Home›Notes›AndrewP suspended, penalised

Andrew Boon

645 days ago in 
Tags: boonex, unity, market, andrewp, suspension
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AndrewP suspended, penalised

I hate to post this, but too many people are (or may be) affected, so this whole thing has to go public.

Account of AndrewP (aka Aramis) has just been suspended until Monday. On Monday we're pulling all "points" from that account.

Additionally, I have to say that in the beginning of June AndreyP has been dismissed as a BoonEx employee.

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Here's why:

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1. Dismissal from BoonEx. We have grown unhappy with quality of code and programming approach of AndreyP and gradually removed him from developing any significant parts of Dolphin. The largest part of planned 7.1 refactoring consists of removing all modules and code produced by AndreyP (i.e. blogs, ads, nav-menu, uploaders, and some others). The last few months of his work in BoonEx only included quick bug-fixes of his modules, while we were waiting until we could work on 7.1. The last "drop" was the #2...

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2. Suspension of Aramis account. In the beginning of June we have received a report suggesting that one of the Aramis' mods was using large pieces of another Unity member's product. Unfortunately, we verified this report as true. AndreyP has been fired immediately and his Aramis account was suspended. He received the following statement on June 2nd:

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Hello Andrey,
You account "Aramis" has been permanently suspended. You, personally, are not banned from working at Unity, so if you choose to create a new profile and upload products that do not violate anybody's copyrights, we would not suspend it. However, if you are found selling or otherwise distributing (at Unity or elsewhere) products that violate copyrights, or otherwise brake Unity rules, any of your new accounts will be suspended as soon as identified as yours.
Reasons:
1. Being a BoonEx employee, you are not only bound by Unity Rules, but you are also under additional scrutiny, and should behave absolutely honestly when selling your own products. You should not serve as a bad example of dodgy behaviour. BoonEx team spends a lot of time trying to keep Unity clear of copycats, and can't afford an account associated with a BoonEx employee to be doing anything unethical.
2. When copying parts of Unity member's code you could have asked for his permission, personally, and act according to his reply. Even if they are only minor pieces of code.
3. After comparing files, we have found enough similarities to see that parts of code have been indeed copied. This alone leaves little trust for our future relationship.
Effective immediately, account Aramis is permanently suspended.
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You are dismissed from your role of a BoonEx Developer. BoonEx will no longer order any of your services. And you are no longer deemed a BoonEx Contractor, BoonEx Employee or BoonEx Developer. You should not in any way pronounce yourself being currently associated with BoonEx.
Reason:
1. Systematically poor quality of code and failure to improve your coding practices. Recent work on full Dolphin code re-factoring revealed huge amount of inferior code submitted by you.
2. Deceitful activity as an independent developer. Basing your own products on customer feature requests, 3rd party free and commercial products, and even products of your team-mates.

Andrew Boon

Director
BoonEx Pty Ltd
Community Software Experts
http://www.boonex.com

======================================================

Since that day, AndrewP created a new account and replied with a promise to only sell products based on his own code.

 

3. Suspension of AndrewP account. Today, I have come across a new product submitted by AndrewP - a "chatroulette clone", which was advertised as his own, but descriptions, screenshots and obviously the product itself were copied from http://www.camchatscript.com/. I have huge respect to people creating their own products and have zero tolerance to those using them without permission. AndrewP explained this as an "integration", but it's not how it was presented. At first I have suspended his account permanently, but after discussion with AndrewP and his new promises decided that we will go with a softer penalty again, for the last one time.

The main reason for softening the penalty, however, is that there are many Unity Members that use his products and rely on their support. And this is also the reason for making this case public. Buyer discretion strongly advised.

I hope that this would serve as a good lesson for both AndrewP and anyone who may think about selling products based on on illegal use of copyrighted materials here on Unity. I also hope that AndrewP would continue supporting his customers and providing Dolphin extensions without breaking rules ever again, but I may not advice that anyone should rely on it, so be careful.

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Sorry for posting this not-so-positive piece on Friday, but I really had to. We build BoonEx as a "different" company, a better company. We make mistakes and sometimes fail to deliver what our customer expect, but we always try hard and always stick to our core values, one of which is honesty. So, I decided that we should neither cover it up, nor just warn him and "let it slide".

A very relevant quote: And I thought about that and I decided that Apple can't afford to change its core values and simply let it slide. (Steve Jobs, at AllThingsDigital).

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martinboi
martinboi•645 days ago
 
I really appreciate the honesty. This is something that will ripple through the whole community and will hopefully motivate everyone to tighten up the reigns on their development and distribution of products. Boonex is headed in the right direction, and I respect the fact that you did not compromise the core values, even when it came to a reputable team member.
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cbassthefish
cbassthefish•645 days ago
 
Oh dear. Poor show :o( The CamChat had caught my eye earlier and I did wonder where it had disappeared to. Ah well, let us put Aramisgate behind us and move toward getting the CPU issues sorted ;o)
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houstonlively
houstonlively•645 days ago
 
@ Andrew Boon

Please tell me that his 'Group Scheduler' module and 'Group Albums' module do no fall into any undesirable categories. I had a little bit of input on those as far as what features were necessary. In a PM, he mentioned that he was interested in developing a mod that integrated a chat roulette clone. I tried to talk him out of wasting his time on it.... that type of system is famous for really seedy users, and will turn any site it's used on, into a sleazy porn site. I guess he see more had already made his mind up to do the integration. But.... if a sleazy porn site is your goal... I guess that kind of mod is for you.

Asa far a removing Aramis uploader code from Dolphin, may I assume that you are not referring to swfUploader? SWF Uploader is a good plugin and it's well supported.
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UFO360
UFO360•645 days ago
 
Waooo

I can believe this happen to AndrewP or Aramis he is my favorite developer here on Boonex like Deano
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LightWolf
LightWolf•645 days ago
 
Nothing worse then getting caught with your hand in someone else's cookie jar. Nice to see the truth posted and a warning to others that stealing others hard work is NOT okay with us members on here or the staff.
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Zarcon
Zarcon•645 days ago
 
Wow.. Makes you wonder who may be doing the same things huh. I will have to congratulate you on making this publicly known. This goes to show that BoonEx is really determined to "clean house", whether its with Unity members or it's staff members.
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Nathan Paton
Nathan Paton•645 days ago
 
This was a very surprising announcement.
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zigojacko
zigojacko•645 days ago
 
To be honest, AndrewP was the one developer that has not only produced modules I require for my site that no others had but even built a module on my request that my site cannot function without. I obviously haven't purchased all of his modules but for those that I have and there were no others like it, I am hugely grateful and I think his modules are outstanding.
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wolf2217
wolf2217•645 days ago
 
What makes it worse is that this offense was commited by a now ex-boonex employee.
I thought for sure he would know better...more than anyone else on here.
Sometimes ones who work on the team or with the company are ones you need to pay closer attention to cause some feel it's ok to break the rules.
It's good to see that EVERYONE is being rewarded/punished fairly based on their actions.
It's a shame to hear it but greatful to know that there are no favorites and i think that was proven.
Thanks see more for the post.
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Diddy
Diddy•645 days ago
 
my experiences with AndrewP were good and positive.
AndrewP, please look positive into the future, I trust you, so please keep up the positive work!

We all will get over it and and you definitive need to get a second chance!

Peace, Love & Understanding. Trust & Respect comes within!

Thanks Andrew Boon, such issues need to be known to all of us!
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124c41plus
124c41plus•644 days ago
 
@ Andrew Boon

Appreciate your honest admission that at least 1 developer has been designing mods based on members' requests instead of building them into the Dolphin core. It has renewed my faith in your vision and administration.

Many wonderful features, like allowing for recurring payments, were lost from D6 to D7, and these need to be reincorporated. Numerous members have posted their frustrations to no avail, wondering if anyone was listening. Other features are sorely needed. It seems see more ridiculous that there is no membership action to allow for selling to the public. Plus, making it easy for members to sell tangible goods would not only increase their profitability from the sites they've worked so hard to build and maintain, but also bring additional Boonex customers to your door.

It is sad that a developer's dismissal, especially someone who has contributed so much to the project and is clearly respected by many, was required for you to be able to move forward. Now, it seems that in your present plan to make the necessary, serious, and substantial revisions to the code you speak of, the potential in 7.1 to bring to reality the important features requested by members truly exists. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I applaud your efforts to shine it.
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killerhaai
killerhaai•644 days ago
 
I have some mods from AndrewP and had no problems with him at all. Always fast and correct support. I hope That He will stay on Dolphin. His mods are better than most others.

Thanks AndrewP for your work.
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adultnet
adultnet•644 days ago
 
I totally agree with killerhaai he was he good and he was helping the others,
now if it is matter of boonex politics, or how boonex works i cant say anything.
I just want to ask :
if someone like AndrewP just want to sale his mods why he cant ?
to still a piece of code or using it better to say is normal happens everywhere and always,
I have seen this happening with Andrew mods too.
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Andrew Boon
Andrew Boon•643 days ago•in reply to adultnet
 
No matter how good a person is, he may not brake the rules, neither the rules of this site, nor laws. One may not steal even if he's a generally good and helpful person; one may also not steal even if somebody steals from him. So, to answer your question - if somebody wants to sell their mods - it great. If somebody wants to sell somebody else's products as their mods - it's bad.
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dddolphin
dddolphin•644 days ago
 
@ Andrew Boon

Boonex did not copied one line of code from anywhere.??? Not even by googling for anything?? If yes that is strange.....
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Andrew Boon
Andrew Boon•643 days ago•in reply to dddolphin
 
Whenever we use somebody else's code we always make sure we have the right to do so. Our product is very transparent, and we pass responsibilities on to our clients too, so we have to be careful. BoonEs software doesn't include any known copyright violations.

And even if did copy somebody else's code, even if we were dishonest, that wouldn't change anything in this situation.
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Nathan Paton
Nathan Paton•644 days ago
 
@adultnet: I suppose it's alright to steal code from others for your payed modifications, then?

@dddolphin: There's a difference between utilizing properly licensed code (e.g., GPL, CC, PD, etc.) and stealing code from others without their permission.
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richmanfl
richmanfl•644 days ago
 
I can say that a few of the developers on here who have been listed as "issues" on here have actually been great programmers in their own right. AndrewP has been one of the few developers on here that actually does take the time to work with someone on making changes and adding features back that I feel are critical to the core of Dolphin. When you post in the forums that you have an issue, and get totally ignored after asking for help, I have been able to turn to AndrewP for assistance, see more and he was always there to cleanup things that no one else wanted to take responsibility for.

I have personally worked with him for weeks on several of his newer projects, and guided him into creating, testing, and writing specifications for each module to perform well. I qualify my expertise, as I have worked on projects for the US Congress to actually test Internet voting as well as support software and applications running on hundreds of the billion dollar cruise ships all over the world.

AndrewP has not hacked or left open doors like some of the past coders that were on D6, nor has he taken money and never completed his work like some people have (which are no longer here). Every programmer has his own style of coding and I can give a project to 2 different programmers and the code will be completely different at the end. Which one is a better programmer if both do what they were spec'd to do? If he was not living up to the principals of working on the core of Dolphin as an employee, that is Boonex's prerogative to handle, But to cut off a person who not only gives good service, but also has a fantastic rating from customers is really stupid.
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Andrew Boon
Andrew Boon•643 days ago•in reply to richmanfl
 
What you've said is exactly the reason why Andrey, even after the SECOND warning, is still allowed here. This post, however, shows that we are taking this issue seriously and no matter how good or important a member is for BoonEx, he would have to face penalties for doing breaking rules.

I wish Andrey good luck and hope we wouldn't have to raise this subject ever again.
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houstonlively
houstonlively•644 days ago
 
I will say one thing about AndrewP's modules, and I've purchased several of them. Whenever I found a problem with any of them, he was very prompt at fixing them. I wish I could say the same about a different Boonex coder, that I purchased a mod from.

@ Andrew Boon .... I will agree that AndrewP's product descriptions don't always credit the Open Source code that he integrates, but I also know that English is not his primary language. Perhaps it's not an intent to deceive, rather a language see more barrier when trying to describe your product in a secondary language(English).
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Andrew Boon
Andrew Boon•643 days ago•in reply to houstonlively
 
It could have been a language barrier issue, but we have discussed both cases in Russian and in mutually understandable terms, and, unfortunately, I was right.

I hear a lot of positive feedback about the way Andrey supports his products, and that's why he's still allowed to stay.
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hd4real
hd4real•644 days ago
 
This is sad to read. No one is perfect. I have also purchased from him with no problems. I hope he will still support his customers.
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DosDawg
DosDawg•644 days ago
 
Andrew,
this is sad news indeed, however, this is also not something that is really news to the members of Unity. There have been others who reported the same and were left ignored. I am speaking of the whole ordeal here, the bad coding practices, the perusing trac and developing mods to sell in the market rather than fix the issue in the core of the application. There are others doing the same, and I think a full and complete inventory of the entire development staff would produce others who are see more 'as guilty' as Aramis.

I think the public announcement of firing AndrewP is in and of itself unethical, and in the US that would be grounds for a lawsuit, because that is tarnishment of ones reputation, and detrimental to long term income. Regardless of the reasons for the dismissal, there is absolutely no reason to exploit the situation using Andrew's name.

When eyewayrobbery was removed from the unity membership his name was not exploited by you, and there was no public reason given by you, and where AndrewP was an actual employee of BoonEx, this matter should have been handled in more privacy. I do not agree with the public announcement on this, and find it disturbing.

Regards,
DosDawg

Aramis, you can always move over to modmysite he allows selling of others work, and even allows for those who visit his site the instructions on how to rip off the dolphin application. this has been pointed out, and nothing done about it. Conflict of Interest?
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Andrew Boon
Andrew Boon•643 days ago•in reply to DosDawg
 
This announcement is part of the deal which Andrey agreed to. Initially I suspended his account, but he wanted to stay and this post was an alternative, which he went for.
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