Donate or Die!!! Why do some plugin developers shout so loud?

[guileshill]

Why am I posting this? To check myself out, as much as anything... am I being unreasonable?

I am using a very neat little plugin on a few sites, no names... yet. It's one of those little tools that does one job quite well and in an almost unique way, so alternatives are hard to find.

But, once activated, this plugin puts a huge donation appeal into the Dashboard. I have some obfuscated screenshots if anyone wants to see, this is a really big demand for money. Ironically the developer begins by saying "I love the spirit of the open source movement... but this can only work if everyone contributes their part properly'. Which means "I like the idea of the open source movement but not the no cost part, so pay me now."

There's more, this near half page donation panel is repeated on the General Settings Page. This version includes a tick box which requires that you sign an affidavit that you have contributed. Once this has been signed, admittedly, the demand for payment is removed from the main dashboard although it remains in the settings panel as a signed affidavit that you have donated to this little hero of the spirit of open source.

Additionally, this plugin now has a pro version which is charged (much as the free one is, perhaps!). Advertisements for this version appear on every post editing page. An additional ad appears in the plugins page, and in WP3.1, now that the plugins panel is paginated, on every page of the plugins panel.

I always donate when a plugin proves valuable, and I quite understand, with plugins that have a control panel, that developers put donation buttons and even adverts for premium plugins on those control panel pages.

But for me this is very much a user-experience issue, as well as a debatable attitude to open source. The back end of wordpress is part of my client's user experience. If every plugin developer tried to dominate the backend like this it would become unuseable.

I object to it. So I wrote to the developer. His reply was brief and to the point.

"I have no time to deal with jokes like this. I might reply if you pay me money"

This was the high point of the conversation, when I suggested that responding to a complaint from a paying user with contempt was not a good idea, it all went positively juvenile.

So, I'm open to suggestions and comments. I know there are a few technical restrictions on what sort of links and so on are put into plugins. But I don't know of any regulation that governs the behaviour of developers towards the community and in particular if and how they are allowed to dominate the back end of WP to promote their products. Maybe it's my Britishness, I just don't like being shouted at. But underneath this my concern is more serious, this sort of behaviour spoils WP for both designers and their clients and I really don't see how it helps the community.

Chris

[leewillis77]

Hi,

I read your post with interest. I'm a plugin developer, I don't have any "premium" versions of my plugins, and they're all provided free of charge through WordPress.org. Although all of that is under review - see below...

I have some donation collateral in some of my plugins, but not anyway near the volumes you're talking about. However I thought I'd reply to give you a plugin developer's point of view. I'm not pretending that my point of view is "right" - or indeed shared by other developers, but it's here nevertheless!

Ironically the developer begins by saying "I love the spirit of the open source movement... but this can only work if everyone contributes their part properly'. Which means "I like the idea of the open source movement but not the no cost part, so pay me now."

"Open Source" is nothing to do with "cost", absolutely nothing, nada, zilch. It's about the openness of your freedoms to take software you've received and extend it / inspect it / re-use it at your will. There's an excellent article here : http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

But for me this is very much a user-experience issue, as well as a debatable attitude to open source

I have to strongly disagree here. Unless the plugin author is placing restrictions on how you use the software - this is perfectly in line with "Open Source", and not at all debatable. This is where Open Source really comes into its own. You have access to the code, you have the rights to do with it what you please - you can REMOVE these links and info if you want. The GPL gives you that freedom. Asking for money (No matter how vociferously) is nothing to do with whether something is Open Source or not.

I always donate when a plugin proves valuable, and I quite understand

Chris - you may well do, however I can safely say that the majority of plugin users don't. Not when they first install a useful plugin, not after a while of using it, not even when they ask for support or advice, and receive it for free, not even when the cause of their issue turns out to be nothing to do with the plugin in question.

[For background, my plugins have about 46,000 downloads between them and have probably generated < £200 in donations - most of those for the plugins which do push "donation" to some extent. As a related statistic I reckon I've handled over 300 "support" questions in the same period. Many of those are actually people asking for help in how to use the plugin - or add features, rather than problems with the plugins.].

It's these users that your plugin author is trying to persuade, and convince. The fact that it's over-the-top in your case is just down to playing the averages and trying to appeal to the majority - who generally don't donate.

this sort of behaviour spoils WP for both designers and their clients and I really don't see how it helps the community.

This is the thing that is making me reconsider how I provide my plugins.

Due to the nature of my plugins - most of the people installing them are doing so for a business reason. In the majority of cases these are business building sites for clients, and charging them for doing so. In any other industry, you would expect to pay for the materials you used to perform your trade, and you'd factor in the costs of that into what you charged. Unfortunately because people have confused "free beer" with "free speech", their expectation is that Open Source software is "free" as in "free beer", and for most people they never consider paying for or donating to a plugin.

According to WordPress.org - around 40% of plugins are kept updated to the latest release, which I take to mean that they're actually being used. If every one of those 40% had donated just £3 - then I would be able to do WP development full time, and those plugins would be more feature rich, better supported, and there would probably be a broader portfolio for users to use - ie "the community would benefit"

So, in summary - I perfectly understand where this developer is coming from (Except, I'd note that communications should always be professional!), and defend his right to ask for money in as obtrusive manner as he wishes. You have the option granted to you by the GPL to remove that "shouting" from your copy of the plugin. If the effort / cost of that is too high - then buy the premium version.

Personally I'm considering two things:
- For the majority of my plugins, being stronger about asking for donations
- At least one is probably going to be "paid-for" only

Predominantly, this is because the current donations don't even cover the notional "cost" of the time I spend providing support. Another alternative is providing paid-for support, but leaving the plugins free, but TBH I've just never been keen on that model.

Like I said, I'm not saying my POV is "right" - or trying to criticise anyway - just thought it might be useful to get an opinion from the other side of the fence...

Hope it helps.

[guileshill]

Helps? Oh yes, Lee, and thanks for it. I'll correct my terminology as I get to understand it better, and this response helps.

Yes, of course I can, and have, removed the intrusions. Not sure what I would do if I had to do that with a lot of plugins though, just add it to the cost of development I suppose (much of what I do is about the content and I am still at that 'shoot, I seem to have picked up some php on my designer shoes' stage of learning).

I think my feelings about the sheer volume of his insistence is that it makes so little sense in terms of marketing and even less in terms of advertising. He is bellowing at someone who heard him the first time, he reaches noone new, the message doesn't change. Yes his message appears on every site that uses that plugin, but it is, unless surgically removed, permanent and quite pointless. His manner, true, is a little hard to swallow and he has a huge amount to learn about responding to people.

Anyway, your response has been hugely helpful, I had no idea that donation responses were so poor generally.

I have just been reading through that huge thread on the GPL licensing issue over Cforms, and that has helped me understand a lot more. But if there is the freedom to charge in some way, for such plugins, and if all the big boys and girls behind the WP community are in the same boat, why is there not some sort of recognition of the value of contribution to WP created by those plugin developers in the form of some sort of community membership programme for users that opens the repository. Would anyone who really earns from providing WP services really object to a subscription programme for access to all these tools?

I said in my little hello forum post that I am prone to asking silly questions, so I guess I am living up to that from the outset. So just take these thoughts as the meanderings of a disingenuous outsider.

I look forward to connecting further.

Cheers

[C3MDigital]

Hey Chris,

I think you have some very valid points and I completely agree with you about the dashboard notifications. I have no problems with plugin donation requests on any of the settings page or even dashboard widgets with news feeds etc but notifications that are hard to dismiss cross the line in my opinion.

There was a very good discussion in the WP community a few months ago regarding "Open Source Motivations" that was sparked by a blog post from Alex King. I wrote a response along with some others including Jeff Chandler and Yoast. Everyone had very good points and has their own motivations for contributing to open source.

[dgwyer]

I have added donation links to some of my Plugins and has been pretty much a waste of time. There have been only a couple of donations over the last few years. Admittedly my Plugins have been downloaded less than 15,000 times, but I have seen posts from other Plugin developers that have had well over 100,000 downloads and the result is similar.

I also tried (last year) an approach where I charged a small monthly fee for support to all my Plugins and (free) themes. This wasn't successful to say the least, so whilst I'll still develop WordPress Plugins I am kind of resigned for now to give them away for free. I don't really mind giving away Plugins for free though, but I do have a couple of ideas for premium Plugins which I might develop later on this year. This would depend on me being able to host the Plugins myself, and provide automatic updates similar to free Plugins etc.

There are some good points made here about commercial Plugin development:
http://wpmu.org/hey-wordpress-stop-t...lass-citizens/

[guileshill]

Thanks guys. So, if donation buttons do not work, which I admit I find disturbing, why would this guy think that overblown and disruptive donation buttons will work better? I guess I have the answer in his character and maturity, or lack thereof. It's a sort of php tantrum, digital Pester Power. There is something quite revealing in your responses and how you describe what you are doing, or deciding not to do. Your responses are creative or resigned, exploratory or frustrated, but they are all reasonable and mature.

So I guess the answer, at this stage, is that I just got an awkward one, all part of the joys of community eh!

There has to be a better way to show respect for good developers. We have the rating system, but that's a hostage to fortune and not linked to any other positive behaviour. But there's no explicit honour system, no statement from the community about its support for developers and expectation that people will show that appreciation concretely. I wonder if behaviour is different for those developers whose work is very visible on the front end, SimplePress for example, and those who make some of the back end functions easier, like this guy?

[Rich Pedley]

why does he add all those links? that's easy to answer.

nag, nag, nag, nag, nag, nag, fed up of me nagging yet?, nag, nag, nag, nag, pay me and I'll stop nagging, nag, nag, nag, nag

I have one donation link in the plugin, on the about page, which is only viewed (probably) on first install. But I'm also in the lucky position of having a plugin that people want extra features for, and not all can go into the core plugin. So I make the money from the extra plugins. And yes this does seem to be a case for releasing a plugin with features lacking - but really it isn't, if the features are needed by most of the users then they just won't use your plugin in the first place.

Generally people won't give money for free plugins - period. I don't think anything is ever likely to change on that front. If you charge for the plugin, then there are other free ones about that will do the job.

Some charge for support, I don't and never will - though even I had to cut back on CSS queries because most of them weren't even related to my plugin! so I tell them they have to pay, and 99.99% are never heard from again.


The rating system is a pet peeve of mine, and the works/broken links - more people complaining will use it than those who never have an issue. These leads to false results.

[guileshill]

Hey Rich, I know why he is doing it, I just don't know why he thinks doing it loudly will work better. I guess it comes down to how you handle the point at which nagging turns into a tantrum. Of course, you do what I do, edit the code and strip it all out.

I'm getting the impression though that the repository is both a field of dreams and a nightmare. At best it seems to be a way to get your name out there associated with something helpful and positive. But that you shouldn't expect to be repaid for that, so should treat all plugins you put into the repository as loss leaders for something else. But this is pretty poor in terms of respect for people's work.

My background is in high-end brand leadership. It can take years for big companies to learn that brands are relationships and that language (verbal and behavioural) governs much of that relationship. It really shouldn't be that hard for individuals. A degree of emotional intelligence is required, and the toughest lesson I have had to teach companies is to swallow, do it deep and do it often and develop a taste for it. To change the metaphor, choose the hill you want to fight for, otherwise your brand will consist of little more than a reputation for being rigid and argumentative.

[dgwyer]

I personally could quite happily code all day long on WordPress. Each new release gives us more goodies to develop against. However, I have found it pretty hard to generate a revenue stream from this alone.

This was pretty hard to accept for a long time, but for this reason I have shifted emphasis (almost exclusively) onto theme development. Now I have a new business partner who is a graphics designer this has now become a reality, and we have recently launched our first commercial theme and have plenty others in the pipeline. :)

I definitely still intend to keep developing (free) Plugins but for the forseeable future these will be fairly small (but useful!) Plugins that I know I will never get anything back from, other than a bit of extra traffic for my site. However I quite enjoy creating useful add-ons for WordPress so I don't mind really so long as I can find a way (via theme development) to sustain a WordPress related income.

My latest Plugin for example helps to hide the new WordPress 3.1 admin bar from view when you don't need it. Using jQuery you can display/hide it at the click of a button! This saves you having to disable it altogether.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/...bar-minimiser/

On a side note it is probably better to blog about WordPress development topics than to code Plugins if you JUST want to increase your site traffic. I recently had a blog post tweeted about by Smashing Magazine and my site traffic for the next couple of days spiked at nearly 2,500 visitors a day MORE than usual!

[Rich Pedley]

sidenote, I saw that plugin mentioned recently, very nifty.

yes I think a lot of plugins are developed as loss leaders. I actually developed mine in my spare time... but I had loads of spare time. Never really intended to make any money off it, so what i have made has been a bonus. It certainly has covered hosting fees and more for me. But I couldn't ever make it as a business on it's own. this is kind of ironic in a way, my plugin is eShop...