Auctions plugin - just an illusion?

I can swear I have seen such a plugin in the plugin section. But I can not find it anymore. Was I daydreaming?

  • Yes, I released an auctions and bidding plugin. It's a huge plugin (actually 3 rolled into 1) which took a long time to build. All my other plugins I released because I felt the commnuity would find them useful.

    The auctions plugin was released to gain some exposure, respect/recommends and, hopefully, some work (I started a web/app dev/design company in January and need to pay the rent).

    Unfortunately, I only ended up helping other devs on this site pay their rent and gained zero myself. So I decided to take it down, protect the code better, and release a GPL and commercial version at another stage.

    If you want though, I can send you the plugin under a non-GPL licence

  • quite true and rather sad to see some cowardly developers in this community who are too eager for a few $$'s and forget simple professional courtesies when bidding on project work based on another developer's hard work and plugins and my condolences to the sucker client who hires non-original developer-authors to work on ehcamenets - just because maybe the client likes pay less e.g. $5-10/hour-cut-your-own-brothers-throat-for-money-rates rather than professional rates.

  • any hints as to who it the other devs might be?  would be nice to know who the a**es are on here, so as to make sure i do not deal with or donate to.........

  • The nature of GPL specifically allows for other people to enhance/change your work to fit their needs.  There's nothing shady going on with that.  It would be nice if they hired the original devs, as the original devs probably have a better idea of how to go about fitting the changes to the clients needs, but there's nothing wrong with it.

    @Mark - if you're getting undercut for work try not to worry about it too much.  Just don't lower yourself to cut throat prices if you can help it.  It doesn't serve you to work for razor thin profits, you'll just get overworked and lose motivation.  The best thing you can do is prove that you have the capability to tackle the tougher projects that the low-ballers can't handle.  That's where the premium money is.

  • @Matt - Get Real !!! ;-)

    Everyone knows the 'nature' of GPL - however almost most of us understand 'professional courtesy' in the English language. It would be nice ?? kisses !! ;-) I make a very pointed stance of *not bidding on enhancements  for PlugIns' by other Developers - including *Matt Beckett's plugins - even if existing clients ask -- I tell them politely to contact the original Author. And 2x -- I have told this to many Clients. Only exception is rare and at the (my existing) Client's requests. I almost 99% never respond to any Posts at Prof Svcs if it's re: other Dev's PlugIns.. Who better to handle that ? than the original author ? How on earth can I even imagine that I could do a better job with Matt.B's own PlugIns that Matt.B himself ??

    How can you say that 'nothing wrong with it' ? Sounds very much like you are condoning that other developer ! ;-oO;X;P If some client approached you to make changes to a PlugIn I wrote - would you take that money OR would you do as I would ?

    Several years back - a developer released a plugin for which I had been offered $$ earlier (in a public post) -- When reminded about the 'deal' - That other developer (nice guy!) totally backed out within approx <= 1 minute -- and said that the money should be paid to me ! ;-)

    The deal I had made earlier was --> That I would code that PlugIn - if the Requestor would donate the proferred $$ amount to charity of their own choosing. I sent the usd$ 40 they sent - to *The Street Children's Fund*... and with the note that the money was given by the " Elgg Community " -- *not from DhrupDeScoop.

    And here you are -- saying ' nothing wrong...' ! 'GPL'.. You should not have posted such supportive comments in these circumstances... The topic is too sensitive for careless remarks and you've stirred a bee's honey nest. You need to understand beyond and behind 'nature of GPL.. ' is real people - not just the commercial interests. Everything is wrong with that other developer's ethics.

    GPL and OpenSource is in the red corner and Professionalism and Simple Good Manners is in the Blue corner...

    And never shall the twain meet !

  • I disagree with you wholeheartedly Dhrup  :)

    If you don't want other devs modifying your code then you don't release it under GPL - simple as that.  On the university project I've made extensive use out of some other peoples plugins which needed modification for the universities purposes.  Most notably widget_manager and file_tools.  All changes that I've made I've been paid for.  I've also pushed all changes back to ColdTrick's github repo - some of which they like and pull in, others they opt not to.  Are you saying they should be pissed at me because I got paid to adapt their plugin to my clients needs? (ps. Jerome/Jeroen - I certainly hope you're not!).  With a sufficiently complex project, requested changes to plugins having to go through original devs would be a project management nightmare.

    I'm not bent out of shape if people adapt my plugins to their needs, that's why they're here out in the open for anyone to download.  If you're turning down work due to it being on my plugins then I urge you to stop doing so.  You're not helping me by turning it down, I certainly don't have time to cater to everyone's requests.  When I am asked to modify another devs plugin, as a one-off transaction for example, I do refer them to the original developer first - however I am in a position, as I presume you are, where I'm not in need of the work.  If I was in a position where I was scrounging to make my mortgage every month then absolutely I would do it every single time.  Good manners mean exactly nothing when your family is at stake.

    If commercialization is the main goal, then releasing it as GPL is the wrong move.  It seems here that commercialization is the goal for Mark, so removing it from here was his best option.

    PS. The exposure and subsequent opportunities I've gained from releasing my plugins here has been worth orders of magnitude more than what I could possibly have sold them for.  That's message I was trying to send to Mark.

  • First of all; it is a great disappointment that this plugin is no more available. It was a very promising one. Both with the existing functionality and the promised ones.

     

    I can understand Marks's point. He worked hard for this plugin with the hope of getting some consultancy. Now he gets none and sees other developers getting the consultancy for his own plugin.

     

    On the other hand, (if I may add to Matt's excellent text) when you release a software with GPL, you know the opprtunities and risks with GPL. And you count on the fact that if anybody wants serious work done, they will come to the developer who knows the plugin best: the one who designed and developed it. Surely there will be some people in between who shall go for another developer because s/he bids a few euros lower. They are the ones taking a risk. But in general, this model seems to work for the developers of core Elgg. Apparently this has also worked very well for Matt.

     

    So there may be several possibilities:

    - Mark may have got upset too early, in the first set back.

    - As everybody has different situation, Mark can not afford the time to build up a name and get consultancy.

    - The free-for-all plugin scheme does not always work well.

     

    I think all three play a role in this case. As for the third possibility, I notice that a lot of useful plugins disappear in the list when a new Elgg version comes because the developer does not see a point upgrading it without any revenue. Also the culture is to blame. I find it strange that when people demand money for their good work, they are somehow mocked in the forums as "too commercial" (e.g. Webgalli) or so. Even stranger, people who run commercial sites (and probably make money) complain harshly when the new Elgg-version compatible plugin is not available! I wonder if they ever bothered making donations to the authors of the plugins that they use on their sites once they started making money...

     

    As for Mark; releasing a "light" version of your plugin as GPL and having a commercial version is a good idea. It is a good risk management. Like any risk management, it is also a compromise. Hopefully there will be customers which will need extra stuff on top of the commercial version. As Matt makes his point, it is where the real money is. Just do not loose your faith in Elgg because of one specific case.

     

    Regards.

  • @Matt - You're talking about editing a bunch of plugins, both bundled and third party, to meet a clients requested functionality. No problem with that, I've done it myself and haven't felt the need to ask the devs' permission.

    I'm referring to a job in professional serviecs titled "NC - Create additional summary page for Mark's Auctions-Bidding plugin". This is different. My name is even in the job title. Yet despite going as low as I could and offering to do the work for a paltry €20 per hour (which doesn't go far here in Ireland), I'm under-cut by a dev here, presumably offering 5-10 dollars an hour. They entire job involves modifying the plugin I built and selling it back to the client.

    Matt I asked a few months ago how to acquire work on Elgg you suggested I release some plugins. I've done so, had over 2000 downloads, and got a total of 1 job (well 3 in total, but the others didn't pay up in the end).

    There should be more protection for devs here. Why oh why is there not a paid plugins section on this site? Wordpress do it and thats one of the reason they have so many devs, themes and plugins and are so successful.

    We should also be allowed to release plugins, for free, under non-GPL licences. Something like an "end user" licence where genuine users can use and modify the code, but not distribute or put it out for tender. I dont know if such a licence exists and I know it would be difficult to implement. Point is, more protection for devs would lead to more devs staying here and more plugins being released for free (there are countless devs who were active here 3 years ago but who have since abandoned - this cant be a coincidence)

    There are dev's like yourself who, I assume, treat this as more of a hobby and devs like me who want to contribute to the community whilst also paying the rent. Applying a one-fits-all policy doesn't work and is detrimental to the advancement of Elgg.

  • @İşöğünçı- PlugIn will be back @GPL sometime soon with some DeScoop 'NexGen' improvements ;o)