[QGIS-Developer] Theoretical discussion: A QGIS paid plugin marketplace? (was: sponsored plugin)

[C Hamilton]

Hi Nyall,

First, thank you for all that you have done over the years. You have helped
me a number of times in answering questions. Open source software is an
interesting beast. There is so much donated time without compensation yet
people need to feed themselves. My first QGIS plugin was in 2016 and I now
have 12 QGIS plugins that are published (several more that are
unpublished), but I am facing a dilemma. My work has funded all my
development except for one plugin which I did for myself. Unfortunately, I
was never really able to break into the ESRI culture here and a year or so
ago was told to stop doing further QGIS development and to focus on other
research. I did not find something that I liked as well so I am going to
retire (because I can) in May. So my dilemma is what is going to happen
with my plugins. I care about them. I have an agreement with another
organization to take over support but after the first meeting I have no
confidence that they will be able to do it. I will probably still fix some
bugs after I retire, but I am not all that interested in working for free.
I want to explore new hobbies in retirement so any QGIS work would be
minimal unless it also fits in with one of my hobbies.

I don't know how to get compensation in the open source world unless there
is a company who is investing in and developing open source software. It
would be nice if there were a mechanism for developers to get some
compensation.

This is a difficult topic to address, but I hope something comes out of it.

Best wishes,

Calvin


On Wed, Jan 31, 2024 at 8:28 PM Nyall Dawson via QGIS-Developer <
qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Hi lists!
>
> I wanted to kick start a (hopefully!) civil, THEORETICAL discussion about
> the role of a paid plugin marketplace for QGIS plugins.
>
> This has been on my mind for a while, and recently was bumped by this
> email to the list:
>
> On Fri, 19 Jan 2024 at 19:38, gam17--- via QGIS-Developer <
> qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi everyone,
> >     like many of you, I have developed and maintained a plugin for many
> > years completely free of charge.
> > I have never received any donation or compensation of any kind and now I
> > would like to find a solution.
> > Has anyone already found a way to receive donations?
> > I was thinking of asking for a sponsor that would be displayed during
> > execution, for example in the window titles or through a specific menu
> > item like QGIS does (in this way the sponsor would be much less
> > visible).
>
> So again, stressing that this is a THEORETICAL discussion, I'm interested
> in hearing people's thoughts on the potential role of a paid plugin
> marketplace for QGIS.
>
> Here's a bullet point dump of where I'm currently sitting:
>
> - 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!)
> - In fact, there's already likely thousands of private, paid for plugins
> out there! I'm talking here of plugins made specifically for internal use
> by one organisation only. Yep, that organisation COULD make the plugin
> public/freely available, but in many cases they are specific to that one
> organisation's needs or contain organisation sensitive logic/data. These
> plugins are completely compliant with the GPL, despite being private and
> paid for by that organisation.
> - 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. 👎
> - 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.
>
> 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?
>
> Nyall
>
>
>
>
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