Commercial Intent To WordPress Sites?

[Jeffro]

This post by Vladimir is something I've seen spark up time and time again recently but this is one of the posts which caught my eye on the subject. Basically, wanting to label a WordPress site that has a commercial intent so that they have to pay the plugin authors for the plugins they use. I highly doubt we'll see it happen due to the license and all, but do you think something like this would work?

I'm thinking the Iphone Add store but for WordPress plugins, maybe pay a few bucks to use the thing if your site has a commericial intent. But, I think the GPL license pretty much keeps anything like this from ever happening.

http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/add...gin-developers

[andrea_r]

Yep, if you want to stay within the gpl-ness of the thing, it means people are *free to use it* whatever way they like - even make money from it.

[Laura]

I think if you made commercial developers pay for the plugins, they'd be more likely to go to other CMSes. The advantage to WordPress is that it is free, and allows both client and developer to benefit from that.

I'm not sure an app store wouldn't just cause more headache for plugin authors, people wouldn't be able to try before they bought, and after buying would feel more entitled to free support.

[Jeffro]

Well, they wouldn't be forced to pay, it would all be voluntary just like it has been already. I understand the ramifications for the project as a whole if something like the app store idea was developed and people had to pay for plugins, even if it was 99 cents, it would simply be a barrier to entry and put a bad stigma on the project as a whole.