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Is There a Ploy Behind Some Open Source Plugins?

by thunderbird
5 replies
Many times, a free plugin, eg free shopping cart plugins for Joomla and for Wordrpess are incomplete. It seems that they're being free is meant to lure people to install them and commit.

Since these plugins are incomplete, the user, already committed to them, will get frustrated and either buy the "pro" version or pay someone (likely the developer) to set it up on a site.

Basically you have to be a programmer or hire a programmer to even make minor adjustments to these plugins. A programmer who is working on a Joomla shopping cart plugin and doing a brilliant job solving an array of problems with this plugin for a pet site of ours, quite frankly states some of these code problems are plain stupid or likely deliberately planted (eg not written properly to call up categories).

Adjusting this shopping cart plugin for an optical site also proved to be particularly challenging, though it was mission accomplished.

My point? I'm not complaining -- just leting you know what you might be getting into when you use a "free" shopping cart plugin.
#open #ploy #plugins #source
  • Profile picture of the author stma
    No right to complain about free

    But some things to consider:

    Some people distributing plugins aren't the developers themselves. They outsource.

    Some folks are trying to be nice and support the open source community.

    Some folks do it as a hobby.

    Some do end up going the commercial route. Let's say you released a free plugin and started getting hammered with questions, support, upgrade requests, etc.. Why not make a "BETTER" version that has more bells and whistles and tighter code and charge for it? It takes them time and effort - they shouldn't work for free either.
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  • Profile picture of the author thunderbird
    Very good points, stma. Nobody should work for free (I know what that's like)
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    Project HERE.

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  • Profile picture of the author andrewpeacock
    Hi,

    As a plugin developer... maybe you're right. But in our defence, from what I've seen of WordPress vs things like Joomla, WordPress is much easier to develop against, partly because the community of developers is HUGE. Joomla seems (in my limited development knowledge) more complex, and there's not quite the community knowledge to draw upon.

    Regards,
    Andy
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    • Profile picture of the author brilliant
      The Joomla community wouldn't develop if the developers couldn't make any money, so it makes sence to give a Pro version for a small fee, but only if the free version works fine too.
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  • Profile picture of the author CliveG
    I wrote a WordPress plugin mainly for my own use but then decided to distribute it free and include a link back to my website. So yes there was a ploy behind my plugin but I did not make a secret of it.

    As far as plugins that do not work is concerned always look at the software versions that they have been tested on. My plugin is quite simple but it is a lot of work to keep up to date and tested as WordPress itself is updated - people expect it to work on all systems and every version of WordPress. "Customers" of free products are often more demanding than customers of paid for products.
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