Read a few of the comments from the first pricing announcement here. You will notice that the general vibe from the community was negative when the original pricing model was released. Here’s why I was turned away.

1. The project used to be free and open source. Any price increase will turn away customers, but going to a massive fee from free is a large and dramatic jump. Many people were using this as a free alternative to Basecamp, and since it’s no longer free, those customers are lost.
2. The up front cost is pretty high. Not only is the initial price not appealing, but some people just can’t plain afford it.
3. Upgrades & support was expensive. On top of the initial large expense, it was expensive to maintain your software. Upgrades are imperative as security holes can present a problem with your website.
4. Limitations were useless. The versions limited the number of projects which was pointless because it didn’t cost aC any more money if you hosted more projects because the script is hosted by the customers.

The last three of these issues were resolved in the revised pricing model.  One of the mistakes I think they made with their first pricing model was that they tried to make their project appealing to both the open source world as well as the proprietary world.  That’s tricky to do if not impossible.  In the most recent pricing model, at the time of this writing, addressed that.  Ilija decided to drop the free version, and as it did turn away some people, I believe it was the right thing to do.  It is clear that they are more focused on making money off of the non-free version, and as they said on the website, someone else will pick up the slack in that area.

So although it’s not free, I find this pricing model more plausible as a solution for me and several others out there, but the most commendable thing was the fact that they were willing to make such a change based on the commenter’s suggestions and complaints.  Good job, aC.

The pricing announcement was posted early this morning CDT, and the general vibe in the comments of the announcement page is not looking good. I, personally, am not impressed with the decision at all. I was excited to see an open source alternative to Basecamp for as long as it lasted. Yes, it was known that aC was going to go through some changes in the licensing and pricing. That was announced back in beginning of the year (blog post), but this change was far more radical than most people were expecting.

Back in February when the announcement was made, Ilija Studen kept the user’s confidence up by saying:

You will not lose your data, don’t worry.

Can’t tell much about licensing, but we will most probably go with something used by profit oriented open source projects (MySQL, SugarCRM…) One thing is for sure – there will be a free and open source version that match current feature set so current users will not be let down when 1.0 gets launched.

Whole point of this transformation is to provide more value to users, not to drive them away. We are aware that some people will now like the idea of profit oriented open source project, but still being able to provide good support, dedicated development team and guaranty that we’ll be here next year is something that we find really important. Hope that most of the users agree with us on that.

I’m not really sure how “there will be a free and open source version that match current feature set”. The new free version limits to 5 projects, and the old version [0.71] had no project limit at all. Apparently, the coders in aC land got a little more greedy along the way.

I find it a shame that such a good project has turned more towards the mid-size companies because I know that I will not be forking out $2k for a script that will sit on the same server with an operating system that was free.

So then how is the company that made aC supposed to make a living? They got to eat too, right? I agree that everybody has to earn a living. There are many ways that open source projects make money including accepting donations, selling advertising space, and charging for support. Maybe that will be a future article.

You can read comments I posted on that activeCollab post here and here.

Update: The aC team has since updated their pricing. That information can be found here.

First, I don’t understand that the owner of whyfirefoxisblocked.com thinks that Mozilla is responsible for the extension and actually encourages people to contact Mozilla about it. Here’s the reality to that false statement, taken from Mozilla’s site:

“Mozilla is providing links to these applications as a courtesy, and makes no representations regarding the applications or any information related there to. Any questions, complaints or claims regarding the applications must be directed to the appropriate software vendor.”

The owner of whyfirefoxisblocked.com carelessly states that Mozilla is responsible, which Mozilla states they are not on the extension page itself.

Why Blocking Firefox Doesn’t Work

Let me start of my reasoning with two major flaws that applies to most every type of filter – honest people are offended by it, and the target people get around it. In this case somebody using Firefox without Adblock will not get the right to use their browser on the sites they want, and the people that do use Adblock can easily get around the filter by changing their user agent. That in inself is reason enough not to block all traffic from that browser.

Also, the people all for blocking FF apparently did not notice that Adblock Pro is available for MS Internet Explorer as well.

I was blocked! What can I do now?

If you were blocked just from using Firefox, don’t worry, they can’t really keep you out. The first thing you need to do is download the User Agent Switcher. Then, after restarting your browser, click on Tools > User Agent Switcher > Internet Explorer (or other browser if you wish). That’s it, you’re in!

If you want to make it more interesting, I suggest you get more creative with your user agent when browsing these specific sites. Change your user agent to say something like “IUseABP_YouCantBlockMe”, or maybe link to this article or others that are out there. Be creative and let these site owners know that they can’t block us!

UPDATE (Aug 24): It would seem that Danny Carlton of JackLewis.net has found a tricky way to detect weather if the browser is IE or not by using a JavaScript method, but don’t worry. It took me all of 30 seconds to figure out how to get around that, too. Along with setting your custom user agent, you will also have to download the Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox. Once you install that and restart your browser, click on the Disable button on the toolbar and disable JavaScript & Meta Redirects. That will prevent him from redirecting you to the inaccurate “I Hate Firefox” page and also keep you from being redirected to his “you must enable JavaScript so I can redirect you to my ‘I Hate Firefox’ page”.

Using my methods, you can access these sites using Firefox (Screenshot 1) as well as Internet Explorer with Adblock Pro (Screenshot 2).

If ads are blocked on my site, how am I supposed to pay the expenses?

Well there are a couple of methods to either getting your ads noticed or earning revenue some other way.

• Kindly ask people to disable it on your site, and only use non-intrusive ads.
  Pretty much the only ads I don’t mind seeing are Google’s text ads. They are non-intrusive and are relevant to the page. If you, the site owner, assure me that your ads aren’t annoying, I will disable it for your site. The reason I have Adblock running is because I’m tired of seeing banners like the one I posted below. This is my textbook example of “annoying”.
  
• Have paid sponsors and list them as normal links or images.
  Adblock shouldn’t block them as it can’t tell the difference between those and normal links. Plus, it’s probably better for you to take out the middle man and offer ad space yourself. PracticeBoard is one example, and their ads aren’t even blocked on my browser.
• Have a donation button, and say something like “Since you see no ads, how about $5 for the useful information?”
  I pay sites like wunderground.com $10 a year to not show the ads even though I know AdBlock blocks them anyway. I understand they have to eat, too.

So to sum this all up…

Blocking Firefox is fruitless because 1) not all Firefox users use Adblock, and 2) not all Adblock users use Firefox. By blocking Firefox, you show that you don’t know how to design a website that is appealing to your visitors the way it is. I suggest that you, the site owner, take another hard look at your website and take some tips mentioned above in making your ads more appealing and less intrusive.

P.S.

I should also note that a rumor is going around that the site was hacked. Although it would be funny, the original site (whyfirefoxisblocked.com) is alive and well. People were just confusing it with a similar domain, whyisfirefoxblocked.com.

First, I would like to start with some positive example before I get into the bad example. A good example of moderated forums is phpbb.com/community. Their moderators are extremely active in keeping topics on track, removing spam, and enforcing board policies. Furthermore, I have found that they do not delete topics, they just lock them and delete spam material as necessary (and replacing it with “[spam]”). I have found that this tremendously helps the forums maintain transparency.

Now for a bad example. I was Stumbling, when I came across getswiftfox.org. See for yourself, it’s pretty interesting, and there is definitely somebody unhappy with the product. This in itself didn’t make me stop using the program. I won’t do that based on one site’s (or person’s) opinion. I proceeded to the program’s main site for more information on what the issue was. It appeared that there was a hot topic about the closed source license of SwiftFox. I then went to this topic. One of the main phrases that stuck out was “He didn’t just close my two previous threads, but deleted my account and banned my IP.” Apparently, the site admin (and program writer) banned a user because they seemed to be asking questions he didn’t want to answer. Because I see somebody complaining of over-moderation, it makes me wonder what else this guy is deleting, and because of that, I no longer trust the program.

Final thoughts: if you have a forum for personal or business use, be careful on how you moderate them because it can easily backfire.