This has absolutely nothing to do with either games or my site’s new theme. I’ll get around to both of those eventually.

I read an interesting article on Weblog Tools Collection today, and I thought I’d throw you my thoughts on the subject.

As all of you probably know, I seem to have some kind of issue paying for stuff online. Not that I can’t pay, but that I don’t want to pay. We were talking about this in a Flash Game Monetization thread on the forums, and you remember how I strongly opposed any kind of payment for a flash game. I don’t know why my mind is set like this, it just is. And as you can guess I’m also against paid Wordpress plugins.

I’m going to take you into some crazy metaphor now, that’s probably going to end up sounding crazy when I’m done writing, but that still illustrates my point somehow. Let’s say I want to buy a chair for my apartment/house. The vast majority of the public would go to either a furniture or a chair maker and buy one. But instead, let’s image that I know how to make chairs. If I own a large area of land with a bunch of trees on it, I could get the wood and make my own chair if I wanted to. Obviously these are skills that not everyone has, but since I know how to do this I want to use it to my advantage. So instead of going out to a furniture store, I’ll make the chair myself. Sure it might take a little longer and it might not look as nice as someone else’s could, but I have the chair I wanted and I didn’t have to spend any money.

Now let’s go back to the real world. Let’s say I own a WP site (how many do I run now?), and I want to extend its functionality in some way. I’m just like the chair maker above. I know how to make a plugin, so why should I spend my money on having someone else make it for me? Now there’s no point for every single programmer on the internet to do this, so instead I’ll post the code online for someone else to use. And if some other designer makes the same thing that I want, who am I to say no?

Now I’m not saying I can make anything. Akismet is probably the best example of this. It’s gotta be the most useful and most complex plugin out there, and I respect it for that. There’s no way I could replicate that on my own, and I accept that. But if tomorrow they decided to start charging for it, I would not pay. Yes it means I would have to moderate every individual comment I get, but this wouldn’t be an issue considering a day when I get more than 2 comments is peak traffic. Larger sites, with better business models, could afford this though.

And I guess this brings up another point. By definition, plugins extend Wordpress, they don’t provide its basic functionality. So if a plugin decides to start charging, I can just give it the boot. I’m running 19 plugins right now, but I honestly don’t consider any of them essential enough to pay for. And any of them that I really want, I could just make myself. Heck, I could make WP Ajax Edit Comments if I really wanted to. Not saying that I plan to, but I could if I wanted. (Fun fact, that plugin is charging people to use any newer version, although they left their last version online for anyone who wanted it. That’s what I use, and I hope it never breaks.)

And even if plugins do start charging for their use, there would be ways around this. As I’ve probably said before, the internet simply cannot be used for making money except in some special circumstances. People (like me) are always looking for ways to not spend money, and in most cases pirating a plugin would be easier than the alternative. Personally, this is where I draw the line, as I would rather go without something than have a pirated version of it, but not everyone is like this. I mean, if you look at programs like Photoshop, Flash, or any expensive software, you can find places to download the gigantic EXE online, so obviously a 5 KB .zip file wouldn’t deter people. Obviously this isn’t my ideal view of the internet, but these are the facts.

While I’m not saying that as a web designer I should be privileged into getting free plugins, or that furniture stores should start handing out free stuff to carpenters, hopefully you’ll understand my mentality toward the subject a bit more.