When I reported on the WP User Avatar plugin’s rebranding and repurposing last week, it came as no surprise that users were angry. However, I did not expect pushback against those user complaints from a subset of commentators and others in the community.
There were a few points, each boiled down to the argument that free plugin users have a sense of entitlement.
These points focused either on the concept of plugin authors needing to make a living or the GPL, a license that offers no warranty on the code the user receives. Both of these arguments led the conversation astray at times. The focus of the user complaints was not on upsells or about code they grabbed from the wild. No, the backlash was about logging into their websites and finding things had changed with no warning. It was about a plugin installed from an official, presumably trustworthy, source being replaced with a different plugin.
What I see is not a group of people complaining about an advert. What I see is not a long list of users disliking feature changes.
The issue of maintaining free plugins and user entitlement was never the point.
Even David Bisset of Post Status followed that rabbit down the hole. There are good points to be made on free plugin development being a labor of love — and sometimes just a headache from a support perspective –, but this conversation was never about a commercial upsell. It was about the ethics of wholesale swapping the codebase of one plugin with a different one.
Will some users complain about a new advert in a plugin? Undoubtedly.
Will nearly 200 users leave one-star reviews in that case? Unlikely.
Many users have a sense of entitlement. They grab a free theme or plugin and expect developers to answer their every whim. I would argue that it is a small percentage of total users based on personal experience, but that vocal minority can give the whole group a bad rep. They can be a drag on a developer’s motivation to continue with a project.
I get it. I have been doing this whole free software thing for nearly as long as WordPress has been around. It is easy to feel underappreciated for work that you pass on to the community. And, if you have no benefactor funding all of this free work, you must find some means of putting food on the table.
Users of free software are not owed free customizations. They are not owed free technical support. They are not even owed a promise that a developer will not swap in a new codebase that does something different. They are owed nothing.
However, the price of admission for playing in this market, regardless of whether it is free or commercial software, is that every plugin’s success or failure rests in the hands of those who use it.
Maybe we, those of us who build free plugins, do not owe users anything. But, we have a responsibility to be trustworthy stewards of our sub-communities in the WordPress ecosystem. We have a responsibility to behave ethically, rightness and wrongness as defined by our users.
Whether it is commercial or free software, the goal is to have users — is it really software if no one is using it? They are the lifeblood of every project. Ultimately, developers who want people to use their code must answer to those who would.
On the flip-side, developers are not owed glowing reviews on their projects. Users have a right to complain, even about a plugin that they acquired for free. It is not about them wanting special privileges or treatment. It never was. If you treat them fairly, do right by them, and communicate, you can build a living and breathing community around your software.
Please send virtual hugs to developers who are building the plugins and themes you use. They are a vital part of WordPress’s success. Five-star ratings and donations never hurt either.
Just because someone puts something for free on WordPress.org doesn’t mean they are “entitled” to anything either. On rare occasions, the trust which is obviously presumed by being on WordPress.org, is violated. In those cases, I believe it is the responsibility of the Plugin Review Team to side with users.
It is never okay to have a product in the wild that is advertised as one thing and then to switch it for another without first letting users know it is going to change. That is something that the Review Team should, but doesn’t seem to, recognize.
Sure, developers can do anything they want. Even violate the rules established by those who control access to the Repository.
The problem is, it seems, if there weren’t rules outside WordPress.org that require removal of dangerous plugins, I get the feeling (based on responses I have seen over the years) the Plugin Review Team wouldn’t do anything about it.
The Plugin Review Team is made up of people with more knowledge in coding than many others who use the plugins. It is obvious that would be a requirement. The message that comes out of that team seems to be more slanted in favor of other developers rather than users who face the aftermath of what some developers decide to do to users for the developer’s own profit.
The Plugin Review Team seems to think (based on my experience) that developers are entitled. And that unless there is a flagrant violation of some moral code, all’s pretty much fair.
Arrogance & callousness toward those who aren’t in the elevated position of being a developer, comes to mind when I think of the Plugin Review Team.
As a user, I am ENTITLED to my opinion.