Watching people respond to my recent post reminded me of a scene in When Harry Met Sally (it’s about 51:50 in – watch on Netflix).
To steal and paraphrase (badly): “If you asked me what my motivation was and I said ‘I’m not making any money’, that would mean my motivation is money. Just because I answer a question about how much money I see as a direct result of releasing free plugins doesn’t mean that my motivation is money.”
In the prior post I was answering the questions posed to me. The questions were about my motivation and were also explicitly about monetary benefits. I answered both, but certainly didn’t make them causal.
When I talked about the donations I received, I was trying to illustrate that money is not motivation for this type of Open Source contribution. If you’re getting a couple hundred bucks a month or 5 bucks a month, that amount isn’t that significant to most developers. I wasn’t even referring to the most recent design changes of the plugins pages on WordPress.org, though people falsely assumed I was and chimed in accordingly.
A number of people focused on this line from my prior post:
I actually feel strongly that the current situation is unsustainable. Unless the WordPress community at large starts to better recognize and reward the developers that create the tools that they use and rely on, the developers won’t/can’t continue to provide as they have.
and misinterpreted it. People again focused on money or the need to thank developers, but that’s not at all what I’m talking about.
I want the community to simply have a better understanding and respect for developer’s time. That can be many things. It is the attitude with which someone approaches a developer, it is having understanding if a developer is too busy to help, it is the community finding a other ways to get support (and support each other) rather than relying on the developer.
If you re-read my answers I think I actually make it fairly clear: my motivation for releasing free GPL plugins and themes is not money. I see things that can be improved and want to make them better. Because WordPress (and b2 before it) is Open Source, I have an opportunity to do this. My motivation to contribute to Open Source is driven by three factors:
- Self-interest. Most of the things I’ve written and released germinated as things I had a need for or interest in.
- Intellectual curiosity and satisfaction. I like tackling and solving problems.
- Philanthropy. My Open Source work provides me with a feeling of pride and satisfaction that I create things that help others.
That is my reward and motivation. Based on my conversations with other Open Source developers, I believe these are pretty common factors.
I don’t want or need gratitude. I want an understanding that using something I created does not give you a right to my time.
I want to not be personally lambasted if I don’t have time to update the plugin when there is a bug or something in WP changes and the plugin I wrote breaks. Expressing frustration is fine, speculating on or assigning motivation is not.
I want to be given the benefit of the doubt when something outside of my control, that I’ve spoken out about, happens (and not be accused of breaking it on purpose to drive revenue to WordPress HelpCenter).
I want to not read about me “not caring about my users” when other commitments and priorities have to come before my free contributions to the community.
I don’t think these are unreasonable requests. And I don’t think I’m alone.
Joost says don’t release plugins if you can’t support them. I find that statement to be naive. It is very difficult to predict the future. I would not have accurately predicted that WordPress would graduate from a technical community to a mainstream community and that WordPress would power 10% of the world’s websites today. 4 years ago as an independent developer I would not have predicted that I’d have a team of 15, a baby and more responsibilities and draws on my time than I could have imagined at the time.
I’d like to reiterate the statement I used to close my previous post:
There are lots of smart people with good ideas trying to do the right thing, I’m optimistic that solutions can be found. I’ll certainly continue to support that effort however I can.
This isn’t a situation without solutions, but it’s not going to happen overnight either – and it’s going to need to be led by the community.
I would like to emphasize that the issues discussed above are all related to free plugins and themes. As the WordPress community has transitioned from a majority of technical users to a majority of mainstream users I believe that it has also transitioned to being better served by commercial products and support.
WordPress users today expect things to work, they expect packaging and documentation, they expect support. These are all very reasonable things to expect from a commercial product.
We provide great support for customers of our commercial WordPress products directly through our support forums and via the documentation we write and maintain. This is part of our agreement with our customers; this support is part of what they are paying for.
We have our forums configured so that every post in a forum for one of our commercial products results in a task assigned to me personally. I then triage the posts and handle them myself or assign them out within our team. It helps me keep a good view on exactly what the needs of our customers are and helps identify holes and areas of improvement in both our products and support offerings.
Well, this post certainly clarifies a few things from the previous post you had. It all seems pretty reasonable to me now. Nothing you’ve published here is out of this world but seems commonplace in most open-source environments.
Hey Alex,
thanks for iterating back on the issue 🙂
I said two things about releasing plugins, and you only quoted me on half of it. I said that if you don’t want to maintain them any more, you could easily tell that to the community and people would pick them up. They’re not just your burden to carry…
Then, you say
how does that rhyme with your original quote:
Yes I responded to that and no, that wasn’t falsely. You said what you said, right? 🙂
Finally, you name 3 reasons for why you do this and you forget the most important one IMHO: it allowed and allows you to build a name and a company for yourself. You falsely disconnect the fact that you have “a team of 15” from the fact that you released those plugins. I think that team wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for those plugins, and that’s what I tried to get you, and the world, to understand with my post.
You, and many many more people in this community, have to start thinking from the perspective of the user. They don’t code, nor do they understand or are even bothered by these issues, they just have a problem. You’ll have to take the time to explain all this to them.
If you don’t have time or don’t want to make time to update a plugin: fine. Just tell people and say patches are welcome. If you don’t even have time to review those patches, orphan the plugin and ask other people to take up the commitment. Those other people then get to use the benefits too, heck, who knows, in a couple years they might have a team of 15.
Believe me I absolutely feel your pain, I get those emails too, I get annoyed every once in a while too, but you have to remember what all these things bring you and brought you. While I think people should show gratitude towards you, you should show gratitude to the community as well. You owe each other.
:sigh: Once again you are confusing cause and effect. That wasn’t my motivation, that was a pleasant by-product.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by wptavern, Gordon Brander, Alex King, wpfeed, Amor and others. Amor said: It’s Not About Money or Gratitude http://bit.ly/fYLEoI -via @alexkingorg […]
Gratitude is great, but should users show more affection/support to developers besides an occasional donation?
Glad you clarified your other post as I was also confused by the “change” of opinion (glad I held off blogging about it). 🙂
This is odd…I ALWAYS donate to the open source developers who create the WordPress plugins I use. YOU are the only one who never took a moment to fire off a quick thank you e-mail for the $30+ of Amazon wish list items I sent you. Perhaps it’s because you EXPECT the donations and all the others sincerely APPRECIATE them?
And no, I don’t use your plugins anymore. Still trying to figure out why a link to this post ended up in my WordPress dashboard.
Maria, I would encourage you to re-read this post.
Also, Amazon doesn’t send me the contact information of the buyer when someone buys something from my wishlist. If you did buy something, that was a very nice gesture.
I’m sorry Alex, but I’m just not buying that you don’t think about your business when you release plugins. If you’re not, well, then you’re not, I just couldn’t believe that to be true 🙂
What I said is that my current business isn’t my motivation for contributing to Open Source.
I suggest that the timeline of my Open Source involvement actively contradicts your theory. The height of my involvement (theme competitions, plugin releases, etc.) came when I had a day job and was building Tasks Pro – both of these were several years before I started doing any WordPress consulting work (I doubt there was much WordPress consulting work period in those days).
Since I started building the team at Crowd Favorite, my plugin releases have slowed from a stream to barely a trickle. If it was my goal to leverage these Open Source contributions to somehow build the business, I’m doing it all backwards.
You are, of course, free to think whatever you like.
While I do appreciate all that you are saying here. But, coming from a background of “industry giants and top places to work for in the world” I will also say this-
Money and gratitude are the two most effective and possibly the ONLY real motivators in human behavior.
Technology based creatives struggle so hard right now just to maintain their client base that we compete to work for free.
So while your intentions and motivation ma not include things like gratitude and money, I would appreciate, as would many, if you would not project the attitude that by somehow working for pay and getting the occasional pat of the back, is wrong or bad. I for one would like to get paid. A quick pinch on the ass, or gratitude, would be nice as well.
Cheers- Johnny Molotov
Did you even read this post?
The fact that you had to take the time to write an addendum to what was already a very clearly articulated blog post is a very good metaphor for the situation you’ve described.
+1 Rachel
I can’t believe after all of this, people are still totally misunderstanding you. I can assure you, it was very clear to me.
im curious, is this whisper blower for plugin or theme developer to monetize their product?
Well, as a fellow busy plugin dev myself, I see myself on Alex’s side on certain days and Joost’s side on certain days. It really depends on who I am interacting with.
I’m also glad that there are many smart people out there to come up with different possible solutions like WP Help Center, WPPlugins.com, and Fundry. I just signed up with Fundry to test the waters to see how that model will work for WP Greet Box and WP Minify.
I, like Maria, am also wondering why I still see links to posts from Alex King in my WP Dashboard when more than 90% of those posts are of commercial nature? Then you want us to believe that “it’s not about money”?
Boy, you’re a smart marketing guy, but your actions portray a different message than what you want us to believe you are — even this very post proves this. 😉
. . . . would you guys please take it outside, you’re boring me stiff already
I just want to say how much I appreciate you and your work. Thank you so much for everything you have created. Do not think for one second that you do not have an impact on many lives, because you do. Sending some love with big hugs!
Wow. It seems that no matter how much you try to break it down, explain, and simplify, somebody will mis-interpret some turn of phrase and turn it into something else. 🙂
An excellent summary of what motivates most of us who contribute to open source. Most of the time, we’re solving a problem for ourselves and just say “somebody else might benefit from this, too.” So you throw it out into the wild. If we get an “attaboy” or a donation, great! But if we don’t, it’s not like we expected that.
I wrote my first plugin in June 2004. I could probably count the number of people who have donated to me on the fingers of one hand. I could probably count the number of people who have sent a simple “thank you” on the fingers of two hands.
Fortunately, though, I’ve never had the misfortune of somebody berating me or rudely demanding fixes for problems in my plugins (I’ve gotten “it doesn’t work” or “it’s broken”, just not rudely). Perhaps because my plugins have been pretty simple, and mostly niche stuff.
Are there benefits to our work beyond self-satisfaction, even in the absence of money or gratitude? Sure! As I’m sure you know, there’s a tiny subset of people who are impressed when they learn that you were once a core developer on one of the most popular open source CMS projects in the world. Does it put bread on my table? Not in a direct sense. Does it give me a sense of pride? You betcha.
It’s the lack of respect that likely, more than anything else, contributes to developers falling away over time. Too often, users don’t appreciate the fact that they got something for nothing. So what if you built your site around it and are now “stuck?” Welcome to life, that’s an on-going problem with IT in general. Be glad you got that way on an open source module instead of a $50k piece of proprietary software that just vanished into the ether when the vendor went under.
At some point, developers have to firmly fight back. Not be nasty, but we have no duty to kiss our users’ ass. They’re not our clients, they’re users of free software. For them to cop an attitude is like a homeless man getting uppity that he’s tired of the same brand of soup at the soup kitchen. If you’re going to cop an attitude, you better have paid your dues in some fashion.
@Pete – I just looked at the last 100 posts from Alex’s WordPress category:
https://alexking.org/blog/topic/wordpress
There are only 10 that I can find that are of a commercial nature. Go away, troll!
@ Alex – I re-read your original post and agree with your position. It had taken some of your comments of out context when speeding through the first time.
It really irks me when people complain about free services/products. Working without compensation puts an unrealistic expectation on the developer and the relationship. this in turn translates into distorted expectations of the industry.
Just my 2 cents.
Thanks for your contribution by the way and my apologies for the misreading.
Cheers.
-J
Some of my plugins are forks of existing ones. I liked them, wanted them to be better, even offered code to the author (I just wanted to contribute, didn’t want to need to support their live during WordPress upgrades, I wanted original author to do that), but didn’t get answers from the author.
Well, then I just took their GPL idea and built my own plugins, which are much better than original ones (don’t take me wrong, but I’d also not build a plugin if there’s already one that’s perfect… if I build a plugin, it must be the best, otherwise I lost my time).
As I said before, I never received bad-mannered comments, but I get many comments from ppl trying to use my plugins over PHP4. Some requests took months to be addressed. If anybody want fast support, just pay for it and he’ll get top priority (which still doesn’t mean I can make a day last 30h).
And now I remembered another interesting situation. Even before starting developing WordPress plugins, I developed a Travian hack. It was a fork of a very good hack that a guy developed and orphaned. I rebuilt it from scratch, made it more easier to maintain and made it work again. And whole that hack received many more downloads than all my WordPress plugins together, I almost never received a comment from its users… I planned to keep it updated even after going away from Travian, but since nobody bothered to talk to me, I also didn’t bother maintaining it. Sad but real.
@Alex, well said.
@Joost, you have to dig that different strokes different folks. Not everyone has the same motivations as you, or the same mindset.
@dougal, I dig that your a font of knowledge when it comes to WP, I’d employ ya if I could. maybe I will one day when the finance is there.
@dgrut, 30 million users via MS, 16million self hosted & 16million on the wordpress.org. We would be silly not to monetize at least some of our efforts, I myself monetized the other month by adding a CDN and different icon sets to my plugin. I now get a decent amount per day from it and expect to have broken even on costs after about 4 months. However the main of my users still use it all for free. (share and follow)
The way I think free plugins/themes should work is that if support is available then that’s good, but take the plugin/theme asis, maybe pay something for premium support if it is available.
Put simply, you are getting somethign for nothing. If you don’t like it, go write your own or download from somewhere else.
I enjoyed reading your post. I have developed a number of buddypess plugins, one of them quite complicated and well used. I developed these for a project then released them to the community. I find it frustrating that no one donates anything to support the plugins. I wish that a future version of word press would include some donation tracking system. So that blog owners could be reminded on their blog dashboard every 2 weeks or so that a donation to XYZ plugin would be nce. And if they previously made a donation then a thank you for all the support they gave. Right now there is no way to do that. Heck I’m guilty as the rest of them. I’ve used countless plugins on sites which I never go back and reconfigure so i never see the solicitations for donations and frankly can’t recall if i made one already. This system of mine will probably never be built vor various privacy reasons, but it sure would be great!
I’ve seen other plugin developers insert tracking code in their plugins and tell people: if you don’t like that, then don’t use my plugin. A strange approach but one that actually let’s you know who is using your creations and lets you contact them.
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