Hi,
Sorry, I seem to be missing what you are trying to say
Do you mean to ask about the rights one would get when using actions downloaded from the ecosystem?
Do you mean, what if someone is "selling" through the ecosystem?
Let me make some bullet points to be perfectly clear about the ecosystem as it is and how I hope it can become:
- The ecosystem is only a more convenient way to access content that otherwise is spreaded amongst the forum and the wiki, so there is no extra rights or usage issues with what you get from the ecosystem.
- you are free to reuse these custom actions as part of a package you will sell. I don't see anything wrong in this. We are selling projects that use Unity and PlayMaker, and this is fine. I think the same goes one level down where it's fine to sell a tool or a sample that use custom actions you found on the forum, they are for you to do great stuff and if you become rich thanks to that, this is great! Let's draw the line where someone would just sell a bunch of custom actions taken from the wiki or forum or ecosystem, that would be lame and silly.... but we've seen this in other fields for sure...
- I personnaly don't plan on selling anything through the ecosystem. Everything MUST remain public and freely accessible.
- I am currently brainstorming how I can scan your project for let's say Ngui or else, and then when you search, you would get ngui related actions listed, so that I am sure that if you download that action, you wont' get an error because Ngui is missing.
- IF I get to that point, I think it will be fine too, because it will be clearly stipulated that an action requires this and that from the asset store or else, and you won't be able to download it if I haven't checked your project that indeed this asset is present, so you are safe here too.
- I may ( and that's going to be passed through Alex in all cases) begin to provide advanced features that I would charge monthly, so you would register as a member of the ecosystem, and access premium features such as favorites, custom packages bundles, custom ways of searching, etc etc. but in no way that's going to give you access to content otherwise hidden to non paying members.
- I am also tinkering with the idea of providing a way for people to sponsor the ecosystem with a convenient paypal button or something, because I do believe a lot of you appreciate the amount of work behind this ( custom actions dev and support in general) and would happily share back or invest in a way into this to become bigger and sustain.
- In all cases, ALL CONTENT WILL REMAIN FREELY ACCESSIBLE TO ANYONE. Since the basics of the ecosystem is to host EVERYTHING on public github repositories, so people that are ok with github can actually synchronize the very sources of the ecosystem and shunt the browser all together. and I am fine with this, I actually encourage it, the ecosystem browser is simply to get an action quicker in your project.
- In case some authors step in and start committing a large amount of actions and various content ( which I also encourage and will work on features to allow for this), they will understand the nature of the ecosystem as being delivered for free, so I don't think that anytime soon, you would get cornered into having to pay for this service. Even tho, I must say that it would be better in an ideal world... The amount of work and effort to maintain all of this is really something that Alex is backing up big time, and this is not something that can sustain the way Unity and PlayMaker are growing. I mean I paid 100$ 3 years ago... that's all Alex got from me so far... while I spent about more than $6000 to Unity in license in those 3 years and Unity 5 is already on pre sale... there is something to address here for PlayMaker to sustain. That's of course my humble opinion.
- If one day it becomes clear that some custom actions have such a great value that they must be purchased, I would think that either it would be a departure from the ecosystem and be rebranded somehow for clarity. I would think that this case would mean a lot of changes in Unity world as we know it. There is more and more pressure ( it seems) from alternative and micro payment is a good business model after all, so what if some actions would be charges few cents or even a dollar? would that be a terrible move? would that be positivly perceived as a way to make the ecosystem sustain and be encouraged and embraced like the huge success Unity has with its asset store business model? That seems to work for IOS, Windows, Android, this "store" model, Could the ecosystem adopt this model too? some stuff free, some stuff not?
- I still think that the asset store is lacking many critical features, and ideally, the ecosystem could be a way to address that. But the task is just overwhelming for little me... so I'll go easy and step by step, but if you think about that the ecosystem could become, this is awesome! So during that time, it's very important that you express your feelings, needs and worries on all of this.
Bye,
Jean