Abuse of WP Plugin Support by Piecemaker Developer

Hello All,

I want to report something disturbing I have uncovered from one of the WP plugin authors. We have installed 100s of WP plugins without any issue or problem, but today we installed a plugin called “Piecemaker” and this plugin does not work properly. We see PHP errors related to a MySQL query that crippled the plugin (fatal errors). We contacted the developer and told him that his plugin did not work property and he immediately asked for money to solve the problem. I explained to him that the error was obviously a PHP error caused by his plugin and I was not going to pay for this, as his plugin was supposed to work and he has some responsibility to to the WordPress community to support it, at least look at the errors, but he flat out refused. Even without a shade of understanding of the error, without looking at any of the PHP errors, he said “it is not possible his plugin has a problem”, and he said without paying him, he could provide no support; demanding money to even look at the errors.

I think this is an abuse of the WP plugin system and community. It seems to me that developers have some obligation to support their plugins if they are going to publish and promote them via the WP ecosystem and community.

Isn’t this right?