Growing trend - Selling a product and disguising it as donations

This sums up what I think (and I'll add bold type because that's what the cool kids are doing)

1) Free = Free.
2) Donate = A friendly, non-obligatory monetary gesture to show appreciation and gratitude.
3) Paid = A friendly, MANDATORY monetary fee required to unlock features or other wonderfultastic features.

You all can carry on and discuss and debate the merits and benefits and downsides of all of this, but in the end requiring a "donation" no longer makes it a donation.

 

I don't have a problem so much with paying for things. You'd be hard pressed to find someone more free-market Capitalist than me. (To be clear: real Capitalism on a level playing field, not crony capitalism as practiced by many governments.)

However, I do have a problem with the misuse of words. There is no such thing as a "required donation" or "required tip"--it is a "payment" or "selling price". A "donation" or "tip" is completely voluntary. The misuse of the words by the children still learning their language while playing WoW do not change the actual meaning of the words. "Donation" and "Payment" are not interchangeable words.

I, too, have donated to many people on this site. But, I refuse to give money to anyone stating that a 'tip' or 'donation' is 'required'. They don't know what they're talking about, and for me, that lack of attention to detail makes me concerned about the quality and voracity of their work product also.


Just my $0.02,
chinajade

 

Ok well I have a question... And this is purely speculative... What happens if I donate and the "Routine" sucks? Can I get my donation back? lol... This is the only reason I don't like the "Required Donation" option... If I throw some one 5$ only to find that it's crap, yes I know it's only 5$, but then again I have to throw another 5$ to try another one. Like I said I have donated in the past and been fairly lucky with what I "Donated", we just have no leg to stand on when it doesn't perform. Kinda like a tip when going out... You tip after you have had the service... not before...

 

There are free versions for you to try the CR out. As well as Phelon for his PvPSuite plugin, we, as the devs behind DWCC, offer a UI (as well as some other perks, like Talented settings, etc.) to donors

 

In case you have ever been to London: Yes, there are required tips. Been to several restaurants that add 5% as a "required tip".

 

You are trying to have the thread closed because you, yourself do not follow the rules as mentioned. You personally leave people hanging for days that have given you donations. The only reason you have reported this thread is because you are one of the people causing a problem. You can have this thread closed but you cannot hide the posters posting on your thread. I was going to donate, as I was looking for a warrior CC but seeing those people waiting for days threw me right off.

 

1) If you would have bothered to read through the DWCC thread, you would have found statements cleary saying we are sticking to the rules.
2) You do not even seem to have read what I replied directly to your post, let me quote myself here:

3) Never heard that before

Addition to 3): That's a good one, though

 

My pleasure

 

They posted, it is in your thread.......they are speaking for themselves.

 

No it isn't a tip, it's a gratuity charge. Much the same but very different. They cannot call it a tip, because tipping implies the same thing as donating. They are both on behalf of the customer not a requirement.

Buying/Gratuity charge same thing you have to pay it.

 

Want a photo of the check?

It cleary says "tip" there.

 

However, from my side, everything's been said and explained here. Links to the mods' posts are available to everyone. I think I made my point - I'm done posting here.

 

Not quite.
Person A requires a task to be performed that they can't/don't want to do themselves.
Person B will perform the task, if they can agree on fair compensation.
Person B performs the task, and is compensated by Person A.

This is very different from volunteering, in which your only compensation is intangible.

 

$5? Pffft, the one I want to buy soon is $15!

 

Yea! Make these profiles and spend countless hours perfecting them for free, because we're entitled to it! YEA! GUYS?!

Seriously, they spend hours and hours on these. Least we could do is reimburse them, only thing i have a problem with is their prices, $30 for a CC, how about no. But that's my choice as a customer.

 

But thats what a community is for...
Seriously... If you can you contribute, if you can't you don't...

I don't agree with this selling trend at all. You actually can't get any full working version of a plugin or CC for free anymore. Thats something I do not agree with, as you never know how it will turn out.
Not long ago someone has been banned from this forum because he wanted to sell something pretty useful. It was a Profile for ProfessionBuddy, where you could select specific Herbs and Ores and an amount how much should be farmed. Also it has a 1-600 functionality for Herbing and Mining included. It has been banned, because he flagged it clearly as "for sale".

Now all these other guys use the backdoor and use the flag "donation". They maybe create something for free, which might be even totally useless, and sell their stuff for 15 ?.
Sorry, but I don't agree that this is ok.

All those addon creators, even the big ones like TSM, DBM, Big Wigs, Recount, etc. work for the community for free. They get some donations from people who can spend the money and they are good with it. If something is not getting developed someone else from the community picks it up and updates it (like it's for some Plugins for HB as well). If I can fix something I'm doing this also for free. But even if it's not getting developed anymore you haven't lost anything.
If those guys you pay don't give a shit about HB anymore they will just stop the development and are gone - with your money.
This happened twice already to me on this forum...

So work for the community for free and be pretty sure to get donations if you are working good, or don't and try to sell your stuff...
The actual way is just bullshit...

-edit-
Btw...
If someone buys the plugins/profiles/CCs as per the site rules he actually could change something in it and release it for free, right?
So actually if someone bought TuanHA Monk for example he actually would be allowed to change something and release it, correct? So how does this "donation" shit make any sense at all?

-edit2-
Here is btw. a fresh "sell only" thread for an actually useful plugin...
http://www.thebuddyforum.com/honorb...or-your-honorbuddy-toons-via-google-talk.html

 

If op thinks a topic is breaking the rules by selling a CC or profile then report the topic, if it dosn?t get deleted it is ok.

Personally i think thaunha is on the border here as he is releasing a functional CC but gains paying people a week ahead access to the CC, what else i don?t know.
For wxample now with a new HB people who don?t pay have to wait a week for it?

 

TuanHAs Monk CC is/was really nice when it was free. Within the same day he released his payed version, I would have donated him, as it was really working awesome.
Anyway, I paid for it, even if I don't see any dps increase.

About the not working free version I can't say anything. I didn't update it from the private repo, so I would assume it should still be working for you aswell?!

-edit-
Just checked his thread.
Well even if I paid for it I can not agree with the way he is handling the free version...
The changes from free to paid CAN'T be that big... And it can't take a week to bring it up to date, if the paid version has been updated already...

Also he sells his CC and seems to be working with another guy on it. Now he even asks for a separate donation for him....

 

When I first purchased HB I was surprized that honorbuddy didnt make quest profiles for 1-85. Was shocked the users had to create their own profiles. Luckily we have kick! At the time singular while better than nothing, wasnt anything to write home to mom about. Current singular seems to pull good numbers on dps charts now. Point is when you buy HB it says it does all these things. but really its only capable of doing all these things if you know how to make the profiles, quest behaviors, plugins. It proably should say Capable of doing x, y, z but is only supported by the users who make them and however long they support what they make. Since gold selling is so low looks like people are sticking it to the community and selling their routines, ect. IMO the bot should come with a 1-90 or whatver lvl is max. a decent combat routine, proffessions 1-600. with the ability to make your own if u want. and incentive for the people to make better routines, better questing profiles give em a free session for thier bots or something, but it would have to be quality. I guess it is what it is tho.

 

This thread is bordering on drama so I'm almost afraid to wade in....almost...but since I have some strong opinions on the subject I'm diving in. This will be an essay but I encourage you to take the time to read it if you have opinions on this topic.

Before I get into the intellectual meat of my post there's a couple of details I think we can all agree to off the bat:

• Some people are cheap m*f*rs who think they are entitled to everything for nothing and no matter how you structure it or what you call it they are going to whine about not getting it handed to them for free.
• Some community members here work their asses off and use some pretty amazing skill that's actually worth good money in the real world with no expectation of financial return
• Without community produced material shared with the rest of said community the bot would not be as useful to most of its users

I think a lot of people are getting hung up on the word donation and its literal definition. So let's look at that first. We're never going to settle here whether or not there is such a thing as a required donation. While I agree that by strict dictionary definition a donation should be at the discretion of the donator I can also name many examples in life where there is such a thing as a required donation. Dictionary definition aside there is a legal concept known as the required donation. Now add to that that virtually all money transacted by third parties in this community is via PayPal. PayPal has two methods, Pay and Donate. Technically, according to Paypal's terms and conditions (at least for this US participant) NOBODY here is using the donation feature properly anyway (I'll carefully choose that word instead of "legally"). Unfortunately the only way to make PayPal take a payor specified amount instead of a seller specified amount without a third party script is via the Donate method. (If I still had a copy of the script I'd offer it here for use so we could get further away from the word donate.)

I think its more important in this particular community with its current ruleset to focus on the intent of the donation requestor rather than the terminology. For the rest of this post I'm going to change my terminology as follows:

paid = required money
tip = not required
free = may or may not include a money transaction link but no money is required (aka tip)

So that drills us down to the core issue: whether or not its right to offer a lesser version of a product for free/tip and a full feature version for pay. Since the devs/mods/powers that be have determined that it is allowed to do just that I have to respect that and agree to play in those rules. I can't code plugins or CCs yet but even as a profile writer I can absolutely appreciate the hours that get dumped into some project. I can understand the desire to want some compensation and appreciate for your time and effort. I would truly hate for some of the great devs who (paid versions or not) are still not getting what their time is worth for the kind of work they are doing to quit. That being said, if this has always been a community of sharing and tipping or selling on the side then it would be foolish for a dev to come in and create product with the primary intention of making money.

For me, that's what it all boils down to. As long as the rules are what they are I have no problem with someone offering a lite version and a paid features version. What I have a problem with is those who's primary intent is to make money off the rest of the community and primarily promoting and transacting that business through this forum through the loophole of "donation". Those of you with your own sites who offer all kinds of free stuff here and link to your site where you also have paid product, you are not who I mean. Even those who do not have their own site but who's posts are intended to offer the free product and just mention the paid as an "oh by the way", you're ok too.

But if you made something with the intent to sell it and then made a gimped version just so you could post here as free then I call flag on the play. Your free product needs to have some value. Even the cheap leader loss shit that gets you in the door at Wal-Mart has some value. Its not broken crap. (Sometimes its still crap though, let's be honest.) Furthermore, the focus/majority of your post here in the forum needs to be about the free/tip version not a ruse to funnel people to your "pay option".

Examples:
Offering and promoting a working, non-buggy plugin or CC for free/tips, throwing in a GUI and maybe a bonus feature or two = Good
Making a product for sale, stripping it down to barely functional and offering it for free solely to promote your paid product = Bad
Making a product, trying to sell it, getting wrist slapped for breaking the rules, stripping out the bare minimum features into a different profile that hasn't really been tested and doesn't work all that well and still promoting the hell out of your paid product anyway with a bait and switch = Worst

So regardless of the method used to transact the money, let's agree to call a spade a spade. If money is required, call it paid even if you're using the Donation feature of PayPal. Just follow the the rules and offer a working product for free first and foremost or do your business elsewhere.

And if you're one of those people in my first bullet stop bitching and try offering a tip once in a while for some of the amazing addon product available here for free which whether you want to admit it or not is still considerable. Then maybe those who are offering wouldn't feel like they have to monetize their work in order to stay motivated.