A Plea for Independent MojoMotor Addon Developers

As one of the developers of MojoAddons, along with Zack Kitzmiller, Phil Sturgeon, Dan Horrigan and Tom Myer, we’ve banded together to provide much-needed functionality to extend the MojoMotor platform.

I’ve noticed two threads of discussion happening surrounding the addons we’re creating, selling and supporting, and I’m finding both of these discussions to be a bit discouraging. So I write this post- a rationale of why and how we do what we as well as a plea for your support.

The first discussion revolves around the question, “Why do you charge for all of your addons?”

From my perspective, commercial addons are the ideal solution for a commercial product such as MojoMotor. While it may come across that we just want to cash in on a new market, for me  at least the rationale is deeper than that.

As a web developer using ExpressionEngine for my clients, I often need the functionality provided by addons. I am given a choice when I start the project, either I can build all of the functionality myself, or I can purchase someone else’s addon and use it. There is also the third option of finding a free alternative.

I normally choose to purchase a commercial addon. Why?

In either the case of building my own or using someone’s free alternative, I lose support for the addon. If I build it myself, I have to support it. A free addon may have support, but there’s no guarantee of how long it will be available, how attentive the developer will be, etc.

When I’m charging customers thousands of dollars for a website, I don’t want to be taking that kind of risk to my credibility. If something isn’t working, I need to be able to get in contact with someone who knows what they’re doing. Sure I could dig through the code and figure it out myself, but that’s a waste of both my time and the customer’s money. That’s why I use a commercial CMS like ExpressionEngine, and stick with commercial addons to add functionality.

In the same vein, the addons I and other MojoAddons developers are selling come with support. That’s where the price comes into play. Most of us wouldn’t mind contributing a small piece of code to the community to help people out, and both Dan and Phil have done this, but the influx of support requests makes it unreasonable to do this for our larger and more complicated products. It just comes down to a matter of time—donating maybe two or three hours to the cause is one thing, but the unending hours of e-mail support add up and take us away from our other priorities.

Support is the main reason why we charge for our addons.

Along this same line of thinking, I just want to remind our customers that you shouldn’t hesitate to contact us for support. In the MojoAddons download center, and e-mail is provided for support of each of the products you’ve purchased. You’ve paid for our support, so please don’t hesitate to use it.

We’ve had a lot of great reactions to our addons, and we’re excited about that. But a few bugs have cropped up here and there, and I’d encourage you to contact us for help when you do find a problem, rather than trying to fix it yourself. In the end it’ll help make our products better, and it’ll help us help other users of our addons.

The second discussion I’ve become aware of surrounds the development of free alternatives to the addons we’re selling.

Firstly, I’m all about supporting the community. EllisLab is known for fostering active, friendly and helpful communities of users surrounding its products. It’s one of the reasons it’s so great to work with CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine and now MojoMotor. I just want to get that out of the way to begin with. In no way do I condemn the creation of community code and addons for the good of everyone.

What I do condemn is blatant imitation of commercial addons. I’m certainly no intellectual property expert, and I don’t really want to dive into legal battles. But the reality is, there have been several free addons released that clearly have a basis in the functionality my colleagues and I have envisioned and built.

It’s discouraging to see this, tearing down the hard work we’ve done and the support which we’ve committed to offer.

A lot of thinking, preparation, development time and testing has gone into creating the products we sell. And we’re proud of what we’ve done, creating, hopefully, easy-to-use tools for MojoMotor users.

I totally support the creation of free alternatives, as long as they don’t duplicate the functionality of our addons with nearly-identical syntax, etc.

While I don’t have any recourse for this situation, I want to try and turn this around to have a positive outcome. There are GREAT developers out there now, working hard and fast to create everything the MojoMotor users wish and hope for in addon software.  So, instead of condemning these actions I’m going to call them to a greater cause:

As software developers in a great community with a brand new product, I encourage every developer to INNOVATE. Sure the other MojoAddons developers and I have had some pretty awesome ideas thus far, but the community can no move forward if we simply continue to rebuild the same addons in small iterations. The MojoMotor users are calling out for the features they want to see.

Regardless of whether you choose to release your addons for free or commercially, we developers are problem solvers. And trust me, there are plenty of problems out there to solve. So get out there, do it. Don’t let the ideas I or my colleagues have created hold you back to an idea of how your addons should work.

We are a community, and I am glad that EllisLab is committed to organizing its users in this way. I encourage everyone here to respect the creations others have come up with, continue to build up the products we love with equally awesome addons and lastly to work together, not against each other, to bring MojoMotor to new levels of functionality that will benefit everyone.