Warning - Developers beware

[Dreamtheme]

Dear Developers,

 

I'm writing about this case publicly, because after two months of communication with PrestaShop, I'm very disappointed by PrestaShop and their cooperation in protecting developers products - themes and modules.

 

About the Case:

In the early of January, a customer who bought one of our themes, contacted our support team, for help about setting up Multi-shop function, and how to setup two stores with our theme.

 

We have helped the customer, and notified him that he must buy another license for his second store as it should be according to PrestaShop addons active to this day Terms and Conditions of use which at this point are still the same. You can view the current ToC here.

The customer understand that, and asked for sometime to test the Multi-shop and then asked for discount for the second license. We give him 40% discount and 7 days to test.

 

After the test period was over, the customer still did not bought a second license and continued to use our theme on his second store. We have send several e-mails to this customers and we changed to more hard tone in order to pressure him, but the customer just became rude, and then stop communicating at all. To this day, this customer continue to use our theme on both of his stores without second license.

 

Due to the fact that the customer is in country outside EU and USA, and his stores are also outside EU and USA, we was unable to send take-down request to his hosting providers, because the rules in his country are a bit different in this manner, and we will need to contact Public Prosecutor in that country in order to take-down his website.

 

About PrestaShop

 

As the theme is ordered via Addons store on PrestaShop, i have contacted and notified PrestaShop about the situation on their contact form, and to this day, almost 3 months later there is no response from them.

 

I have mentioned the case in another topic and get attention to Benjamin Utterback, the community manager of PrestaShop. He asked to PM him with the case details. After i have send him PM and explained the case, i have demanded the customer access to our theme files on addons to be terminated and the customer banned from addons.

 

A week later,  the replay from Benjamin Utterback was:

 

 

 Although this theme is being used on a subdomain and multistore. The theme store is not actually in use. We don't think that we should ban this customer from Addons because this store is inactive. That said, I am talking with the Addons team about clarifying the license rule with multistore and I will get back to you. The fact may be that customers are able to use the theme per domain, no matter how many subdomains are connected. I am talking with them to figure it out. Thank you for your patience and for the reminder.

 

To my surprise, PrestaShop its seems don't know and don't execute to their own Terms and Conditions.

 

I have pointed the Terms and Conditions quotes to Benjamin:

 

1. Definition of Multi-Shop in PrestaShop Addons Terms and Conditions:

 

 

Multi-Shop:
Means the function allowing the users of the Solution to manage several Shops from one back-office only.

 

2. Quotes from PrestaShop Addons Terms and Conditions:

 

 

The Customers using the Multi-Shop undertake to pay Prestashop for additional licenses of use, that is one license per Shop, by contacting Prestashop for a quote, at the following address

 

 

The Customer only benefits from a simple license of use of the downloaded Addons, in
a non-exclusive, personal and non-transferable manner, for the entire world, and for the whole duration of the copyrights. This license shall be valid for one shop only.

 

3. Additionally, Fabien Alet (the head of Addons market team) in forum topic cleared the same when asked:

 

 

There has been a bit of misunderstanding about multi shop and licences. To make things clear this is not allowed to use one module or one template on multiple store. I can tell you that I already spoke to a couple of clients over the phone and I made them buy 2 modules for 2 shops.

 

You can find the Fabien post here from 23 October 2012.

 

I have pointed all this to Bejamin and his replay was:

 

 

It is clear, I'm just waiting for a resolution from the Addons team. I will let you know as soon as I get more information. Thank you for the links and info.

 

10 days later without any replay, i have PM Benjamin again asking about any development about the case.

 

His Replay:

 

 

We are meeting to clarify the rules. I expect an answer by early next week. thank you!

 

14 days later without any replay, i have PM Benjamin again asking about any development about the case.

 

His Replay:

 

 

 I was out of the office for a few days. I'm sorry about the late reply. 

 

We will be amending the tos and communicating to the forum about the amendments. However, this will not be done until after the release of the 1.6

 

The Addons will be getting updates and improvements throughout the entire system. For now, I kindly ask for your understanding and cooperation as you always have. 

 

The problem is within the definition of the word "store" . "store" could mean one TLD url with multiple subdomain stores. 

 

I am not 100% sure but I believe that is how we are going to make it clear. A customer will be able to use a template and module on ONE TLD . However, this is not for certain. I will let the community know once we make the improvements and clarifications . 

 

Thank you for your support.

 

 

After that, i pointed out to Benjamin, that future Terms of Conditions are for the future, and will not concern this case, as the only thing that matter is the active ToC when the customer bought the product.

 

I also pointed out that what is "Multi-shop" function is explained in the definitions of the ToC of Addons, and there is no need for udnerstand of the TLD while in the ToC is explained the "Multi-Shop" feature and what that means exactly.

I also pointed out that it is clear that the customer understand those ToC and the did not argue about them.

Also pointed that we as theme developers, dropped the support for this order and this customer. The only thing that we have requested at this point from PrestaShop is to terminate the access to our theme files to this customer as for us it is clear that he abuses the Terms and Conditions intentionally .

 

 

Today, 10 days later after the last replay from Benjamin, and several additions PM's i still don't have answer to is PrestaShop going to undertake any actions to protect our product in this particular case.

 

I'm very very disappointed about this situation and after two months of struggles with PrestaShop, it is clear to me that they don't want to take action on this, so i have decided to warn all the developers about that case, to let you all know what is going on, and in my opinion at the current moment, we can't trust PrestaShop to protect the developers products against abuses.

 

We are selling themes on Addons almost from the beginning of Addons, and up to this point, we have never needed actions such as this, but there is first time for everything. And I'm not sure how many cases like that we don't even know.

 

This topic probably will get deleted, but i have tried to explain the situation without any emotions and to add a constructive critic, because the ToC and the clarification by Fabien are clear enough.

 

Regards

Edited March 22, 2014 by Dreamtheme (see edit history)

[keitaro]

dream theme i understand your point of view but for others it may be different.

 

"This license shall be valid for one shop only."

please define shop

 

 

For example

I use multiSTORE and 2 languages, but because it is difficult to separate the languages completely with their own separate pictures banners and payment modules with out showing the other language modules i use multi store and add a /(language) to the domain www.store.net/ in this case how do you define 2 stores as it would have been fine if i used the limited translation language module.

 

I agree with Benjamin that the rules need to be updated to reflect the difference between a shop and 2 shops.

 

Another example could be

I sell model train and i sell RC cars and planes but i want to keep the site simple. so i have a www.store.com/train and a www.store.com/RC and a button to jump between the 2 categories (multishop)

This is still 1 shop with the same name and 1 business under the same name.

They can check out with items in cart from both categories.

 

How do you define that i must buy a second theme because i am using a multi tiered domain?

 

The fact is in these cases i have paid for a module to sell under (shop name) and therefore fits under the 1 shop umbrella.

 

 

 

So i can understand why they are hesitant to take any step you are requesting them to do.

[Dreamtheme]

Hi Keitaro,

 

I strongly disagree with your view for a simple fact. In the Terms and Conditions in PrestaShop there is this line:

 

 

The Customers using the Multi-Shop undertake to pay Prestashop for additional licenses of use, that is one license per Shop, by contacting Prestashop for a quote, at the following address

 

What this means is do you have enabled the "Multi-Shop" function? if YES, Do you enabled same theme/module for your second shop under that "Multi-Shop" function? If YES you need to pay additional license according to those terms. Because what "Shop" means in the context of the previous sentse is "Shop" under the "Multi-Shop" function. So understand that we don't speak for a "Shop" as a general meaning here, but a function part of software.

 

And what Multi-Shop is, is defined in this line:

 

 

Multi-Shop:
Means the function allowing the users of the Solution to manage several Shops from one back-office only.

 

Also in the Terms and Conditions for "Developers", there is the following line:

 

 

Article 6: Intellectual Property

The Company sells virtual Products on behalf of its Partners on the Website. Consequently, the Partner expressly authorises the Company to sell online the virtual Products which it has submitted to the latter. It retains however the intellectual ownership of its virtual Products and the Company undertakes not to use them for its own benefit or to sell them under conditions other than those outlined in article 3.

The Partner and/or Company grants each Customer who buys a virtual Product a user licence, on a non exclusive basis and for the whole world. This licence is only valid once for a single e-commerce store. No assignment of right is accorded by these TCUs by the Partner to the Customer. Moreover the Customer is prohibited from reselling or using in other stores the virtual Products bought on Addons.prestashop.com. This restriction includes all the resources supplied with the virtual Product.

 

Also, you can use one domain like yourdomain.com/store1 and yourdomain.com/store2 and consider it one shop like you think, however can you imagine that more toughtful customers, would simply make a new store with www.yourdomain22222.com to redirect to yourdomain.com/store2 and you will practily have two distingushly separted stores but avoid second licenses. And if there is a flaw in the terms and conditions, who's fault is this? Ours or PrestaShop's fault?

 

Also, Microsoft states that you can only use one copy of Windows per Computer. Can you find where in Microsoft Terms, the word "Computer" is defined? Because you can use the same monitor, and the same mouse or two mainboards in one case, and claim that it is one computer and you don't abuse their license.

 

And this is about the Terms only.

 

 

Now don't forget that this theme is our own property, so we can decide what to do with it, not PrestaShop, if we say that we terminate this license, means that we terminate it! We drop the support for it for that particluar customer and terminate his particluar license. So if PrestaShop have different view for the Terms (even that Fabien cleared and stated what they ment), they can simply refund that customer, make sure that he no longer uses our property on his website (uninstall the theme) and no longer have access to our property without our permissions.  If the customer, do not uninstall our product, PrestaShop still should forbid the access to our property but deny the refund, and help us protect our propery rights.

 

At this point PrestaShop allows customer to have access to our property without our permission!!! And by not taking action, at this point PrestaShop also abuses our copyright rights of our property defined by the Law. Because addons market is a distributor of our product, not the owner, so PrestaShop cannot decide without our permission to who gives access. And at the current moment, PrestaShop provide access to this customer, with all the theme updates and assets, even that they are notyfed that we don't give our permission to do so anymore for that customer. You can't take someone else product and do whatever you like with it.

 

So in this case, there is alot more then how you read the Terms and Condition of PrestaShop. And the time that takes to act and understand the issue is just terrible.

Edited March 23, 2014 by Dreamtheme (see edit history)

[keitaro]

comparing "shop" and "computer" is a bit stupid. A computer is defined as a whole unit of hardware pieces combied together.

 

Are you telling me that some one swaps out motherboards and graphics cards and hdds on a daily basis to use faster and slower powersaving pc`s at their leisure.

 

And are you telling me that if a persons pc broke underwarranty and they swapped out their board they are no longer entitled to use windows anymore ?? no didn`t think so.

 

This is the same for a playstation or xbox games are technically liscenced to the playstation you own originally only and to that serial of that piece of hardware. but then what happens if your hardware is faulty and gets replaced can they cancel the licence No.

 

 

This licence is only valid once for a single e-commerce store.

again this doesn`t specify domains, nor does it say this excludes multi store.

 

Again www.modelshop.com/train and www.modelshop.com/RC is still 1 shop trading under 1 name selling model products under 1 shop name.

 

I could agree with you if it were www.joescompany.com/musicstore and www.joescompany.com/petshop

 

As theres are totaly unrelated shops

But a model shop for example still is 1 shop using multi-store features for category use.

 

 

This is why IT MUST be distiguished what exactly 1 shop is or isn`t.

[Pronux]

In my view the Terms and Conditions in regard to Multi-Shop are very clear and I have to fully agree with @Dreamtheme

 

However, in the future I think it can make sense to change the licensing model as @keitaro suggested/described (has to be discussed between PrestaShop and you the template builders).

 

Also, Microsoft states that you can only use one copy of Windows per Computer. Can you find where in Microsoft Terms, the word "Computer" is defined? Because you can use the same monitor, and the same mouse or two mainboards in one case, and claim that it is one computer and you don't abuse their license.

 

This is may be the case for a consumer windows, but as someone who works also in the Microsoft Enterprise (ERP) space, I can tell you: compared to the relatively short & clear Terms and Conditions of PrestaShop, Microsoft is ABSOLUTELY CRAZY (  http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1mb8w3/is_it_even_possible_to_be_in_full_licensing/ )

[Dreamtheme]

comparing "shop" and "computer" is a bit stupid.

 

Thanks for calling me stupid.

 

But what I ment, was that there is no matter, if you actually swap mainboards or video cards, all i said was that it can be used as an pretext to abuse the license, becasue a "computer" has pretty wide meanings. Yes you can swap your falty mainboard and keep the license, but you cannot have "two active mainboards" at the same time and keep the license. Even if this is not defined in their Terms and condiftions.

 

Also you did forget what i have explained with domain redirection.

You can make the subdomain of your second shop, and then redirect it with entirly differnet domain, and register this domain with different name and in this way avoid second license. And if someone ask you, you will tell: "i don't know who is this domain and why is redirecting to me, i just use it on my subdomain." Do you see it now? You can abuse it very easly.

 

And also i said that our theme is property of our company, so we can terminate any license at any time, and to forbid future uses and access to those files. So in this case is not only complain about the terms but the general reaction of PrestaShop to this matter.

[Dreamtheme]

Also, there is another thing:

 

The cusomter actually asked us, if he can use it with one domain. We said NO. And NO means NO. This is our property. Then if the customer said, wait in the terms and conditions its not defined well what is shop, and i thought that i can use it with one domain, then he missundersud it, so he can ask for refund and stop using our product because he did not understand well the terms.

 

However he did continue to use the product, and he do not requested refund or uninstalled the product, he continue to use it even if he already knows what exatcly means. This simply shows his intention to abuse the license.

 

So please, lets not make this topic argument in the Terms and Condition, and look the Particluar case...

[keitaro]

no one accused you of being wrong or him not doing the wrong thing.

 

I am simply stating that the T&C`s are not clear.

 

you say    The cusomter actually asked us, if he can use it with one domain  

you mean multi domains right?

 

though quick question did he buy then ask about domain or after he bought

 

Also a sub domain is different to a domain. you don`t need rights to have a sub domain but you do for the primary domain.

 

so again the t&c`s needs to be updated and a discussion on just where one can draw a line on store and domain.

 

I think in your product descriptions you should add a note liscence valid on 1 domain only and this excludes sub domains. additional licences are required for sub domains.

[Dreamtheme]

This topic is about how PrestaShop handle this, so that can other developers knows. Not if there is certin unclraty in the Terms of Conditions. Because if this is clear enough or not, its work for the attourneys, not us in the forums. But even if it is unclear, this still isn't excuse PrestaShop not to take actions in 3 months, and not protect us when we said that we terminate this license.

 

About the customer, he asked after he bought it, and install it and we have notifyed him that he needs aditional license. The fact is that if he did not contacted us with a problem he would have use it and we will not even know.

 

We cannot add such things in descriptions, because of the Terms and Conditions for sellers where we agree that own terms are not transferable to the customers.

 

I don't mind T&C to be updated and made clearer, or to discuss this in the forums with the customers and developers and how would be better.

 

I do mind that whatever updates may be done, this won't affect already made orders with the old T&C, and that this is not excuse not to take any actions in 2-3 months.

Edited March 23, 2014 by Dreamtheme (see edit history)

[prestamax]

Dreamtheme, I can understand your anger and per the terms you are certainly right. Personally I think the terms should be changed because such a license model is a bit out of touch with reality. Themeforest for example says the license is for one "installation" which would cover a multistore and this makes more sense in my opinion. Multisite can be used for many reasons. Let's say a seller decides to split the inventory in several stores for better stock management or whatever this would be just a little switch in the backend and it is difficult to communicate why it would result in the necessity of multiple licenses. And what if a seller makes the switch after several years and your price model has changed and the license costs have increased. Which price would apply then? I think a bit of generosity in this regard would result in less trouble on both sites, more happy customers and therefor more sales.

 

I think prestashop should change the license definition here.

[El Patron]

I think the only way to impose any sort of agreement is to code one's proprietary software with keys that self impose these conditions.  Relying on following some toc that nobody reads is fruitless. 

 

my two cents

[Xavier du Tertre]

One store is a website you navigate through to purchase products from one or several universes. 

 

If one buys a template to dress up storesellingstuff.com, or a module to improve the store, they shall not install said theme or module on storesellingthings.com.

 

Sometimes, merchants use Multi-store to organize universes on their online store, and they sell stuff and things on the same front-office, using multi-store in their back-office. Although they use PrestaShop’s multi-store functionality, it is still only one store. This unusual usage of PrestaShop is quite rare and rather than acknowledging it and promote it in the ToC, I think we should all save ourselves some time and consider that the sentence “It is not allowed to use one module or one template on more than one store.” says it all.

 

Because it does.

 

 

On a side note: DreamTheme, you have the contact details for Fabien, the Head of Addons at PrestaShop. Feel free to email him anytime, it is a bit more fair than addressing your one-customer-problem to 620,000+ community members with a "Warning! Developers Beware" subject. What were you trying to do exactly? When you put PrestaShop at a disadvantage, you put the whole Community at a disadvantage (including you).

[Dreamtheme]

 

One store is a website you navigate through to purchase products from one or several universes. 

 

If one buys a template to dress up storesellingstuff.com, or a module to improve the store, they shall not install said theme or module on storesellingthings.com.

 

Sometimes, merchants use Multi-store to organize universes on their online store, and they sell stuff and things on the same front-office, using multi-store in their back-office. Although they use PrestaShop’s multi-store functionality, it is still only one store. This unusual usage of PrestaShop is quite rare and rather than acknowledging it and promote it in the ToC, I think we should all save ourselves some time and consider that the sentence “It is not allowed to use one module or one template on more than one store.” says it all.

 

Because it does.

 

 

On a side note: DreamTheme, you have the contact details for Fabien, the Head of Addons at PrestaShop. Feel free to email him anytime, it is a bit more fair than addressing your one-customer-problem to 620,000+ community members with a "Warning! Developers Beware" subject. What were you trying to do exactly? When you put PrestaShop at a disadvantage, you put the whole Community at a disadvantage (including you).

 

 

Well, i have contacted addons directly on contact from as i said and they did not replayed at all, which at least is very  unprofessional. Also Benjamin himself asked to contact him about that and said that he is communicating with the PrestaShop team about that issue, so i don't see the point to contact 3 different persons when you guys communicate between yourselves. If Benjamin asked me to contact Fabien i would.

Benjamin was helpful as he can so i don't have anything mindful against him, in fact at this point he is the only guy who tried to do something.

 

I agree with you that this case is not good for everyone, but can you tell me, if you was in my shoes what you would do when there is no resolution after two months? I'm more then welcome to to cooperate and resolve this issue, however i don't think that answering topics with some guy have troubles installing PrestaShop is more important than such issue and left unsolved for so long.

 

What I'm trying to do is to get attention to this issue and to get it resolved, and issues like this don't happen again, and other developers don't suffer like we are right now.

Edited March 25, 2014 by Dreamtheme (see edit history)

[prestamax]

 

Sometimes, merchants use Multi-store to organize universes on their online store, and they sell stuff and things on the same front-office, using multi-store in their back-office. Although they use PrestaShop’s multi-store functionality, it is still only one store. This unusual usage of PrestaShop is quite rare and rather than acknowledging it and promote it in the ToC, I think we should all save ourselves some time and consider that the sentence “It is not allowed to use one module or one template on more than one store.” says it all.

 

 

I think "one than more DOMAIN" would make it clearer.

 

I know sellers who use multistore for SEO reasons (an own tld for each country for example mystore.fr, mystore.de, mystore.nl). The stuff is the same just three domains for SEO reasons. They would need three licenses then?

 

Edited March 25, 2014 by prestamax (see edit history)

[Pronux]

I know sellers who use multistore for SEO reasons (an own tld for each country for example mystore.fr, mystore.de, mystore.nl). The stuff is the same just three domains for SEO reasons. They would need three licenses then?

jep, we have such customers, same store on different domains. We even have a customer who doesn't use the multistore feature but uses 2 domains for his store. 

 

I think that “It is not allowed to use one module or one template on more than one PrestaShop installation.” would eliminate all uncertainty in the future.

[Xavier du Tertre]

Well, i have contacted addons directly on contact from as i said and they did not replayed at all, which at least is very  unprofessional. Also Benjamin himself asked to contact him about that and said that he is communicating with the PrestaShop team about that issue, so i don't see the point to contact 3 different persons when you guys communicate between yourselves. If Benjamin asked me to contact Fabien i would.

Benjamin was helpful as he can so i don't have anything mindful against him, in fact at this point he is the only guy who tried to do something.

 

What I'm trying to do is to get attention to this issue and to get it resolved, and issues like this don't happen again, and other developers don't suffer like we are right now.

I think there is a misunderstanding... I actually think that your customer is using their theme on one and only one store. Their store has mutiple universes and they handle these universes with the multi-store functionality, but there's only one online store at http://www.yoreselurunler.com.

 

Can you tell me, if you was in my shoes what you would do when there is no resolution after two months?

I can't project myself in the position you're in today, because I wouldn't have considered this use of multi-store functionality on one online shop a problem 

 

I don't think that answering topics with some guy have troubles installing PrestaShop is more important than such issue and left unsolved for so long.

Let's agree to disagree on that one.

[Dreamtheme]

Xavier,

 

I'm tired of arguing about it. According to our company attorney there is abuse in T&C, and i tend to believe our attorney

 

Regards

[El Patron]

I am closing this.