FooPlugin’s Digital License Key Management Plugin is Now Open Source for Developers

photo credit: 16th st – (license)

Three years ago, FooPlugins built FooLicensing, a digital license key management tool that enabled them to manage customers of their EDD-powered commercial plugins store. Although EDD already offered a license creation and management extension, FooPlugins required more features than it had at that time and opted to build their own.

As of today, FooLicensing is now open source and free for anyone to use, along with the associated EDD connector plugin.

“We love the community and wanted to give back,” FooPlugins co-founder Adam Warner said.

“We know FooLicensing could be so much more but we just don’t have the time to dedicate to it alone. We are a small team and because of that we find ourselves with dozens of projects that could be so much more if only we had more time and people.”

Open sourcing a project can change its trajectory if there’s enough interest and developers willing to contribute to improve it. Warner isn’t counting on that, however, and simply hopes other developers will find it useful.

“It’s a bit of a leap of faith, but if it helps someone else get involved to help create an even more robust system, then great,” he said. “Bonus if it helps someone build additional extensions to help others.”

FooLicensing’s main features include:

View and manage the validated domains for your EDD license level

One click EDD license upgrade/add to cart

One click EDD license renewal (with associated discount) /add to cart

A logged-in user who has entered a license key will see all the relevant account information detailing status, activations, expirations, etc.

Administrators who are using the plugin together with its EDD Connector will see a menu with various license creation and management tools.

The EDD Connector, also now open source, enables the following:

Add new licenses to attach to an EDD product

A searchable list of all license keys that have been created and assigned, complete with attached domains

A list of licenses that have been renewed

Testing for license validation and update checks in the API Sandbox

A management area for various messages (domain attach, detach) and for license renewal discount amount and emails

Foo Licensing is Extensible for Other Platforms

FooLicensing was built from the beginning to be extensible for use with other platforms beyond EDD. The team at FooPlugins had plans to expand their library of connectors but didn’t have the time to execute them.

“Our goal for FooLicensing was to build additional integrations for other eCommerce plugins and digital sales platforms but it quickly took a back seat as our FooBox and other plugins like FooGallery gained popularity,” Warner said.

“Documentation is non-existent at this point, but we welcome you to step through the code and consider getting involved with the core plugin or with extensions for other eCommerce platforms.”

Warner said the team is considering a full-fledged site dedicated to FooLicensing if enough developers become interested and would consider the possibility of a marketplace to host any extension built. FooPlugins does not currently have plans to create additional extensions in house.

“We’ll see what the future holds, but for now we need to move forward with some other things rather than holding this tight to our chests,” Warner said. “Open sourcing the plugins just fits in with what we believe is the right thing to do to make the web (and the WP community) a better place.”