Flip’s Chameleon under fire
Flip recently got under fire for its Chameleon Content Managemen System - which is based on an open-source code application called Wordpress: Nabble reports to look at Flip’s Chameleon closer Digg believes that GPL is violated Technosailor thinks licensing is a mess Flip’s official response is posted on all forum entries and below. Please also visit our offical Flip [...]
Flip recently got under fire for its Chameleon Content Managemen System - which is based on an open-source code application called Wordpress:
Flip’s official response is posted on all forum entries and below. Please also visit our offical Flip Media Chameleon CMS Website for more information, plugins etc.
Dear all,
With interest I read the comments on this forum and others regarding Chameleon and WP.
First of all, I invite anyone to discuss this topic further to get in contact with me via www.flipcorpcom/contact/ as I am not always checking back to the site.
Secondly, please find a response the majority of comments:
1) We are not hiding or intend to hide the fact that WP is the core behind Chameleon. Chameleon is a marketing name for the plug-ins that Flip Media has developed and that we sell to our clients. Our sales people are trained to mention WP and we explain to all of our clients that we took WP and customized it with additional modules in order to make it relevant to their needs, e.g. Arabic support, Flash menus, e-commerce and so on.
2) We are not selling the product as an ASP model, e.g., we only implement Chameleon for our own clients. No one can buy Chameleon and then re-deploy or re-use under a commercial agreement in the name of Flip Media.
3) All Chameleon installations are hosted on Flip Media’s own servers and not re-distributed on any other 3rd party servers.
4) We do not require clients to sign any NDA or other contracts or agreements (as somone mentions incorrectly on this post).
5) Regarding pricing, we do charge a consultancy fee approximately of 25,000 AED (depending on client, market, requirements) which is 6,800 US$ or 5,300 EUR which is a remuneration fee for our efforts of setting up the CMS with the additional modules that we programmed. I believe that it is fair to do so (and not breaking any GPL).
6) We are in the process of releasing some of our modules that we developed to the public - just completing some QA on the same. Anyone who knows us in the Middle East can confirm that we are one of the key driver of the interactive industry in the Middle East, not from a commercial point of view but always providing cutting edge technical and creative solutions to our clients. We released so much source code, given away sites for free / charity (check www.flipcorp.com/csr) and will continue to do so.
7) Source code is typically being acknowledged to the original author. Flip Media do so, publicly, in writing (here!), orally (with our sales staff) and everywhere. If in any cases we missed something, glitches happened, please let us know and we will correct. Please understand that we have more than 60 people employed in over 6 locations and 4 countries - at the end of the day its down to the individual and not easy to control. Again, we will make the effort and go through code and sites and correct whereever we find mistakes - and take your input into account. Anyone blaming us and claiming to be 100% perfect in coding, referencing, documenting etc. - please give me a call or apply for a job @ www.flipcorp.com/jobs - you got it!
I am not sure if I missed any points - if so pls contact me directly.
Finally let me close by thanking for the discussion raised and hopefully making some of the points clear.
Best regards
Martin Diessner
CEO
Flip Media
www.flipcorp.com
comments
dotone
July 6th, 2006 at 8:20 amFrom what I understand you are not in the CMS market, not even close as a solution provider. You might’ve crafted big solutions but that’s not what you do all the time. You giving up your CMS secret and brand is something that would take that edge away from you. While this might be a big blow to Flip, it could be solved. Don’t re-invent the wheel, but at least invest on your own CMS, one more note, WP was never meant to be a CMS! It’s actually the same blogware that you’re using on this blog!!!
First I knew you guys are all ASP(use MS active server pages, WP is on PHP), then all of the sudden I clicked a link by mistake to get me one of the WP error messages on one of your designed websites. I head back to chameleon page, not even a word on WP. My first impression was: Flip does that? I even remember you guys said something about AJaX in your CMS. The whole thing flashed back on me, remembered WP got AJaXed in v.2.0. What is going on?
That’s a big mess, hope you get out of it soon.
Dinesh Lalvani
July 6th, 2006 at 10:08 amWe have been doing a lot of AJAX stuff, mainly in Brand Central and on the front end of websites that we are currently building. The basic AJAX from WP is hardly the stuff to write home about. We have learnt alot from WP and we have also learnt its limitations. Thats why we have had to rework alot of source code to make it more optimised and faster, with more features so that it would behave more like a CMS then blogware. The next build of chameleon is already moving away from WP roots. A more centralised approach with proper Access Control List system, Version Control, Staging and Live Environments, something WP will not do because of its target audience.
All i can say is watch this space.
Martin Diessner
July 6th, 2006 at 10:23 amDotone, fully agree with you about Flip not being in the CMS market. Chameleon is primarily a tool for us to roll out sites quicker, lower costs for clients to update content and most importantly to re-use certain modules that we are building.
You are right - we used to be on ASP and .NET and did most of our work there, but clients in the Middle East needed to save cost on licenses. I am pretty sure that Flip Media is one of the only interactive agencies that is a) Microsoft Certified Solution Provider and b) paid for all CPU licenses for all of its Windows Servers, SQL 2005 DB servers and so on. Most of our clients could not afford it - hence php, mySQL and linux.
Furthermore, we did develop Chameleon on .NET platform as well - again not to resell it as a CMS to other agencies or vendors as a product, but to enable us to roll out sites faster.
I believe some of the mess was created by IT driven non-marketing people (see the blogs I am refering to in the article) that see our product branding of Chameleon in the wrong light.
Either way - we are opening up all of our code that we did on top of the WP core to provide it back to the community as usual, and the Chameleon version 3 is already on its way - adding so much functionality to it that it will be great for people using it.
dotone
July 6th, 2006 at 11:01 amFirst I’m really confused over here, why would you market an internal tool?
Second, you had built you own CMS before. Now that you’ve changed base and platform, why still is it under the brand Chameleon? It could’ve been easier to say, Chameleon was our old CMS now we rely on our WP implementations which is neither illegal nor unethical as they mentioned in the forums. Implementing/Facilitating do not mean selling. Just a tool.
Magnus
July 6th, 2006 at 11:49 amWhat a mess….
Perhaps it would help a bit, at least in the eyes of open-source/WP people to mention WP, GPL, and all of that on your Chameleon page (http://www.flipcorp.com/chameleon/). I’m not going to get into an argument about the who’s right or wrong here (hey, I don’t know enough about GPL to do that), but I can see how someone can get one idea from reading:
“Chameleon CMS is Flip Media’s complete content management solution aimed at making the management of website content and updates easier and more convenient.”
And then finding out it’s WP with some of your stuff added on to it (I hope that’s a somewhat correct description of what it is).
We Love WordPress So We Use It, but We Also Hide It at The Blog Herald
July 6th, 2006 at 7:45 pm[…] I bring this up again today because Martin Diessner is wearing out his Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V keystrokes by finally catching up with the news that (whisper) people are talking about him and is pasting identical responses all over the net. My gripe remains. I don’t give a rats ass if you use WordPress, Martin. Lots of people use WordPress. Hell, I even use it as a CMS on some sites, a chore it was never tasked to do but does nicely. But cite your sources on your site. Don’t hide behind the fact that you use WordPress. Use it as a badge of honor. Are you afraid that clients won’t cough up $6,800 USD for your CMS that you give no public demonstration or proof of concept for if they know it is WordPress? […]
Martin Diessner
July 6th, 2006 at 11:33 pmDotone: Chameleon exists both in PHP and .NET
Magnus: We are updating our documentation - we never hidden the fact about WP being the core. I said on all the other forums that anyone could have contacted us in the sense of a good community and advised us about that fact - a lot of bitching on all these other forums could have been avoided. Flip has developed some amazing plugins that really make life easier and we never hidden these facts as well as all plugins are being credited to the author in the WP admin console. Again, flipcorp.com/cms will be updated shortly.
Agnus @ Herald: I responded on your blog and as I said I think its a pure community that obviously has talking and posting comments instead of being simple straight forward to contact us and to put things in the open. We are now updating our site, and we never sold the CMS as a faked or mocked WP adaptation.
Martin Diessner
July 6th, 2006 at 11:47 pmAaron asked about a demo site or the Chameleon via email, here my response:
It doesn’t hurt. I am simple person, and all I asked was to do research properly before assuming things. A simple phone call or email would have done the job.
We will provide a demo login via flipcorp.com/cms and our blog flipblogspot.com to show that there is nothing to hide. It’s our weekend today and Saturday so please expect it by next week. I am not a php developer (never even logged on to a linux box in my life) but our guys will provide the demo login shortly. Not sure if the whole CMS can be made available as a download but I will ask them to do so as well.
All plugins will be properly documented and then made available as well.
Please check back on our site/blog or contact me on martin dot diessner at flipcorp.com
let's b real
July 8th, 2006 at 5:34 amI hope you have a press release coming soon on this one. As you are extremely good at pointing fingures [correct: fingers] at others and taking it to press. I think before educating clients and giving advice on people developing their website, make sure you know what you could end up with. This is really pity, you guys don’t even have moral ( I bet you would be doing the same dirty playing on your ad server, showing more clicks and conversions). I would greatly advice all clients to use double click [correct: DoubleClickâ„¢] instead of brandcentral [Brand Central] as you could easily manupelate [correct: manipulate] the results ( and you are good at covering up, I can see that from the chameleon ). I think clients well [correct: will] soon become mature to understand all the crap you market and publisize [correct: publish] in pressreleases [correct: press releases].
I am sure you are charging more then AED 25000 for the cms and boasting that this is your own developed Chaleleon [correct: Chameleon]. So are you going to inform all you clients that has [correct: have] been using Chameleon ( actual WP ) to update the footer which gives credit to the real people ( who has [have] put on lot’s of efforts, I hope you understand the research and toiling gone in development).
Martin Diessner
July 9th, 2006 at 1:16 amFirst of all, I have marked and corrected your in-correct spelling and grammatical mistakes. In the future, when posting comments, please use online spell checkers e.g. Spellcheck.net.
Secondly, with regards to your comments on Chameleon, if you had read and fully comprehended the previous discussion you would have not missed the point again. Flip Media has updated all Chameleon sites with proper credits and is currently posting on our website and this blog all additional plug-ins developed by us and a demo site.
Thirdly, it seems to me that you have not understood what Brand Central is all about, hence the disqualifying comments. Brand Central is an online media planning and tracking verification system that provides approved statistics on publishers’ performance. There is no incentive to any agency or client using Brand Central by technically modifying the results in Brand Central (as you claim in your invalidated accusation) since it is within an agency and client’s interest to monitor publishers. The tracking reports from Brand Central match the individual tracking reports of the publishers that we advertise on (within industry limits) and financially KPMG is auditing Flip Media year by year to provide additional comfort level to our clients. Furthermore, please be informed that Brand Central has now fully integrated DoubleClick™ in its ad-delivery and tracking mechanism to further advance on 3rd party approved ad delivery and tracking.
Now down to the real issues: Your blog entry contains several statements that are blatantly defamatory of Flip Media and I guess that’s why you choose not to identify yourself. Not that I don’t know who you are – I have seen those kind of underhanded methods before. Last time you used your blog credentials (Name: lets b real | E-mail: | URI: http://letsbreal.com | IP: 213.42.21.78) was in a comment on this blog defending i-gency.com claiming to be the first agency in the Middle East offering “real-time sales activity reporting†by using DoubleClick™. What a co-incidence.
Bad mouthing in this way by making defamatory comments about Flip Media and its products is a criminal offense in the UAE and most countries in this region.
Don’t you have any balls to state your name and the organization you work for when making the above comments? Anyone else who comes across similar accusations please let us know or post directly on this blog.
Dimitri Metaxas
July 9th, 2006 at 7:23 amHave been following the debate on this blog as well as numerous others and impressed with the pace of dissemenation of views regarding potential GPL infringement by Flip and the accused rebranding of Wordpress in the form of Chameleon (rather an ironic name considering the circumstances).
As a non-technical person one can get quickly lost in the legalities of the software development and attribution but it seems to me that no laws were broken here, just that the GPL boundaries were pushed somewhat (from a Techie ethics standpoint) and Flip flexed their capitalist muscles in packaging what is essentially a Wordpress base along with the self developed plug-ins (or mixture of self developed & off the shelf). Apart from a little wrist slapping on sales people misrepresenting Chameleon origins and more thorough attribution on Flip’s product homepage there is no need villify further. Just my partially informed view.
With regards to “Let’s b real” turning this conversation into an opportunity to attack Flip on pretty much all levels he can conjure, this reveals a wider issue in our fledgling industry reminiscient of dogs fighting over the table scraps. I and (im sure) many others have seen this in action many times now, and generally such public displays of slander of Flip or AME info or any other leading company in our industry has to date been un-supported and seems to be carried out for reasons of personal gain rather than a moral outcry for the benefit of poor marketers being taken for a ride in digital hyperspace. The “Double Click” plug was nice.
One day these most honorable companies in our small but significant industry will learn that fighting for the table scraps means we will never get a shot at the feast on the table. Instead we need to focus our energies on converting traditional marketers and agencies who are relentlessly pumping ad dollars into non-measurable, over inflated traditional channels like documents through a paper shredder.
Frank
July 10th, 2006 at 12:30 pmSo far I am very impressed with your course of action!
There should be more companies like yours that work with/on community projects, and feed the results back to it.
I think you still can make money with Chameleon while publishing the source of the plugins, as most of your customers would not want to set-up/maintain the system on their own, while home users are grateful for such powerful additions!
Keep up that great mindset!
Martin Diessner
July 10th, 2006 at 4:22 pmThanks to William who comments on Technosailer:
[…]
I would like to come to Martin Diessner aid here. If you look on their main website they give full credit to Wordpress. Also if you bother to read Wordpress’s licence which comes with every download of their blog software it states:
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and
(2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.
It also states:
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee
Therefore the cms software we are talking about is not illegal and flipcorp is not acting against the law and the GPL licence.
[…]
William
July 12th, 2006 at 12:50 amNo Problem Martin. I Don’t Like The Fact That People Here Are Stating Unjust Comments About Your Company Without Any Real Evidence. I Myself Would Use Chameleon If I Could Afford It, But That Is Not The Point.
If I Was Incharge Of Flipcorp And Received These Liable Allegations I Would Seek Legal Advice However I Am Not And Martin Seems To Have Handled This Rather Well.
I Have One Tip For All You People Out Their, Before Making Any Comment Involving Legal Ramifications Please Check Your Facts Before Doing So.
Martin Diessner
July 12th, 2006 at 1:27 amThanks for the advise…we are fighting legal battles every day but some peole putting dafamatory comments about us on the web keep on hiding (no real identity, email address) which made me losing my faith into law execution if the person is not even known, no country in the world will accept a law suit against UNKNOWN…
William
July 12th, 2006 at 2:18 amI think its great what ‘Flip’ is doing, keep up with the good work. going off topic for a bit:
So where are you originaly from? I’ve not been to Dubia myself however I’ve heard it’s the place to be for business. And the ‘no tax thing’ seems great!
Martin Diessner
July 14th, 2006 at 10:44 amCheck out www.flipcorp.com/team…..Dinesh is from India, I am from originally from Germany. Live a bit (4 yrs) in England, and been to ‘your’ Lake District many times. Right now in London, flying back on Sunday. Almost as hot here as in Dubai, but having a great time!
William
July 15th, 2006 at 3:55 amYeh I was down in London a week back and it was roasting then, how did you know I was from the Lake District? I live in Penrith, next time you come please feel free to visit.
A friend and myself are just starting up a web based company, cant say much at the moment as I dont want to give away the idea, however lets just say its never been done before.
I had a look at your team, one question, how do you manage to keep up with them all? I must cost the company a lot of money ringing them up all the time.
dotone
July 16th, 2006 at 4:14 pmI have the same question. How?