[QGIS-Developer] Theoretical discussion: A QGIS paid plugin marketplace?

[Roger Merritt]

Hi Greg,
This is a highly subjective conversation, and I am sure we can all agree on
that.
But in answer to you question about separating plugin developers from:
Core Code Developers: I guess Plugin Developers see an opportunity that is
outside core GIS Functionality - eg LandXML from Victoria (Australia)
Contributors to docs: I have been a documenter in my life and they create a
learning experience for others to follow
Packagers: I have packaged up my applications over the years and it seems I
still am packaging up QGIS Plugins
A good QGIS Developer must lurk in the background looking for ways to
justify the effort - at the same time looking for a possible return.
This is what I believe is the problem being discussed.
My two cents worth
Roger

On Thu, Feb 1, 2024 at 7:47 PM Greg Troxel via QGIS-Developer <
qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Nyall Dawson via QGIS-Developer <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> writes:
>
> > I wanted to kick start a (hopefully!) civil, THEORETICAL discussion about
> > the role of a paid plugin marketplace for QGIS plugins.
> >
> > - Yes, I'm aware that plugins must be GPL, and that this makes paid
> plugins
> > a little trickier in that they're obviously still subject to the GPL.
> > - The GPL does NOT prevent charging for software, or mandate making it
> > public to non-paying customers. We could potentially have GPL plugins
> which
> > are only available to paid users, and only make these plugins available
> > privately to those users. YES, the GPL **DOES** mean that those paying
> > customers can redistribute the plugin publicly and freely without issue
> if
> > they want (and regardless of whether the original developer wants!)
>
> Are you envisioning that this paid marketplace would provide sources at
> the same time it provides binaries?  I would think it would have to, in
> order to be really compliant.
>
> Would you envision any social pressure for recipients not to publish
> plugin sources?  I would say that even a little pressure would be
> totally inappropriate.  One way around it would be to require that any
> plugin have published sources before acceptance.
>
> While you rightly point out that QGIS being GPL imposes a requirement
> for plugin licensing, there is also the point that plugins would not be
> possible without the base and we need to view this entire discussion
> within the larger context of the social context of free software.
>
> > - There's nothing preventing a public GPL QGIS plugin from depending on a
> > subscription based back-end, and offering zero value to anyone not paying
> > for that backend. And there's a growing number of these plugins, which
> > depend on users paying xxx large corporate entity regular high fees to
> > access the backend service. The GPL doesn't (and arguably
> > shouldn't) prevent these large entities from making money off QGIS
> plugins.
> > - But this means that the current situation is unfairly weighted toward
> > these large entities! A one-person team making an excellent plugin and
> > providing an awesome tool for use in QGIS has a MUCH MUCH harder time
> > finding ANY financial compensation for their efforts! I don't like this
> > situation at all, and I'd say it goes against the "spirit" of why QGIS
> was
> > made under the GPL in the first place. The big corporate entities win,
> the
> > smaller community focused developers lose out. 👎
>
> I sort of see your point, but not really.  Here, I am guessing that you
> are mostly not talking about a situation where the value is the plugin
> code and it is being unlocked by a fake subscription.  I suspect that
> the real value is in the data available by the subscription and the
> plugin is just plumbing to access it.  And that if someone else had
> similar data, using the plugin as base code to access that other data
> would be fine.
>
> Or am I misunderstanding?  If so, the nuance is probably helpful to the
> discussion.
>
> > - Despite the fact that a paid user could freely re-distribute a paid-for
> > plugin, there's still potential financial gain for the developer in
> making
> > a plugin available for a charge on a theoretical QGIS plugin marketplace.
> > - The blender market is a great example of this. There's LOTS of GPL
> > blender add ons available there at charge. Eg
> >
> https://blendermarket.com/products/hard-ops--boxcutter-ultimate-bundle?num=2&src=top
> > as one example. If those numbers are accurate, that developer has sold
> >35k
> > copies of a GPL licensed add on at $39 each. I'm going to go out on a
> limb
> > here and guess that that developer's motivation to make their add-on
> > excellent is considerably higher than the developer of an equivalent QGIS
> > plugin 🤣 (not to mention that their time investment is much more
> > justifiable). And any ONE of those 35k paid users could have made the
> > plugin freely available for everyone else... but that hasn't stopped the
> > sales.
>
> In this case, is the source code really not available to the public?
> If not, with 35k bought copies, then it's hard to believe that there
> really is compliance, just from a statistical priors viewpoint.
>
> > So what does everyone else think? Would there be a THEORETICAL place for
> a
> > THEORETICAL paid QGIS plugin marketplace somewhere in the future? Or is
> > there a better model we could (theoretically 🤪) follow to financially
> > reward plugin developers?
>
> How (and why) do you separate plugin developers from
>   contributors to the core code
>   contributors to docs
>   packagers
>   a bunch of other categories
>
> ?
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