Support » Plugin: WP Club Manager - WordPress Sports Club Plugin » It's fine that you've taken my code from SportsPress but where's my attribution?

  • It has been brought to my attention that you’ve taken our SportsPress plugin and removed our copyright and any trace of accreditation to our work to claim as your own. Under the GPL license, it’s perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, for you to modify our code, but you need to give credit where it is due. We’ve put a lot of time and effort into developing SportsPress, and I find it quite disturbing that you’ve neglected to acknowledge this.

    If you want to contribute to the SportsPress project, you’re free to do so by forking from our GitHub project so we can both contribute to developing better sports plugins for WordPress users.

    I would appreciate it if you would be upfront and honest about where you have taken your code from by including our original copyright and acknowledging us in the description for this plugin.

    https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-club-manager/

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    and removed our copyright and any trace of accreditation to our work to claim as your own. Under the GPL license

    @themeboy If it’s a fork then that’s alright (which you’ve made clear, I’m just being complete) but the copyright and credit has to remain.

    Can you send the details to plugins[at]wordpress.org? This might be something the author can resolve with an update to WP Club Manager.

    Thread Starter ThemeBoy

    (@themeboy)

    @jan Thank you, an email has now been sent.

    Hi Themeboy,

    That’s interesting because I didn’t even know about SportsPress until after I released WPCM! I looked at your plugin after it was mentioned in an early post on this support forum. My plugins code is based mainly on WooCommerce, and I’ve noticed that your plugin has, since WPCM was released, has been completely overhauled also using WooCommerce as a model so there are now many similarities between our plugins, mainly thanks to WooCommerce.

    It’s worth noting that your plugin lacks the attribution to WooCommerce that you are so concerned about.

    I’ve been working on WPCM for nearly a year so the accusation that I have taken your SportsPress plugin and removed your copyright and any trace of accreditation to your work to claim as your own is completely off the mark and wrong.

    I find it incredible that you have taken this method to contact me also, trying to publicly discredit my plugin on the support forum without getting your facts right first.

    Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    I find it incredible that you have taken this method to contact me also, trying to publicly discredit my plugin on the support forum without getting your facts right first.

    *Does the hands timeout thing*

    @clubpress and @themeboy? Before anyone gets excited this may just be a simple misunderstanding. There are a lot of ways to contact people and a post in that plugin’s dedicated support sub-forum is perfectly fine.

    If there’s a misunderstanding about any hosted plugin here then just work with the plugin team via that email. Simple and not worth getting excited about.

    Sorry man, but I’ve been working on this plugin for nearly a year and took exception to the accusation that I’ve copied SportsPress and called it my own. I honestly didn’t even know about SportsPress until after I had released my plugin!

    Themeboy, I have based my sports presets on your sports preset classes which I added in v1.0.0 – but that’s it. I thought that was the spirit of WordPress, to share and use other peoples code for the betterment of the WordPress community as a whole.

    If you want to discuss this further please feel free to drop me an email so we can sort out this misunderstanding. 🙂

    Thread Starter ThemeBoy

    (@themeboy)

    @clubpress It isn’t my intention to embarrass or discredit you. I’m just asking for you to be honest and give credit where it is due.

    In regards to WooCommerce, our copyright notice explicitly states:

    This program incorporates work covered by the following copyright and
    permission notices:
    
      The SportsPress code has been inspired by and partly adapted from the
      beautifully coded WooCommerce plugin by WooThemes.
    
      Wherever third party code has been used, credit has been given in the code's
      comments.
    
    and
    
      ThemeBoy
    
      SportsPress is released under the GPL

    It’s apparent in your code that you’re quite familiar with our premium theme, Football Club. We launched Football Club in 2011, and it has since evolved into what is now SportsPress. I can see from your very first commit that you have taken a majority of the Football Club code, line for line. The fact that you are completely denying that you’ve taken any of our code baffles me.

    In the spirit of the WordPress community, you’re more than welcome to modify and redistribute our code. All I’m asking is that you be honest with where you have taken it and include proper attribution, whether it be from Football Club or SportsPress.

    Ok, it seems there is some misunderstandings. Let me try and clear up some of this and tell you the story of my plugin.

    I actually started working on it in 2012 from scratch. At that time WP lacked any decent sports plugins and I wanted one for my own team, my research had only looked at plugins and I didn’t even know any sports club themes existed. So I decided to try and build my own using custom post types and taxonomies for clubs, matches etc. I worked on it for a while but other freelance work took over and it got shelved for a later date expecting that I’ll never see it agin (along with plenty of other failed projects!)

    Later that year, I was asked by a client to do some work fixing a theme they had been using for their football club website. I duly obliged, fixing hundreds of errors and bugs and helping them understand how it worked. I did not know where the theme came from, it was named after the team using it and I guess the author had been changed. It had no copyright or license notices attached or in the source code and had no documentation.

    It was very similar to what I had already been working on, using CPT’s, taxonomies, shortcodes, widgets etc., which is standard WP stuff, but this theme had a great way of dealing with stats and auto-updating tables which is where I had been getting stuck on with my plugin.

    M y plugin at that time was far from my mind until last year when my life took some massive changes and I was looking for something to work on that would fit in with these changes. At this point (sep 2013) I decided to revisit my plugin and use some of the techniques used in that theme to fill in the gaps. I worked from september building WPCM using WC as a framework (after they released v2) until it was released in march.

    It wasn’t until then that heard about SportsPress and I had no idea that the theme I used originally had anything to do with you guys if that is the case.

    I am not denying that I’ve taken any of your code, I’ve already admitted that I’ve used some features from SportsPress and I apologise for not attributing you properly. I’ll add notices to attribute SportsPress (and WooCommerce) in the next update.

    It is not my intention to plagiarise other peoples work, my own work has been copied many times over the years and I’ve always taken it as a compliment 😉

    For what it’s worth I think SportsPress does a great job for those wanting more complex league management features and I’ve recommended it a few times to people looking for a bit more than what WPCM offers. So, again, sorry for this misunderstanding and I hope we can work together in the future for the benefit of WP sports fans!

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    I’m calling a time out and throwing a redflag on the thread.

    You’ve both emailed plugins, I actually replied to both of you. This will be sorted out, one way or the other, quietly, and respectfully.

    The tl;dr lesson for everyone here: DO NOT use code when you can’t verify the license or attribution. Among other things, you run the risk of violating ToS, licenses, or copyright. Do yourself the favor of double checking 🙂

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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