Smartstore violates nopCommerce license terms!!! Let's discuss

Andrei originally posted this here, but for its relevance I took the freedom to open a special topic for this case.

a.m. wrote:

It is very unpleasant to find out that some greedy and shameless individuals want to make business by trying to circumvent the law. They are trying to find legal loopholes to avoid paying or complying with the requirements and costs (which by the way are minimum) of the resources which   they are using for their business purposes.

I fully agree with Andrei's arguments but unfortunately I am not a lawyer to   determine whether the actions of these individuals are "legal", but I do know they are unethical and immoral.

As a member of the Nop community (and I am sure most other members share my opinion) I want Andrei's and the rest of the teams efforts focused  int he development of this great e-commerce solution. So here are some ideas of actions that we can take to help the Nop Team in this matter:

- Let us have our opinion heard in Smartstore and other public forums such as these in Codeplex. It could include something like "WARNING: Smartstore rejected to meet nopCommerce license terms. Users of Smartstore  products migh also be in violation of nopCommerce licence!!" with a link to this forum topic.

- I have lawyer friends here, and in the USA and Germany. In case of needed (Andrei: please PM me if you want it) I would request their informed opinion and guidelines to proceed. In such a case, for strategic reasons,  I will not publish their writings unless Andrei considers it important.

UPDATE (4/April/14)

Summary of Events
- The case was taken to court
- Smartstore strategy has been to continue to copy all the new features from nopCommerceto and to postpone the case as much as they can. Read Andrei's comments in this page
- Court held on April 3 with good results for Nop ... Smartstore might soon be gone


UPDATE (17/July/14)

The case is almost over. nopCommerce won the first instance! Please find more info here

Thanks, Eduardo!

eadameg wrote:
Agree. And I already posted such warning about two weeks ago but it was deleted by smartstore team on the next day without any public reply. I've also seen several posts by other users on its Discussions page but all of them were also deleted at the same day

eadameg wrote:
Thanks. PM'ed you.

eadameg wrote:

Agree with you. +1

Maybe these guys can help: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/about/contact/

"On the homepage" wrote:

keesjan wrote:
Thanks

jariwalakrunal wrote:

I will do it everyday specially at Europe's midnight time or later. I don't mind if they erase it. I will do it over and over. I encourage other community members to do the same. maybe at different times.

eadameg wrote:
If you post here (https://smartstore.codeplex.com/releases/view/107361) they cannot erase it

eadameg wrote:

Hi Eduardo,

Good find!  It is great that you found a place where they can't delete it.  But I guess putting it everywhere will still make a point because at least they have to read it before deleting it. :-)

Does anyone know German?

Here is their company website: http://www.smartstore-net.com and here (http://www.smartstore.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=80) is their community forums.

If someone knows German, they could alert smarterstore.net customers that they needed to add the powered by nopcommerce to avoid copyright infringement.

Tim2376 wrote:
You have to go throu a complex authorization process before you can post in that forum

eadameg wrote:

oh, I didn't see that.  The German was enough to stop me. :-)

Is there any way to contact the owners of codeplex, Microsoft, and and ask them if they could do one of the following?

1) force the powered by nopcommerce into the smarterstore project

2) add a warning on smarterstore's codeplex page notifying people that they had to add it or buy a license from nopcommerce

3) or block their account until they were willing to comply?

I know this would not be a real solution to the problem, but it might help for now.