Incentive for posting mods/hacks?

[ckhorne]

I've lurked on this site for a while (and installed a few mods and hacks), and I have a rather major one that I could contribute back to the community - one that would interest a large portion of people.

But I hesitate to do so because of the time required to get it to the point where it was a full mod (although close already), and moreso because of the time required to support the mod.

A MOTM is great, but doesn't really make up for the time invested. And Paypal donations would be great, but I doubt those happen very frequently.

I don't want to sound selfish, but I'm interested to see what incentivizes people to spend the time posting mods and providing ongoing support for them.

Any comments?

[cashpath]

Well.. what is your hack?

1) If your hack is really good you could charge for it.. or release a lite version and charge for the full version.

2) You can add a copyright link that links to your website in the code and require in the terms of use that it stay. If your hack is really good you will get a lot of websites linking to you.

3) People do donate for really good hacks.

[Smoothie]

why do people donate anything?? Why, because it's the right thing to do.

you will have a lot of comments about posting commercial-size hacks without being paid... a lot of coders here spent hundreds of hours to develop free released codes, and they are paid with nothing, even not a single penny of donation...

also, there was a lot of debates about releasing commercial/paid hacks... no answer yet from the guys...

i've released a lot of hacks in the past, i deleted them from here when they were integrated to the releases... most of them were... i also released commercial hacks on my own website, and i continue to receive requests from clients that pay for the job, but i also continue to contribute to the community... when it is not from my codes, it is from supporting or redirecting new members to the proper place.

if you can't handle a commercial website for your script, you can deal with a developper to release and support it... it comes from time to time when guys here do it... (the vb geek just requested for a partner 2 days ago!)... and i'm one of them too...

all the situations can be possible.. you are not restricted by a GPL license here... we are full commercial!

[ckhorne]

I suppose everyone thinks they have the 'end all be-all' hack...

The hack is a replacement of the attachment manager. It allows people to drag and drop images, zip files, pdf, movies- any file that is allowed in the Attachment Manager- directly onto the New Post/Reply/Edit form. It resizes before upload on the client side, allowing attachments directly from their camera without users having to resize manually. It works in IE (activex) and Firefox (java), although does require a third party license. Otherwise, it's a direct fit into the current vB attachment engine - no php files are updated. Users can switch back and forth between the new and old versions as they need to, and the whole thing can be managed on a site-wide basis.

Your posts were all encouraging, and I might post after all. I'd be nice to release commercially, but I don't think there's a commerical hack forum, and don't know why people would ever bother going to my site to find a commercial release. So - it sounds like my best bet is to release and ask for paypal donations or put it on a commercial release, and require a $30 paypal payment or whatever.

[Smoothie]

From my 6 years here, I've seen coders who have released mods that were way above what I would consider a top notch modification. In other words some of these people have gone above and beyond what one would expect for nothing and yet some of these mods could fetch some $$ if allowed to do so here. These people also support these mods through hundreds and hundreds of additional requests, members who are a few bricks shy of a full load, inexperienced forum admins and the list goes on and on.

And I remember who these guys are, and I'll never forget them, or thank them enough. How's that sound for an incentive?

[Shazz]

Originally Posted by Smoothie

From my 6 years here, I've seen coders who have released mods that were way above what I would consider a top notch modification. In other words some of these people have gone above and beyond what one would expect for nothing and yet some of these mods could fetch some $$ if allowed to do so here. These people also support these mods through hundreds and hundreds of additional requests, members who are a few bricks shy of a full load, inexperienced forum admins and the list goes on and on.

And I remember who these guys are, and I'll never forget them, or thank them enough. How's that sound for an incentive?

CMX the vBPlaza guy could buy a new car with just ONLY the posts thats been givin(1.00 a post for example that all the people that said they would donate) . Let alone to think of all the money lol