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

Thu Feb 1 17:01:03 PST 2024

Hi All
The economics of this is very interesting.

As a community, we want to give something to our fellow members that they
need. It allows for our creativity in scratching an itch, and sharing that
solution. However, we can break the mold and work out a novel way to
deliver. The open-source pledge North Road uses goes some way to doing
this. Whilst there a lot of tools are within the licensed (paid) version,
those tools are available for release once production costs are met. This
enables the plugin to continue to deliver to those who cannot pay for the
licensed version, whilst funding further work as technology organically
develops or additional needs pop-up. Also note that the remuneration funds
our support for the FOSS4G community, whether via sponsorship or applying
resources on the committee. So the funding for the plugin gets recycled in
the community, as well as going someway to providing a living wage.

Shutting out people from the use of desired services should not be what we
are about - there has to be another way.

In regards to taking over a plugin, this is how FOSS continues, if someone
is passionate about it, they can ask the creator to take it over. As part
of the marketplace, the community should also have this as a service, a
page listing the plugins that are not maintained or won't be maintained and
is anyone available to take them over. This is a great way for up and
coming developers to learn the craft from mentors.

Keep the discussion going - this community is so creative that I think we
will come up with an option.

Cheers
Em

On Thu, 1 Feb 2024 at 22:33, C Hamilton via QGIS-Developer <
qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> 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 unpublished), but I am facing a dilemma.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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-- 
Emma Hain — Product Manager/Senior GIS Analyst
emma at north-road.com
[image: https://north-road.com]
*North Road*
Cartography • Development • Spatial Analysis
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