This thread is bordering on drama so I'm almost afraid to wade in....almost...but since I have some strong opinions on the subject I'm diving in. This will be an essay but I encourage you to take the time to read it if you have opinions on this topic.
Before I get into the intellectual meat of my post there's a couple of details I think we can all agree to off the bat:
- Some people are cheap m*f*rs who think they are entitled to everything for nothing and no matter how you structure it or what you call it they are going to whine about not getting it handed to them for free.
- Some community members here work their asses off and use some pretty amazing skill that's actually worth good money in the real world with no expectation of financial return
- Without community produced material shared with the rest of said community the bot would not be as useful to most of its users
I think a lot of people are getting hung up on the word donation and its literal definition. So let's look at that first. We're never going to settle here whether or not there is such a thing as a required donation. While I agree that by strict dictionary definition a donation should be at the discretion of the donator I can also name many examples in life where there is such a thing as a required donation. Dictionary definition aside there is a legal concept known as the required donation. Now add to that that virtually all money transacted by third parties in this community is via PayPal. PayPal has two methods, Pay and Donate. Technically, according to Paypal's terms and conditions (at least for this US participant) NOBODY here is using the donation feature properly anyway (I'll carefully choose that word instead of "legally"). Unfortunately the only way to make PayPal take a payor specified amount instead of a seller specified amount without a third party script is via the Donate method. (If I still had a copy of the script I'd offer it here for use so we could get further away from the word donate.)
I think its more important in this particular community with its current ruleset to focus on the intent of the donation requestor rather than the terminology. For the rest of this post I'm going to change my terminology as follows:
paid = required money
tip = not required
free = may or may not include a money transaction link but no money is required (aka tip)
So that drills us down to the core issue: whether or not its right to offer a lesser version of a product for free/tip and a full feature version for pay. Since the devs/mods/powers that be have determined that it is allowed to do just that I have to respect that and agree to play in those rules. I can't code plugins or CCs yet but even as a profile writer I can absolutely appreciate the hours that get dumped into some project. I can understand the desire to want some compensation and appreciate for your time and effort. I would truly hate for some of the great devs who (paid versions or not) are still not getting what their time is worth for the kind of work they are doing to quit. That being said, if this has always been a community of sharing and tipping or selling on the side then it would be foolish for a dev to come in and create product with the primary intention of making money.
For me, that's what it all boils down to. As long as the rules are what they are I have no problem with someone offering a lite version and a paid features version. What I have a problem with is those who's
primary intent is to make money off the rest of the community and primarily promoting and transacting that business through this forum through the loophole of "donation". Those of you with your own sites who offer all kinds of free stuff here and link to your site where you also have paid product, you are not who I mean. Even those who do not have their own site but who's posts are intended to offer the free product and just mention the paid as an "oh by the way", you're ok too.
But if you made something with the intent to sell it and then made a gimped version just so you could post here as free then I call flag on the play. Your free product needs to have some value. Even the cheap leader loss shit that gets you in the door at Wal-Mart has some value. Its not broken crap. (Sometimes its still crap though, let's be honest.) Furthermore, the focus/majority of your post here in the forum needs to be about the free/tip version not a ruse to funnel people to your "pay option".
Examples:
Offering and promoting a working, non-buggy plugin or CC for free/tips, throwing in a GUI and maybe a bonus feature or two = Good
Making a product for sale, stripping it down to barely functional and offering it for free solely to promote your paid product = Bad
Making a product, trying to sell it, getting wrist slapped for breaking the rules, stripping out the bare minimum features into a different profile that hasn't really been tested and doesn't work all that well and still promoting the hell out of your paid product anyway with a bait and switch = Worst
So regardless of the method used to transact the money, let's agree to call a spade a spade. If money is required, call it paid even if you're using the Donation feature of PayPal. Just follow the the rules and offer a working product for free first and foremost or do your business elsewhere.
And if you're one of those people in my first bullet stop bitching and try offering a
tip once in a while for some of the amazing addon product available here for
free which whether you want to admit it or not is still considerable. Then maybe those who are offering wouldn't feel like they have to monetize their work in order to stay motivated.
(To be clear: real Capitalism on a level playing field, not crony capitalism as practiced by many governments.)
