Here’s the deal: every hour I spend writing Textpattern plugins and documentation is an hour I can’t spend earning money to pay the rent. Either I find a way to make development pay, or I spend my time doing other things.

Still, I don’t want to dig a hole trying to sell plugins under a commercial license, because it depends on too many things outside my control. Selling software by-the-copy is a dead end business model.

So, my compromise is this: I’ve written, documented and tested a new plugin, to be described shortly. The plugin will be published under an open source BSD¹ license.. if and only if I receive a target amount in Paypal donations.

Anyone who’d like to see the plugin released may donate any amount they’d like. It doesn’t matter whether the target is reached by many people each donating $2, one person donating the entire amount, or something in between. Once the target is reached, the plugin will be published for any and all to download (this is an implementation of the Street Performer Protocol).

If the target amount isn’t reached within 60 days, the plugin won’t be released. It’s all or nothing: either the target is reached, and the plugin is freely available to anyone who wants to download it²; or donations fall short of the target, and the plugin remains unpublished. In the event that the time limit expires before the target is reached, all donations of $5.00 or more will be refunded, and smaller donations will be counted towards the next plugin, if there is one.

Donations will be handled by the Dropcash service. You’ll be able to see the progress of donations in near-real-time via the status box shown in the sidebar to your left.

As an added incentive, anyone who contributes $5.00 or more will have the option of being included on the plugin page in a list of patrons, along with a href link to the web site of their choice.

The target amount I’m setting for this first plugin is the princely sum of $US 100. Again, I don’t mind whether that’s reached by 50 people each donating $2, or one person donating $100.

(Incidentally, $100 is far less that I would have earned if I’d spent the development time working on a paid job. I’ve lowballed this one, since it’s an experiment to gauge the feasibility of the Dropcash model. If this is successful, I’ll use the same method to fund the development of new plugins)

The plugin is described in detail here, including full documentation. Once (if) the plugin is released, I’ll make a reasonable effort to fix any bugs that prevent it from working as described in the documentation. I make no promises that I’ll add any new features; but, since it’s open source, anyone will be free to release modifications and additions. At any rate, my track record ought to confirm that I know what I’m doing when it comes to developing Textpattern plugins.

Update

The ransom campaign was a success, and the Dropcash plugin itself is now available for download. Check here for subsequent ransom campaigns.

¹ The BSD license allows anyone to copy, modify, redistribute and even sell the software, provided the copyright notice and disclaimer is kept intact. It’s less restrictive than the GPL, since it doesn’t prevent the software from being included in a closed-source commercial product.

² Yes, this means people who don’t donate get a free ride if the plugin is released. But that doesn’t reduce the incentive of those who need the plugin. It’s no different than donating to your favorite blog: donating decreases the risk that the blog will vanish. That others benefit from your contribution doesn’t reduce the benefit you receive in exchange for donating.