It has barely been a week since I discovered that someone had been manipulating OctoPrint’s anonymous usage stats in OctoEverywhere’s favor, and now I had to discover that Obico has also been doing the same. 😡
After seeing 2 of these posts recently.... This is why we cant have nice things.
You have done the right thing here Gina.
There are probably others in there as well. I have added obico[.]io and octoeverywhere[.]com to my blacklist on the piHole to prevent me from accidentally supporting these organisations in the future. If you find more of this type of behaviour, then let us know.
One suggestion is to post an amnesty for any others to come clean. If they don't, ban/block them.
Edit: Break the links to the URL's to prevent traffic going to these sites by clicking on them.
That sort of behaviour is absolutely appalling. I am angry for you
I don’t contribute very much but I find OctoPrint invaluable so I have upped my regular payment
Hang in there
Cheers
Mike
Gina, we feel for you, we had a similar experience when someone copied a website and product, word for word. It’s exhausting, losing sleep and elevated stress levels.
Take heart from the love and support from all of us for your work and dedication.
It's a real pain in the ass. I wish you the strength to deal with it in a positive way and to continue your great work on this project. I think the consequences are completely acceptable. Anyone who has a problem with it should question their own motivation.
Keep coding on!
T.
Gina, thank you for your integrity. I'm not surprised you're exhausted; this is emotionally draining stuff. What can you do for yourself? I regard my Patreon payment as, at least partially, repayment for your past effort in creating OctoPrint, not a demand for more features or support, and helping you take some time off would be an excellent use of it.
I thankfully have a two week vacation with my partner coming up at the end of July anyhow, scheduled and planned for since well before all of this got revealed. I'll try to take it easy until then and extend the break towards the front as well to hopefully not be burdened by all of this that much anymore when it comes to the actual vacation. Not going to lie, if I wasn't as stubborn as I am I might have just thrown in the towel over this, this has "final straw that broke the camel's back" quality.
Well, that's the kind of integrity I like. I've deinstalled Obico and Everywhere from my printers (did not reliably detect spaghettification anyhow), blocked it on piHole.
To not leave it at some symbolic stuff: You've lost sponsor money? Ok, I tried to make up some of it (nesides the patreon thing that already exists) with a one time donor thru GitHub.
So shouting out: If you find a 20 or 50 in you wallet and don't know what to do with it - here's a good place to drop it 
I hope that as formerly viable vendors, they both pay your invoices and add a significant gratuity for reminding them that ethics do matter, and they are an everyday choice we all must make over our baser instincts.
Thanks for all you do...
Well, this is extremely disappointing news that the two largest remote access solutions were both manipulating stats. It's especially a shame since they're both in the top 10 regardless and would have done well without usage manipulation, especially as they're the easiest to set up.
For the record, OctoEverywhere says it was not them, but rather a third party from their community who wants to stay anonymous who did this. I'm sticking with the facts here and not saying whether that is right or wrong as I don't have any proof either way - that's also why both posts are worded the way they are. However, they had a long running advantage from that manipulation regardless of who did it, and I suggested to them to get the invoiced amount back from that anonymous perpetrator.
We just wanted to say your software is absolutely awesome, you have done a great thing for the 3D community. We are using an old version of your software, and it is still printing PERFECTLY!
We just wanted you to know this, to cheer you up after finding out the truth!
Hey, Quinn from OctoEverywhere. I’m also extremely disappointed to see what happened in the OctoEverywhere community. I can’t emphasize enough how graceful, professional, and hard-working Gina is with the situation; I appreciate it.
OctoEverywhere is a community side-project for me; it’s not my full-time job. I spend most of my nights and weekends on it because I love doing it and seeing the community use and enjoy it. So when things like this happen, it also makes me quite sad, but I'm sure it's nowhere near the magnitude of what Gina feels.
I want to do whatever I can to make this right for our communities. I’m working with Gina to support the OctoPrint project however I can and will continue if she needs anything going forward. The first step is to help pay for the cleanup, which I have done. Beyond that, I would be more than happy to contribute code, help the support effort in Discord, provide compute resources, or offer whatever else I can. Gina and I have a long-running Discord DM where we can discuss it.
For anyone affected in any of our communities, I also want to make this right for you. Please reach out to me via the support system on our website, which will open a conversation directly with me. I'm happy to assist anyone however I can.
This sort of thing is frustrating beyond words. As another commenter already stated, this is why we can't have nice things. Some selfish individual will always step in to ruin things.
I only print once or twice a month, but Octoprint is a key part of my toolset. To make an tiny dent in the lost sponsorship money, I moved up a tier in Patreon and dropped a one-time donation in GitHub. All your hard work should be rewarded, not punished!
Until there are negative consequences that outweigh the $$$ incentives, developers will continue to game the system. It's always "ooops, my bad" after they get caught with the profit already realized and the damage already done.
I think everyone here understands you do this out of love for the project. Don't let this turn it into something you hate doing otherwise you might as well get a real job. 
Take your time, relax and do what you must for you. You have thousands of people rooting for you.
I know it's quite surprising a script survived more than a year without attention, which was also why I felt opportunistic when OE was exposed as I was quite sure my script had been long dead. I'm attaching a screenshot that shows that offending VM (public ip 52.20.6.221) was created on May 18 2023.
Not an excuse or shifting the blame to OE, as I know I am 100% responsible for my own action. I know I probably won't have anyone's benefit of doubt this time around, since I betrayed the one you previously gave me. Just so that you understand why I'm not revising my post.
My sincere apologies to Gina and the OctoPrint community!
This is really, really unfortunate. I placed a lot of trust in Obico and the spaghetti detective after their last misstep, but this has completely betrayed that. I think you did the right thing by dropping them as a sponsor. I'd like to encourage fellow users to speak with their wallets. This is a space where we are supposed to be working together, to make things and make them better. Unfortunately, people don't think about the consequences of their actions.
Gina, please know that you have a lot of the community behind you, and you are a great example of what can be done right. Please take your time and recharge, this sort of thing can definitely make you question what you've accomplished. However, I will say that your program brings a lot of joy and help to many people, and we appreciate it. Thank you for all that you've done and continue to do!
Gina and all the regular OctoPrint contributors, thank you for your work on this amazing project. I'm back into printing after a sabbatical and your project has always been a crucial part of that setup.
