our accounts and all data, especially since he's now also tampering with the nicknames...

[Mr Euro]

The best way to help out at this moment, is to do nothing bad at the .com site. Behind the screens there are some negotations going on. And believe me, al three guys involved have a heart for EBT. I still believe in one EBT. Also read announcement of Craco

[jovada]

The best way to help out at this moment, is to do nothing bad at the .com site.

I agree, but still, I want my account removed on the .com site

[EuroBillTracker]

Here is a translation of my second post in French.

I have had enough of being the one to justify myself. My position was explained above.

I invite you to ask yourselves the following questions:

1) why was the forum redirected to *.eu in a permanent fashion ? What danger existed ? Here is the complete email I sent to AJ:

I have decided to resume hosting and maintaining eurobilltracker and will no longer take contributions to the site code & maintenance from Marko and you.

This decision comes from no longer having a working relationship with you. More importantly, you came to believe that you co-owned (or owned) eurobilltracker despite my warnings to you that you did not. It's a shame because I think things we both worked well together at first.



SOA transfer is effective. I made a few guesses for records (www, mail, smtp, imap, forum, wap), if I am missing any please provide them.


The website transfer is effective but I need
- a redirect URL for the gallery


Since I do not know the extent of @eurobilltracker.com mailboxes you have created, I have left the current MX record to point to your mail server.
- Please provide me this list and forward email addresses so that I may migrate the MX record back to my server
- I also need to copy the support email. Please provide me with the ebtshared password as I no longer have it and it is stuck in my browser's cache.

forum. points to the forum as usual

wap. points to your server as usual. I wish for the eurobilltracker domain to contain only sites I maintain:
- Please provide me with a redirect URL for the WAP site



To finish on a more positive note, I will repeat what I have always told and what I believe : you have done a fantastic job of maintaining the site and I am glad that you volunteered to host it when you did.
It is just one proof of how much you love the site and the community. I hope you will continue to be part of this community.

As the email show, the forum URL points to the server in Finland that is running it, I asked him to give me URLS for the Gallery and the WAP site so I could redirect traffic to it. I also asked for the list of email accounts he created (without asking) on the *.com domain so I could have emails transfered to the recipients with no lose.

His work is recognized as I always have. However, recognition does not mean ownership or allmight-iness

2) On what factual basis am I being accused of being a "avid capitalist" ? Judge me on my acts, not on fantasies of someone who doesn't even know me.

3) How dare I be attacked for wanting to ensure the site's survival without AJ forking in euros when this was a position that AJ, MS & I had all agreed to at the start of 2006 ? I have the March 02, 2006 20:45 email from MS to prove it.

4) How can anyone doubt my determination to have a single bill tracking site : all my actions over the years have been aimed at that. I created the site, pushed to have translations so that all countries would use the same site, created a tool I made public (!) to make it easier to coordinate what amounts now to 80 people translating(there is no other tool than PHPBabel to do so), I changed the server with a fait-accomplis in order to protect it but all links to tools, forum, wap site, etc were still running until they were subverted by AJ/MS to permanently redirect to *.eu.

As a sign of goodwill, I will relink to the forum if its URL is that of its creator, Peter, not that of AJ (unless he claims that he should also control that too ?) : www.eurobilltrackerforum.com. To be more precise, no URLs of the style

Code: Select all

forum.eurobilltracker.*

(either .com or .eu) shall be visible in a user's browser and its title is not *.eu. This is possible now that the forum is back to being about discussion rather than only a conduit for AJ/MS propaganda..

Castanhola, your access to the site was banned for violating site policy, see http://www.eurobilltracker.com/faq/?command=4096;tab=1 We have already been confronted with this behavior with followmyeuro.com. I will remove the bans when the situation is resolved..

Pole Doctor : thank you for the translation on my first post..


I gave AJ and MS responsibilities so the site could grow. I did not chose the right people, I took back what I had given..

Now, this situation has been going on for 3 days. That's enough. I have shown considerable patience & restraint. It is more than time that AJ realize what they have done and make a gesture of "ouverture" to unwind the situation they have created.
The ball is on their side of the court, let them know it.

[ErGo]

Castanhola, your access to the site was banned for violating site policy, see http://www.eurobilltracker.com/faq/?command=4096;tab=1 We have already been confronted with this behavior with -.com. I will remove the bans when the situation is resolved..

The FAQ says:

Also, your username should not contain email addresses or URLs. [...]
Violations may result in an admin manually editing your data.

There is a huge difference between banning and editing!