WordPress Plugin Site Cleanup.

arcain6
(@arcain6)

10 years, 7 months ago

I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but i think it’s time WordPress starts to separate plugins a bit further.

It’s annoying crawling through all the plugins to find one that ” might ” suit your needs, and usually, when you find one that seems to fit your EXACT need. It turns out to be GIMPWARE.

What is gimpware you ask.. It’s where a developer of a plugin, or software intentionally makes it less useful in the hopes a user will buy the missing or ” gimped ” functionality.

How would you feel if someone gave you a free car.. only to find out you have to pay for the doors, seats, tires, engine, windscreen, mirrors, turn-signals, and seat-belts separately, at 5times a reasonable price. Or worse.. you had to pay for each of these bits monthly.

That is what these new plugin developers are doing. They are senging out Gimped versions, wordpress is hosting them for free.. and they get all the money. Seems like a bad deal for WP, and it’s users.

Some of the worse offenders are people like WMPUDev, with their myriad encrypted plugins that are gimped, and nag the user all the time.

There’s no sane reason for wordpress to keep this going. It costs WP bandwidth by hosting their plugins for them, but doesn’t get wordpress any funds.

Here’s the proposal.
Normal opensource, free, non-gimped plugins goes onto the plugins page under category:
FREE – No strings attached, free to distribute / edit etc
OPENSOURCE – has GPL or other opensource license, and isn’t gimped.
Licensed – Free, but has license for branding removal (otherwise fully funcitonal)

Payed / gimpled plugins go on a totally seperate page, using categories such as:
Subscription – monthly fee to use full version
Teired – you pay for each bit of functionality
commercial – one time payment for ungimped version

Free – Doesn’t cost the user anything
Any plugin that isn’t gimped, limited, or otherwise hobbled unless paying extra goes in this area of the site.

Commercial – Costs user money.
If the plugin has any sort of paid ” premium ” “extension” or otherwise paid-for-usability goes in this area.

I’m sorry but just because you hand out an almost useless plugin for free so you can sell all the ” bits ” that make it work as it should have from get go, doesn’t mean your plugin is free.. it’s GIMPWARE.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

Thread Starter arcain6
(@arcain6)

10 years, 7 months ago

Perhaps also integrate a reporting feature so users can ” report ” the plugin to have to moved to the correct page / category

WPyogi
(@wpyogi)

10 years, 7 months ago

but doesn’t get wordpress any funds.

WordPress.ORG does not get any funds from any plugins, and ONLY free versions of plugins are allowed on the WordPress.ORG repository.

WPyogi
(@wpyogi)

10 years, 7 months ago

You might also want to see:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/about/guidelines/

Andrew Nevins
(@anevins)

WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

10 years, 7 months ago

Btw I would be happy with the free car analogy.

Moderator Pippin Williamson
(@mordauk)

10 years, 1 month ago

I’d take a free car with no doors any day.

Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)
(@ipstenu)

🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

10 years, 1 month ago

You mean a Jeep?

What is gimpware you ask.. It’s where a developer of a plugin, or software intentionally makes it less useful in the hopes a user will buy the missing or ” gimped ” functionality.

On a serious answer, honestly it annoys me too as a user, but as someone who wants to make a living in WP, I understand it totally. We do require plugins be functional but your definitions of gimpware forgets services.

Payed / gimpled plugins go on a totally seperate page, using categories such as:
Subscription – monthly fee to use full version
Teired – you pay for each bit of functionality
commercial – one time payment for ungimped version

If everything in the plugin is in the plugin code and it’s locked down? TOTALLY frustrating. If you have to buy add-ons, well, okay, you deserve to make a living and I don’t mind paying for something of proven value (FWIW I bought some of Pippin’s add ons for his EDD plugin).

But then there’s VaultPress, which is installed on my box (check) but calls back to THEIR server, so I pay a monthly fee for the service. And that’s not gimped at all I think, since it’s clear what I’m paying for.

Scott Fennell
(@scofennellgmailcom)

10 years, 1 month ago

I think tagging a plugin with something that clearly conveys its payment model could be beneficial. Investing time into finding, installing, learning, configuring a plugin only to later learn that what you REALLY want is outside of your budget could be a bad experience, and one that leads people to view WP in a negative light.

I think it’s a little unseemly to complain about getting anything for free (not that the OP was necessarily doing that, though lots of other certainly do). But wanting to be clear from the outset about “how free” something is? I think that’s worth consideration.