Hey I’m back with some bits from around the Woo ecosystem. Plus I have a little bit of BobWP rebranding going on.
More on contributor support
Last Thursday on the podcast you may have caught the conversation on supporting contributors to WordPress. Carl, Zach and myself had Alaine and Carole on the show and it was a conversation you should listen to if you have an interest in how contributors are supported in this WordPress ecosystem. It’s a long one, about an hour and twenty minutes. If you can’t take the time to listen, do peruse the transcript.
The reason I bring this up on WooBits is two-fold.
First we need to keep on having this conversation. I am looking at ways to keep it alive here, but it needs to be beyond Do the Woo. And more importantly, these conversations need to be constructive and beneficial. We need to optimistically look at some solid options.
Which leads me into the second reason I brought this up. Alaine did a quick follow-up on the podcast in a conversation on Slack. If you listened to the podcast, or are planning on it, this is an excellent follow-up. Or as a standalone comment, it says it all.
While it is awesome to help sponsor individuals and support the volunteer work, we really need a systemic change in the long run. So please consider this whenever you hear people talk about the “M” word, adapting their pricing strategy, trying to monetize a free product, etc… No, they are NOT greedy! They are trying to make their work and the value it creates sustainable. In its finality, this will – as overly dramatic as that may sound – literally save lives down the road!
And he ended that with a nice plugin for my favorite WordPress nonprofit.
And while I’m at it, please head to Big Orange Heart. If you’re not yet familiar with what that non-profit is about, as it helps alleviate some of the problems we have been creating due to our systemic disbalance.
Those ugly GPL nulled sites
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this, but I’m hoping most of you know what I’m talking about. Those sites that resell the use of plugins and themes by simply getting their own licenses and offering clubs to people giving them access to hundreds of products for next to nothing. Although it is a constant struggle for product builders, and they do get away with this because of the GPL license, well it’s ongoing. Personally and professionally I think these people suck.
But as I follow Woo conversations on Twitter, I say some post this tweet (I am not including the WooCommerce plugin company they named, but trust me, they are reputable and one of my favorites.) The tweet went like this.
“What happened to the xx Plugins for WooCommerce? I noted that they did not get updated for a long time…”
Now they were tweeting to the site that was one of these GPL club sites. And their response was:
“license expired, renewal price has shot up, demand for them is actually low, they’re less popular than you might think, so going to wait and see what Black Friday has to offer”
Okay, without going on and on, all I can say it there is so much wrong in that single tweet. Ponder on that.
The BobWP brand
Just a little teaser here. If you follow me on Twitter at BobWP, likely you have seen me shift my twitter account to be more focused on our move to Portugal. At the same time I have been forwarding the domain bobwp.com to this site here. Well, on both Twitter and on bobwp.com I will be building a refresh on the brand. And what I mean by that is I have some ideas in the pipeline for other projects outside of Do the Woo but at the same time aligns with what we do here. Which means I am working on getting my new site up on BobWP.com. So there really is no more details to share on that, but as always, keep your eyes and ears open in that front.
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