WordPress is Pretty Expensive for being Free
When I originally wrote about the murky legal basis underlying the ecosystem of paid plugins, it was before the embarrassing public meltdown pitting WP’s “leadership” against a well known Wordpress host, WP Engine. It comes down to this: there’s a mess of greed, authoritarianism, and lawfare for a supposedly free open source bit of software.
Not a Bug, a Feature
WordPress is free software under the GPL 2 license. In other words, this license ensures that the software is free to share and modify. Per the link:
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price.
It also means that if you derive software from WordPress, it must also inherit the GPL 2 license and itself be free software. Reading all this, you might be confused about why there’s a massive ecosystem of paid plugins, most of which do indeed count as “derived” from WordPress.
Try it yourself. Open a paid plugin and check its license. If it has a GPL 2 license, that code is open source. Per the terms of that license, it’s free to share and modify. It’s really that simple. But of course…the spirit of open source withers under fine print:
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
When you download a plugin, you’re often paying a fee for two things: the process of transferring a copy and the convenience of ongoing updates. After all, they are technically allowed to charge you a fee for every new version, otherwise.
Nothing is Free
If everyting is open and free and awesome, why does one person have such authority for the WordPress project? Well, because the trademark is still a thing. The software is free, but still copyrightable. Confused?
This is how the world works. Just because Wordpress as software is wrapped in an open source shell doesn’t mean someone can’t wedge a very profitable, powerful commercial entity into the cracks. Automattic is a multi-billion dollar valuation company, it’s in the business of making money, not honoring the “spirit” of open source.
The point is this: Automattic has minted millions of dollars by exploiting the GPL-2 license to their advantage. Why shouldn’t you be allowed to do the same?
Let’s be Real: Most Plugins are Shit Anyway
The reason there’s such an appetite for paid plugins is because it’s a model that makes sense. If a bunch of people pay a dev, that person can afford to do more updates and make great things. Everyone wins. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s also a little annoying that this software usually ships as open source code. Some plugin authors probably don’t even realize it as they bundle the license they’re required to bundle.
I don’t have an issue with the model, but if you’re going to develop commercial software for WordPress and you’re going to bundle this license, you shouldn’t complain that people treat it as open source code…because that’s literally how it’s supposed to work.
ACF Pro is a vital plugin, but the rest (espeically the most popular) are bloated and perform poorly, in part because they need to support as vast a range of WP versions as possible to maximize their commercial success. The commercial nature of plugin also makes them pile features into these codebases…and they just plain suck.
Instead of wondering if you need to shell out hundreds or thousands on plugin renewals, you should just freakin’ delete them. When some software is charging hundreds and hundreds for “lifetime” licenses (uh, because they know it’s open source code, remember?), maybe it’s worth stopping and asking if it’s even worth it.
I’m not a lawyer, don’t sue me
This is where the world of nulled plugins comes in, and where I have to disclaim that I’m not a lawyer and don’t even like lawyers…
If you’re thinking: doesn’t GPL mean I can’t get in trouble for using a pirated plugin? After all, the plugin authors are allowed to charge whatever fee they want, but they cannot prevent someone from re-sharing it for free becuase it’s still open source code.
Technically that’s true. Pirated code is a security mess, though. Plugins are a security mess in general with how WordPress handles them, so again…the best solution? Pay coders to write code. It’s cheaper in the long run, beleive it or not.
Use Automattic as an Example
They “own” the trademark, so why not use them as an example. They decided to copy the very popular ACF Pro plugin (I’d argue that this only useful commercial plugin in WP period). It wasn’t popular, but good luck arguing that it wasn’t legal.
Again, Automattic has made a business out of leveraging every rule in the GPL 2 license and using it as an advantage. That’s how the paid plugin ecosystem began. If you write software for this “market”…I don’t know why you would, to be honest, unless you’re okay with volunteering your work into the open source ether.
TLDR: You don’t “Need” to Renew Plugins
Yes, you can continue to use plugins without paying. You can legally modify the source code to suppress license-based features, too. And if you buy a plugin for one project? You’re technically allowed to use it everywhere, no matter if they have a “premium multi-site” model.
The plugin author is also allowed to add code that makes this difficult, but they do not have any physical way to entirely block you from using their code as you’d like once you get your grubby fingers onto it.
What about Security and Ethics? Why do you Hate Plugin Developers?
Obviously throwing random code into your site is bad for security, but so is the ecosystem of WordPress paid plugins in general.
Maybe I’m just too simple, but it’d be nice if open source could be open and free and paid software could be paid. Make neat lines, don’t blur the two and hope people don’t notice…which is pretty much the Wordpress strategy.
Why is it such a big deal?
First, this model encourages bloat. The products that do the best are the ones that offer a vast range of features at a bargain price. Supporting as many WP versions as possible means more marketplace, but lower code quality and performance. I mean, there’s plugins that still support PHP 5.6 because people still run PHP 5.6!
Second, the lack of a real distribution system means that “clever” plugin authors must offload some (or a lot) of functionality to their server-side endpoints. GPL license or not, you won’t be able to use that software without an active license. But that also means lag on every admin endpoint…sometimes a lot, because guess what? Those companies don’t always want to write optimized server-side endpoints or pay for good infrastructure.
In other words, the entire ecosytem is a mess by design. Compared to npm or composer, WordPress plugins suffer from the Automattic style of monetization which involes mashing capitalism into open source…the result sort of speaks for itself.
Conclusion: Composer, Sage, and Code
There’s a better way. The Roots team offers the Sage theme, which manges third party code through a real package management system, PHP’s composer.
Otherise, you need to write code to build good software products, even and especially with WordPress.