Привет вебмастеров и полъзователей CMS ExpressionEngine

As you know, we recently had to stop selling ExpressionEngine in a number of regions due to the growing piracy in these communities as well as very low sales. We estimate that for every legal license sold in Russia, dozens are pirated. The very concept of this club, pooling money together and purchase sharing, is also illegal, and no different from one legitimate purchase being pirated among a circle of friends.

Some of the comments in these forums lead me to believe that many of you feel that we are a rich American corporation with deep pockets and that your activity doesn’t hurt anybody. I registered to this site, and am taking the time to write this post to help you see that that’s not the case. We are a very small company, a team of passionate individuals such as yourselves that have to provide housing and food for ourselves, families to take care of, and bills to pay. Each time that the product of our passion and time, ExpressionEngine, is used without being purchased, it hurts us. Our sales and price structure enable us not to get rich, but to keep doing what we do.

Some of you here are just as honest and hardworking as we are, and have paid for every license your companies have used, enabling you to have success in the web development industry, and provide jobs for others. We love that. But the plain truth is, your region has developed a culture of piracy, and the community at eeclub.ru in particular has been part of that culture. This was one of the key reasons we decided to shut down sales to the region.

We heard from a few users who had purchased many licenses in the past who were upset that they could no longer buy ExpressionEngine, or would have to find a sneaky way to buy it. Coupled with the fact that our business has grown and been successful because we trust our users, we’ve decided to rescind the policy and resume sales of ExpressionEngine in Russia, so that those legal and honest companies and their employees and their employee’s families are not hurt as a result of someone else’s illegal activity.

This isn’t being extended without condition, however. We absolutely expect that you prove to us that this is a good decision. Many posts talk about how much money we will lose by not doing business in Russia, but the truth is, we don’t make money here. The number of total licenses that we’ve sold to Russia in seven years of business is less than 100. So we expect you to demand more of each other. If you’ve pirated before, stop. If you know of another community member pirating, ask him or her to stop. Demand that the owners of this site purchase a legal license. Did you know that the forum module this site runs was never paid for?

Can you not see why we took the action we did? The largest community of supposedly legitimate customers in this region is running on pirated software, had users offering their discounts to others, and purchases and shares software from third party developers with smaller companies than even ours. We won’t tolerate it. We want you to not tolerate it either. Demonstrate that you’re different, that along with intelligence and talent, you also have integrity.

Because we believe in people, we’re confident that you will rise to the occasion, clean up this community, and that ExpressionEngine in Russia will thrive, as will your own businesses, whether you’re a web firm or a freelancer. We’ll be part of that story and you’ll be part of ours.

Thanks for listening.

Derek Jones, CTO
EllisLab, Inc.