I contributed to this with that hint. I’m okay with that.

However, I will miss Pawan’s contributions to the WordPress plugin directory. I hope he relents and follows the suggestion of giving people an option of subscribing to his newsletter.

Pawan, I also suggest for you to increase the qty of blogger stories and decrease the marketing emails. You may get surprised on the “click-through” rates!

Chip, regarding the GPL compliancy, we have already discussed about this to death. Let’s not bring it here for endless discussion.

Date of my comment: 08 January 2010.
Date of your response: 22 January 2010.

So, which one of us “bring[ing] it here for endless discussion”?

In the past there was no automatic notification and automatic installtion for the plugins. We custom developed such features for the support of our user. Talk about dedication. At that time no other plugin developer had thought in that way. I think we were the only one who provided such easy features to users.

Later, wordpress built its own wordpress directory and then provided update notification and automatic install to the wordpress users. Those codes are there as it is from the past to be developed further for other features. Our plugins now gets updated by wordpress repository in the same way as other plugin does.

You’ve brought this up about three times now.

As soon as the WordPress.org SVN became available, your update code became obsolete for WordPress repository-hosted plugins.

That was two years ago, and the update code is still in the plugins. The plugins still check your site for updates – even the ones that were hosted in the WordPress repository.

“Also, while I also don’t see why it’s so bad to have an external link on a theme (i.e. not in the admin console), I can see where some might feel that is over the top but still they are providing a valuable service; why shouldn’t they be able to get a link? Again, the user can modify the GPL theme if they like and remove the link.”

GNU defines GPL as a ‘free software” license. Quoting from the GNU definition of Free Software:

“The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it is the user’s purpose that matters, not the developer’s purpose; you as a user are free to run the program for your purposes, and if you distribute it to someone else, she is then free to run it for her purposes, but you are not entitled to impose your purposes on her.”

While your purposes, as the developer, may be for users of your plugin to provide a public-facing backlink, your purposes don’t matter. All that matters are the user’s purposes. Forcing such a backlink violates the GPL in that it represents a use restriction, and also in that it compels the user to communicate with arbitrary third parties (i.e. his site visitors) regarding his use of your plugin.

Can the user use the plugin without subscribing to the newsletter?

If you want to force users to register, and to subscribe to your newsletter, make them do so before they download the plugin. As far as I can tell, this model is fully supported by the GPL.

But once you have transferred the plugin to the user, you have forfeited any right to compel the user to do anything – including registering and subscribing to your newsletter.

As for theme footer credit links: they are easily edited/removed, and are not required – unlike your Stripe Ad plugin, in which you claim it is a violation of the license to remove your link.

And you may honor the unsubscribe request, but if that same user ever installs another MaxBlogPress plugin, they are once again required to subscribe to the newsletter – a newsletter from which they have already unsubscribed.

The problem is the forced opt-in that is required in order for users to use your plugins.

Put a subscription link on the plugins options page, and let the users *choose* to opt-in to the newsletter. If you did so, every single bit of this controversy would disappear.

Seriously?

Come on now; I know you can do better than that.

You can use AdBlock for Firefox, there’s a similar plugin for Safari and something certainly exists for Opera and Internet Explorer. We will not show anyone a message when they use any of these.
You can deactivate Javascript and a majority of the ads will not be visible anymore.

You can even subscribe to the feed and there is only one add below the entries anymore. This site works if you block ads. Your plugins don’t without HAVING TO subscribe.

Everyone can earn from their plugins, I do not wish anything else than that people can make a living of what they love doing and if that’s developing plugins let them become rich. Do not fish for their email though. (Btw, I did not know about the Aweber single subscription option, sorry for that, the countries where I have used newsletter legally required to add an unsubscribe link and have a confirmation process for subscription).

In fact, there’s not even opt out process here. There’s no button saying: “Don’t show me the ads”.

You are complaining about the optin form because it’s new to you and people are not used to it. Do you remember, when google adsense came out, how lots of users starts complaining about the websites which installed adsense ads? Now people are used to it and don’t complain anymore.

For your kind note: aweber allows us to use single optin as well. It’s my decision to use double optin.

Another financial strategy is to ask for money to use the plugin. Not everyone can pay the money for the plugin. I made a way out to offer free (in terms of money) service with the help of newsletter. If you don’t like our plugin then of course I’m not forcing you to use the plugin. It’s the users decision and I’m happy whatever they decide.

What you do though is push your email newsletter on users. Without at least subscribing (and hopefully not unsubscribing) you do not let anyone benefit from your plugins, some useful ones even.

You would break the Aweber ToS otherwise, unsolicited email is illegal in many countries and would be ‘marked as spam’ etc etc etc.
All things you are very well aware of but try to wrap into ‘nice words proving how nice MaxBlogPress is’. If you were you would delete the activation process and maybe consider another financial strategy.
It’s wrong, it’s unethical and it sucks if those are the strategies you have to rely on as marketing specialist. I would not hire you and due to the malicious nature of the newsletter I do not recommend anyone your plugins.

Chip, regarding the GPL compliancy, we have already discussed about this to death. Let’s not bring it here for endless discussion.

2 The plugins circumvent the wp.org SVN and check for (and install) updates directly from the MBP web site, which by my reading of the wp.org repo guidelines, is itself a violation that hosted plugins actually use SVN for hosting, rather than merely using the repository for listing.

In the past there was no automatic notification and automatic installtion for the plugins. We custom developed such features for the support of our user. Talk about dedication. At that time no other plugin developer had thought in that way. I think we were the only one who provided such easy features to users.

Later, wordpress built its own wordpress directory and then provided update notification and automatic install to the wordpress users. Those codes are there as it is from the past to be developed further for other features. Our plugins now gets updated by wordpress repository in the same way as other plugin does.

I haven’t listed some of our plugins in the wordpress repo and they are still being updated using our custom install routine. That’s for user convenince and you should actually praise us for doing such a hard work for creating better user experience for the user.

3) Many users complained that the email list to which they were forced to subscribe behaves in a “spammy” manner, sending out far too many (daily or near-daily) emails of marginal usefulness (and that may or may not have anything whatsoever to do with the plugin they installed).

There are thousands of subscribers who love the newsletter. If they don’t like it then they are free to unsubscribe and we will never send them any email ever again.

If subscribing giving a try to a free newsletter entitles free support, free bug fixes and free updates then what’s wrong with that?

If you check then you’ll find we have support link in each and every plugins. How many free plugins have you seen dedicated to that kind of support?

Serious Question:

If someone devotes their time and energy into creating a plugin and/or theme and offers it up via GPL-licensing to the community, is it really so bad for them to put a link in their admin section asking for donation, even if it does request them to link to the blog or click a button that says “I already donated?” It’s GPL so anyone who wants can fork it and get rid of it if they like. Some developers may not want their clients to see a donation button, but shouldn’t that developer who is getting paid give a little back to the plugin/theme developer who helped them get paid? It seems like being against this is like “biting the hand that feeds…” (with some thumping NiN cords in the background…

Also, while I also don’t see why it’s so bad to have an external link on a theme (i.e. not in the admin console), I can see where some might feel that is over the top but still they are providing a valuable service; why shouldn’t they be able to get a link? Again, the user can modify the GPL theme if they like and remove the link.

I do see where they shouldn’t imply that it must be paid to license it because that would violate the GPL, but if it’s made clear it is only a request for donation, what’s wrong with that?

-Mike

We are not forcefully holding any of the user. They are feel to unsubscribe the newsletter if they don’t like it and they are free to uninstall the plugin if they don’t like it. There’s not any kind of forceful action there.

I understand if the theme developer put the backlink in code or setting page but how can they claim the real state in the website itself? That’s something to think about.

We have strict policy regarding handling the email. First of all, we don’t sell the email to third party. Second, the emails are strictly used for sending our newsletters which includes tips as well as the recommendation for related products/softwares. Third users are not holded hostage in our newsletter. We include unsubscribe link in each and every email we send. If the user don’t like our newsletter they can unsubscribe anytime they like and we never send a piece of email to them ever again.

If you care about your plugins and think they are ethical, I challenge you to remove the subscribe process and for the next weeks to put the unsubscribe link at the top of your newsletter. I said rather black hat. What you do with your plugins is more than grey hat. Leaving ethics aside for a second, it stinks. And you know it does. You know that people would not subscribe to your more than 70% marketing focused newsletter otherwise.

Are you honest or are you a ‘marketing hack’? Remove the activation process, blog about it and I’ll be the first one, with a new entry here, to mention the action you undertook. Until you do so I will be the opinion that your plugins were correctly removed from the repository.

The reason the optin form is there is to support the development of the plugin. Isn’t it good, we developed a business model so that we can provide free support, free bug fixes and free feature updates without requiring the user to pay in terms of money? We have released more than 25 free plugins and we have been working full time on this project since 3 years. Isn’t it surprising that we have released only 1 paid plugin in all those years?

The subscription is for a newsletter which user has full control to unsubscribe. We include unsubscribe link at the bottom of each and every email we send. The unsubscribe is automatic and instant. No obligation. User can continue to use the plugin even after unsubscribing from the newsletter.