Woah this topic got crazy when I wasn’t looking… Here’s my 2c:
Hostility
To be honest, I’m a little embarrassed at how toxic this thread has become. I recommend EroScripts really highly to anyone I encounter in various other places related to scripting like Discord and Reddit. For a company to come here to recruit scripting partners is a huge gesture of confidence in the strength and relevance of EroScripts.
When a company reaches out to involve the community, treating them like shit isn’t going to convince them to change their ways to satisfy your opinions - it’ll just stop them from reaching out altogether.
Employee Scripters vs Partners
SLR is a company that exists to make money and mitigate risk. If they’ve made the business decision to partner with independent scripters rather than take on full or part-time employees, that’s totally up to them. It’s not exploitation, simply risk management. As interactive scripts become more popular and revenues increase, SLR will naturally want to have contracted employees in people like @realcumber and @raser1 to prevent them from being snapped up by competition. But right now, the technology is still too new and nascent to allow them to make that choice. Stop expecting companies to do the morally right thing at the expense of their bottom-line. If you think that they’re making the wrong decision, then start your own company to do it better and out-compete them.
SLR’s Revenue Sharing Choices
The revenue share is what it is. If you don’t like it, don’t take it. If the revenue share truly is too low, then SLR will find themselves without enough scripters, and they’ll be forced to increase it. If lots of people are taking it, then by definition it’s sufficient. Nobody is creating scripts as their main profession, so there isn’t anyone in a situation where they have no choice but to accept or their family goes hungry.
As for me personally, I would probably have set up the revenue share differently, but it’s not up to me, and I have no intention of creating scripts professionally, so ultimately I don’t really have a say what it should be. If scripters are accepting it, then it’s good. If they’re not, then it’s too low. It really is that simple.
OFS vs JFS
There’s nothing wrong with creating a clone of existing software for the purposes of adding features that don’t exist in the current version. JFS is listed as “personal use only” and hasn’t been publicly updated in eight months. Creating an open-sourced, frequently updated clone is a totally normal thing to happen in that situation.
Paid Scripts vs Free Scripts
Paid scripts, featured prominently in other platforms, increases visibility of the technology and grows its userbase. That means more companies can safely invest in the technology, which results in more scripts, devices, apps and features for all of us.
People who think that paid scripts ‘take away’ from the body of free scripts are being short-sighted - if there’s no money in the technology, device manufacturers will go out of business and content platforms will stop investing.
