.Products

The czars over at WordPress Plugin Support have decided that our plugins are in violation of GPLv2 (which is not the case, reference: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html). We are trying to discuss this with them in a reasonable fashion and hopefully we can come to some sort of resolution. In order to stay listed on their directory, which is the source of 99% of our traffic, we must give away the plugin for free. We cannot request a license fee and must rely 100% on people making donations.

We've gone that route before. In fact two of our plugins were donations based. We received exactly ZERO donations. The day we put in the "license to activate for all users" hook we started receiving funds from users. Enough funds started coming in to actually encourage us to develop new plugins. Now the license model brings in enough revenue to provide routine updates like the major update nearing release for the entire family of MoneyPress plugins.

Without these funds we simply cannot afford to provide ANY form of support, even forums based, for the products. Even the 1x $10 or $25 fee does not cover our costs for doing so. With those fees in place new customers help cover those costs. Without them it simply makes no sense for us to continue to provide any kind of support or spend any time updating the plugins. We have to put food on the table like anyone else. 90% of the WordPress users will never make a donation. Unfortunately "Why buy a cow when you get the milk for free?" seems to be the mantra when it comes to WordPress plugin donations. We are hoping WordPress will re-read the GPL and understand what it means. It does NOT mean every software author must give away everything they do for free.

In the meantime we simply cannot afford to continue providing routine updates as we must work on projects that earn revenue and WordPress has killed the revenue stream for this product. Until & unless we can resolve this situation with WordPress and start generating some revenue from our plugins we can no longer provide routine updates to the product. We're going to keep it online, but the frequency of updates is going to be significantly less as will our bi-weekly forum reviews if we are not listed in the WordPress Plugin Directory and thus end up with almost no revenue stream from the plugins.

In the meantime, if you need support, want to see a new feature, or have found a bug and need a quick resolution please contact us about our paid support and upgrade options. Fees start at $60/hour with a 1-hour minimum. Response times for the $60 rate can be up to 2 weeks. Urgent support is provided at $120/hour, prepaid.

If you like the plugin and would like to see continued updates, feel free to write to Mark & the rest of the WordPress Plugins team at plugins@wordpress.org and ask them to re-instate the Store Locator Plus listing and allow us to continue requesting a license fee. The future of the product depends on it.

Best Regards,
Lance Cleveland, Founder
Cyber Sprocket Labs, LLC
www.cybersprocket.com