I’ve just found out about a new service Pawan Agrawal is doing for all us WordPress blog owners.
As WordPress updates the software (currently 2.8.1 as I write this), then inevitably, some older plugins fail. This can be really annoying, and it’s probably happened to you like it has to me.
What Pawan has announced he will do is take on development of older plugins.
Yee-haa.
This is pure Marketing GENIUS on the level of X-Factor and Pop Idol.
Think about this for a moment.
People will tell him what their favourite plugins are, and that they are no longer being developed. As the licences for many plugins are open source of one kind or another, he can safely and legally take on the development of those older (but popular) plugins, and in doing so they become HIS.
Think a bit more, and you’ll realise that just like the X-Factor (people vote by phone), other people are doing the market research for him, and finding popular plugins he can easily make his own. And he’s building a network of people who have committed to use the plugins they’ve asked to be revived – they’re pre-sold.
Better still, there’s no new development work to be done. Most of the code is already written, and it’s likely that in most cases it’s just a minor fix to revitalise the plugin again.
In doing so, Pawan becomes the owner of the working version of the plugin.
Because most of these failed plugins are likely to be small amendments in order to get them to work again, it’s almost a case of products and advertising for free.
And of course, Pawan gets to pick and choose the ones he wants to do and we ALL reap the benefits.
But especially Pawan. 😉
Now THAT is a true win-win, which is just the kind of thing I love.
You can go “vote” for your failed plugin below.
http://www.maxblogpress.com/blog/219/maxblogpress-revived/
-Frank Haywood
Wow careful with this statement Frank: “As the licences for many plugins are open source of one kind or another, he can safely and legally take on the development of those older (but popular) plugins, and in doing so they become HIS.”
Many of those plugins are under the GPL and just because he takes them over does not give him ownership. Same for the BSD license, Mozilla and many other open source licenses. None of those licenses will transfer ownership of copyright. They all allow modification by others and the right to sell them when modified, but each license also has its own particular rights and restrictions on them.
The original license still has to be retained with the legal copyright, of the original authors.
Open Source does not mean that you can take them and make them your own – period.
Darren:
In most cases all Pawan has to do is credit the orginal plugin authors, and say they stopped maintaining it. Then he can rename the plugin to something similar. And to all intents and purposes it’s effectively his.
He doesn’t care that he doesn’t own the copyright on the original code, but he’ll get the publicity and traffic for it. Knowing Pawan, he’ll probably make people sign up to his mailing list in return for activating the plugin. 😉
Word will get around quickly enough that the old plugin has been replaced by the new one.
If the author of the original plugin doesn’t have time or care enough to fix / upgrade it, they’re hardly going to get upset when someone takes over the work to maintain it. It happens all the time.
-Frank.