Yeah I’d be up for that – anything to encourage more people to develop more useful plugins. If we all contributed say $10 that would very quickly grow the pot of money.
there are some pros and cons to this concept; sure we can offer financial incentive for plugin creation, but what about future upgrades – we’re going to pay for that too? I’d hate to become dependent on someone’s plugin if it’s just going to be abandoned 6 months down the road
I’d hate to become dependent on someone’s plugin if it’s just going to be abandoned 6 months down the road
This is one of the drawbacks of the extendable model though isn’t it? money or no money we will all be reliant at some point on a plugin for vital (as we see it ) site functionality with no guarantee it will continue to function after core site file upgrades, if an author chooses to abandon something there’s not a lot you can do about it short of pick up the continued development of it.
The only real way of avoiding this is to be able to maintain plugins and files ones self and/or to place a onerous burden on core project developers to do their best to ensure things like plugins will always work, that core upgrades have some means of addressing backwards compatibility but it’s a lot to expect if possible at all.
@ruthlessbookie I think this will be a problem regardless of whether we allow people to pledge money towards a plugin. The pledges will merely be an extra incentive for developers who otherwise wouldn’t be compensated for all their efforts at all.
fyi, most developers include donate links with their plugin. Either on the developers website or in the plugin readme or the plugin download page. This way you can choose which plugin to support or to create incentive for the developer to prioritize a feature.
I guess also, don’t wait for a system, if you feel a plugin is deserving the time and effort put in, just support it. In reality it might give the developer a chance to buy a starbucks coffee, since my limited experience tells me that donation are far and in between. Thanks for bringing up the fact that developers should be encouraged though!
