Have You Ever Paid for a Plugin?

I have never paid for a plugin but I have made many donations to support plugins I have come to depend upon. Examples of that are the “In-Series” and “Progress-Fly” plugs. It goes without saying that I would expect to pay for a ‘custom’ or requested plugin.

I have made many donations to support plugins

Excellent! That’s the spirit and I would encourage everyone to do the same.

“Nope, and I never will. I have a big problem with someone who charges for an addon to a free program.”

This is a ridiculous thing to say. You’re another person who’s misunderstanding what “free” means. It has nothing to do with price and everything to do with freedom. And that includes the freedom to charge money for it, via donations or otherwise.

That freedom is explicitly granted under the GPL license WP is distributed under.

I am not misunderstanding what “free” means. I simply said that I feel it is wrong to charge for plugins for a program such as WordPress. You know, I know, we all know that any plugin created for wordpress that someone charges for will either be shared out or redone by someone else who won’t charge for. The profitability for wordpress plugins only has a limited window.

May a good thread for someone to start would be one that highlights plugins that provide such a good service or functionality that warrants being paid for.

Look, there are a lot of things in life that are “ok” to do, but it still doesn’t make it right.

“I simply said that I feel it is wrong to charge for plugins for a program such as WordPress.”

But why is it “wrong” to charge for free software? I don’t understand your argument.

Initially, you mentioned that it’s “low” of people to make any profit from free software. But that’s exactly my point when I said you misunderstand what free software is. Profit has nothing to do with it, it’s about freedom to make a profit or not and the freedom to make changes if you want to. Just as long you don’t try and take that same freedom away from others.

The WP developers have always been fully aware that all their hard work and time could be used as a basis for someone else to make some financial gains. That’s what the “free” in free software means.

Please do not tell me that I do not understand what “free” means. I do…

My argument was not that it was wrong, that was my opinion. My argument was that there is no reliable degree of profitability in charging for a free software such as this. Like I said, I could easily pay for a plugin and just give it out to others. I could also make a few small changes to it and release to the public for free.

Ok, I understand what you mean by “degree of profitability in charging” but what about charging for installation, upgrades, theme customisation, etc. Is that wrong? Most of us who offer WP as a platform do exactly that.

If you read one of my earlier posts, I state that explicitly. Charging for the installation, creation, customizations, etc. is one thing. It was my opinion that doing so for mass selling in the name of profit from more than a single user was wrong.

I have never purchased a plugin—but I’ve donated to plugin authors who post their plugins for free.

“Name any plugin out there that in its original form will function as a standalone”

Youre kidding, right? There are plenty of plugins for wordpress that provide something FOR wordpress that use NONE of its code, and therefore work fine as stand alones?

Need one? My last.fm cloud plugin. Need another? Anything similar to that that integrates a third party application/web site into WP in a similar fashion.

I wonder, since last.fm does have the option to subscribe, and since Ive always subscribed,
do I get to charge for my plugin w/o your scorn, kahil?

As to the original question, I’ve solicited help from friends in doing a lot — Ive also taken the time to “pay” them —

One individual got the New BT cd shipped all the way to Australia. Another has gotten a cpl paypal payments.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with charging for something that you have worked to create. And the market usually dictates whether or not the item is worth the price.

I’m happy to pay for something I want, especially if I cannot do it myself.

PS: By definition, in order to be a plugin for WP, a plugin must use a hook. It’s a rather simple task to remove the code that provides the hook, and use a simple include statement to display output.

Ok, first of all, y’all are getting way too worked up over this. Seriously, there are more important things to bitch about.

Next, please read a person’s full post rather than skimming through and only seeing what you want to nit-pick over. I did not say that there was anything wrong with charging for a plugin or theme that you made for someone. My problem is with people that do so for the sole purpose of profit. Most of the plugins and themes that I have seen on the internet that people were charging for, were simple plugins. As for themes, many are charging for themes that they did not create, rather modded. I can sit here all day and mod out themes and sell them. My problem is with such people profiting off of the ignorance of others. By ignorance I mean those who just don’t know that they are getting ripped off because they aren’t web geniuses.

Besides, what is the point of mass selling a plugin or a theme anyway? It only takes one person to end all that. One person to by it and then give it out. Said person buys it and then gives it to two friends, they each give it to two friends, and so on and so on. You seriously only have a limited window of profitability.

Again…chill out…actually read all of what someone posts before gettin’ nasty…

Reminds me of phpNuke…

I’ve taken on paid work to update/modify my own plugins on an individual basis. Not all functionality is general and it doesn’t make sense to release all plugins.

If someone offers to pay me to add features I’ll happily accept it. I’m not mad. The first conversation I have is establishing whether the code is general / releaseable. If it is I have a GPL discount and charge less for the work.

Kind of backwards that, but I like it.

I think the tasteless thing is not people charging for plugins per se but when the plugins are simple, easily reproducible and available in free versions elsewhere. It’s profiteering of new users naivety.

First:

You know, I know, we all know that any plugin created for wordpress that someone charges for will either be shared out or redone by someone else who won’t charge for.

That sounds like an argument a warez pirate would make..

Second:
whooami got it right:

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with charging for something that you have worked to create. And the market usually dictates whether or not the item is worth the price.

Bingo. It’s about what a willing buyer will pay to a willing seller for something, anything. No matter what it is. And there’s nothing “unethical” about it.

There is a great TextPattern guru/plugin developer who would create a new plugin and ask for donations .. it was up to anyone what they donated, a dollar, a penny, ten bucks, etc. His policy was when he received X number of dollars (and he’d tell you in advance what that number was, depending on the complexity of the plugin, I imagine), THEN he’d release it for free. So people who were willing to pony up the cash for the plugin contributed to its being released to the rest of them. I thought it was an interesting concept.

And to answer the OP’s question, yes, I’ve paid for certain plugins (two to be exact). And I nearly always hit the PayPal or Amazon wish list of a plugin developer whose plugins I use regularly, especially if he’s taken the time to answer a question for me or help me troubleshoot it. David Chait, of chaitgear.net is a good example of a plugin author who releases free plugins, but who will go to the ends of the earth for you if you run into trouble. So for that, I’d gladly contribute.

J ??

Do you people not read what someone posts????

First, do not start accusing people of being warez pirates.

Second, I said the same thing that whooami said! I said that getting paid to make one is good! If someone commissions you to make one, great! Donations good! There is no market for mass plugin production. Unless someone creates a unique plugin and then somehow makes it so that you have to have some sort of registration code that you get after buying, it makes no logical nor financial sense to start making plugins for profit.

Ughhh… sigh… it seems as though people are just up to startin up high school drama crap. Read someone’s whole post before you read one sentence, take it out of context from the rest of the post and then start flaming them.