App Install Misuse

Marketplace General Discussion
1

Hi All,
Need the collective advise on how we should approach the below issue.

One of the marketplace vendor is constantly installing our app (10 times in the past 4 months). Given their interest in the feature set we offer in our apps they are trying to do competitive analysis to replicate the missing feature set on their side.

Pointers needed:

  • How are such scenarios handled in the Atlassian marketplace?
  • Any past examples that anyone can share?
  • What role does the Atlassian Marketplace team play in such situations and how they can help?
  • Any policies that prevent such abuse?

Thanks
Vish

1 Like
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I don’t think there’s any way to avoid this, we also have dozens of apps in the marketplace and it’s expected that our competitors can and might install them and check what we do and how we do it.

If you want, you can paywall everything and at least get some money out of it, but the reality is that you should acknowledge that it’s something that will happen as it would in any market, not just in the marketplace or in software. Do you think that nobody at Ferrari has ever bought and inspected a Mercedes engine or viceversa?

And to be fair it gets even worse: on Jira DC you can get the plugin JAR and disassemble its content (unless it’s obfuscated in some way)…

The reality is that if your product is good, you’ll do better than your competitors, if it isn’t, then make it better, but trying to stop people from checking what you’re doing is literally impossible, unless you’re willing to set up barriers (e.g. no free tier) and potentially losing real customers – and by the way a competitor will easily pay 100$ to get a license if they think they can beat you and make 1000$ out of it.

4 Likes
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Indeed, as @PaoloCampanelli said, this is inevitable and most vendors went/are going through this. Atlassian will not help you in any way. Worst, they barely do anything when other vendors actually steal your code.

If you were first on the marketplace and have more installs, you already have a big advantage over them as customers will discover and try your app first. The best thing to do is to be more innovative than them and provide good customer service. Don’t sweat about it and focus on your apps.

4 Likes
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Hi @PaoloCampanelli, @yvesriel,
:pray: Thank you and appreciate your comments and encouragement!