Gallery ripped off!

szac

Joined: 2003-07-08
Posts: 26
Posted: Fri, 2003-09-19 04:23

Ok, this is ridiculous- http://www.photomachine.net

Totally unacceptable. I'm sure there's examples of this elsewhere on the net, I've just never stumbled on to it personally. A damn shame.

 
Gaile

Joined: 2002-07-20
Posts: 1301
Posted: Fri, 2003-09-19 05:21

Personally I find it pretty cheesy that no mention is made that the software in use for their *PhotoMachine* is actually our very own Gallery.

Their "ABOUT US" page states in part:

Quote:
Our goal is to offer free products and services with absolutely no markup to the customer. All we charge for is our time for services and hosting fees. By using automated tools and open-source software we are able to create functional web solutions at very low costs.

I have no idea if this is Kosher or not since I'm not overly familiar with all the terms of usage for Open Source software. It doesn't feel right that no mention of Gallery is made, however I'm sure this will be addressed by Bharat, who is the Gallery Project founder, or possibly one of the other Team Members who have more knowledge of whether this is permissible use.

Gaile

 
bharat
bharat's picture

Joined: 2002-05-21
Posts: 7994
Posted: Fri, 2003-09-19 08:16

This is not a new thing. It's happened many times before, and will continue to happen in the future. While on the surface of things it seems like they're doing us a disservice by not giving us full credit for our hard work, when you think about it they're doing us a big favor. I am now, and always have been (since the beginning of this project) been in favor of people using Gallery in any form. If they can make money off of it, more power to them. I'm not in it for the money, nor am I in it for the fame -- I work on Gallery to provide the best software that I can for the masses. And deep down, we all know the truth about what's driving their website.

Here's something from the Project Vision page that I wrote almost 3 years ago:

Quote:
[Gallery] must be so customizable that you can plug it into your existing website and it will look and feel just like the rest of your site. If you integrate it into your site people should never know that you didn't write it yourself

I still deeply believe in this. I want PhotoMachine to win and win big. I hope that they have a ton of happy, paying customers and that they make a lot of money on the deal. They've got a marketing/sales department whose sole job is to convince people to use Gallery! Sweet! So what if its not called Gallery on their website -- we know the truth. Maybe after they've made a big business model out of it and have a lot of customers we can send them a nice email saying, "hey, don't forget about us". But even if they never send us a dime we can always point to their website and say "hey, see that big popular photo hosting website with a ton of customers? They are powered by Gallery".

If you think its bad with Gallery 1, just wait till they get a load of Gallery 2. G2 was designed from the ground up to be capable of hosting hundreds of thousands of images in a large scale environment .. just like PhotoMachine. Our goal is for every photo hosting service to be running our software so that when people think about starting a photo hosting service they don't say, "how will we accomplish this?" they instead say "how many Gallery servers should we install?".

I noticed that somebody edited their demo and put a blurb about Gallery in there. That was a thoughtful act by a loyal Gallery advocate and I think that I speak for the team when I say that I am touched by your consideration. However, I don't feel that its appropriate to take issue with them in a way that might damage their business so I removed the statement. Don't be offended -- I did it, not them.

-Bharat

 
Gaile

Joined: 2002-07-20
Posts: 1301
Posted: Fri, 2003-09-19 08:23

Well said, Bharat!

You aren't just "The Man with The Plan", I am seeing that you are also a man with a Heart of Gold.

And it's like you said...."deep down, we all know the truth about what's driving their website."

But deep down inside I know that I'm hoping they feel a small pang of conscience and acknowledge Gallery in some capacity. Just because I think it's the right thing to do.

Gaile

P.S. It wasn't me that messed with their demo. I didn't know you could! :P

 
spanelr
spanelr's picture

Joined: 2003-07-11
Posts: 8
Posted: Tue, 2003-09-23 03:33

One of the features listed on http://www.photomachine.net/products.html:

Quote:
Edit the thumbnail. Gallery comes with a small Java applet that lets you select a part of the image as the source for your thumbnail.

Freudian slip perhaps? he he...

Bharat, you deserve recognition for powering their website. Could all this lead to a commercial license for Gallery in the future? It could be a great way for you and your extremely talented dev team to reap some additional benefit.

Thank you,

Bob Spanel