On Market Products Updates

When Boonex does a major release it does create a lot of work for developers.  Upgrading a module may mean days or weeks of work.  Now think about this, if they are offering free upgrades that means that the return on this time is only recovered when a new sale is made.  If a particular module is not selling well, that means that all the effort of upgrading the module to meet the new Dolphin version may not be covered by sales of the module.

Lets put the pressure on Boonex to work with the developers instead of the other way round.  For example, when Boonex introduced the new full width column, it should first have been discussed with the module developers to see if this rather insignificant addition would result in major headaches for the developers who would be left to scramble to make their modules work with the new changes in layout.

How often does one see anyone give incentives to developers to upgrade their modules to address the work involved?  I have seen very little in the forums; there are some that are offering Deano compensation for upgrading his Deano's Tools module.  Maybe one way would be for developers to sell the new version module separately and offer a small fee for the upgraded module; say a few dollars, to existing customers.  That way if they have 100 customers that currently own and use their module, they would see some income to help offset the cost of upgrading the module; time is money and time spent upgrading a module is time you are not doing other work that brings in the money for that time.

I think Boonex should come up with in there Market an upgrade script for the developers. So that way when Boonex upgraded the core. Then the developers can set and upgrade price for all the people that already bought the modules and a full price for those that have not, to get the module. I don't think it is worth the time for the developer to site back and figure out who has already bought the module and charge a small price for the upgrade..

If that makes any cents.

Or people should just send a donation to the developer for doing the work for free anyways.. But no one want to just donate to a hard working developer even though they are getting something in return..

Hi GG. Thanks for opening the discussion.

I remember Boonex opened a discussion similar to this a few months ago. I'm personally of the opinion that a subscription based system works for both clients and developers, even though I am not a fan of on-going expenses.

It's the only one that makes sense (to me) and encourages not only the developers to honour the commitments and statements made on their module pages, but also allows clients certainty that their on-going fees mean on-going support and upgrades.

I personally think the fees charged for modules in the market are (ridiculously) expensive. You can buy a number of modules to add certain small features/enhancements to the core product, and after a while you've found you've spent hundreds of dollars on something that's ready to go on-line with. Then, you realise you could have bought a competing product which has those features out-of-the-box, as core.

Some modules are priced - alone - at more than the price of a full competing product, and that competing product provides all the bells and whistles, not just a tiny add-on to core.

There's many reasons I personally stay with Dolphin but the above doesn't negate that fact.

Lastly, I should say that a small amount ($1 or $2) per module per month would make sense to me. Better than $30 or $50 or $100 outright and then wondering if upgrades happen, and developers wondering if it's worth getting out of bed to upgrade mods.

Yes, in the case of updates, subscriptions allow developers to see incentive for updating modules since there is a continued revenue stream.

Some of the problems with how one sees updates may be due to a lack of understanding of coding.  I think many don't understand how major changes in Dolphin code can mean hours, days, weeks of coding to make a module compatible with the new version.  In some cases it can mean a complete rework of the module requiring basically that the developer creates the module anew.

No, I quite understand that, but I do not want a subscription system. Enough credit like that. Remember also to sites that operate on the basis of volunteerism, almost. They organize themselves and decide when to invest, when they have money, they buy and pay and talk about it more.

It's the developers as to decide how they want to work.

Forget two minutes and updates take the case of Anton. When improving an existing module, it is a new product and just ask the price difference if you already own the first module.

Ex: Simple Chat v1 = $ 40
Simple Chat v2 = $ 60

If you have the first version, you only pay $ 20 for the second version.

It does so only when it considers that much work and I find it as a system, he alone deems if necessary where not.

A dévellopeur can also sell a module with 1,2,3 years of free updates. Yet once everyone decides to do as he wants.

GG you talk about big changes with many hours of work for major updates. I'm at BoonEx for 5 years, and I've been there twice. It's not every six months.

There are many possibilities to consider, but I repeat, I did not want to rent a module, I want to buy and I acccord also to buy the update when it is indispensable.

Do not forget also to clarify that Modzzz to put its modules updated soon with an update script and I thank him. I think if he did so quickly is because he loves above all satisfy his clientelle.

In summary I think it's every dévelloppeur to decide how he wants to work.

I would still like to see Boonex work more with the developers.  For example, the HTML5 uploader changes was not that simple, they removed a bunch of existing classes and combined them into a new structure.  Therefore, if you had a module that expected those classes to be there, then that module would stop functioning and report an error the the user.  If Boonex worked with the developers; even if they don't listen, they should work with the developers.  They can say to the developer, here is a list of classes we consider deprecated and they will be removed.  Then if a developer has 20 modules that expects those classes to be there, they know ahead of time that they will have to rewrite those modules.  No, the answer is not subscribing to the GitHub and expecting to notice any changes.  Boonex needs to let the developers know what is coming; that way developers can try to keep ahead of any releases.

We tried to suggest several incentives for developers but no one ever responded. 

So we are trying to make decision by ourselves. 

Keeping the changes which can affect compatibility of modules to the minimum is one of the first things we(developers) keep in mind when we are making changes in the code. 

However sometimes there is too much pressure from the community or strategic changes are required and we make such changes.