Charge for [optional, but essential] access to your servers (API). End of story.

And yes, if plugin is GPL, and somebody provides a patch (bugfix or feature), that’s a net benefit for you.

In the first you can charge based on time irrespective of the value, in the second you need to factor in your development costs in the sale price then figure out if you can sell enough at the necessary price to make a return. If you can’t then all your time and effort does indeed go unrewarded.

What you have come up with seems entirely reasonable. Anyone who wants the code can get it and end users pay for your product.

The downside is that your entire model relies on trust. There are a number of whatifs that kill your revenue stream:

First: what if someone forks it, releases it, and promotes it better than you? You seem like the untrusted copy instead of the original.

Second: What if WordPress 3.0 has your code added to it?

Of course, licensing doesn’t prevent this, it just means you can have your day in court, if you can afford it, to try and reclaim revenue, but GPL makes it easy to happen. That is why the premium themers are promoting support services so heavily.

There are people who already successfully charge for plugins and they do it by just not putting it on wp.org. In effect they sell to people who sell it on to end users and it never goes any further so it is entirely feasible as long as the target market is right.

You cannot be paid for your time and effort without agreeing beforehand that the customer will pay for that.

But I need to create a product before I can sell it. In fact, every product is created in hopes of recouping the costs only after it has gone on sale.

Or are you saying that my time spent working on a GPL plugin doesn’t qualify as work for which I can charge (indirectly) by applying a price to the resulting product? Does it even matter if I am charging for my work or for hosting the API?

I am trying to figure out a way to generate revenue from WordPress plugins or themes which doesn’t limit the access to the product and at the same time gives reason to pay for it. Here is what I have come up with, so far:

1. Release a plugin and charge users $10 for downloading it.
2. Make the source code available freely through an SVN repository, so that those who know how to use it and are most likely to improve or help fix it can use it for free.
3. Charge $5 for any update that adds new features while bug fix and security releases are free for everyone.

If someone decides to fork the plugin and upload it to the WordPress repository everytime there is a new update, they are free to do it and I wouldn’t mind. I would still remain the trustworthy source of the original.

This way the whole community could enjoy the continued development of the plugin while the contributing users would receive certain percentage of the revenue generated by that particular update.

I don’t see any downside of this approach.

p.s. I am no thinking about ways have maximum profits. I am only looking for alternatives to the donation model.

Are you fundamentally questioning the benefit of GPL for all users in the long run?

The problem you have here is that you are confusing recouping costs you have voluntarily incurred (time and effort) with being paid for your time. You cannot be paid for your time and effort without agreeing beforehand that the customer will pay for that.

For example, if I ask you to build me something you can charge me an amount per hour for the time it takes you. If you create it first and then try and sell me something you are trying to recoup your costs by selling me the product, but I am paying for the product, not your time.

If you have chosen to give me the freedom to do what I want with that product, once I have it, it is mine. I can give it to everyone else for free. That doesn’t stop you charging for access to your version, you just have to hope that no one figures out they can get it from me.

Charging for the service isn’t better for the user. But it doesn’t contradict anything in the GPL. They are still paying for access but they are paying for something where you can control that access without contradicting the license.

The best thing for the user is for you to GPL the plugin and offer the API for free because they can then get your plugin from another source, pay nothing, and use the API for nothing. It would suck for you though.

You can’t sell code that already exists, you can only sell a license to use it.

In case of GPL it would mean selling users their freedom to use the software, because that is the only thing GPL license protects, right?

Therefore, I think that the only thing I can sell is the access to my version of the software, isn’t it? Once they buy it, it becomes their version with all the attached freedoms of GPL. It would be the access that I charge for, not the code.

On the other hand, charging for a web service is actually making a charge for providing something.

So I can’t charge for my work and time improving my copy and giving it away, but I can charge for a service that is, in a way, exclusive and proprietary?

I still fail to understand how charging for a service is better.

Even though they technically have that right in either case.

You can’t sell code that already exists, you can only sell a license to use it. If it is under GPL you have already made the licensing choice so you can pretend to offer useage licenses but they are uninforcable because the GPL prevents you from creating those restrictions.

On the other hand, charging for a web service is actually making a charge for providing something. It is on your server, it is doing processing of information on demand, there are running costs involved. It makes sense to charge for that.

Finally, even if all the code on your web service is GPL, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to give the code away and nothing stops you charging for or restricting access to the information that results from running the code.

(In my opinion :-) )

Let’s say we have this plugin that must interact with an API to be fully functional. We want to monetize it, so we can either (a) charge for the plugin (download) and give the API access for free, or (b) give the plugin away for free and charge for the API key.

Is either of the option more in line with GPL or are they exactly the same from the users’ perspective?

Or am I misunderstanding the question?