[QGIS-Developer] Requiring QGIS plugins that requires paid subscription and.or authentication to be tagged as such?

[Greg Troxel]

Even Rouault via QGIS-Developer <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> writes:

> I believe this has been discussed. Was there any conclusion on this?

My read of rough consensus was that at least labeling is obligatory.

> Just came across a Toot about a AI powered QGIS plugin (that I won't
> name to avoid advertizing it). In its description nothing mentions
> that it requires a paid subscription. Shouldn't we require that it is
> at least mentioned in the "about" metadata, and possibly a dedicated
> metadata item like "payment_required=true/false/partial" that could be
> used for filtering. And while we're at it
> "authentication_required=true/false/partial"  for plugins where
> payment is not needed but you need to have credentials one way or
> another (a plugin I'm developing for a French local administration
> would fall in that category. a few open web services but most
> requiring to be authorized by the administration)

I wonder if we should go further, and decline to provide free use of the
plugin infrastructure for other people to operate their businesses.   It
really should be doable for people to add other plugin catalogs, sort of
like f-droid enables one to configure multiple repositories.

I don't mean to object to the reg-required plugin you are working on.
But I would draw a line between

  plugin author and reg-required-entity are the same thing - not really ok

  plugin author and reg-required-entity are distinct - ok