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Commercial Extensions, how about it !
but that's just the idea... "with the given time, you can do it yourselves"... and if you care to try it... go right ahead.
but why do people think it's wrong to get paid for your time?
If you buy an extension that will help you finish a website in half the time as if you'd coded it yourself... isn't that worth the money you paid for it? If you use the extension for a while, it's going to pay for itself with the time saved.
High prices are a different story, it's the same concept as choosing between Macy's and JCPenney... just because Macy's has higher prices doesn't mean they're wrong ... bad businessmen maybe, but not wrong.
The General Idea:
If every valuable (evaluated by Macromedia itself) commercial extension would be integrated in the new release of Ultradev. Macromedia gives the owner of the commercial extension a certain amount for each copy of the software that is sold. Let's say between $1,- and $10,-. Then Macromedia puts this on top of her market price.
So let's assume that there are among all commercial extensions about 10 really great ones that add extra value to Ultradev as a develop tool. That will raise the price of the product by about $70,-.
The Commercial Idea:
All the copies of Ultradev that Macromedia sells most likely is more than 1 owner of a commercial extension can ever sell of his own individual extension. Let's say Macromedia sells 20.000 copies (?) of Ultradev. That is a revenue of 20.000 x $5,-(average) = $100.000,- for the owner of a commercial extension. The main thing where the owner has to focus on is technical support for his extension. No more on-line selling of individual extension (cost reduction). For Macromedia it is even better; they position their product in the market at No.1 because of these value addes extensions (with just a minor price increase).
The Conclusion:
This way the users of Ultradev can benefit of the great standard features and also the included commercial extensions for as less as $70,- (average). This is $7,- per commercial extension.
I hope they will not do this: they'd better spent the 100.000 dollars to hire 2 new developers for their team. Assuming that they both will make 50.000 a year you could have 2 man-years for extension developing only..... that could be worth much more!
(Or even hire Tom Muck, Al or Massimo for 100.000 for one year..... Dreamweaver would be top notch again!)
Also a great idea !
The result would be the same: the actual user will benefit by having a lot of standard features to develop by just buying the standard piece of software.
Lets not forget that DW/UD is already quite a heafty investment for a designer. Not just the price tag but also the time involved in learning to use it properly. Adding on an additional cost for extensions, just to add functionality that really should already be there for the price charged, is one sure way of losing customers. Nobody wins if the total cost of ownership increases and nobody likes hidden costs, which is exactly what 'commercial extensions' represent.
When developing web sites using dreamweaver or Ultradev do you charge your customers. do you make money for the time you spend designing, developing,testing and how much do you charge?
I would guess you do not do it for FREE.
Extension development takes time, skill and in most cases dedication.
I you are working on a project for a client and you require a commercial extension that costs between $15 - $99 dollars. this is usually becuase you require the code the extension produces or the results of the extension.
Either becuase the extension saves you time (therefore money) or becuase your skill levels are such that the extension does something that you yourself can not do.
in both cases the extension does something that saves you time and money, so if you purchase a commercial extension simply pass the cost of the extension on to the customer, this way you as a developer are not out of pocket, the next time you use the extension, your saving more money.
Extension development takes time, why should extension developers that spend thier time, developing something that makes your life easier not get paid for the time they have spent developing the code, also dont forget No extension code or very little of it is Open Source, it is still the property of the developer they hold the copyright, most extension developer allow you to learn from there code, and in most cases to use it in your own code in future, but you should still ask there permission if you use the code in anything other than the code introduced into your code by the extension.
For example the Zip Suite extension comes in two version a functional freeware version that is free of charge and a commercial version costing $28 , both the freeware extension and the commercial extension took over 2 months to develop and test, why should i not get paid for spending the two months developing something.
anyway all i ask, is that you take the time to think about the value of your own work when thinking about the cost of commercial extensions, and remember that most if not all extension developers either run very small companies or do not run companies at all and develope extensions in there spare time.
Extension developers have not started to charge for there work becuase they wont to rip the end users off, or are after a quick buck, but becuase the time spent writting extensions has to be covered or no more extensions will be developed.
this is just my side of the argument/discussion based on the amount of time i have spent developing extensions. and the amount of money others have made using them. sorry that i have had to start charging for the large more complex extensions but ihave a family to feed and look after so i as many other extension developers have no choice, if you dont like it dont buy the extensions, simply learn to do it yourself.
Yours
Paul R. Boon
Lead DW/UD Extension Developer
Public Domain Ltd.
Paul,
Completely agree with you on your point of view on this subject. It gets more clear on what people do with Ultradev as tool. At least of that people that voted in this poll so far. I bought about 6 commercial extensions so far and they were all for commercial project solutions. So the functionality that i offer to the customer has a certain functionality which i can charge him/her with. The return on investment for all of these extensions have been about 10x time it's value and sometimes even more.
All functionality build with these extensions have proved themselves and i can re-use them in a next project even easier and faster. So, in the long run this pays itself back over and over.
Hope to see the PD online editor with advanced features in the near future (together with PureASP Upload) !!!!
Yes i charge my customers (more every year, this year I raised my prices twice) do I buy extentions? I haven't yet, but I will. I have bought some asp scripts of the internet in the past and downloaded many extentions too. I also have downloaded many free cgi,php,asp java scripts and to those independently wealthy or idealistic developers i am truly thankful to.
If i had a choice I would probably go with the extentions ( i like how easy the are to implement, not like adding some one elses ASP scripts. I have also written plenty of my own ASP and PHP scripts in the past and this is the worst way to go.
ever typed a colon instead of a semi-colon or accidently over look an apostrophe(spelling?)
(I just realized how cool this little app i am using right now is I like how it can be formatted, is this available as an extension?)
Fortuneatly the scripts I wrote are to take care of things I wasn't able to find scripts for. (Do you see an opportunity to sell a script in this case). I could take a little time and set these custom written scripts into something everyone could download and use, but I would be out of my mind to do this. I have too many paying customers to write debug test more debug more test...... just so someone with limmited abilty can compete with me in the market place (using my scripts).
No if i ever develop the scripts for commercial release it will definetley be because I feel I could sell enough of them to offset the development time.
Bottom line a well written (Very little bug problems) useful extention is way better than any code you need to disect and can save a day of debugging, just look at writting a login script by hand compared to the way Dreamweaver UD does it. it takes 30 seconds with UD. The same log in script written by hand is a 20 minute job F*ck up one semi-colon change that to 45 minutes make a little tougher error to catch (like a blank space at the end of a variable and you could possibly spend over an hour).
Hmm let's see 30 second to 5 minutes for maybe a one time $50 charge or 6-7 hours a month in extra debugging at $35.00 per hour ($210 -$245). I think i will go with the scripting NOT.
Now after saying all this I do not believe they should not cost so much I don't believe they should cost more than about $30 for most $50 for more robust ones, I went to the PHakt site and looked at their prices and determined most of their products are over priced especially since they are all PHP based. Believe me when i say although PHP is easy to use and does most things ASP will do, (my site is PHP based since it was built before i started using ASP) the really big paying jobs will have NT based servers because whatever you think or feel Microsoft OWNS the business world and I want to be paid well - period.
If the devlopers want more money than $30 - $50 per extension than the should sell developers licenses of their extensions.
Fred Wehnert
Operationa Manager
fwehnert@CanadaWebDesigns.com
CanadaWebDesigns.com
(I just realized how cool this little app i am using right now is I like how it can be formatted, is this available as an extension?)
fred
This little app is one of our extensions and is available from udzone its called the PD Online HTML editor, and is available from http://www.udzone.com/showDetail.asp?TypeId=3&NewsId=578
Yours
Paul R. Boon
Lead DW/UD Extension Developer
Public Domain Ltd.
Jarak
Most if not all extensions, whilst free from the exchange and from sites like UDzone, the code is not Open Source, the extension developer owns the copyright, and you are granted a license to reuse the outputted code.
I think Paul is right on the mark.
If you do webdesign /webdevelopement for a living, it's no problem bying a valuable extension, and if you do webwork for fun, you've got the time to learn how to do things.
Just my 2c
It is impossible to develop all features and every kind of functionallity on your own.
So other people do that work.
If it is like this, you have to pay for that work other people done !
mk
I develop extensions and have had over 100k downloaded from Macromedia and 30k more from my site. I love the cry of 'community property' for extensions. It screams of hypocrisy. When I asked on my site for graphic artist help and tutorial help I received about a dozen responses, of which 4 people offer to help after I mentioned this wasn't a paid position. Seems 'community property' applies when it is SOMEONE ELSE'S WORK. I also provide support for my extensions, again, at no charge, and I get about a 40-60% thank you when I solve people's problems. With the attitude of users, the rewards of extension development aren't as enticing as I thought.
Grow up - if your making money off of an extension you should be more than willing to pay back the extremely small amount of money the developer is asking for - unless you think you can develop the code yourself in less time than what is being paid. Even $100 for an extension that saves you 1 hour of coding each time you use it will pay itself back in, what, 3 uses??? (at most) Of course, with the whole community property-don't-make-me-pay attitude, it is likely that $100 extension won't get written and you will have to spend 1 hour each time you want to make a certain function work for you. What do you expect for free...
Paul Davis
www.kaosweaver.com
(p.s.: we will be allowing other 'trusted parties' to sell extension at our zones soon)
Contact me directly, I would like to discuss commerical release of software, I have several extensions (cookies, Perl suite, some asp session stuff for DW, etc) I was thinking about making commercial.
Paul
www.kaosweaver.com
I just purchased my first extension (UltraSuite 4K) and find it well worth the price. I'll use them over and over. It's great value for the $. I'm less inclined to pay $20 for a single extension I may only use once or twice.
My suggestion to you extension developers out there who want to get paid for your work (as well you should) is to follow UltraSuit's model. Combine your efforts and develop a suite of extensions. I wouldn't mind dropping $50-70 for several well-crafted extensions. Just a thought...
I am staggered at the results of the pole. As a professional developer I am truly disgusted with the attitudes of what can only be neophytes and incompetents (granola eating tree huggers with a twisted sense of reality aside). I really like the general license provided with most extensions. As a developer, I don’t want to buy some compiled, or “you’ve got to licenses this on every site you use it on”, piece of… code. I will buy, gratefully, knowledge and time in the form of code, and extensions are just that, a great time saver, and excellent reference for well written code. I would suggest that some of these people give up their pay in lieu of donations and good will. After about 3 months of that, lets see how they vote.
The extension development community have been and continue to be altruistic in their efforts to “build a better mousetrap”. But we all have to make a living… so, BRAVO to all of you charging money for SOME of your expertise and time, it is well deserved.
It that is the case, then, please, mea culpa.
If that is not the case, and you do support the free market system, and you are aware of the overwhelming amount of FREE resources made available to you by these “ROBBERS” (at their expense no less), then I’m not sure what you are pissed about; other then not having enough time to learn how to do this stuff on your own, and possessing a good amount of displaced aggression involving your “hate to see all these people making so much money”.
Are you broke (cash poor) or something? I can understand that frustration, especially if you are trying to redevelop a skill-set, and you’re not making any money – and then, you have a lay out a dump truck load of money to purchase product you need to learn in order to make the dump truck load of money you need in order to purchase the product in the first place. That sucks… been there, done that. But that still your tough luck and doesn’t make anyone a robber for selling something they created (again, see first paragraph for disclaimer – since if you are socialist/communist – yet you wish to use this product of capitalism – well, my RED friend… that is a whole different topic… for a whole different type of forum).
On the other hand, let’s say that you own a not for profit (non-profit), community supportive organization, and you went to - let’s call him – Extension Developer M - and said to him, “Dude, we have like - NO money, and we do a lot of good for a lot of people, and we are building a web site. We would love to use your technology. If we can provide you with proof of our non-profit status, will you donate a copy of you software?” Now if Extension Developer M said no, he would be an <expletive deleted> and scum (IMHO), but he would still not be a ROBBER. However, I’d bet you, dollars for dimes, that Extension Developer M and his ilk would not hesitate to say YES, because that’s the kind of people I KNOW them to be. Take a look at the time and love that went into their FREE products, tutorials, news articles, help forums and Web Sites, then look at what YOU provide the community, then judge these “ROBBERS” once you take the high ground (and more power to you!).
“Life is not a TV show and this is not the STAR TREK universe.”
Thomas Jefferson – If only he could see us now <tic>
Good point Xeth. However, this is an issue to take up with Macromedia. Also, this is not an open-source GNU product, so, if we as developers choose to use Ultradev, then we have to expect (not accept) that marketing and spin will eventually take priority over quality. Macromedia is a public company, which decreases its decision making abilities, and increases its need for marking and sales. As soon as the technical aspect of creating the product is seen as “overhead”, and sales is seen as the real “business”, well, that’ll be the beginning of the end. So far, the product still seems to mean a lot to Macromedia, but the pressure is on… the shareholders will not wait for profit…
I also agree that Extensions with similar functionality to T. M.’s Navigation Suite, or UDZones Pure ASP Upload should have been included with the base product. But hindsight is 20-20, so I’ll cut Macromedia a break, until the next release, and then I’ll weigh the Total Cost of Ownership before making an upgrade purchase.
Back to the discussion: Extension developers are generally very giving and reasonable. They are not big evil companies (that is an oxymoron isn’t it). These guys work hard, and are asking a reasonable price for the time/support they put into their products. My point is that paid for extensions are reasonable, just as reasonable as the possibility that Macromedia can develop similar extensions and incorporates these into the base product of the NEXT release (i.e. As an extension developer, you face the likelihood that Macromedia can/will make your product unnecessary). I am referring to extensions that incorporate basic design techniques, and do not represent any base intellectual property of the extension owners (this definition fits 99% of extensions).
Regards,
Jack
”I look around with wonder at the love expressed, the enlightenment attained, and the overwhelming feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood emanating from my fellow human beings… and then I wake up.”
Again... excellent point (Open Source does not = Free). I was thinking along the GNU line (where you expressly can't create For Profit products, which is very different then Open Source, GNU is FREE (as in FREE – no interpretations necessary), you can only charge for "services" related to the code you create under GNU, you can not charge for GNU products). By implying that Open Source = GNU was grievously, and outrageously WRONG. My bad.
For the record: I believe that Open Source allows for the best capitalism to exist while maximizing intellectual progress.
—with commercial Extensions is their being listed along with the free ones in the Macromedia Extensions Exchange, which, pracitcally by definition, should be limited to free Extensions (with the idea that, if one is capable of doing so, one should submit an Extension or two of one’s own, to live up to the implied quid pro quo that the term “Exchange” implies).
If Macromedia listed the commercial Extensions separately, I would have no problem with that. They could and should also charge the developers a bit for that service, since they are basically being an advertising medium. The area of their Web site devoted to commercial extensions could be “glitzier” than the Exchange, with each product having its own .jsp-generated page which could have Flash animations, etc. right on it, as well as offering a link to the developer’s own site.
At the very least, the remuneration status of an Extension (Freeware, Shareware, Commercial) should be a column in their database, which can be searched and sorted on just as Extension Type, Rating Level, Server Platform (for UD), Date, etc. can be.
Amen brother!
Having created some popular extensions (and a few not so popular) my total combined donations consist of $20 over a 6 month period. The cost to simply host the site that I have all my free extensions on is $99 per year, so I am losing money based upon the contributions and donations of people for my extensions. This, of course, assumes my time is worthless and my programs are free (of which neither is true)
So I now am developing commercial extensions that will range from $20 to $100. I will continue to develop some non-commercial extensions for Dreamweaver and will continue to support what I developed. I just understand that those who choose to support software development are mature business people, those who don't are, well, immature amatures.
You have some valid points - that the extensions should have a cost rating. I think that would be important and helpful when people are looking for solutions to problems they face. On some other points:
1. Exchange should only have free because by definition???? Excuse me for a second, but what have you exchanged with every developer of an extension you have downloaded? Nothing I'll bet. By definition, exhange is - I give you something, you give me something'.
2. Charge for commercial released software. Well, you see, Macromedia gains great added functionality to it's own software package because of the extensions that are available - for free. We extension developers receive absolutely nothing from Macromedia for developing software for their profit product. So charging would result in the decentralization of information about the available extensions for their products thus diluting the value that extension provide for their product, thus making their product worth less. Furthermore, if they are charging for the advertisment space, they would then be required to maintain the site a far cry better then they do now and other ramifications would make that move extemely costly which would further decentralize the information on available extensions, which again lowers the value of the software as a whole. Of course, those companies who bear the cost of this expensive setup would simply pass this cost along to the consumer meaning the extensions will cost a lot more.
I know I certainly won't pay any significant amount to put a commercial extension up on the Exchange, I get plenty of traffic via my site and this site gets plenty of traffic as well - both locations allow me to post my extension without charge.
Re: your #1: As it so happens, I am at this time in the process of writing an Extension or two of my own, which I will make available (free) when they’re ready. I am a programmer myself. Part of what has taken me so long was finding something that hadn’t already been done (I don’t like to re-invent the wheel, nor do “me too” projects [just how many variants of “Insert Today’s Date” are there on the Exchange as we speak?], nor waste my time and effort and other people’s download time to do something trivial [one Extension out there lets you — get this — intent a paragraph just by placing the mouse cursor at the beginning of the paragraph, then mousing over to the Objects toolbar or Insert menu and selecting the Paragraph Indent icon or menu item, and voila! It inserts five non-breaking spaces {“&nbsp;”s}for you! Of course, you could have done that anyway just by holding down [Alt] and tapping your [space bar] five times {or, better yet, defined a “text-indent” in CSS using DW’s own CSS features}, but isn’t it better to download and install an Extension that requires more effort to do that, and as a bonus further clutters up the “Common” tab of your “Objects” panel and your Insert Menu?].
Re your #2: good points re: Macromedia receiving value from Extensions. I likewise agree that they should maintain their site a lot better than they are doing now, advertising or no. I withdraw the suggestion that Macromedia should charge for “advertising” commercial Extensions. I stand by my assertion that at the very least there should be some way to know that an Extension is commercial from the table listing, before one has actually clicked on it to read its long description.
On your #1 - yes I do agree that plenty of extensions are similar. To use your example, take my date insertion. I felt a lot of extensions didn't handle what most people would want - so I created one that puts the current date and not just todays date on the page. It also allows the formatting to be in any sequence the user wants with complete control over the spacing or punctuation between the date elements. To take it one step further, I also included 9 or 10 different languages support. When I do something similar, I make it significantly better as to give people a reason to want to use mine. This one was very popular and, at the users request, I added a CSS support to the extension. While re-inventing the wheel is pointless, making a better wheel is just as challenging as making the wheel in the first place (unless the wheel was useless to begin with). If you need any help with your extension development, feel free to visit my site and drop me a line (www.kaosweaver.com)
As for #2 - we are in agreement, I would like them to list the extensions by type - commerical, shareware or freeware as well. Now if the site loaded like it should (and I am on a T1 or Cable) this wouldn't be as bad of an issue. I also feel they should list the charge as well - something like:
Name | Version | Author | Date | c$45.50 | Rating | MM Approval | Downloads
Name | Version | Author | Date | s$19.50 | Rating | MM Approval | Downloads
Name | Version | Author | Date | f$0.00 | Rating | MM Approval | Downloads
For commerical, shareware and freeware (which could also be set to donation suggestion amount) respectively. This way I can see if a product has cost and it is something within my price range and interesting.
Leon, I find it strange that on the one hand you agree that extension developers should be paid for their extensions, and yet on the other hand you claim that extensions should be spread freely, thus, by implication that extensions should all be free.
Extension, but it's very definition has nothing to do with the word free. If you were to have an extension built on your house, would it be free? No.
Part of your reasoning is sound. The knowledge and information to create extensions is freely available, and it is there for everyone to use. It's not a secret society with funny handshakes, rather, it's a mode of working that you just have learn.
I wonder, when I see the results of this poll, how many of the people who voted that all extensions should be community property. How many of the 322 (at the time of writing) have actually ever bothered writing one? I would guess that 99% of them have never bothered.
If you, or anyone else reading this have any doubts about the validity of charging for extensions, that you sit down, and actually spend a little time in writing one. It might just open your eyes.
I happen to be a "granola-eating tree hugger", and I have paid cold, hard cash more than once for some pretty complex extensions. Be careful of your generalizations - not everyone who's conscious of their bodies and Mother Earth thinks the world owes them a living - I know plenty of conservatives who feel that way - they are just better at hiding it and getting more money out of it.
I'm thinking of spending more of my dough on Tim Green's new Intellicart (rawveg.org), which piggybacks on InterAKT's suite of PHP extensions. But, yo, Tim, would like to see some examples first?!
I love it that some folks develop for free (I host and have developed several "for charity" sites for free). But I also love it that the opportunity is there for the community to fill in the holes that Macromedia missed. And many times, the best extensions get worked into future versions of the product (NN Fix Layers and Web Photo Album, for example).
So, bully for those who wish to provide for free, and more power to the ones who charge (although I've spent almost as much in extensions as on UD, and will probably exceed)! If you don't want to pay, develop your own extensions!
P.S. I've never developed an extension (although I've always wanted to learn!) see comment on free sites above if you have an urge to flame me. . .
F*** me!
What a bunch of money grubbing, whiners. It's guys like you that take, take, take from the open source and gpl'ed communities with out ever putting something back in. F*** you and your overpriced extentions, I'll gladly hand code as long as I don't have to deal with you pricks.
Dude, your comments are way off base...not to mention rude as hell! Here's some advice...next time you decide to flame someone, have a point! Give some examples to establish your point. Otherwise your comments mean absolutely nothing. So who's the whiner? Anyways...
Now...in regards to commercial extensions...claiming that developers just steal from other developers in an effort to make money with extensions isn't right. Extensions in and of themselves are far more than just simple copy and paste code. Sure, the code is there...but with it comes interactivity with existing code on your page and much much more. Extensions are simply Macromedia's way of easing the burden or repetitive tasks.
Just like open source code, you've got free code and not-so free code. Take message boards for example...vBulletin and PHPbb just to name two. vBulletin isn't free but PHPbb is...which is better? You decide! And that's what commercial extensions are all about...choice! You chose whether or not if a not-so free extension will save you time and money and has all the features you're looking for. If not...find one that is free or develop your own code.
Also, keep in mind that alot of extension developer give away alot of them for free. It's the more robust extensions that are not-so free...the one's where the developer had to spend a significant amount of time on to complete. Add to that the amount of time it takes to give good support for extension users and the cost of hosting and bandwidth for a site to host those extensions. So ask yourself one question...if you spent alot of time developing an extension, would you give it out for free? Would you be willing to donate part of your own time and money to support it? My guess based on your brash response is...probably not! Time is money! Take it or leave it!
I cannot create extensions and have no desire to do so. I do however use lots of them, both freebies and I have probably purchased nearly every extension available for Dreamweaver.
The facts as I see them are simple and yes, it is commercialism. But why not. If someone takes the time to create something of use to other people then they should be paid if someone wants it. If they aren't worth the money people won't pay. Thats business, that's life.
No one has to buy them.
Keep up the good work extension writers. I'll keep sending you the dollars. $$$.
I have probably spent around $2,000 on extensions, maybe more over the last few years but they have probably saved me 1,000 hours at least. That's $2 an hour. Any programmers out there willing to work for $2 an hour.
Extension writers Rock.