In this edition of WordPress Weekly, we have a fireside chat with Jonathan Davis, lead developer of the Shopp e-commerce plugin. We discuss what it’s like to run a business around open source software, marketing, customer service, the technicalities of the plugin and much more. If you’re a plugin author thinking about going the commercial route, this is definitely the episode for you.
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Last weeks poll question was: Which Theme Company Has The Best Word Of Mouth?
Out of a total of 155 votes, WooThemes had 104 votes, Spectacu.la had 21 votes and StudioPress 11 votes, Press75 6 votes, ThemeHybrid 5 votes, iThemes 4 votes, Gorilla Themes 2 votes, Themes By Jestro 2 votes.
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October 31st, 2005. What is the exact number of spams caught at that time by Akismet according to the Live Spam Zeitgeist.
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45,390
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Who was the very first WordPress.com VIP member?
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Next weeks episode of WordPress Weekly will be a round table centered around the topic of WordPress security.
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Next Episode: Tuesday September 15th, 2009 8P.M. EST
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Length Of Episode: 57 Minutes
Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode71.mp3
Listen To Episode #71:
It’s good to hear that Shopp is doing well and that selling a GPL plugin is an effective business model. That was an interesting point he made about the cost of Shopp being an advantage because it kept the number if users seeking support to a managable level. It seems like a sane and responsible approach that benefits the users and the developers.
I’d hate to see every really good WordPress plugin be commercial, but it make sense for mission critical functionality like eccomerce. And it’s only fair, by it’s very nature anyone developing a site with a shopping cart should hopefully be generating revenue, so there’s no reason a bit shouldn’t flow back to the developers that enables those transactions in the first place.
I agree that WordPress.org should have have a commercial plugin page to mirror the theme one. It’s probably not really needed as much due to the number of commercial plugins. But it’s the fair thing to do, and it sets the right tone that responsible commercial developers who share their code and support the community are recognized and get a little link love :)
I bet after last weekend Robert Scoble, WordPress.com’s first VIP, wishes he was still getting warm towels and cold drinks from Matt and his crew…