How do I crowdfund/sell a plugin?

Hi,

This thread is different and I couldn’t find a better category for it.

I am not looking to hire someone.

I’m planning to get a plugin developed which will cost me $400.

I can’t bear the cost. I want to crowdfund this plugin. Or maybe sell it to recover my cost.

I had a discussion about the same with @Ahmed_Gagan, and he told me that currently, there is no way to crowdfund or sell a plugin that he is aware of. To get better insights, he referred me to @JammyDodger. Jammy told me that I could ask in marketplace to crowdfund my plugin.

The idea wasn’t that appealing as I’ll have to wait for potential funders to discover my post. Then the collection of funds is also a problem as there will be no mediator in between.

Flarum, which is the direct competitor to Discourse, has Extiverse, where people sell their plugins.

Due to that, the development cost is low as the developers are willing to develop it for cheap and then recover the money by selling it to anyone afterward.

Win-win for both buyers and sellers.

Is there any way organized way to do that on Meta?

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You can always crowdfund a plugin by posting in marketplace and asking who wants to co-fund the plugin with you.

@angus is working on a subscription system for plugins, he might be able to tell you more about it.

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Just for the record, I did suggest that as an option. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for letting me know :slight_smile:

Yes, sorry I didn’t mention that. I will correct that in my post now

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There is a project underway to solve that problem but I think it’s not quite ready. The short term solution is to post in marketplace as suggested already.

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I asked the same months ago when I was funding several plug-ins but got the same answer. I don’t think there’s any restriction on crowd funding, after all these are plug-ins that are paid and can be helpful to the whole community.

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Hmmm.

I had the impression CDCK didn’t want PayPal style funding pools being promoted and managed on Meta itself due to historical issues with conflict and potentially other legal ramifications?

This is partly why we’ve not seen this kind of multi-person arrangement in recent history. It’s something that used to happen years ago before it was deemed too disruptive.

I guess that doesn’t prevent such crowdfunding occurring off-site but not sure if such initiatives can be promoted here?

Has that position changed?

The usual, enduring model is that there is a single investor and a single responsible entity to deliver the work

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