Mods Or Add-On's Anyone Every Feel Guilty?

[Markos]

A possible solution: allow addon authors to offer paid addons based off their activity creating, supporting, votes, etc, for their free addons in the resource manager. If their activity with free mods falls, then their account status is changed and they are no longer able to charge for addons. All existing paid addons would be locked. This would possible promote a good amount of free resources as well as allowing addon authors to make some cajeesh.

This also be a very good idea. On vb.org there are a "level" based on installs, why don't create on XF something similar? And limit only to most popular coders the possibility to create pro addons. I see that on vb.org the best professional coders have released also some great free addons (example Mosh, DB-Tech, Psiconic Vision (sic!) etc.).

 

[Onimua]

A possible solution: allow addon authors to offer paid addons based off their activity creating, supporting, votes, etc, for their free addons in the resource manager. If their activity with free mods falls, then their account status is changed and they are no longer able to charge for addons. All existing paid addons would be locked. This would possible promote a good amount of free resources as well as allowing addon authors to make some cajeesh.

What counts as activity though? Updates? Support? I don't really see any accurate measurement for that, especially because each item has different items associated with it.

And unless I'm mistaken, the resource manager isn't just for add-ons but also styles, smilies, etc. Not much activity could happen with a smilie pack for example; does that mean the creator of it shouldn't be allowed to charge even a small fee for it?

My biggest issue with donating is most developers only accept PayPal.

Not everyone can use or access PayPal. An Alternative would be Google Checkout, Alert Pay, 2Checkout.

When/if the resource manager get payment options, I would hope that these options would be included too.

 

[Shelley]

I don't mind donating to any author of a 3rd party add0n. If the add-on is what I need and I've seen it's a worthy product which the person has spent time on I feel a donation is only human to do for the time spent they put into providing it. Onto paid, I have no problem whatsoever paying for a add-on if I need it, if it's a quality product and more importantly it does what I want it to do. I can see both sides of the argument, but the fact remains if a developer wants to charge there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, sure you can limit them posting, but that would only limit the exposure to the audience of people whom wish to use such an add-on and are willing to pay.

I think whether people have the money is irrelevant, that is not the author's problem but then charging for every little add-on can potentially harm the resource community. It's really down to the author, example of a add-on i was surprised to see free and this was inblog, with the amount of work the author put into it I would have personally charged for it, which I would not have had any problem in purchasing it but he didn't and I donated like I have done with several products. It's a very fine line keeping both parties happy, authors charging (which they'll do regardless) and people wanting freely available stuff.

I think if they spend the time on it, they want to charge then goodluck to them.

 

[jmurrayhead]

What counts as activity though? Updates? Support? I don't really see any accurate measurement for that, especially because each item has different items associated with it.

And unless I'm mistaken, the resource manager isn't just for add-ons but also styles, smilies, etc. Not much activity could happen with a smilie pack for example; does that mean the creator of it shouldn't be allowed to charge even a small fee for it?

It would have to be based on category, whether it is a style, add-on, or other. What I'm thinking is it could be some type of points-based system. You get points for supporting free products, points for up votes, points for new releases, etc. For styles/images, simply points for votes, maybe something else if anyone can think of something. Then, down votes, inactivity, possibly something else would subtract from the total points. Again, for styles, graphics, etc., it would just be down votes.

Just an idea which obviously would need to be deeply looked into to see if it would be a viable solution.

 

[Peggy]

... example of a add-on i was surprised to see free and this was inblog, with the amount of work the author put into it I would have personally charged for it, which I would not have had any problem in purchasing it but he didn't and I donated like I have done with several products. It's a very fine line keeping both parties happy, authors charging (which they'll do regardless) and people wanting freely available stuff.

I think if they spend the time on it, they want to charge then goodluck to them.

I feel the same about Jaxel's add-ons. Most certainly excellent work, and worthy of charging for them (altho I hope he doesn't).

 

[Kier]

I'd be reticent to set some kind of arbitrary threshold for resource creators to pass before they could charge for their add-ons. If people want to charge for their work, they have a right to do so, and I don't think anyone has a right to tell someone else that their work is not worthy of a price if the author chooses to set one.

 

[jmurrayhead]

I'd be reticent to set some kind of arbitrary threshold for resource creators to pass before they could charge for their add-ons. If people want to charge for their work, they have a right to do so, and I don't think anyone has a right to tell someone else that their work is not worthy of a price if the author chooses to set one.

That's absolutely true. My suggestion was simply pertaining to their ability to sell their addons here on XenForo.com, and somewhat addresses the concern about authors charging for every addon. They can certainly sell their addons elsewhere, if need be. But, I don't care either way, just wanted to give an idea.

 

[User]

Unless one runs their forum as a business, in which case all costs are business expenses and should not be an issue, one runs their forum as a hobby. A hobby too has costs associated with it. Just because one can't afford their hobby doesn't mean that those who provide the resources to undertake the hobby should provide them for free. The whole "I can't afford it hence I need it for free" is flawed on so many levels. If one can't afford something then they can't have it, simple as that. In that case it's reasonable advice to say that one should spend less time on one's forum hobby and more time on on improving one's RL financial situation so that one can actually afford the hobby.

Open source / community mods are imho largely a relic of times past. The world has changed and culture has changed with it. People value their time and releasing free mods results at the very most in some recognition in the "community". Recognition is only of value when one's ego requires it.

Why isn't XenForo free when there are many free forum script alternatives? Because at the end of the day money matters, to full time developers as well as to part time add-on developers. Likewise admins should expect to pay for functionality they want or require. Obviously my opinion on this is different than Xenforo Ltd's, but I believe that in order to offer a wide variety of quality add-ons developers need an incentive to develop them, and a "community gratitude" is simply not enough these days.

I released my xentrader addon as free to test the water so to speak. Despite various people telling me when it was released they would donate me $x, I have only had one person actually follow through and give what they said they would.

Perhaps one way to address this would be to implement functionality that displays who donated and how much that user donated. This would create some social peer pressure to which some may succumb.

 

[iTuN3r]

I released my xentrader addon as free to test the water so to speak. Despite various people telling me when it was released they would donate me $x, I have only had one person actually follow through and give what they said they would.

Also there should be way to track Who downloaded those Add-on's & who donated for it .

 

[bogus]

One wonders if you can't afford 10 dollars to buy a mod, how can you afford to pay 140-150 dollars to buy a paid forum software, not to mention the costs of the server.

If the mod/addon is worth the money and suitable for my purposes, I would give as much as I can .....
if someone is only doing a mod/addon to make some money because the software itself is new and still provides a way to make some business, I would not spend a cent for it.
Surely everybody wants a bit of what you give, but I think it is important to support the system than to think of the own "advantage"

 

[steven s]

Usually once a year I might look at mods/hacks/addons I use and donate a little something for those that I can not live without.
I have paid for vB mods in the past.

I should add, I don't feel guilty using people's mods.

 

[Jethro]

There's a false assumption here, most serious mod creators who are working on complex addons will have their own support sites for their addons rather than hosting here at xenForo. The obvious reason being the amount of support threads for something like an arcade or article manager would swamp these forums very quickly.

I've paid for mods in the past for IPB, but generally only if a high standard and adding a real additional benefit for members. People get real carried away with adding a 101 basically useless mods that don't enhance their member experience in the slightest, just for the sake of adding them. Sorry for being harsh, but wake up and smell the coffee here.

To be honest, blogs don't work for the majority of forum sites after initial interest, galleries have limited appeal but can be crucial to some sites (an arrowhead site we support could not live without it's gallery), arcades (while I like em) are over rated, and review software once again will only work for sites with a serious review orientation.

Simple terms, don't add stuff that doesn't benefit your members as you'll only have to upgrade it down the line.

Oh and we're in the process of reactivating a dormant IPB site with xenForo software and will need an Article manager, and a review module. We are going to can the blogs, arcade, and gallery that weren't overly use. I'm going to dummy up the review software, almost have something working, needs some CSS tweaking, as it doesn't need to integrate into xenForo.

 

[borbole]

If the mod/addon is worth the money and suitable for my purposes, I would give as much as I can .....
if someone is only doing a mod/addon to make some money because the software itself is new and still provides a way to make some business, I would not spend a cent for it.
Surely everybody wants a bit of what you give, but I think it is important to support the system than to think of the own "advantage"

So let me get this straight, as long as you don't get to spend a cent on paid mods or anything then that is supporting the system and when mod authors charge for their work, that is being selfish? So the mod authors should work for free for you so you can have anything and depend on "your generosity" when you "donate" to them?

And you talk about own advantage? Unbelievable.

You do what you got to do. If you don't want to spend money on paid mods, then don't. Simple as that. No one is forcing anyone to do anything they do not feel like.

But I won't go further into this discussion as it is pointless and it will generate into arguments that could cause the thread to be closed.

 

[Jeremy]

There's a false assumption here, most serious mod creators who are working on complex addons will have their own support sites for their addons rather than hosting here at xenForo. The obvious reason being the amount of support threads for something like an arcade or article manager would swamp these forums very quickly.

I've paid for mods in the past for IPB, but generally only if a high standard and adding a real additional benefit for members. People get real carried away with adding a 101 basically useless mods that don't enhance their member experience in the slightest, just for the sake of adding them. Sorry for being harsh, but wake up and smell the coffee here.

To be honest, blogs don't work for the majority of forum sites after initial interest, galleries have limited appeal but can be crucial to some sites (an arrowhead site we support could not live without it's gallery), arcades (while I like em) are over rated, and review software once again will only work for sites with a serious review orientation.

Simple terms, don't add stuff that doesn't benefit your members as you'll only have to upgrade it down the line.

Oh and we're in the process of reactivating a dormant IPB site with xenForo software and will need an Article manager, and a review module. We are going to can the blogs, arcade, and gallery that weren't overly use. I'm going to dummy up the review software, almost have something working, needs some CSS tweaking, as it doesn't need to integrate into xenForo.

Well, looks like I'm checking out then, since I'm not "a serious mod creator" because I don't plan on spending $140+ on a new site just so that I can support free add-ons. To feel like you need to fracture your user base over (potentially) hundreds of "add-on support sites" is quite annoying. I'm on the official site, I go there for support. You want to go to a site for blog, a site for gallery, a site for the arcade, which is annoying and tedious.

On my note of donating (to keep on topic) is that I rarely ever give out my PayPal (I think you can find it in BBCM somewhere) because I do this out of a passion for coding and not for money. If I did it for the money, I'd have nothing released here. You'd be paying for it, believe me. I don't feel bad for not donating on everything I use, because of that exact reasoning. Its free, I shouldn't feel guilty to use it for the price they charged.

On the side topic of charging for it here, we could end up with everything free, but I haven't seen too many "paid" add-ons. If XF is a middleman, I feel they should take a small percentage, partly as a deterrent for just that reasoning. You'll never see a paid add-on from me, and if you want to know why, I've expressed my reasonings elsewhere.

 

[jmurrayhead]

If you don't want to spend money on paid mods, then don't. Simple as that. No one is forcing anyone to do anything they do not feel like.

That's what bogus said... That he wouldn't pay for it. Don't see where he said he was being forced to.

 

[EQnoble]

Here is my opinion, love it, hate it, whatever I don't care. It is what it is.

I feel an addon is worth what you believe it is worth. That does not mean you have a say in the cost nor is it proper to try and negotiate the price of a mod publicly...that is a mockery to the people who do the coding around these parts.

If an author makes his mod available for free, I may download even though I was not looking for it. I may try it out, and may just like it. Does that mean I will donate...no. Do I donate to causes...yes. Can I remember any single donation...no. My last 26 transactions on paypal accounts we're all donations ( to people from here and abroad ) except one, and that one was a purchase I made in proxy for a person I consider a friend. I do not think of my donations or try to remember them, I made a choice at a specific moment along my life's timeline that, at that moment had data running around my head and my heart was saying click send. I this way will never regret a donation or try to renege on it.

People work very hard attaining a skill to be able to work a bunch of symbols into something that makes pages function. I don't expect them to give me the output of that skill for nothing but if they offer I may take it. I may also appreciate it. I may not like it or have a use for it...but for damn sure when something is good and I think so...I will be the first to let the author know. If I can picture it being useful on any terms for any individual and the author seems like a good person...I donate and move on. I don't need a thank you, I don't need extra code...I feel they have earned it. Not everyone has the option to part with their funds...but anyone having a need for a mod here has a webserver or access to one I would feel safe assuming. You can donate exposure if you don't have money to give (standalone html pages are great). Money is not always the answer to everything. I would trade you(anyone) all my money for all of the knowledge to be able to make a real mod myself with an installation process. I can get money everyday and do, but intelligence is the real currency. It depends on where you stand and what you are looking at and through what lenses.

I donate to things myself to offset for some of the people that I know even without counting can not afford to do so and are too proud to say so. You shouldn't feel guilty unless you know the cause is good and you don't act when you are well within your means to do so. No one expects anyone not to feed their kids or go to school because of an addon.

-----------------

In regards to the resource manager...I would like to see when the options are there (if they are) for donations (if it lists the donators and amounts) to have the option for the person donating to have it stamped anonymous. I don't want anyone knowing where my money goes personally. I am not against listing donations and amounts...it is very good to entice people to donate or remind people who forget (me, maybe you) that they had an intention to do so. So to be clear I would like the info displayed with the option for the donator to suppress either their name, amount or both at the time of submitting

I have a lot of opinions on donations and surrounding details but I will end it here for now.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I think its a two fold problem really. Paid mods don't often do well because people don't want to pay for something, they want it free, then those with free mods who use a copyright removal system as payment, people think paying to remove their copyright entitles them to some type of extra support.

Then donating, which I cannot comprehend why donating would give you any more right to responses than someone not donating? Donating is different to paying for a service. I think people need to get a grasp on the reality between the two IMHO. The XF dev rating system will sort most of this out IMHO.

I would love to see the XF system incorporate an ability for the dev to just implement directly with a payment button from the page, so we don't have to go across to some other site, and instead you can buy mods directly from the developer here through their paypal, with support all in one location, then we can use the rating system XF have incorporated to rate mods and their developers so lots of customers don't get sucked into bad developers dash for cash, then do nothing for it.

 

[Forsaken]

I think its a two fold problem really. Paid mods don't often do well because people don't want to pay for something, they want it free, then those with free mods who use a copyright removal system as payment, people think paying to remove their copyright entitles them to some type of extra support.



Then donating, which I cannot comprehend why donating would give you any more right to responses than someone not donating? Donating is different to paying for a service. I think people need to get a grasp on the reality between the two IMHO. The XF dev rating system will sort most of this out IMHO.



I would love to see the XF system incorporate an ability for the dev to just implement directly with a payment button from the page, so we don't have to go across to some other site, and instead you can buy mods directly from the developer here through their paypal, with support all in one location, then we can use the rating system XF have incorporated to rate mods and their developers so lots of customers don't get sucked into bad developers dash for cash, then do nothing for it.

I feel if you donate (or someone donates to me) that I owe them a bit more in the way of support and attention. This is not to say that I'll ignore other users, but I'm going to be thankful to someone who has donated, and I'm going to show it through being attentive. If they've got a specific request, and it involves something in scope of my vision for the modification I am more likely to do it than if it were something suggested by someone else.

While many people here suffer from overblown entitlement when they donate, they are allowed it to some degree. Donations are what allow coders to release add-ons for free; without them many will not do any work (unless like Kovifor they have a passion for it, which most do). Donor only becomes an issue when they become abusive, or they become overbearing and throw it in your face (not necessarily abusive). That makes you lose your drive, and you just don't want to deal with the crap anymore, causing you to become lax with your modifications.

On the other side of the fence though, there are developers who will always treat their users poorly, whether they've donated or not. I believe if you release your work you should weigh any suggestion with a bit of consideration, even if its obviously pointless to you (it might not be to the poster). I also can't see how donors are treated the same, if not worse than other users. Its basically shooting yourself in the foot because you're never going to get donations from that user again, and it might feedback into other potential donations.

As for paid add-ons... I really feel only things that take a bit of time should be paid. If you can do the add-on in 1-2 hours, charging for that just seems like you want to nickle and dime people (I've recreated a few add-ons here I needed for my site with more features because I won't pay into 1-2 hours of work). This is always the developers choice, but its also something that'll effect how they're viewed by the community.

To be completely on-topic, I have to say I rarely donate for free modifications (haven't yet as I haven't even launched my site yet), and the ones that do are ones of coders I respect, and who provide excellent products and support.

Do I feel guilty about not donating to the others? Definitely not, as donations are not a requirement, they're a sign of support. Just as donors are not entitled to everyhing the may wish, developers and designers are equally not entitled to donations from everyone (And I believe this for my own work as well).

People should only donate when they feel a donation is deserving, not just because developers try to wheedle extra money out of them. Donations happen when you provide excellent modificaions, and great customer service, anything less is disrespectful to the donor.

 

[jadmperry]

Kier,

My vote is for letting the mod authors set their own prices.

Let me know if I am mistaken about your point. But, if I read it right, the concern is that by allowing folks to charge for their mods the mods won't be as readily available as if they were free.

A few thoughts on the subject of paid add-ons.

It's well established from the Apple AppStore experience that there is a gaping chasm in terms of uptake between apps that are free, and apps that cost $0.01. The difference is far greater than the difference between apps that cost $0.01 and $1.00 - anything that is not free severely limits its potential for uptake and distribution.

It seems that this is just supply and demand, no?

However, I fear that if we introduce a system whereby authors can easily charge for resources posted here, you may find that suddenly everything has a charge attached to it, which would be bad for XenForo and its users, as it may have the effect of stunting the add-on community and make the platform less attractive to potential customers as a whole, which would have a knock-on effect for those charged resources as well of course.

I am not sure that the premise is right...if some things have a charge, I don't see why it would follow that everything would have a charge. Take it back to the Apple/iTunes example. If the logic held true, then you would not have all those free apps, I think. Sure, the scale, ecosystem, product, customer base are different, but I think there are enough similarities to make it unlikely that all add ons would become paid.

I am not sure that, even if they are all paid, that this would be bad. I mean, for those add ons that aren't worth it, word of mouth or ratings would make for low/no sales. If the mod is that bad, then what loss to XF and the community? However, to get a higher quality (and perhaps somewhat supported) add on, it makes sense to allow the author to charge. If he charges too much, then he will suffer from low volume of sales. If he charges too little, he will likely be overcome with work and the product will suffer.

Then again, if someone comes up with an absolutely must have product (which I think is more likely with allowing for sales), it may be that XF decides this should become part of the core...and you negotiate to buy it or else you code your own solution...maybe you charge more for base license, or have an ala carte model and sell it as an add on. Or maybe you don't charge more, but you make up for the expense by selling more XF license.

Bottom line, I think having a store where folks can sell their mods at a price they choose is the best choice. Hope I understood what you meant and offered a helpful opinion. At the end of the day, you guys have to figure out what is best for you and the software. Can't wait either way!

 

[erich37]

A few thoughts on the subject of paid add-ons.

As has been previously intimated, our resources manager won't handle payments with its initial roll-out. The primary reason for this is simply a lack of time to implement the system rather than any sort of idealistic imperative.

In the future, we would like to allow people to charge for resources that they post here on XenForo.com, but we have some concerns about the implications of doing this, so I'm happy to put those concerns out there to solicit some feedback.

It's well established from the Apple AppStore experience that there is a gaping chasm in terms of uptake between apps that are free, and apps that cost $0.01. The difference is far greater than the difference between apps that cost $0.01 and $1.00 - anything that is not free severely limits its potential for uptake and distribution.

Now, I'm not suggesting that all resources should be free - far from it. Some of the add-ons posted on XenForo.com already are more than worthy of a charge. However, I fear that if we introduce a system whereby authors can easily charge for resources posted here, you may find that suddenly everything has a charge attached to it, which would be bad for XenForo and its users, as it may have the effect of stunting the add-on community and make the platform less attractive to potential customers as a whole, which would have a knock-on effect for those charged resources as well of course.

if you release this add-on to be used by all of us webmasters on our own forums, a payment option would be useful for specific forums.
whether you use payment-integration for the Resource Manager here at XF.com is a different story....