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05
2008
New Products from a Joomla Lead Developer
Written by Steve Burge   
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JXtended.comIf you've been around the Joomla or Mambo projects during the last 5 years, you'll have heard of Andrew Eddie. Currently he has the unwieldy title of "Development Working Group Coordinator", but spend any time on the forum and you'll see he's hard at work in many areas of the Joomla project.

Last year we interviewed Andrew about extensions that he was developing. This week he launched his new site JXtended.com and with it over a dozen products.

Apart from making the owner of JExtended.com rich (I mistyped three times when writing this article alone) what can we expect from the new site?

Andrew's New Products

The site has four major extensions:

  • Comments. Just what it says. Its an Ajax-based commenting system.
  • Magazine. The largest of the four extensions, its the newspaper-style component thats currently used on TheArtofJoomla.com.
  • Catalog. This has generated the most excitement among people I've talked with. Similar to the heavily-encoded Joomsuite, it allows people to break out of Joomla's Section / Category hierarchy and create truly flexible sites.
  • Finder. An advanced search engine for Joomla sites. As we've mentioned before, Joomla's default search features are weak.

Theres also an assortment of plugins, WYSIWYG editors and database tools. All of them need Joomla 1.5 and PHP 5.2.

New Approach to Commercial GPL

As mentioned in our interview, Andrew is using a commercial GPL business model. The way he's going about it is unique in the Joomla world (to my knowledge).

People buy credits that cost between $8 and $10 depending on how many they buy. The Catalog cost 9 credits costs 9 credits ($90), Magazine costs 7 credits (around $70) and Comments costs 3 credits (around $30). Once you've purchased you can renew your access to support and documentation for a lower number of credits.

I personally think this has the potential to produce more stable products for customers and more stable income streams for developers. However, I may be wrong - there's no way to know without testing. Andrew is brave enough to be one of the guinea pigs.

 

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Comments  

 
#1 Cory Webb 2008-05-05 13:52
It looks like he has some interesting extensions available, and I wish him and his team the best of luck.

However, I am struck by what seems to be an obvious flaw in this model. What is to prevent some developer from purchasing these extensions and turning around and offering them for free or at a discount to anyone who wants it? As long as that person follows the stipulations in the GPL, the jXtended team has little recourse. For that matter, what is to stop the Joomla core team from taking these extensions and incorporating them into the Joomla core, thus removing any opportunity for the jXtended team to profit from their own extensions?

I do not agree with their interpretation of the GPL, but you have to respect the fact that they are staying consistent with their stated beliefs and following a business model consistent with that belief. I will probably buy an extension or 2 from jXtended, and I hope they succeed, but I cannot help but think that their business model is not sustainable.
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#2 Ogy Nikolic 2008-05-05 14:39
Selling commercial components is not easy. Imagine this: Someone who has bought your component says that it does not work on their site. You spend 3-4 hours on the issue just to figure out the problem is related to another component or SEF component. Hopefully he charges enough for support but some users may not be willing to pay for a component that requires some additional fixing.

It's almost better making a component for free and giving it to the rest of the world. If someone needs your help with making it work on their server or customizing it, then charge well.
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#3 Mathias Verraes 2008-05-05 16:45
There's other ways to develop GPL software and have a sustainable business. At Joomlatools, we are currently building our new translation manager Nooku using a funded model. A number of high level customers (mostly joomla integrators, but also end users like the United Nations) support us during development. This gives them access to the code and input on the features. When we reach stable, we can then move to a service model for the 1.x series. See http://www.nooku.org/partners.html

I feel this business model puts the focus on the things that matter: innovation (people who fund us, do this to get the new features they need) and support (helping people to use the software efficiently). This is completely different from the business model where you make something and then keep selling it for as long as possible.

People should learn to see the GPL as a _feature_. When you make a comparison between two products, put 'GPL' in the list of pro's, and 'Proprietary' in the list of contra's. The 'GPL feature' means you can use the software in any way you like, you can extend it indefinetely, you can keep using it after the author decides to do something else, ... That feature alone is worth paying for that software.
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#4 Daniel Chapman 2008-05-06 07:31
I am interested to see how it goes too.

@Cory

While it seems like an obvious flaw to many people it's not as easy as it sounds to replace someone else's extension. You can make it effectively warez, and distribute it for free, but serious customers are still going to come to the original source for it and pay just for the security, convenience and updates.

The biggest threat though is another GPL business person taking it on. But the partial security he has here is that not many people can support another person's extension as well as if it was their own, so their service will suffer more than if it was their extension. Also, they probably won't be able to keep up with updates as well because again it's not theirs.

Active projects are very difficult to fork and replace the original authors, inactive projects aren't so hard to though. ;-)
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#5 Aaron Fowler 2008-05-06 08:54
@Daniel

I think the biggest threat to the business model is Joomla incorporating these very useful extensions into the core (as Cory said). However, there may be a conflict of interest here as Andrew Eddie is also one of the lead Joomla developers - would he "discourage" this from happening?

In any case, I'd like to see Jxtended release the (unsupported, undocumented) code for these extensions (under the GPL, aren't they supposed to do that anyway?). It would allow potential paying users to try before buying, and it would also pull in users who would never pay for it, who will provide invaluable word-of-mouth advertisement for the product (assuming they like it).
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#6 Daniel Chapman 2008-05-06 09:02
He doesn't have to release anything. They only have to give you the source code if they gave you access to the code (compiled, raw encrypted whatever) in the first place.

Otherwise Google would be out of business as they would need to release the vast majority of their own code.

Releasing the code won't get you that many extra users, if any, and is more likely to cost you users. Half of our extensions and whenever we release a new free one we get 5x as many support requests (all from free members) but no real change in the signup rate. But when we release a good paid extension we get a jump in new memberships.

So giving out the code would only hurt him.

I don't think the Joomla team would fork anyone's code into the core for exactly the reasons I outlined above, they have to then support it.

They would be more likely to simply take the ideas and a few choice bits of code and rewrite the bulk of it so it fitter what they wanted.

But that same idea can be applied to a proprietary extension. Take the ideas and rewrite a copy. So it's not something Andrew alone is going to be subjected to.
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#7 Cory Webb 2008-05-06 09:59
@Daniel

I can't disagree with you because I have never tried to distribute GPL products, but one point I think should be clarified. You used the term "warez", which I don't think applies here. "Warez" connotes illegal re-distribution of proprietary software, and re-distributing GPL software is inherently legal, as long as you follow the stipulations within the GPL.
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#8 Daniel Chapman 2008-05-06 10:13
I used the term 'effectively warez' to imply that it would be released simply to deprive the developer of their deserved income and not supported or otherwise developed by the releaser.

This activity, while yes you are right, technically legal, is I would believe, against the intentions of FOSS software, which are to promote the development and advancement of software for the betterment of the community as a whole and not simply to exploit developer's good will to get a free ride.
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#9 Daniel Chapman 2008-05-06 11:25
Yes they do need to give you code to install, but they don't have to provide you with anything just because you want it. Someone is only obliged to provide the source code once they have actually distributed something to you.

You can't for example rock up to Ninjoomla and demand that I hand over all my source code under the GPL if you never had a membership and never acquired any files from me.

If you got a membership, and downloaded some files and they were encrypted, then you could demand the source code from me because I already distributed a copy of the software to you.

@code up front - Your idea about commercial companies paying for it is nice in theory and makes a great ideology but it simply isn't practical. No one will pay unless they really need the support, are confused about the fact that they can get it for free (I have seen this before actually) or are unnaturally altruistic.

What you are suggesting is in fact the donation model with paid support. Give it free and ask for people to pay if they want to, or want support.

The 'they will pay if they think it's worth it' model simply doesn't work. Because people simply won't pay unless they have to.

If so, then there would be no need for Models like Andrews and my club and we could all just put up a donation button and that would be that.
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#10 Steve Burge 2008-05-06 11:56
I've got to be honest and say my thinking has evolved over the last year. Initially I was very skeptical about any GPL business models, but I've started to see the traditional "one-time fee" model and other alternatives as equally flawed for extensions:

1) Traditional model. This works fine for templates but not extensions. Ognjen summed up the difficulties well. I'd also mention the problem of keeping. Notice how many extension developers sell their 1.0 and 1.5 products separately. If you charge every time Joomla makes a major upgrade, aren't we already close to an ongoing fee?

2) Donations. A lot of people have tried it and I know none who have succeeded. Some have even lost money as people will donate 10 cents, from which PayPal will deduct 50 cents or more...

3) Encoding. I'm on record with my reasons for opposing this and Mathias adds other good arguments.

That being said, as I mentioned in the blog post the GPL model is still evolving and its success is far from assured. Will it work? I don't know, which is why I'm grateful for you guys chipping in your ideas.
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