Should Stardock pay royalties to theme artists?


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An artist I know recently decided to quit making themes because he basically decided he didnt want to continue having certain companies make money off his work. My question for you all is do you think a company who charges yearly subscriptions to use its software should be required to pay royalties to all the themers whose work said software is using? In certain aspects this would be like itunes distributing artist songs without paying the artists, yet making money off a subscription to their song distribution.

What do you guys think?

Edited by leedogg
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A) stardock only provides software

B) on what basis does a theme get money, hoe many people use it? How 'good' it is? or just any6body who spits soemthign out gets $$

C) There are alternitives, its not like they have a monopoly

D) do you want micorsoft to pay royalties to every single pice of sftware built for windows, because ultimatley its no difrent, hey M$ should be paying stardock......

E) themers shoulnt do it for the money, thats the dumbest thing ive ever heard

F) tons of work is put into stardock software, and it realy is quite the suite. They diserve the money they get.

G) its the dumbest idea ive ever heard

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If artists are in it for the money I think they could use their talents somewhere else, where they can make a better income. I also don't think Stardock should be charging for their software.

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well, if they give them proper credit for their work, then they shouldn't pay. if I was making themes, a simple mention of my name would be good for me.

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I agree with lostspyder. Microsoft doesn't pay themers either even though I paid for my windows (which I need to be able to use the themes)

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Why is it so far fetched? They are already selling themes of their own. How hard would it be to build in monthly theme usage logging then pay royalties to artists whose themes are used the most?

They would be kicking back some of the money to the artists whose work pretty much drives their software. Without the artist's (free) contributions, nobody would use their software. This might even encourage artists to make themes for them. Artists dont need to do it for the money, but it doesnt hurt either... If stardock offered their software for free and artists provided free themes, no problem. But stardock charges for their software and then relies on the freely made work of the artitsts. Everybody made such a hoopla over that guy on ebay that was selling free visual styles. Well what if I converted all those free visual styles for my software, then charged for that software and made all those converted(free) themes available? The end difference is very little to me. I'm paying somebody for the use of freely made work.

microsoft is completely different. People sell their own software to be used in Windows. If MS charged companies that made software using their OS nobody would make software for them and then nobody would by that OS.

Edited by leedogg
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microsoft is completely different. People sell their own software to be used in Windows. If MS charged companies that made software using their OS nobody would make software for them and then nobody would by that OS.

Ever heard of visual studio?

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leedogg man what's wrong with you? If anyone wants money he can sell his themes, stardock only distributes skins that have been uploaded and with permission. Just look at Pixtutio, they sell many of their skins.

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leedogg man what's wrong with you? If anyone wants money he can sell his themes, stardock only distributes skins that have been uploaded and with permission. Just look at Pixtutio, they sell many of their skins.

Whats wrong with you? It wouldnt affect you. It would only affect artists, they get some extra cash for all their hard work. Stardock loses a little in profit, but basically will get more workers eoncouraged to work for them :rolleyes:

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Ever heard of visual studio?

What about visual studio? people dont have to use visual studio. There are plenty of development environments out there.

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Ok, a themer who makes skins for Windowblinds, well I guess that person would have known from the start that to use a Windowblinds skin-a user has to purchase the software to use the skin. That should have been known from the immediate start.

If Stardock product is good enough and people are happy with it, then they will buy it.

Its a skinners choice whether they create msstyle or wb skins.

If a msstyle skinner doesn't want Stardock to "benefit" from their skins, then they simply have the right to say no to porting.

It's ultimately the people who decide what skin and what software to use.

IMO- an artist should do simply what they love to do.

If they can make money off it- then so be it- they can simply make the decision to sell their themes- why should they stop skinning?

but really art is more about a passion- to me at least anyway.

Personally, I make skins because I just love it- it's my passion and my hobby. I don't want any money from it. The day I stop enjoying creating a skin, is the day I will stop. I would never stop because of money issues or any other factor. It's my passion, I simply do it for the joy of it.

It's really the individual artists choice what platform they skin for, and whether or not they want to charge for their skins.

Really, it is Stardock and TGT in the first place who enable skinners to do these creations. Without their software, maybe only Luna would still exist.

So all round everyone has benefited to some degree so far. Skinners get the satisfaction from creating a job well done I think :) and Stardock and TGT have ultimately enabled that to happen through the creation of their products.

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What about visual studio? people dont have to use visual studio. There are plenty of development environments out there.

All wb4 skin consists of are images, and a few esantly renamed text files that contain all the code about the theme, then its all zipped up, renamed as a wb4 file. You dont need skin studio.....

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I was wondering the same thing about Apache,php and mysql. Hosting companies wouldn't sell a hosting package if it weren't for those free software packages.

I bought GrandPrix 4 because of the huge amount of free addons.

I bought Quake3 because of the free maps, mods and servers I can play on. Quake is basically useless without them

All those people that provide free stuff don't get a penny even though the makers of paid software profit from them.

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1. Themers aren't forced to skin to WB, they can skin to MSStyles

2. Why no mention of StyleXP? They charge for their software, but then I refer you to point 1. Themers are no way forced to use WB, if they feel the same way as you they can create a MSStyle or charge for the theme themself like Pixtudio do.

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The artist You refer too doesn't do anybody a favour by deleting his free skins and so leaving nothing to the people that liked his art. Sorry, but that event just leaves a bitter taste about his real intentions (attention again ?).

Windowblinds skinners from the very beginning (long,long time before that hack and that 'everything must be free' attitude arose btw.) have always been comfortable with Stardock giving them platforms to show their skins in a nice manner. What most people don't (want to) see is that Stardock actually gives a lot back to the community. There are examples like GUI Olympics and all the professional work that is spend to Wincustomize and the superiour support users and skinners get from SD.

I can't stand when WB-Skinners are threatened as mindless zombies in the hands of Stardock.

Oh and let me bring some other purchase-skinnable-progs to Your attention :

WinAmp Pro (Actually they would have a lot to do with giving fees to skinners now ;))

JetAudio

Musicmatch JukeBox

Trillian Pro

and so on. See ?

Edited by c242
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Oh and that artist quitting also named TGTSoft in his post about reasons exclusively, not only Stardock.

Quote : "tgtsoft and stardock are a disgrace to the customization community"

There is a lot to discuss about that sentence alone, but that would be way offtopic. Whatever, he does no harm to anyone than himself and the people who liked to use his skins.

Edited by c242
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Stardock does not distribute those skins in the retail package, do they? Why Linux can do things like that is cause of the GPL, right?

My take is that if Stardock only releases its skinning software without any of those free themes, they should not even be questioned about their activities. That is just fine as is. But if Stardock is releasing their product as a retail option in a bundle with free styles, that is different.

If you make a free style and you upload it to a site for people to use, you have no right asking for a penny from Stardock. But if Stardock wants to bundle your skin, then you can negotiate. That sounds fair, right?

This is like that guy who made QUTE for FireFox and then got all huffy when they wanted to modify it. They had every right to tell him to get lost, because he had given that to them to use free, but had given them grief over what they wanted to do with it. Now the QUTE is all whining like a baby that he got booted out of the FireFox distribution and the main guy said he doesn't want to work with him any more. It is his own fault for trying to strong-arm a free project anyway.

My question for you all is do you think a company who charges yearly subscriptions to use its software should be required to pay royalties to all the themers whose work said software is using?? What do you guys think?

I actually think it is the other way around. If anything, Stardock would be in the position to charge people who want to develop skins for their platform, just like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo charge game makers for developing games that run on their consoles.

But Stardock doesn't do that. They say that if you want to develop skins for our product, that is fine, but that is your choice and we don't have to pay you for your work. Just like Microsoft does not have to pay anybody for creating MSSTYLES that work with the built in UXTHEME.DLL in XP.

Here is a thought. I put tons of money into sod so my lawn looks good. Should I have to pay a fee just because your dog decides to walk on it? I don't think so.

Edited by Bearded Kirklander
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Actually Stardock hires skinners to do skins for them. Every skin that is sold with the WB-Distribution is there with the authors permission. And there are skins exclusively made for the distribution with the software. Pixtudio did a lot of those in the past.

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I think a little kickback from Stardock would encourage more people to design skins for the WB platform. However, I don't think Stardock should be required to pay royalties to the skinners. They were all well-aware that they would not receive any monetary benefits for their skins but choose to do so on their own accord.

"I actually think it is the other way around. If anything, Stardock would be in the position to charge people who want to develop skins for their platform, just like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo charge game makers for developing games that run on their consoles."

Wrong. Game developers get paid when they sell games. It's a win-win situation for both sides. The more games are sold, the more both sides make money. It doesn't work that way in the skinning world. Skinners make nothing while Stardock gets free skins, which in turn sells more copies of WindowBlinds. It sounds like a one-sided deal here where skinners lose out while Stardock gains everything but like I said, skinners know all this beforehand. If Stardock decided to sell these skins, I'm sure there would be legality issues.

I personally don't use WindowBlinds. Not because it's "slow" or "uses too much resources" I know both are false for a fact because I have tried it and it runs just fine. I'm just a cheap ****** that doesn't want to fork out the money for it.

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I kinda agree with the topic starter. I too think that Stardock should pay royalties for themes (especially when they bundle them with the app). Stardock exists by the fact that people make skins for it.... without the skinners Stardock would already ceased to exist. At the same time Stardock is the one that is making money of the skins and not the original authors (good skin -> people like it -> people buy windowblinds... etc.), which kind of sucks.

Maybe royalties aren't the best idea, since every dumb ###### could upload some crap skin to wincustomize.com and get royalties... that is not going to work. The one thing that irritates me about Stardock is that they dare to charge for SkinStudio. Sure there is a free version, but there should just be 1 version, the Pro version.

There is no way I am gonna pay for a tool to make a skin that is gonna generate them money.... they are screwing you twice.

That's my opinion on this matter.

And about the Microsoft example. First of all Microsoft doesn't make money on the skins we make, the existance of 3rd party skins has no influence on the sales of Windows XP (since most of it is OEM stuff anyways). Besides that Microsoft doesn't even support skinning, they even made it 'impossible' with the digital signature thing.

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I kinda agree with the topic starter. I too think that Stardock should pay royalties for themes (especially when they bundle them with the app). Stardock exists by the fact that people make skins for it.... without the skinners Stardock would already ceased to exist. At the same time Stardock is the one that is making money of the skins and not the original authors (good skin -> people like it -> people buy windowblinds... etc.), which kind of sucks.

I think all Stardock would do is hire skin makers dirt cheap as employees and crank out skin-packs or something for cheap and they would still do fine and have lots of sales. I agree that good skins can help provide an incentive to purchase Stardock stuff, but nobody is forcing skin makers to skin for it and make it available for free. It's like UT2004. It comes with tons of content that is bought and paid for in house by Epic, etc. They paid people to make levels and they sell those levels with the game. If people feel like making MODS, that is fine, but don't expect Epic to pay you for them just because you make them.

People are too freakin' greedy. If you make great skins, package them up and show them to Startdock and ask if they want to hire you or buy the rights to ship the skins with their product or something. If you want to give back to the community and get some cool pats on the back, shut up, stop whining and just give the stuff away for free and feel good about yourself. :laugh:

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I think all Stardock would do is hire skin makers dirt cheap as employees and crank out skin-packs or something for cheap and they would still do fine and have lots of sales. I agree that good skins can help provide an incentive to purchase Stardock stuff, but nobody is forcing skin makers to skin for it and make it available for free. It's like UT2004. It comes with tons of content that is bought and paid for in house by Epic, etc. They paid people to make levels and they sell those levels with the game. If people feel like making MODS, that is fine, but don't expect Epic to pay you for them just because you make them.

People are too freakin' greedy. If you make great skins, package them up and show them to Startdock and ask if they want to hire you or buy the rights to ship the skins with their product or something. If you want to give back to the community and get some cool pats on the back, shut up, stop whining and just give the stuff away for free and feel good about yourself. :laugh:

My point is that I am not gonna skin for WindowBlinds to help a company sell its product while it is charging me for the software I need to make the skin. I think that is just plainly wrong.

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My point is that I am not gonna skin for WindowBlinds to help a company sell its product while it is charging me for the software I need to make the skin. I think that is just plainly wrong.

I can respect that stance. :)

I don't hardly know how to theme anyway, but its fun to talk about.

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