What does free mean?
What does free really mean?
(an open letter to those who are disgusted by our desire to make a buck)
So people have started giving us a hard time because every add-on in the marketplace isn't free. I get that. When we went open source in mid 2008, we talked a lot about the importance of freedom of expression and how we wanted to make the world a better place. All this remains true today, the reality is - we gotta eat.
Let's be direct - this "free" thing is new, and open source is an odd conglomeration of different ideas and licenses. To me, the idea is you have control. I don't want to have you driving a car around where you're not legally allowed to open the hood. That's crazy, but that's what a lot of commercial software does today. Does that mean you can have any car you want and I have to build it for free on the off chance you want to pay me to service it? I'm not so sure.
I don't think "we make money on services" is a very fair model for a software company, be it open source or commercial licensed. In my experience, large or small companies following this model tend to put less love into their core product and more love into each gig they win, for unavoidable financial reasons. I don't want to do that. I want us to make our living off of selling software, not fixing it.
So yes. There's a marketplace - and we're building stuff that's for sale in there. Nothings massively expensive for what it does. I say that as a man who has approved many thousands of dollars for license fees around CMS software, and is now selling components for $15 a pop. Moreover, I say that having opened the money machine to you!
You can make money at this. We've taken a lot of the heavy work out of the equation for you here. You've got a great framework to use that's powerful, extendable, and totally free. If you build something YOU want to sell, we'll happily help you do that. If your add-on meets our standards, we'll put it in the marketplace, we'll help you translate it, we'll even make it a featured add-on in our marketplace and across tens of thousands of concrete5 installs in the Add Functionality tab.
So let's get to it. A website should be as easy to use as a pen and paper. That's doesn't mean it's evil if we can actually make a living at this too. Does it?
-Franz Maruna
CEO, concrete5
Comments:
Moreover good work and ongoing support go into the apps you can buy here, you get what you pay for.
best wishes,
-frz
I, for certain, am glad that I can support the developers of this cms (and any other developers) by purchasing addon's (when I get to that stage, with my clients needs) and know that this CMS will continue to grow into something marvellous.
regards,
mmuller
Jcolome
Gainesville, FL
big thanks, Andy
BUT. From experience, people want to try an add-on before they're prepared to pay for it.
Is there plans to create a Try-Before-You-Buy staging area?
Another question has raised it's head on this theme. How does Concrete5 deal with competition.
For example, I see that Concrete5 have created a Suckerfish add-on, and are selling it for $15.
Will my add-on that also provides support for the Suckerfish menu, but sells for $2 be listed in the marketplace?
Yes, in general we approve competing add-ons if there is some value to both and they both work. You can see any number of image galleries in the marketplace.
We can't sell things for less than $15 because we're not Apple and able to negotiate merchant deals that cushy.
I missed the $15 restriction before, but I did eventually find it under http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/marketplace-submission-rules/ .
Clarification, please?
Here are all the legal documents around concrete5, and concrete5.org
http://www.concrete5.org/help/legal/
In short, the core and free add-ons are all MIT. The commercial add-ons are still open source, but you own your copy for one active website and can't resell it, even with modifications, without author approval.
Now to my question. I'm a web designer who prefers to develop client sites on my own server then move then to their permanent home. If I have the client purchase the particular addon(s) desired, can they be moved or are they site-specific? This will be important to know if I plan to start developing c5 sites.
Thanks!
If you connect your site to the community through the add functionality page in your dashboard it will create a project page here on concrete5.org for your site. That's tied to your site via an ID in your site's database, so as long as you're using the same database across all "copies" of the site, you're fine.
If you need to wipe your database, or if your site goes away and you want to use your add-on licenses somwhere else, you can release the licenses from projects and reassign them as well.
We're really not trying to get in the way with some annoying level of copy protection that a bunch of open source developers would be able to break anyway. We're trying to just show people how to do the right thing by tying support to your purchase + site information.
If you're deep into wordpress matters, you should also note that concrete5 is MIT license. All of the add-ons we sell here are covered under a single commercial open source add-on we wrote for simplicity sake, but if you want to make your own application that requires concrete5 and sell it on your own site in some other way (like Thesis) you're welcome to do so.
Here's more thoughts on that debacle and why the GPL isn't helping:
http://concretethestudio.com/?p=223
My personal thoughts on this however is that these items are priced kind of high for a single website use. Someone above mentioned if your site is generating revenue, then they person buying the addons should not mind spending more money. This may be true, but many people looking for open source scripts, are doing so because of a tight budget. I feel that there should be multiple licenses. Have an lower cost license available for personal and other non profit sites, and more expensive one if your site is making money, and another one for developers like me that would allow me to use it on multiple sites.
