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

jariwalakrunal wrote:
Great initiative. Lets all of us contribute

JonNopper wrote:
Agree. Thanks.

By the way, the new product logic is not the only difference. SmarStore misses multi-store and multi-vendor support. It also has real performance issues with large number of products. I could sound weird, but it's also a bad practice to have such presentation theme. It looks good but it's really hard to customize. A default theme in open-source projects should always be as simple and clean as possible. If you have a look SmartStore showcase, then you'll see that all of them are the absolutely same because of such theme. It's a bad practice

And it still has a lot of bugs which were fixed in nopCommerce long time ago.

a.m. wrote:

Agreed. About theme too, having such a default theme could be an issue especially with customization. An opensource project must have simple default theme. And at the pace that nopCommerce makes progress, the Smartstore will become ancient.

And, as promised, here is the first update. A CEO of one of our German solution partners (nopDynamics), Mr. Jörg Hubacher, kindly recommended me a very good law company specializing in such cases. He also helps with cooperation in this case. Glad that we have such a great solution partner. By the way, I would also like to the thank the community members for advices and recommendations (especially Eduardo).

So I've already hired this law company. And the legal case is going on. It can take some time because it still depends on some external factors. But I was told that the case is bulletproof. Well, of course =)))

I'll keep you informed about the results or any further steps taken.

Hi,

I originally posted this comparison here but SmartStore moderator has deleted it. It's okay, here are the comparison after we analyzed both solution SmartStore vs nopCommerce.

SmartStore
•  good and visually appealing default theme. I agree, I like the theme. But as a default theme it is difficult to customize. The default theme must be simple.
•  few region specific plugin
•  few minor enhancement in admin area ( @SmartStore. Sorry, but I don't find any major meaningful enhancement in smartstore, if there are any please list it)
•  copied source code from the nopCommerce (note that it's copied and yet does not acknowledge nopCommerce license terms, which could be an issue for any serious retailer for long term)

nopCommerce

Compared to SmartStore, nopCommerce is better choice. Why? Read more..

•  Simple default theme, but many choice of free and premium themes from nopCommerce solution vendors which is larger than SmartStore
•  written and maintain by original contributor, well thought out, planned implementation
•  nopCommerce is evolving faster than SmartStore with many newer features
•  project is maintained in open manner, I mean you can influence and ask the nopCommerce team to add new features. And its public repository is available for everyone to access. Check http://nopcommerce.codeplex.com/SourceControl/list/changesets?page=1 you can see daily commits made to the project. Now look at SmartStore's repository.. https://smartstore.codeplex.com/SourceControl/list/changesets?page=1. Only two commit made, and that are in May. This gives a clear indication that SmartStore is not maintained properly, and its not a open source project in real terms!
•  Active forum with large user base
•  Many plugins and themes. And its easier to implement a new plugin & theme for nopCommerce.
•  If you're looking for help on customization, you'll find someone easily for nopCommerce platform.
•  Many features are already added to the nopCommerce which are not available in SmartStore. (Of-course, SmartStore can copy them easily)

There are many other points but I just tried to list the most important points for comparison. If you have any other points to add, feel free to add.

Thanks

And, as promised, here is the second update. So we've already hired the law company some time ago. By German laws our lawyer first had to write a warning letter to SmartStore before going to court. So he did it. He had some correspondence with a lawyer of SmartStore (4-5 letters).

I won't write about all points. But here is the most interesting one. SmartStore guys said that they had downloaded nopCommerce from CodePlex and its license was GPLv2 (not NPL) at the momeent. They don't care that nopCommerce license should be read on the official site (www.nopcommerce.com) and not on Codeplex (this is not the official site). But OK. They referenced to this link (license achieve) that the license was GPLv2 at some moment. Of course, it was done on CodePlex only, and only because CodePlex team required some time (these 7 days) to manually edit the license text (codeplex project owners cannot directly edit custom license text). But as you can see it was so only from August 2, 2011 till August 8, 2011. At that moment (August 2011) nopCommerce 2.00 was just released. But SmartStore was derivative from version 2.70 which was released in 15 months only (end of November 2012)! Feel the difference? After that question and asking to clarify this point a SmartStore lawyer just started ignoring our lawyer =))

So now our nopCommerce lawyer prepares all documents to go to court and start a legal case to stop it.

I understand that SmartStore owners are trying to use any chance and postpone the legal case. But the final result is obvious for everybody. It's just a matter of time. Maybe, they are hoping that I'll just stop or don't have money for a lawyer. Maybe, something else. No way! Now they just aggravate their current conditions.

I'll keep you informed about the results or any further steps taken.

Smartstore is dying by itself; see their project lifetime download statistics or their sleepy discussions forum and their documentation

If you want you can post your review here and they cannot delete it ;-))

a.m. wrote:

Hi Andrei,

Thanks for sharing an update.  Let us know when the court case will be.  I wish you the best... I am sure justice will prevail.

This not an update about the legal case. But just wanted to share some interesting findings with you.

I've just looked at the development branch of SmartStore on CodePlex. These guys continue to copy features from nopCommerce. For example, have a look at their multi-store support. They just copied all code from 3.00 and 3.10 versions. No real enhancements even made! Furthermore, very often they copied it introducing some new issues. These guys are really very talented =)))

How about their "5 site showcase"? I always thought that sites in any showcase should look a bit different (not just a new logo and a couple of CSS style changes)

a.m. wrote:

Sorry, we didn't know that your code was in need of improvement. In future we will take this into account.

But honestly, you should also check all the other commits and not just concentrate on one single branch. Perhaps you'll find some interesting stuff for nop ;-)