Thread

You aren’t a true success until someone pirates your software.

http://www.share-ee.com/

Discuss.

Seriously though, besides the obvious downside to this, I would like to discuss a possible upside.

Pirating happens. That’s a fact. Especially when you’re talking unencrypted code that can be modified to remove license checks, etc. It’s essentially unavoidable. So is this a big problem?

I would like to argue that this site is actually a good thing for the community. Why? Critical mass. Pirated add-ons put add-ons in more hands. By having access to add-ons to experiment and develop with without cost, the single biggest obstacle to choosing EE is removed for many users. Fair or not, what this means is more active development using these third-party add-ons.

Why does this matter?

Although I am 100% behind the idea that developers must be fairly compensated for their work—and that add-ons being for sale commercially is largely what has made EE’s third party add-on community superior in quality, reliability, support and updates to uneven mess of WP’s plugin library— the fact is that sheer volume of active development plays a HUGE part in the growth and sustainable, long-term success of any CMS, including EE (and third party devs).

When you look at the relative trending search terms for EE vs other CMSs, the results are not exactly encouraging:

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=ExpressionEngine,WordPress,Drupal,&cmpt=q

What pirating add-ons does is increase the amount of dev being done with EE. The flipside is that this dev inevitably comes with support requests, which have not fairly been paid for. There’s a risk devs will be overwhelmed by the freeloaders, and that legitimate (paid) users’ support requests will go unanswered.

I know. It sucks.

But, to remain hopeful: MP3s changed the music industry forever. So has streaming video media. I would say both have changed for the better, to meet the demand of modern media. I take that as evidence that there can be a happy (profitable) ending to this trend.

Pirates have always been the first to skirt around a pay wall if and where they can—but if we look at the typical adaption pattern, after this initial wave of theft, a balance is struck—especially once those devs who pirated to learn now have paying clients they can bill for the license fee.

It seems to me that pirating is an indication of early mainstream success.

Thoughts?

Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing (I tend to think of it as a bad but mostly harmless thing, kind of like call waiting), the site’s gone now.

TTFN
Travis

Hah, call waiting… Nice analogy, Travis. 

Yes, I think it’s bad—hope my post didn’t imply I supported this site. I don’t, and I’m glad to see it’s gone. I’m just saying, piracy is bound to happen, and could just be taken to mean EE is in enough demand to be worth stealing. Not the most flattering compliment, but hey!

Cheers.

I was not fast enough to see the site before it was taken down, but regardless… stealing is stealing. I can understand using a dev copy during development, and then purchasing legitimate licenses before launching client sites which use these commercial addons. But to publish a site which encourages outright stealing is unacceptable. Something would I neither expect nor condone from members of this community.

Yep totally agree with the above. I took a look at the site before it was taken down and whilst it didn’t have much content and you needed to get an invite to get on the site (who is doing this exactly?) as has been said before, stealing is stealing.

Would it be any different if someone was stealing cars and giving them to someone else?

These kinds of people I believe actually stifle development as you will find that us developers won’t want to develop any more if we are losing money on the add-ons we have spent time creating. In the end it just doesn’t make any sense for us to create add-ons if they are going to be shared freely and we don’t get any money back for the time we spent on creating them.

You wouldn’t go into a store and take a newspaper saying that you’ll pay for it later would you?

Best wishes,

Mark

Well, piracy tolerance was one of Microsoft strategies to dominate the OS world and worked a lot.
Is sad, but what Graham said is correct.

We all know it is wrong - but the message is loud.

People are finding this all a bit too expensive. The increase in the amount of download sites “sharing” EE and how public is has become is really people stating a message.

That aside though, EE i am sure is pretty safe. Lets be honest if i an EE user wanted to, i could buy one license, and then build 1000’s of sites as i have the files. But i don;t i license each one, same applies to addons. So, people almost have as much access to free EE as they did before, and they will not worry about the above site that has been pulled down.

IMHO the message is “some” people are finding this all too expensive.  But those people aren’t the long-term (or potential long-term) professional clients that EE is targeting.

EE sold for $249 in 2004.  Using the inflation calculator at http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm that works out to $296.00 in 2011 dollars, so the license cost of EE has just kept up with inflation.

I’ll agree with you, if I was living in the US!!
EE could be TOO expensive if you’re living and working in places like Italy (were I come from) where clients think that 300$ it’s the price for the entire site!

I love EE and I’ve always wanted to give my clients the best solution possible, but the price of the solution (plus the addons…) could be overwelming for some of them.
I truly regret the lack of a “Core” version, which was very usefull to instruct my client and make them switch to the commercial one after they’ve seen the benefits of a solution like EE.

Neither I feel that Mojo Motor could be the right choice…

I think it’s more the cost of add-ons in question, which can easily add $500+ to a project. I’m working on one big site right now that will likely total over $1,000 by the time we go live. That’s a pretty big barrier for many small-time developers, especially the first time, to get the add-ons “in hand” to develop with. For this reason, I could see it being sometimes difficult to recommend EE to “budget” clients, or quick & dirty projects…

However, I agree with you—EE is well-positioned for a professional market. For the most part, this is reflected in add-ons that are professional (and priced professionally) as well.

Agreed - ‘some’. I understand where you are coming from…
But my opinion is also related to market expectations - in my market, that i am selling to. Whether the expectations has been increased by higher quality opensource products, or whether businesses are deciding they require X feature and expect that as standard, i do not know. But when i first started EE the price was lower, and there was less requirements by my clients for specific features/addons (even though these would cost more to custom programme, or so i explain to them). But the initial setup cost has risen, against opensource products growing stronger in the market, in a large economic recession.

In my opinion this has been a case of circumstance in my market not suiting the best product for the job.
Now realistically - it has not been a problem for me, i have enough work - i am not cherry picking the very best projects, but i can certainly choose to not take on projects at a loss or minimal profit, the recession luckily has not severely impacted me.

But other people have not been so lucky, EE has been priced out of their market, hence what i was stating above the influx in knockoffs. People want the Rolex watch, for knock off rates. (or by theft as it effectively was here.)

Personally, i begrudged the price change when EE2 was first released, and i was unhappy with many quality and use aspects of it - i like many were vocal about this. But i have seen improvements, support is improving and changing, new features are creeping in, bugs are getting squashed, and the product is justifying its worth - to me at least. Add-ons are heading this way too, with support improving, competition in the market is kicking in and prices begin to reduce slowly, but the influx of $5 addons is frustrating - just paying for them and adding them to the accounts wastes more time than it was worth!

Anyway, massively straying off topic.
The point i was making is that yes EE is in the professional project range (which have the budgets), but because it is so good, the low-end want to use it too, have different expectations and needs. I would probably even suggest it is a nice share of the EE market now. I would love to see a survey on this i must admit.

So, long story short, “some” in my mind is larger than many people would estimate.
Hence my point about these people becoming more vocal, and some extreme actions being taken - which please understand i do not agree with.

At the risk of going down the rabbit hole on this discussion again..😉

Coming from an Enterprise background where we paid 6 figures for a CMS that did less than EE and we had to build our own control panel, I’ve just never understood the pricing issue.

Seems to me that if a project uses $500 in addons that means its a more complex site that you should be charging more for, right?  And is it a site you might not be able to do at all without EE plus those addons? And those costs are getting passed on to the client?

Certainly there are projects where even a few hundred dollars is too much, but even at $1K for the software in an EE-Based solution that’s still at the cheap end of a CMS-based site, especially when you look at what you’re accomplishing in the end.

@WTA

Ya, exactly… The cost can be a big barrier upfront. It’s hard to make the case for EE when WP & Drupal offer what I’m sure seems like “the same thing” to clients for “free”. I’ve definitely had offers where the entire proposed project wouldn’t even cover EE+add-on licensing costs.

But, it’s also a matter of market… There’s plenty of skilled WP developers out there who offer a “custom” WP theme for $500 that many clients are perfectly content with. I’m sure one could do quite well hammering out cloned sites with minor cosmetic changes, and no real functional innovation. The downside is a homogeneous web where everything looks and works like the derivative of WP it is.

I think the only place this really bites me personally is when I see a $45+ fieldtype add-on that is essentially a clone of a free WP plugin, or $100+ add-ons that don’t work with MSM (Solspace Friends & Calendar, I have to call you out on this—*nudge, nudge*).

MSM support is actually the biggest issue with add-ons, I find… If you develop MSM sites, you will be shocked at how many very expensive add-ons just plain don’t support it. I think if a dev is going to charge over $20 for an add-on, they have a serious responsibility to commit to the product with full support for EE, including MSM.

Coming from an Enterprise background where we paid 6 figures for a CMS that did less than EE and we had to build our own control panel, I’ve just never understood the pricing issue.

Agreed. EE is a *steal* and it rocks.

But as nevsie points out, the raising expectations/quality of open source projects represent a legitimate counterpoint, however reasonable/unreasonable compared to Enterprise rates…  What it comes down to is having to pitch a client on spending a $500-$1000+ on CMS costs that could, theoretically, be avoided with the free open-source solution… regardless of implications for development.

The reality is, designers and developers are the ones who love EE, NOT clients—until they get to use the end product, maybe. We see the value in that $500-$1000+, but clients may not, especially if you’re unlucky enough to have one that’s heard about WordPress.

Seems to me that if a project uses $500 in addons that means its a more complex site that you should be charging more for, right?  And is it a site you might not be able to do at all without EE plus those addons? And those costs are getting passed on to the client?

Yes, this is a complex site and the budget is several tens of thousands. So $500-$1,000 is fairly minor to the total project budget. And yes, the cost is passed onto the client. IMO, it is a perfect example of the complex, professional build that EE is best suited for. Doing it without EE would easily quadruple development, if not more… Not to mention being impossible for one guy to pull off (one guy doing it all is still pretty crazy even with EE, but hey).

Not debating at all that EE has saved the day on this project by making it possible in the first place.

Certainly there are projects where even a few hundred dollars is too much, but even at $1K for the software in an EE-Based solution that’s still at the cheap end of a CMS-based site, especially when you look at what you’re accomplishing in the end

*I* understand that, as do other EE devs… But do clients?

I find where I see the cost as an obstacle is on smaller projects. I’d love to use EE for my buddy’s cottage blog or part-time photographer friend’s business site—because it’s what I know and love—but these are not clients that can afford the cost. For those kind of sites, I’m almost forced to recommend WP, simply based on cost.

But… I guess you get what you pay for in this life, right?