Benjamin Moody: “As a developer of free plugins there is great excitement and pride when something you have put so much time in gains traction and starts to be used by 1000’s of fellow WP users. Along with this thrill is the sudden realisation that 1000’s of fellow WP users now rely on your plugin!
It’s not long before the time comes that you are spending large amounts of your free time just answering support requests and assisting users with bugs, etc. Then come the feature requests! You’d love to help everyone but it can be hard and take up allot of time, plus you gotta eat right!?
So what are your options? Rely on donations? Create new features as paid addons? Turn your plugin into a premium plugin? This panel will discuss how monetization affects the WordPress community. Would the WordPress community be as successful if not for free plugins? Can developers be rewarded for some of their time AND keep the plugins 100% free for all to use?”