YouTube Plugin

Now you see what I was talking about? This simple conversation trying to find a solution which suits different users is turning to a "Farmer's Market" type forum with people trying to convince each other that the cabbage is worth 99 cents per pound?

No offense to all hard working commercial developers, but this is basically the main problem with commercial products: You are welcome to do anything, as long as you do not look for an alternative. And that is generally the main difference between opensource and commercalware. Commercialware discourages competition, opensource is inspired by it.

I don't know what I've said or have done to deserve getting such cliche advice like:

"Interestingly, if you are so hot on cheap plugins, why don't you pay top dollar for a developer to

do your plugins, then release them back to the community for a buck?

OR... Learn to code your own plugins and release them for free?"

All I have to say, that you only get this kind of "advice" in a commercial environment. Don't believe me, check other subjects about non-commecrcial pluginsz on this forum and compare the friendliness of comments and quality of advice with what I hear in response to my simple comments and expressing my preferences here.

I wonder what else I'll be hearing next if I keep insisting on continuing this conversation?

Let's cool down a bit and stick to the subject of trying to find different solutions for all different kind of preferences in our opensource forum.

As of this moment, all I have said is to praise our commercial developer Mike for his efforts to create this plugin and have encouraged others to provide solutions for people who for "any reason" can not or would not want to buy Mike's plugin.

I think one thing some people are missing here is that "majority" of the Joomla! based websites are not "money making" commercial sites and most, especially the ones in the style of a community portal are just labors of love for some passionate individuals who put their time and effort in providing services to online communities,

Considering such sites are the ones who probably benefit the most by employing a large array of plugins and componenets to deliver different features and services, most of them either have to forego offering the "commercial only" supported plugins and become obsolete or have to hope that someoned will release a donationware or a "fre of charge" plugin so they can enhance the quality of service on their free websites.

BTW, one thing I still can not understand is that "what is wrong with being a fan of cheap plugins (If by that you meant the dollar amount)? I love CB and I don't see much difference between the kind of service and product I can get from JoomlaPolis guys and a commercial developer like Mike. Do you?"

Let's just stick to the subject and please post your praises or negative comments about existing plugins like Mike's to their own forum posting, as I am not here to put down any products, jut looking for more or maybe even better options!
Cheers,

JD

To suggest that "everyone who makes money based on providing products/services for an opensource project would systematically put a part of it back into the core projects" is just ludicrous. It does not make open source stronger. It discourages people from picking up the core project in the first place. No Joomla commercial component developer donates a fixed percent of his earnings to Joomla. No Unix admin donates a part of his salary to Unix. No PHP programmer pays a percent of his earnings to php.net. No MySQL DBA does the same either. There are countless opensource and free projects out there - *countless* - and to expect all commercial products that involve these free projects to donate a part of their earnings back to the core projects will totally defeat the whole meaning of "open source".

Mike,
I just have to say I am a bit disappointed at your answers here. I think a bit lack of knowledge about the history of opensource is leading you to making a cliam that "no" commercial developer systematically donates a part of their income to opensource movement (check IBM support of Linux). Look around you, do a research, read the movements history a bit and you'll find out that with all respect you've jumped the gun here.

One more thing: Now that you are such a big supporter of the commercial software, do a research and see what percentage of the major software developers income comes from the continuous licensing fees they collect from 3rd party developers and what is the role of the collected fees in advancing the major commercial developers in further developing new technologies.

Of course, you remember that I said that it was "just a suggestion" and I meant the payments to be based on a volounteer and honor system, unlike the commercial software industry. You are welcome to disagree with my opinion and wanting to keep all the profits (if any) to yourself. After all we live in a commercial world.
Keep up the good work.

JD

Post edited by: joomladude, at: 2007/01/23 20:35

joomladude wrote:

You are welcome to disagree with my opinion and wanting to keep all the profits (if any) to yourself. After all we live in a commercial world.
Keep up the good work.

I'm sorry I can't...I've just drowned in self righteousness *gurgle gurgle* :S :sick:

I'm flattered you compare my tiny site with the likes of IBM. Maybe one day I can be a huge conglomerate and be textbook "social responsible" too!

Post edited by: p9939068, at: 2007/01/24 01:50

the plugin I have is just the most basic plugin you can get.
Just 1 field to enter the YouTube ID, no parameters, and it shows the user's youtube video... nothing else.. and I really don't need more than I ask because it doesnt have anything more than I just told. If you want just what I have then go for it and perhaps donate abit more if you want.

But if you want an advanced plugin, use sandbox (I dont know if there were any fights in this thread about sandbox or whatever but ok..)

p9939068 wrote:

I'm sorry I can't...I've just drowned in self righteousness *gurgle gurgle* :S :sick:

I'm flattered you compare my tiny site with the likes of IBM. Maybe one day I can be a huge conglomerate and be textbook "social responsible" too!

Post edited by: p9939068, at: 2007/01/24 01:50

Mike,
Relax. It is OK! What is all this anger I am sensing in you? I certainly did not mean to make you angry. The fact that you do or do not like to put your money back into the opensource movement is not relevent here. This just came up because you insist on bringing it up posting after posting.

IBM was just an example. I am sure there are many devouted members of the opensource society who put a lot of their income back into the movement. Sarchasim is not going to get us anywhere.

I was just hoping that you'd honor my reapeated request for sticking to the idea of developement rather than the issue of the finance and hope that this aspect of the conversation would stop right htere.

Please everyone, just post your ideas about the new development of the similar plugins or other solutiosn, so we can get back to our real goal here.

Thanks for your attentions.

JD

Hmm i don't usually posts in forums, but after reading this conversation, i feel i'm obliged to.

My company has recently finished our website. During the course of planning, we have come across, and seriously considered several commercial CMS. What really made us change our minds to switch to Joomla are 2 critical components: the Multisite Manager by eLearningForce, and the PlaxoInvite plugin. BOTH of which, i must emphasize here, are commercial products. In a nutshell, it was Mike's plugin which eventually pursuaded us to utilize Joomla and CB (by the way we've already donated something to Joomla).

So about your question if Mike is doing his part for the opensource community, I certainly think so.

Lets not dwell into the deep beliefs and ideas of what I call the "opensource" sociology. Lets keep it real and simple. This community, afterall, is about users. And as a user myself, like most users, we will put our money into commercial products not necessarily because it's better, but because we can expect almost real time support. To some people who are serious about their websites, that happens to be a very critical factor.

You keep harping on something about "finding a solution". What solution are you trying to find? I know me and many others have found our solutions in commercial products. We do not chase after some wispy dreams where every software developer shares his work with the rest of the world for free. Even Nant mentioned he doesn't see anything wrong with charging money for work. I don't see Mike's work as an "insult" to the CB team, like you've somehow perceived it to be. I think what he's doing is complementing their work very well. It actually encourages people to take up CB in the first place.

You can give dozens and dozens of examples like IBM and linux, but lets not forget we're talking about one person trying his best to support his customers. Is IBM opensource? You don't see them giving away free copies of their Rational software, do you?

The way I see it, if i were a developer too, I will adopt exactly what Mike is doing. To expect me to build something, and then share it with the rest of the world for free is nothing short of absurd. Yes it's admirable that lots of people are doing that, but to form a negative opinion about people who do not subscribe to that ideal is, just like Mike mentioned, self-righteous. Will i simply just "stick to the idea of development and not finance" and you've so-called repeatedly requested? No way! Even the electricity that the computers consume, on which developers build software, requires money, you know. Bills have to be paid.

Joomladude, you are a user, I am a user, and this is clearly a board for 3rd party developers (hence the name CB3PD). We have needs, therefore we come here to look for solutions. Of course, as a free country, you are free to choose, but openly forming an opinion that is clearly unjustified does not serve your "ivory tower" cause. (there are better sites for such counter-arguments. try a search on google) You labeled the folks who bought his plugins as a "herd", are you trying to imply we are all brainless buffoons because we're following the crowd? (i see you've removed that comment. good on you!)

Like Switch mentioned, if you're so high on free software, why don't you create one and share it with the rest of us? For me, i am just very glad and grateful that Mike decided to share his work, and needing to pay just a fraction of what I would've needed to pay on places like rentacoder.com and joomlancers.com.

Once again, this is a free world. You are free to form whatever opinion you wish, but this is obviously not the right place. This is a place where the community help each other. I PM'ed Flipsider a while ago regarding his youtube plugin, and he pointed out that i should probably get the Sandbox plugin for its advance feature. I do not start railing in public about Mike charging money for his work. If i think i could get a better solution elsewhere, I'll go through better channels like private messaging. I think that's more polite.

All in all, I think commercial developers like Mike are doing more good for the community than many others. Freelancers charge sky high for their services, and their products never get shared with the rest of us. I'm sure more people will be convinced of the capabilities of Joomla (and CB) when there are more features provided by its community's own developers.

Cheers!

ps I don't think Mike's "angry". I think he's just tired