The developer of the “addon” plugin isn’t affiliated with Gravity Forms.
I have developed this plugin because although Gravity Forms isn’t hosted on WordPress.org, lots of people use it. I developed code to improve Gravity Forms that I wanted to share with others.
Yes, there are affiliate links in the description, but even if they didn’t have an affiliate program, I would have posted this plugin here. Those links are the only way that I get compensated for taking hours of my time to share this plugin with you.
Seems like these sort of things should be built into Gravity Forms by default.. is there a roadmap available for this plugin and what features do you plan on adding that won’t eventually become part of Core?
Is this allowed in WordPress.org?
Restrictions for getting on the plugin repository
1. Your plugin must be GPL Compatible.
Looks GPL to me.
2. The plugin most not do anything illegal, or be morally offensive (that’s subjective, we know).
I don’t see anything illegal or morally offensive.
3. You have to actually use the subversion repository we give you in order for your plugin to show up on this site. The WordPress Plugins Directory is a hosting site, not a listing site.
The plugin was definitely added to the repository
4. The plugin must not embed external links on the public site (like a “powered by” link) without explicitly asking the user’s permission.
Don’t see any of this going on.
Looks like the plugin makes the cut, at least according to the rules:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/
What I find interesting is that the original Gravity Forms Plugin is licensed under the GNU general public license on their website at http://www.gravityforms.com/terms-and-conditions/.
I assume that Gravity Forms isn’t hosted on WordPress.org for commercial reasons. That is they want you to pay them for the right to download the Plugin from their site. When you do so you also get support & automatic upgrades with each Gravity Forms purchase. This can easily make sense if you are using the Plugin commercially & gives the developers some income from their efforts.
At the same time GNU license gives everyone the right to access, share, use, improve & redistribute the source code. So everyone can get all the benefits of open source … if they want … for each GNU release of Gravity Forms.
It appears to me however that in this case the Gravity Forms Addons is being placed in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory at least partly to drive affiliate income from the original Gravity Forms Plugin & as such is not appropriate.
It appears to me however that in this case the Gravity Forms Addons is being placed in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory at least partly to drive affiliate income from the original Gravity Forms Plugin & as such is not appropriate.
The people most likely to actually use this plugin will already have purchased Gravity Forms, so I doubt there’s much affiliate income there.
Even if that were a motivational factor, is it really not appropriate? What does the reason behind a plugin’s existence matter? Shouldn’t it be enough that a person took the time to write a plugin to share with the community and follow all the plugin repository guidelines?
As I work with Gravity Forms and develop unique methods of interacting with the plugin, I will add them to the plugin as time allows.
I am a web developer & SEO full-time, so when I take time to test and package a plugin for the WordPress community, it is because I want to share my tools with others.
An example: I have developed a method of using Gravity Forms as a directory on a website. That is very useful, and I will integrate it into the plugin.
I see nothing wrong with this.
If somebody doesn’t have Gravity Forms and they like the plugin, then why not allow the plugin writer to get some commission on it?
