BuddyPress.org

Your site says straight from the source, but you are not the author of any of the plugins.

makes it look more like you want in on the action too.

It’s hard to remove a post and let you see the response, so I’m closing this one. Please refrain from posting any further about this, it’s beginning to look like spam (this is the third post that I’m aware of, in the last few days). Heck, the title of this thread is the sort of thing Google’s going to pick up on, which I know is your intention.

In terms of people selling or advertising premium BuddyPress services on this site, there’s a balance between promoting your plugin in situations such as responding to a relevant topic, i.e. “how can I do x?” and you reply, “my premium plugin z can do that for you!” (which is okay), and outright advertising or spamming (which isn’t). Announcing a new premium plugin or theme is fine, but posting an announcement or advert each week isn’t — that’s spam.

Blatant advertising or spamming is not allowed; BuddyPress.org community support is about community support, it is not a free-for-all marketplace. This isn’t the place for that type of thing.

Specifically regarding your site, there are extra considerations. You appear to be re-selling GPL’d plugins and themes[1] (I have only taken a quick look at your site). As long as you had purchased these GPL’d themes or plugins originally, then you can turn around and give that theme or plugin to anybody you want. The GPL is about redistribution. My understanding is that this viewpoint is entirely correct.

However, I think you’re missing the big picture. It may not be illegal, but I don’t think it’s ethical. The authors of those works which you are profiting from worked hard to create something. By re-selling their works, I believe you are disrespecting those authors and the larger community. To me, it’s as simple as this: if this sort of behaviour discourages even one individual from creating a new BuddyPress plugin or a BuddyPress theme, because they’d like to try to make some money from it, then the community has been harmed by having one less choice.

I feel this threads falls between an announcement of a service and an advertisement for that service, considering your repeated posts, with debatable ethics. I apologise on behalf of our moderator team; we should have got in contact with you after your first post, and we’re sorry that it seemed we were picking on your posts. However, you could have posted another topic and asked what happened to your previous posts; we would have seen it.

I am paul@byotos.com if you would like to discuss further in private, or you’re welcome to start a new topic and start a discussion about the ethics of re-selling GPL plugins/themes, but maybe that sort of discussion would go best on the wordpress.org forums, rather than here, as it would be seen by a larger audience of WordPress plugin and theme authors (relevant, of course, because your site appears to have WP and BP-specific themes listed).

[1] This assumes that everything in those plugins/themes is covered by the GPL, such as images or any other files, as opposed to just the PHP source.

The site in question is alreayd releasing “lite” version of their plugins in the repo. Quite a number of them at this point.

You’re waiting for them to “come around”. They will not. Their pricing model makes them enough money to have kept at it now for four years.

What you’re doing, however well-intended, sets a precedence that makes it seem okay for people to do this to anyone. Like myself, for example. Yes, I sell plugins as well. While technically you could do the same to me, it would not endear me towards helping you. Ever.

Paul is pointing out that rather than helping people in this forum with their buddypress issues, you’re basically advertising for paid services. THAT is the problem.

`I can most assuredly say he did not rip off the premium one and stuff it in the repo.`

Correct. I spent many hours of my free time coding that plugin. If you don’t believe me, just ask my wife, who had to put up with my constant complaining about Ning’s crappy json files.

I don’t sell plugins myself, but I don’t have a problem with people who do. And I most certainly would not go out of my way to hurt those people financially, if their only “crime” is charging for their work. (Occasionally, there are other issues to be considered.)

It’s specious of you to argue that, on the one hand, the world needs more volunteers, and at the same time to pull this kind of stunt. Pulling the rug out from someone’s business will not make them “see the light” and start volunteering here. It will only make them angry.

Cool, I’ll close it.