[Announce] Donation Plugin

It has not been the nature of the support forums to allow solicitation of for pay services. There is an ongoing discussion regarding this ever growing occurance, and until a consensus is reached, I don’t believe any more action is going to be taken.
Everyone who volunteers in the forums voice is ALWAYS welcomed, however in the appropriate place.

So im summation samboll, no, please do not see this as a free for all to post quasi-WP related posts selling goods or services. IF and when the decision is made in how to handle these types of posts, all will be made quite clear of how it will be dealt with, and what is and what isn’t acceptable.

So in the spirit of the true nature of these forums, helping other WP users out, I hope we can let this issue sit on the back burner another day or so, until it is resolved.

If the thread continues into a open discussion of the merits of paying/free plugins, I’m not sure it will stay open, but that’s just my opinion.

Sorry – I was just being sarcastic.
Samuel
p.s. Your remade Landzilla theme is very tight.

VaamYob :: You could have your donors’ sites appear differentiated in your list depending on how much they donated… much like a tag cloud or some archive lists.

Strange.. you want a theme ‘volunteered’ https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/59932?replies=7 but your code needs money. Other examples may well reside in your forum history.

Either sell it or give it away. One or the other.
There is NO middle ground here.

Donation is defined as a free-will offering, thus a coerced donation is not a donation it is a purchase price, to claim it is anything otherwise is an outright fabrication.

You’re plug-in needs to store data somewhere, does it not? How is this data storage handled, is it via a stand-alone connection to a stand-alone (non-WordPress) database? More practically, it must make some use of the WordPress data base, quite possibly through invoking a WordPress function to store that data, likely within the WordPress data structure, making this plug-in subordinate to the GPL licensing terms.

If you are completely confident that your plug-in does not violate the WordPress licensing requirements, then you should have no problem either making the code available for inspection or offering a detailed explanation of how your plug-in operates whilst not making any use of WordPress functions or its data structure. Please don’t bother claiming that the GPL does not apply here for some reason, WordPress is released under the GPL and requires that any plug-in is released under a GPL license. The GPL requires that “You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.” [GNU General Public License]. The GNU GPL FAQ states “…make function calls to each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single program…this means the plug-ins must be released under the GPL or a GPL-compatible free software license, and that the terms of the GPL must be followed when those plug-ins are distributed.” [GPL Frequently Asked Questions]. Even at best, any arguments in favour of your plug-in not be privy to the GPL fall into a very dark grey area.

I have absolutely no intentions of ever making use of your plug-in, free or not, so in the end it all makes little difference to me. I would imagine that any plug-in author would be fully prepared to offer evidence of licensing compliance if asked to do so, unless of course there is something that does violate the precepts. If you refuse to make any reassurances as to the nature of the plug-in, I would hope that any WordPress user who has or would purchase your plug-in, would review the code and ensure that it does not make any use of the WordPress data structure or functions. If it does make use of those functions or data structure, the plug-in is covered by the GPL, so that said reviewer would be free to release it to the community.

Looking forward to your reply,
Michael.

The GPL doesn’t require an author of a plugin to distribute. So the author still has the right to choose if he wants to distribute or not, and the conditions under which this distribution takes place (eg: payment).

The only thing the GPL requires is that if the author distributes the plugin to X that X also recieves the same rights as the author has.. Meaning: X is allowed to distribute the plugin.

So hopefully now someone will give it away for free!

Or ‘suggest’ a donation if they feel it’s good enough.

Which brings me to wonder what happens if someone pays (oops! ‘donates’) to download the plugin and then decides they dont like/want it or it doesn’t work?

I don’t know about anyone else, but I would never “pay” for a plugin to 100% free software. I may be convinced to donate if the plugin is just that good, but never pay. I’m no GPL expert, but you do call this a WordPress plugin right? And you say that it requires WordPress but does not use any of its code? That seems contradictory there. One would think for you to claim all this that it would have to be usable outside of WordPress right?

Exactly! As timvw says one is free to charge for the distribution of the GPL covered programme, but not for the programme itself. The purpose of my post was the following:

1. It’s not a donation, it’s a purchase price – we’re not stupid.

2. You’ve (plug-in author) said it does not contain any WordPress code in it, if that is the case, how does it work?

3. If it does make use of any WordPress code, as per the GPL then it must be GPL released.

4. If it is covered under GPL, which a user can determine if the author won’t specify, you (the “donor??) are free to do with it as you please under the terms of the GPL or whatever GPL compatible license the plug-in is released under (it is required that all plug-ins for WordPress be released under the GPL or a GPL compatible license), like offer it for a free download or make it true donation-ware (ie: I’d really like if you donate to offset my bandwidth costs, but even if you don’t donate, you can still download the plug-in).

EDIT: Kahil, bingo! That’s exactly right!

for those concerned with getting your money back if not satisfied… All states have a contract law on their books somewhere that states that a person has the legal right to revoke/back out of/change your mind/etc and recieve full re-embersement. For most states its 3 days. Being that this is not payment for a service (LOL…right…) and is a donation using PayPal, it is fully refundable under PayPal standards.

[Thread closed – Podz]