BuddyPress.org

@M no I realise you are not forcing anyone into anything and yes it would be wonderful if more people would bother to learn a little coding, not just PHP but general coding, but they won’t, it’s the issue of ‘Time’ and ‘Focus’ few can be bothered with either nowadays, it’s an instant gratification society where things are ‘Free!’ no effort required!

Forgive my comments, they were – in part – prompted by my feelings towards a well known outfit that offers paid support. I fact I agree 110% with your sentiments expressed in that last paragraph, I too am dismayed at what I see as a reluctance to appreciate the value in work done to provide such things as plugins (not only plugins or BP but coding provided across the development world online) I would argue that we have created a rod for our own backs in many ways and engendered a belief in non coders that this work is something trivial trotted of ones editor in no time with little effort. I wish that everyone using a plugin would understand that in fact there was an absolute moral imperative to ‘Donate’ towards that time spent developing it, considering the download stats one can observe sometimes that are in the region of thousands of downloads for something popular, if people only donated $1.00 that would still mean the coders time was recompensed, perhaps generously?

I’m no lover of the culture that has sprung up but it’s a culture that has been created by us providing the means for the many to find an easy in to running apps / sites without having to expend any / too much energy. To some degree I would argue in favour of the ‘Donate’ aspect being expressed in a much better manner perhaps with a note of the development time to create or even a stipulated amount of such low value, at least a quarter the price of a cup of coffee, that people would in fact feel obliged and happy to have to pay so little for something that has so much value to them? Of course a hundred contra arguments around this sort of subject though.