Bill

“I would be very keen to read how & in what ways, specifically, you see WordPress getting damaged from this? I think the question of harming WordPress itself is really the primary matter. Thanks!”

I think from the perspective of people associating the WordPress brand, which was equivalent to free, or low cost and democratic, to something too focused on the profit motive. Profit is ok, greed is not.

What Woo did specifically, and all the associated backslapping they received from developers makes me think there is a pent up desire for developers to start getting greedy. Read Woo’s post, they see other people making money off their products and now they want their share, they feel entitled. But they already got paid for their product, so why do they think they are entitled to more?

Ford doesn’t expect you to reward them because you used their car to drive to work each day and earn money.

How do people who were able to create a multimillion dollar company from of all places, South Africa, feel they are not doing well enough and are being taken advantage of? How much money do you need is the question.

Woo keeps raising prices but seems to offer less and less. They have reduced the number of themes they are releasing to their club members, but at the same time increasing their fees. If WordPress user base is growing in size then there are more customers. If there are more customers then the prices should be going down, not increasing. Economies of scale.

So why do developers feel shortchanged? You have a growing market of people, but you are complaining. It makes no sense. You are producing a theme or a plugin and reselling the same thing over and over. You have no more costs to produce one than you have to produce 10,000.

On Themeforest there are some people who have generated over a million dollars in sales off one or two themes. How can that happen if there are not enough WP customers?

If support costs are the issue then offer separate paid support options. Many people in the WP community help each other at no cost, it’s easy to put up a forum so people can help each other and save money.

Woo had one, and then took it down. Why would you do this if it was saving you money in support costs? If there is a common problem then let people know and others can get the same info and save money and time.

Why put in a ticket-only system unless you purposely want people to have to open tickets so you can justify charging them for support? Even their paid support was not great. I’ve seen many people complaining about tickets not being responded to fast enough, or just poor responses given.

People notice things like this, where things can be done cheaper and easier for users but are not and you pay more but get less. It makes you feel taken advantage of.

How does it affect the WordPress brand? Because when the market leaders like Woo do stuff like this it makes you weary of using WordPress at all. Don’t forget, these are the same people we personally see at WordCamps, and who sponsor various events and speak there.

It’s a tight knit community and when this behavior becomes the order of the day the whole WordPress brand is affected by it. Many years ago I witnessed the partial destruction of the DotNetNuke community for similar reasons. It became too commercialized, too expensive and I moved on as did many others.

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