Hi,

Thanks for bringing this up. I thought I should write a blog post to make our position clear about the items in the Oxwall Store. Here it goes: http://blog.oxwall.org/...ore-price-vs-quality

Thanks,
Emil

Hi,

It does not mean that if the plugin does not suit your purpose it is immature. No developer is going to spend time in creating a cheaply matured plugin and sell it.

You have to demo available to check out before you buy and could have even contacted me via PM for refund.

It really makes me hurt by saying that the plugin is immature. If so how could many bought that with 0 issues? You even mentioned that it had no issues and worked fine? Then how come it's immature?

Dear Emil S.
I partially agree, that it should not all be about the price it should also be a balance about quality of plugins produced by developers.

But, I completely disagree that market conditions should end up determining pricing for plugins. As good as that may sound, it is only applicable to CMS that have many developers. If a relatively new and promising CMS like OXWALL which does not yet have too many contributing software developers, using market conditions as a price determing factor is detrimental. Buyers of plugins are left at the mercy of developers.

Case and Point. Here is an OXWALL scenario which just occurred to me. I just purchased another plugin for $20. It was a plugin called "Paid Membership". The plugin installed fine, had no error problem at all. And at first it appeared that it was going to do what it was supposed to do. HOWEVER!!! this plugin DID NOT. UNLESS I bought another $20 plugin called "PayPal Billing"  The "paypal billing" plugin contains the required payment gateway to allow the processing and receiving of payment, and that will allow the "paid membership" plugin to do what it is supposed to do.

See details of my angry experience here: http://www.oxwall.org/forum/topic/6823

But now since there are no other plugins available like "paid membership" No other developers have put out such a product. Only that one developer has the plugin and they pretty much charge what they want. Now what am I to do? I have already paid $20. Should I pay the additional $20 for another plugin so as to get the plugin already bought to work?

In a case like this I am held hostage by the developer. As much as an open source CMS scouts and needs as many developers, it is also up to the open CMS owners to kind of balance between what is fair to buyers. Not just fair to developers because they need them to promote their CMS.

Very often the same Developers are the first one to jump ship and move onto another CMS when a CMS loses and popularity.

 If I had known in advance, I would NOT have bought the "membership Plugin". I would consider other options with other open source content management systems. And this is what I was trying to tell you earlier. There is also the price component to consider. There are other open source content management systems (CMS) that already come packed with vital basics like payment gateway engine.  Such that developers just make plugins that enhance CMS stock plugins.

So if an open source CMS begins to have pricey plugins, one might as well as just go and buy a priced CMS. This is very true when there also exists intentionally dishonest behaviors from developers, buyers just jump ship.

Just because a CMS is Free it does not mean that the CMS owners should neglect buyers expectancy for better Quality and lower Pricing.

Dear Mr. Purosothaman

Thanks for responding to my post. It was not necessary for you to come forward as a developer of the Immature Product, that is why I did not mention the developer. But thanks for stepping forward.

It would be unfair to you to ask for a "Refund" You had clearly linked your product to a demo. It was my mistake that I did not view the demo first, before I bought your Product. You did not misrepresent your product, even Though Your Product had a fancy misleading name to it.

I will chat to you on personal message. I am new to this. Sorry If I had known that I could you reach you my personal box  I would have done so firts.

I will contact you by personal mail box.

Thanks'

Ebony,

See your point. The description of the plugin is indeed somewhat misleading. We've asked the developer to change it to make it clear that a separate payment gateway plugin is necessary to make this plugin work.

In theory there should be many (free and paid) payment gateways available. These plugins are relatively easy to develop, so I suspect it's going to be an increasingly competitive market.

As I said, we are not in a position to force developers set the prices lower. We even think the community would benefit from having even _slightly_ more expensive plugins, since developers would be able to focus on several excellent plugins instead of trying to maintain a lot of so-so cheap plugins.

Thanks,
Emil

Quote from Ebony Wood Thanks for responding to my post. It was not necessary for you to come forward as a developer of the Immature Product, that is why I did not mention the developer. But thanks for stepping forward.

Ebony,

I have no intentions of hiding out making a buyer to feel bad of my plugin. I have always worked to make my customers happy.

Quote from Ebony Wood It would be unfair to you to ask for a "Refund" You had clearly linked your product to a demo. It was my mistake that I did not view the demo first, before I bought your Product. You did not misrepresent your product, even Though Your Product had a fancy misleading name to it.

I feel it does not have any fancy name. The plugin has most of the features. It has even the tracking feature which you said its not there. Kindly recheck your admin settings of plugin.

Quote from Emil S. In theory there should be many (free and paid) payment gateways available. These plugins are relatively easy to develop

Emil,
But where are the documents for them? I have tried to develop some gateways, but ended with failure.

My view , as a user and a buyer of many of the plugins here is that:

- Prices are very reasonable...if you consider the user base in oxwall, average hourly rate for a developer and the time it takes to develop/test a plugin...$20 can't go very far.

-As users we have varying/competing requirements and there can't be a one size fit all solution when it comes to plugin development...A solution that is comprehensive for me might lack basic requirements for another user.

-There is often really good support from developers to allow further modification and enhancement of plugins to suite individual's need. (Included in the same $20)! you just need to ask.

Hi there,

i would like to expose my point of view as a regular buyer of Purus' plugins and doing custom development (more than 100 hours of development for now): I think that there is no secret in this world. No cheap product will have the same quality as a fair price product. It is the rule in "real" life, why won't it be truth in Internet? If you buy shoes for 10 dollars, you will have 10 dollars quality. Even if crowdsourcing can help everyone lower the price, you won't have custom development, nor all the things you would like. 

We have to do things with reason and think about fair price and work done.

I would have loved Purus working for me as custom developper, but unfortunately he couldn't. However, he always answered my mails quickly and politely, so I definitely back him.

Quote from Purusothaman Ramanujam
But where are the documents for them? I have tried to develop some gateways, but ended with failure.

We are getting down to writing documentation for all aspects of software once 1.5 is out.

Thanks.

Lets face it there are con plugins and the developers of such are using socket puppets for reviews. More control is needed and tests by the oxwall team to recommend these plugins or rid them from the store. Actual most of the free plugins are really good and do work well. The rest have minor acceptable problems. I feel there is a need maybe to have a client testing team concerning plugins prior to them put in the Oxwall store. I am very suspicious of plugins that cost 1 dollar as that suggest to me the developer thinks no one will sue him/her for con plugin. Plugins should work with every theme and developer of the plugins should give excellent support of their plugin for it to stay listed in the store. People want to earn money then they should work hard to achieve good service if they wish not to give support then their plugin should be free. Lets have some decent quality so good that sophisticated high quality plugin developer could charge $50 US for their plugin. I will take action against people that con in the near future as its not fair to serious Oxwall Clients and those on the independent developers community. Its no good writing blogg's at this present time where people can see the present system is flawed. This is a great product and the plugins should emulate that greatness and not under mind its quality.       

Bob,

Good to know your thoughts.

Oxwall now reviews each and every plugin on their own and then approves it. Its understandable that no plugin or even Oxwall in this case can be perfect and bug free.

It needs bug reporting and time to make any plugin/script good.

You can report if any plugin is not working as explained.

I also noticed tons of plugins that you have to buy are very pricy, and the price does not match the plugin. There's custom menu plugins for $10, and others that are just $1. Quite frankly, to me $1-$4 plugins should just be free, if they do a small, non-impactible thing, then why pay anything on it? Most developers of plugins are over charging for the worth of the plugin. It's just a feature added to a site, it'd be something else if it was a major, serious software.

I believe that the plugin should match the price, and if it's something simple that can be easily found online and coded for free, then the plugin should be free.

Jake,

I would accept your words if you have avoided using the stolen plugins. You do not have the moral rights to say these. I would not have said this but you have made me tell this here. And you are still using them.

Its not others who decide that the plugins should be free. My efforts are not free.

I have made many free plugins too.

Yes, but really, the plugins for $1 or $3 or a small price like that provide effects of something that can be seemingly easy to implement on your own. You pay for the quality and use, not the idea of it.

(Btw, I told you I removed those, sir.) Unless you want to consider using Oxwall 1.5 as stealing.

And yes, people would reply saying "I wouldn't know how to add that, so this is worth the money," even though adding something that purchasable plugins do is simply free. If you can't, you could Google a back to top button, or use something like CSS Menu Maker to make a drop down menu. If the user is to lazy to do that, then why even use any software to run a site?

^It's plugins like these that should cost money, but they don't.

The whole point is, Purus, I recall you saying making Oxwall plugins was just a hobby of yours. I think unless it was your job or career to make plugins, you shouldn't worry about making any money from plugins, unless they do something very big and important to your website. I feel bad to see that the price of Oxwall plugins are turning out to be like the ones on PHPFox, sooner or later you'll be charged $50 just to implement a few chatrooms onto your website.

Quote from Jake Brunton the plugins for $1 or $3 or a small price like that provide effects of something that can be seemingly easy to implement on your own.

You are fine to do it on your own. My plugins are for those who are not technically good and who acn not do that on their own. I do plugins only on request from my clients.. Did anyone asked you to buy this? IF so report them to oxwall :) :D

Quote from Jake Brunton You pay for the quality and use, not the idea of it.

You can get ideas and advice free in this world. So you take my advice too. :)

Quote from Jake Brunton I recall you saying making Oxwall plugins was just a hobby of yours. I think unless it was your job or career to make plugins

I also recall that my hobby should be useful for me. Is there any rule that hobbies should be without monetary benefits? Its not you who should decide what I should do with my plugins.

I have also given few free plugins. I have a free plugin (Mailchimp integration) waiting for approval.

I'm just saying, you should think more about your customers before just publishing a plugin. An example:

If there was a plugin that had games that were integrated with your users (like Facebook games) that was $30-$40, then that's worth it. Why? Coding something heavy like that is basically like freelancing for multiple people. Plus, it's something major that does more then just one or two things for my website. Now, a  plugin that cost like $20 just to make a fancier box appear for photo previews is NOT worth it. Something like that should cost at least just $5.

My whole point, is that most of the plugin developers don't plan their pricing correctly. Like when Login Notify of yours was $5, yes it's free now and that's great, but when it did cost money, that was way to much for something that did a simple task of posting a newsfeed status when one logged in. Your plugin, it's function, and quality should be based on what your amount for it will be.

If it's going to do something like just saying "Hi" in the console, it should be free.