Greetings All,

Since we have been asked- and to clear up any rumors that may be circulating...

Auctioneer, Gatherer, and Enchantrix all follow the guidelines published by Blizzard at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/policy/ui.html , according to our understanding of the policy.

We have never solicited donations in the actual game environment and have never, ever charged for our offerings.

We do request donations on our primary site, http://AuctioneerAddOn.Com , via the link in the upper right corner, from those who find our AddOns to be helpful. Those donations primarily help to offset the costs associated with our development environment; a couple servers and their Internet connectivity.

With a volunteer staff of about 30, usually 5-10 active at a time, spread in different parts of the world, such tools are indispensable to our ability to develop, test, and provide decent products.

All that said, the donations usually come out about even, with our primary Administrator, Norganna, making up the difference out of his family's bank account on the months that donations do not meet the monthly expenses. There are some rare months where donations exceed the monthly expenses, but that overage is needed to repay the "loans" from previous months.

Although some on the team would welcome the opportunity to make a living from development of such complex products, we currently release them under V2 of the GPL.

With such a diverse group, there are those who help as a way to "give back" to the world to those who are looking to polish their resume with some real world experience. As a whole, we do not begrudge those who have decided to depart from producing AddOns, due to what ever reason(s), and support any company's right to protect its property. This current period is quite interesting as numerous laws are being enacted and tested in different courts to determine the future of software development, and only time will tell.

Those who feel strongly, one way or another, should contact Blizzard and their elected officials, directly, and express their opinions. Demands, comments, or requests on websites only go so far, and most often not to those with the authority to make the desired changes. Luckily most of us live in areas where making such opinions known is not only possible, but encouraged.

We look forward to providing products that enhance our users' experiences, and our own, for now, and into the future. Should there ever be any internal or external decisions that do affect our products, we will endeavor to keep everyone informed, to the greatest possible extent.

In keeping with our usual spirit of openness, the new guidelines may affect the future of the AuctioneerDB program, which is in early beta status, but no decisions have been made as of yet. We will post with more details, once they are available.

Happy Adventuring,

Nikk and the rest of the Norganna's AddOns family