Alternative plugin repo

Hi all,

I am getting more and more notices from the Elgg team that I am violating the terms for posting plugins on this site. It's getting quite annoying. Is there an alternative location to host non-GPL plugins? If not, do we want to start something like that? I could obviously host my plugins on my own server, but having a centralized place would benefit everyone.

  • There is currently no such place. I faced the same problem. We moved hosting of plugins to Elggdev.com. If this would be helpfull to you, we can host some of the plugins for you there.

     

    I think Elgg looses a lot by blocking non-GPL plugins. I talked about it with Elgg team a few times, with no result - there is no plan to create repository for non-GPL plugins.

    Over past two years we created over 300 high quality non-GPL plugins. If not Elgg's politics, most of those plugins would be available on community either for free or for a very low cost. This would benefint everyone. It would give a great power to push whole platform forward.

    Due to restrictions, only our longterm clients can benefit from our custom plugins. We don't release new plugins even on Elggdev.com since without Elgg's support it's not worth effort. In my opinion, it's a lost potential. Examples of more commerce-friendly open source platforms show the same.

     

    If plugin developers could host their commercial plugins on Elgg.org, it would be in their interrest to advertise platform forward (just like we did in the past). In my opinion, good advertisement is something Elgg currently lacks. There's a risk that other more commerce-friendly platforms will take Elgg's place soon.

  • Hi Mike,

    Agree with you 100%, and I get the same reaction/response from the Elgg team. Me and Dhroop are in discussion over this, so let's see if can jointly come up with an alternative.

    I would like to explore the possibility of hosting my plugins over at elggdev. Could you please message me the details of how we can proceed with this?

    Cheers,

    Ismayil

  • Count me as one person who is not convinced that converting the plugin repository over to a pay for plugins model is going to help Elgg.

    1. We have gotten *a lot* more support from developers who release plugins as GPL than those who release paid plugins.

    2. There is uncertainty over whether a plugin released for a GPL platform can be non-GPL compatible. WordPress is very aggressive on this (See the Thesis controversy of last summer). I think Joomla is not. We (the core developers) would need to take a position on this if we were to support a paid plugin site.

    3. Both WordPress and Drupal only allow GPL plugins in their repositories and they are doing quite well.

    What are the arguments for a paid plugin area?

  • On a different note, one thing that I think would be cool is using ThemeForest to sell Elgg themes.

  • Cash, in PM I sent you an example of community that does great with commercial model. Elgg is quickly loosing new users, I think allowing non-GPL plugins could make platform popular once more. The more professional developers worked on Elgg, the more universal and more powerfull tool it would become. Both Joomla and Wordpress have thousands of professional developers. I think Elgg has to find a way to attract them as well.

     

    Currently when we're developing Elgg-based websites for a client we usually can't use code from the community. It's simply too low quality. Unfortunately this is very common with open source code. If there were more commercial plugins, we could offer much more to our clients.

     

    In the end, I don't think it's policy but rather usefullness of a tool which decides of it's popularity.

     

    ps. I supported Elgg on every step. I did a few lectures about Elgg. Me and my team committed a few improvements to Elgg core and to Elgg.org. For a few years already we actively adviced in Elgg's community. We released multiple GPL plugins. We're also recently quite active on trac. 

    I was offering non-GPL plugins in the past ( and I stopped doing so after suggestions of Elgg core team ). I find remark that my support for Elgg is less than support of other people quite unfair.

  • Elgg is doing quite well. I'm not aware of any sudden in change in drop-out rate of site builders. Hang around any FOSS site long enough and you'll see people come into the community, get excited, get frustrated, and leave. I believe Brett is at an Elgg conference in Chile that had so much interest that they filled all available slots.

    Now that the Elgg Foundation will be taking over the elgg.org sites from Curverider, we can more easily change the sites. We haven't sketched out what that will look like yet.

     

  • i believe in open source, that's why i love elgg and it's developers for keeping it free for us to use and tweak (for better or worst). i thank all the developers who are releasing GPL plugins, if a certain person wants certain features on a plugin or make a new custom plugin then i think he or she can just ask the developer and pay the developer for what it's worth.

    if developers wanna get paid, then why not get hired by a company and work for them? releasing non-gpl plugins defeats the purpose of open source. if you don't think it's worth your time making a plugin for elgg then why not go somewhere else or just don't do it at all. now i'm not trying to bash on you developers who wants to get paid, i am just merely putting my two cents because i've tried other social network platforms. a lot of their plugins are paid ones and i just hate it.

    i agree with mike, ihayredinov, you should just host your paid plugins at his site.

     

  • @Cim I'm here with you. I prefer Elgg over other platforms. Same thing happens to me, on other platforms the best plugins are commercial. On elgg, the best plugins are free =) I donate every now and then to elgg developers because I love the work and I know the effort put into that. 

    Anyways... This is a great community. Thanks!

  • I like the ability to grab a plugin and play with it but most of the time it is just short of what I need. And that is to be expected with GPL. I wanted to learn elgg from the ground up and with the help of Dhrup, Mike Vazco, Ihayredinov I was able to do this and not for free and I am VERY apreciative that they are there to help me acheive my goal. My 2 cents

  • Cim wrote:

    "if you don't think it's worth your time making a plugin for elgg then why not go somewhere else or just don't do it at all"

    I feel this is sometimes very similar to policy of Elgg.org... This is a waste of potential. I wonder how many developers took this advice and how Elgg would look if they didn't.

    There are a few things that could be done which don't require much work but would attract much more developers to the platform ( as well as people who use Elgg out of the box ). Separate repository for non-GPL plugins is just one of them.

     

    There is a common belief that it's either open source or commercial approach. I don't see a reason why those two approaches shouldn't complement each other. Commercial plugins we released in the past boosted development of GPL plugins. There is now alternative for our commercial forum plugin, mainpage plugin, menu plugin and many others. Commercial pluigns didn't block GPL ones - even more, they pointed which functionalities are worth to develop as a GPL features.

     

    Cash, please just consider this when planning new features of Elgg.org.

     

    ps. next thing that Elgg.org lacks is a clear description of available features. Please compare Elgg.org's description with Elgg.com's description of features. This is another difference between commercial and OS.