Plugins - Proprietary licences and open-source licence categories

[Daeraxa]

I don't think you are understanding my point about the relationship.

GitHub is proprietary and choose to offer their services for people to make and host FOSS projects. MS/GH spend money on it for this exact purpose, there is no ethical issue because this is what the developers and owners of GH intend.

On the other hand Joplin is a FOSS project with loads of contributors who donate their time and effort entirely for free with no monetary compensation - they volunteer their skills selflessly to improve the project for everyone.
If Joplin was to start actively supporting non FOSS plugins by hosting, advertising and supporting them then there is an ethical issue of people making money off based on everyone else's work and giving nothing back in return. This is what I mean by saying there is a huge difference in permitting closed source/commercial plugins and actively hosting/advertising them.

[xaholo3700]

@Daeraxa

If Joplin was to start actively supporting non FOSS plugins by hosting, advertising and supporting them then there is an ethical issue of people making money off based on everyone else's work and giving nothing back in return. This is what I mean by saying there is a huge difference in permitting closed source/commercial plugins and actively hosting/advertising them.

I understand your point now. As I said earlier, I have more doubts than certainties. In that sense, I had thought about this "solution": what if every proprietary extension developer has a certification?

In this sense, the proprietary extension developer could only publish their extensions on the Joplin marketplace if they pay an ad fee to do so. That is, there would be proprietary extension developers maintaining the Joplin community for a period x so that it itself has more developers and keeps Joplin free.

Also, I didn't say that Joplin would advertise these proprietary extensions for free. I said that these proprietary extensions would be paid advertisements that collaborate with the Joplin community.

What do you think of this idea? is it a good or bad idea?

[benmordecai]

We don't need a freemium model for Joplin. Users contribute because they want to use contributions by themselves and others.

[xaholo3700]

@benmordecai

We don't need a freemium model for Joplin. Users contribute because they want to use contributions by themselves and others.

1. There is a difference between freepremium and open core. What I'm talking about is open core. Part of the code is open, part of the code is closed. I can release source code only from themes and not from plugins.
2. This would require the idea of a paid subscription - which is something Joplin Cloud does and commercial plugins which is something I ask for here.
3. The idea of certification and paid ad would be to help Joplin in the open-core model.
4. Of course this is just an idea and not my opinion. It's something I'm asking if it's possible. I'm not saying anything, just asking if the idea I have of open-core is something you guys thought about.

[laurent]

@xaholo3700

Also, I didn't say that Joplin would advertise these proprietary extensions for free. I said that these proprietary extensions would be paid advertisements that collaborate with the Joplin community.

What do you mean by paid advertisements? I guess in this model the project would take a cut on each sale, or do you mean something else?

[xaholo3700]

@laurent

What do you mean by paid advertisements? I guess in this model the project would take a cut on each sale, or do you mean something else?

Short answer

My idea would be for paid extension developers to be "official" from Joplin. That is, you to advertise your plugin on the Joplin site must be certified. If you are not certified, you cannot disclose your proprietary extensions or themes.

The idea of a paid advertisement would be for the plugin to appear on the official page of the Joplin site. Because for me it would make sense if I want to have more users, to pay an ad to view my paid extensions for more users.

In short, my idea is paid advertising and paid certification. That is, they are complementary ideas, but they do not depend on each other.

Long answer

This might work, for example, for a business marketplace, where companies want plugins to solve certain things like exporting pdfs, synchronizing data with some server, etc. Also, as mentioned earlier this could help with the idea of commercial plugins for end users or companies for certain things like the synchronization I mentioned or specific features.

In addition, any end user and company that adopts free software wants the same software to be more integrative, offering different options, themes and plugins. In this sense, having the support of developers, users and an active community is the crucial point in choose. In theory this allows Joplin to possibly be more adopted as it will have different types of developers offering different types of plugins, themes and services in Joplin if this is of interest to the Joplin community as well.

Evernote, for example, adopts the consulting model, where it hires people to solve end-user or companies problems. The idea of Joplin certification came from this idea, but instead of being a simple consultancy, it could offer some possibilities if the person is a developer. For example, if the person is a developer, they can publish themes and plugins on the Joplin website. If the person does not work with development, they can simply offer courses, training given the certificate validation period.

Maybe this certification validation period could be 1 year or 2 years, it would be a way for the community to have money to invest in new open projects. Maybe something like 100 bucks, I don't know, the community would have to see if this idea is good or not.

In the case of Evernote consulting, there are some restrictions imposed, I'm not sure what the restriction would be but there would be some restriction, maybe you as an Evernote consultant can't work as a consultant in a company that competes with Evernote. Anyway,
it would be a little different from this consulting idea of Evernote. Maybe... a good example is a LibreOffice consultancy is something like what I say here.

A big difference would be this: if you are not Joplin certified, you would have to pay to advertise proprietary plugins. If you are Joplin certified, you will receive a discount on proprietary plugin ads. And it would have greater visibility for end users and companies using Joplin Cloud.

My main idea with paid certification would be to bring more trust and branding to the Joplin community. In conjunction with a commercial plugin idea I commented on earlier. I'm not saying the community or the Joplin software is bad, I'm just looking for ways to make Joplin more adopted and used. So... If this is good or bad I want to know everyone's opinion here.

Sorry sorry for the big text.

[benmordecai]

Open core is a bad idea. It still eliminates a major reason for a foss project, which is no usage restrictions from having full features.

[Daeraxa]

@xaholo3700

Also, I didn't say that Joplin would advertise these proprietary extensions for free. I said that these proprietary extensions would be paid advertisements that collaborate with the Joplin community.

What do you think of this idea? is it a good or bad idea?

Personally I would still have hangups but the idea of partnerships is less abhorrent to me than just allowing commercial or closed source plugins the same benefits as open source ones - in this sense they are at least repaying in a different way. I can see that many would still very much have ethical objections to this though.

There is also the more complicated matters of support - i.e is it a one off or continuous monetary contribution - the former makes it difficult to comprehend offering community related support. A share of sales going to the org would help in that sense and fully understand why.

The other thing is a matter of demand - I know not all Joplin users are here for the FOSS element - they are here because it is a "free alternative to Evernote" (I know this because that was how I originally ended up here) but the developers and community are far more invested in the open source side of things so I think that part of it really needs to make their voice clear on this if it was something to pursue further.

[xaholo3700]

@xaholo3700

• My idea would be for paid extension developers to be "official" from Joplin. That is, you to advertise your plugin on the Joplin site must be certified. If you are not certified, you cannot disclose your proprietary extensions or themes.
• The idea of a paid advertisement would be for the plugin to appear on the official page of the Joplin site. Because for me it would make sense if I want to have more users, to pay an ad to view my paid extensions for more users.
• In short, my idea is paid advertising and paid certification. That is, they are complementary ideas, but they do not depend on each other.

1. This might work, for example, for a business marketplace, where companies want plugins to solve certain things like exporting pdfs, synchronizing data with some server, etc. Also, as mentioned earlier this could help with the idea of commercial plugins for end users or companies for certain things like the synchronization I mentioned or specific features.
2. In addition, any end user and company that adopts free software wants the same software to be more integrative, offering different options, themes and plugins. In this sense, having the support of developers, users and an active community is the crucial point in choose.
3. Also, this allows Joplin to possibly be more adopted as it will have different types of developers offering different types of plugins, themes and services in Joplin if this is of interest to the Joplin community as well.

[laurent]

@xaholo3700

The idea of a paid advertisement would be for the plugin to appear on the official page of the Joplin site. Because for me it would make sense if I want to have more users, to pay an ad to view my paid extensions for more users.

It's not clear to me what you mean by advertisement. If you mean the plugin somehow appears more prominently than others, then for sure we won't do that. That would degrade the overall quality of the project by allowing people with deeper pockets to be more visible, regardless of the quality of their work.

Taking a cut of the profit makes more sense to me. Say you sell your plugin for $5 and we take x% of this on each sale. With this, it's more of a win-win situation for everyone involved. I don't know about the technical side of this though, it probably means we'd need to integrate with some payment platform which is another story.

[xaholo3700]

@benmordecai

Open core is a bad idea. It still eliminates a major reason for a foss project, which is no usage restrictions from having full features.

There is a difference between Sass and open core. Sass is generally not open-core, which is why it's something the GPL community doesn't like. Even today, there is no license to sass in an open core. What exists is a license for traditional servers, in this case the AGPL is used. In the case of Sass, it's complicated, because it's software over service. Therefore, there is no GPL compatible license with Sass. Generally, what people adopt would be a BSD-2 or BSD-3.

What I'm talking about open core here is something that Joplin already adopts with Joplin Cloud through a subscription program. Also, open core is adopted by GitHub, GitLab etc. In this sense, saying that open core is a bad thing would be the same as saying that GitHub, GitLab are bad or that most of the community that adopts open core like Joplin is a bad thing.

In this sense, there is a difference between open-core and sass. We can mention Amazon Web Services with the sass model and which is not fully open core unlike GitHub and GitLab or Joplin Cloud. The idea of having paid certification and advertising would be for developers who want to collaborate with the paid subscription model.

Does the MIT license allow you to make the software open source or a proprietary version, do you have more freedom than that? (Note: The mit license does not impose any restrictions.)

[xaholo3700]

@laurent

It's not clear to me what you mean by advertisement. If you mean the plugin somehow appears more prominently than others, then for sure we won't do that. That would degrade the overall quality of the project by allowing people with deeper pockets to be more visible, regardless of the quality of their work.

You are right! Really looking at your feedback, I managed to verify my thinking error. In that sense, thank you very much for the interesting and critical feedback. Really, thank you very much, with few words really clarified my question.

@laurent

Taking a cut of the profit makes more sense to me. Say you sell your plugin for $5 and we take x% of this on each sale. With this, it's more of a win-win situation for everyone involved.

This idea would be interesting. So... I hadn't thought of that idea. I would think that would make sense. I think the idea of ​​a commission on Joplin is something good to have initially, if that is of interest to the Joplin community as well.

My idea for there to be a win-win relationship would be Certification Joplin and commission sales that you talked. But... a little different from that, my idea would be more with proprietary commercial plugins in commission sales.

@laurent

I don't know about the technical side of this though, it probably means we'd need to integrate with some payment platform which is another story.

• Just as I don't know how this commission per sale would be made. I also have no idea how the implementation would be done technically. I also don't have much knowledge on how to earn money with Joplin as a developer, so I open this topic here. Some things y'all talking, I'm thinking too in this.
• An idea... in addition to this sales commission, I was wondering if there would be any certification. I don't know if this idea is good or interesting for the Joplin community. So that it is possible for someone to take courses on behalf of Joplin, that is, for the money to go back to the Joplin community in a way. In theory no one could give Joplin courses without having a legal license to do so. But... there has been no feedback on the certification idea, whether it's a good or a bad thing.

[Daeraxa]

@xaholo3700

I also don't have much knowledge on how to earn money with Joplin as a developer

Honestly your best bet currently is as a "bounty hunter". If there are people that desperately want X plugin to do Y that they are willing to pay for it, or for Z feature to be implemented into the main app (which would still need the blessings of the maintainers that it would even be accepted into the project).

[xaholo3700]

@Daeraxa

Honestly your best bet currently is as a "bounty hunter". If there are people that desperately want X plugin to do Y that they are willing to pay for it, or for Z feature to be implemented into the main app (which would still need the blessings of the maintainers that it would even be accepted into the project).

• Hi! This idea is a good one... looking at all the feedback.

An idea... Does this idea make sense to you all? you can check if this makes sense?

1. Sales commission
   • when "create paid themes and plugins commercial for subscriber users wiithout certification"
2. Bounty hunter
   • when is paid per feature or problem it solves
3. "Certification Joplin" for:
   • receive donations of templates and/or plugins.
   • create events (charging free software events to teach installation, customization, talk about the importance of software today or about new technologies, etc).
   • create plugins or themes on demand when requested by a user, developer, company, people, etc.
   • train people for some open software like Joplin-app or Joplin-Cloud etc.
   • offer courses on Joplin-app/Joplin-Cloud etc to people.
   • Discount of commercial themes and plugins paid in the sense of sales commission.
   • launch specific and paid features within existing plugins or themes

[xaholo3700]

@xaholo3700

An idea... Does this idea make sense to you all? you can check if this makes sense?

1. Sales commission

• when "create paid themes and plugins commercial for subscriber users wiithout certification"

2. Bounty hunter

• when is paid per feature or problem it solves

3. "Certification Joplin" for:

• receive donations of templates and/or plugins.
• create events (charging free software events to teach installation, customization, talk about the importance of software today or about new technologies, etc).
• create plugins or themes on demand when requested by a user, developer, company, people, etc.
• train people for some open software like Joplin-app or Joplin-Cloud etc.
• offer courses on Joplin-app/Joplin-Cloud etc to people.
• Discount of commercial themes and plugins paid in the sense of sales commission.
• launch specific and paid features within existing plugins or themes

I just want an objective answer what do you think of this idea, is it possible? is it good or bad?

[xaholo3700]

@Daeraxa

Personally I would still have hangups but the idea of partnerships is less abhorrent to me than just allowing commercial or closed source plugins the same benefits as open source ones - in this sense they are at least repaying in a different way. I can see that many would still very much have ethical objections to this though.

I agree with your thinking, so... there is a good solution for this. It would be charging a sales fee for these proprietary plugins as Laurent suggested.

I don't think proprietary plugins would have the same right as freedom/free plugins, so in that sense as I said now, these proprietary plugins would have to have a sales commission. For every x proprietary plugin sold, a sales commission would be charged and this money would go back to the Joplin community.

@Daeraxa

There is also the more complicated matters of support - i.e is it a one off or continuous monetary contribution - the former makes it difficult to comprehend offering community related support. A share of sales going to the org would help in that sense and fully understand why.

In theory if there are one or more developers with proprietary plugins. Each of these plugins per sale would already be deducted from the value. For example, a plugin that costs 15 dollars, 5 dollars is the sales commission for the community to get the money back. In this sense, as it is a sales commission, it would be something continuous. The more companies or end users are using it, the greater the financial return would be to the community and the developers. In this sense, there would be the famous law of supply and demand.

The idea would be exactly the second case as mentioned here: "A share of sales going to the org would help in that sense and fully understand why."

I had talked about ads, but it's something I hadn't thought about so well. The idea of a sales commission is more interesting and viable. And in that sense, maybe it's close to what you think or what I'd like to have thought about earlier too.

@Daeraxa

The other thing is a matter of demand - I know not all Joplin users are here for the FOSS element - they are here because it is a "free alternative to Evernote" (I know this because that was how I originally ended up here) but the developers and community are far more invested in the open source side of things so I think that part of it really needs to make their voice clear on this if it was something to pursue further.

I like open source, copyright and free software or better foss/floss. I know it sounds contradictory, but I develop stuff, so I like anything that involves code and software licensing. But... even though I'm not a judge or a lawyer, but... issues from license call my attention. I read everything I can, consult people to understand each point.

I don't really have the idea of dogmatism and I'm always open to considering the points I'm wrong about. For example, I talked about a bad idea that would be about paid ads, Laurent talked about a better idea than mine that would be the sales commission. I'm glad to know I'm wrong, part of it because I know where I can change or improve

In that sense, I'm more open source, but I understand the importance of free software or better foss/floss or copywright. When I speak of this, I say that every software and software license has its audience something.

[Daeraxa]

The biggest question I have is if there is actually a market for it? Do you actually have anything lined up or have you already delivered any?

Without a market or appetite within the community I'm not sure if there is much more to discuss.

This is why I say the most likely way to make money currently would be development bounties because it has been proven that people actually want this.

I also suspect that any paid plugins not tied to a proprietary online service of some description will likely be either backwards engineered or have FOSS competition rather quickly - particularly as the .jpl itself cannot be closed source (you can just open it and see the .js inside - I guess it could still be obfuscated though).

[Sinacs]

@xaholo3700

I don't think this topic is the right time to discuss because it's not where Joplin needs to focus now. But, if you can give help with what Joplin is working on, the day you expect might come quicker.

As I saw many professional developers here create their first post and asked something like "Is there something that I can help with?". I think they are so great!

If you love to use Joplin and enjoy the FOSS ecology, I would recommend you think about "CONTRIBUTION" at first - "Would you be willing to do something for Joplin first?"

Honestly, I don't mean that you are wrong to create this discussion, but I just want to say, If you have the skills to build something out, just go for it, do something for FOSS first.

When you build something good enough, I think people would like to give you a little sponsor, at least you will get something in return.

Or, if you think Joplin needs to have the feature you said, would you like to provide a plan and be ready to help with it? Then, you will get exactly what you want in the foreseeable future.

But if "commercial" is still your priority thinking before action, Joplin might not be the right place for you at the moment.

So, if no one has time to work on it, this discussion is meant nothing.

Umm... I think you were not waiting for others to build the stage for you to earn money easier right?

[vyzaj]

I fully agree with your sentiments here Sinacs.

All technical points asides, it does feel as if at it's core, xaholo's request is for people to donate their time to create a point of sale system that only some would gain direct benefit from.

At face value, it seems reasonable. Financial incentives is how most of the world works to build and grow, so why not use it to help the development of Joplin ?

I think the fundamental difference in perspectives here, is about the spirit of the FOSS ethos.

Most of us are here due to a shared ire for freemium and paid software.
We don't want to create third party accounts, or grapple with the opportunity costs of micro-transactions. It seems like what you propose is the antithesis of why this community exists.

I say this as a fairly staunch capitalist: what you are requesting; is a 'race to the bottom'.

How does profit incentives create a race-to-the-bottom?

If some plugins charge money, why would anyone develop one and provide it for free?
Why wouldn't all plugin developers (even retroactively ) charge money for theirs?
Wouldn't any 'rational actor' ask for the most money whilst providing the least value in exchange?
Is that not how the commercial system functions?

To me - it seems like FOSS as an ethos - allows the software to be immune to some of the more cynical commercial behavior that undermines it long term.
So, i struggle to see how this trade-off will add net-value long term.

Its a freemarket, and nothing is stopping you from setting up shop selling what you like.
But i cant help but see paid-tutorials for free-ware programs as carnivorous akin to vulturism, especially when so many are willing to make free tutorials and youtube reviews.

In my mind, every hour spent marketing & advertising, is an hour not spent improving the core functionality of joplin, and that trade-off seems like a net loss , at the big-picture level of resolution.

We should support the devs how ever we can, i don't expect people to work for free for something i derive so much benefit from.
But to me, it makes more sense to contribute more directly rather than via electronic credit.

[Sinacs]

Actually, I'm not making any comments about Joplin's future decisions. The market is freedom for everyone, every decision maker can change their mind based on different situations.

Anyone spent their time working hard for a return, if they did great, they wroth it. People are always looking for different returns under different situations, sometimes it might be an emotion, sometimes it might be material, and that's totally fine.

In my opinion, I'm not against paid plugins, because it's a good reason for high-quality plugins born and they will take responsibility for advertising the platform at the same time, so it will attract more new users to join. It's not going to be disruptive, if it really does, it should be the problem of management.

Overall, the only thing that I was concerned about was just "Doing the right thing at the right place and right time."

Additionally, ”Race-to-bottom" this concept seems a bit cruel to developers. As I said, not everyone looking for money as a return, but sometimes it has to be. So, just keep open and respectful of people who work hard the time. As a user, I just require fair treatment.

I'm glad you shared your thoughts with me.