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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.

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.

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.

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.

@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).

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.

@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.

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.

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.

@Daniel,

I know I can't demand source code - it would just be nice for them to provide it, given my previous reasons

I don't agree that people won't pay - there are already quite a few "open source" companies out there making money from the model of providing service, support, early access to code, etc. for a fee while giving away the code up front. And every business and professional freelance developer I've had contact with would much rather pay for the "supported" version to get these extra features, especially with the reasonable fee that Jxtended is charging.

Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread anymore - as Steve said the model are still evolving, and it will be interesting to see what works the best for Joomla developers.

Off topic - you responded to my second post, but I only see my first post in the comments. What's up with that?

@Daniel

I have to disagree with this statement:

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.

I do not believe this activity (not "technically legal", but just plain legal) is against the intentions of FOSS software. I believe the intention of FOSS software is the free and open distribution of software. The GPL makes provisions for anyone and everyone to freely re-distribute GPL-licensed software for that very purpose.

I will say, however, that I believe it would be highly unethical and just plain rude to try and undermine the efforts of companies like jXtended by undercutting their price structure and giving their software away for free..

Guys,

I enjoyed reading your comments and I have nothing to add except something I've noticed in the original post by Steve:

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).

I think these components are simply too cheap. If you had someone contact you just a few times, you've lost more money than what you have made.

Instead of charging the least amount possible, you should charge as much as market will allow. Then with this extra money, you may even donate it if it's too much

I a big supporter of Open Source, but we need to ensure to make the living as the job requires an intelligence greater of an average person. I think the biggest issues for developers is that they are too much in love with the development that they don't spend enough time on the business aspect of their operation.

@Aaron, then we can agree to disagree.

I would like to see successful examples of this model you propose. I agree that for massive frameworks such as linux or mysql it can work, but I still feel it isn't feasible for a small scale entrepreneur developing his own stuff. If has been tried a million times and none of them succeeded. If only a handful out of millions do, then it can't really be considered a reliable model regardless.

I know of 3 commercial GPL developers who saw their income drop by as much as 50% overnight when their code popped up on a site and was made free to download. If people were so keen to pay for good quality code why did their income drop?

@Cory - Take a read of the GNU gpl, it is spattered with 'for the good of the community' 'to benefit others' etc. There is no lasting benefit about driving all the developers to use proprietary models, or simply stop developing. You get a small 'benefit' that more people can use a program without providing the developer with anything for their effort, but without a system to support continued production it's a case of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

I doubt highly that the GPL exists purely to kill off any sort of reward for developers which is what you seem to be suggesting.

What is however needed I think is a rethink of the model completely. Because of this, as I see it, weakness in FOSS that it encourages not rewarding developers for the production of products, developers need to look at alternatives for making some income.

The support model is another one that doesn't work well unless you have a large team, complex code and a massive customer base, a module and bot programmer simply isn't going to be able to make a living purely from support, because if he does then he spends all his time working support and not developing the extension.

p.s. how many of the people discussing here have actually tried a GPL business model? I just want to get an idea of how much hands on experience we all actually have vs theory.

Firstly, Steve, thanks for the follow-up on this one. Was very flattered by it.

Thanks all for posting ideas and thoughts as well. It's a pretty big area and there are probably lots of sand-traps lying in wait as well as the potential for sustainable success (I don't know about making Louis, Rob and I rich ... just comfortable will do, hehe).

Going with a GPL model is quite releasing in one sense. You don't have to stress over piracy nor add the cost of enforcement to your overheads. But it does have some downsides. As pointed out, trial versions are virtually impossible because people legally have no incentive to purchase. That presents some challenges in the way we market the information for the subscription products - but there are ways to do that.

On the issue of distribution we aren't naive. It will happen one day, if not already but we went into this knowing full well the risks vs rewards. But then again, if you don't want to pay for support, you aren't getting any either. Taken to the extreme we've gained more reference sites than we have to support

In terms of funding, we also draw on the resources of our respective companies (New Life in IT and webImagery) and we have many clients that "chip in" for extra, and sometimes major, features (notably the good people at www.ptotoday.com, www.planeandpilotmagazine.com, www.beonliving.com, Toowoomba Regional Council and many more) - we just advertise that in a different way.

Conflict of interest comes up a lot. It's something I am always conscious of and have quite a few trusted people that keep me accountable given my position. However, I don't think the project would want our code verbatim as we tend to experiment a lot with different techniques that would frustrate the living daylights out of any 3PD that tried to follow them. The project is probably not interested in supporting another two or three Uber-components (Magazine and Catalog are easily more than thrice the size and complexity of com_content). But having said that, we've put a lot of research in the access control area (because we need it for our own systems) and are releasing that back to our (JXtended's) community free of charge, and it may very well form the basis of what we see in 1.6 if that's the way the project wants to go.

All up, I like to think we are trying to strike a healthy balance between building a viable income model and still give back to the community (aka Joomla!) on which we depend. This is a long term venture for us (certainly no quick bucks to be made) which we will be building the business over a period of probably 2-3 years. Time will tell how it goes but we are quietly encouraged by the response so far.

Andrew, thanks for your insight. I did end up buying Magazine and so far I'm very impressed. I already know of 2 sites that it will fit right into. Currently, the only con is sparse documentation, but looking through the forums you mention that you will be addressing that soon.

Thanks for the insights, Andrew. Best of luck to you and the other guys at jXtended.