Noticed fewer plugin developers and new plugins lately. Also some plugins not being updated or having issues tackled on github. Possibly because it’s not lucrative to spend free time developing plugins and not receiving monetary compensation for it. I feel like this has to change a little. There’s fair support for major plugins like Excalidraw or Kanban but I think the smaller plugins also need some love, otherwise it’ll be hard for new developers to enter the plugin marketplace.
What do you guys think of an Obsidian marketplace for plugins? Like a subscription fee or one-time payment of sorts if you want to use a plugin in a new vault?
If everything keeps becoming paid, it may be difficult for users to justify the cost. Already, sync and publish cost a bunch. You want people to start paying for plugins also?
How about a yearly/bi-yearly fundraiser within the community? Wikipedia funds itself partially this way and they are not the only ones. I personally feel more compelled to contribute to developers this way, I might even give more than I would give compared with a subscription fee. You can distribute this pool of money over developers who were active in that period of time. This will incentivize developers and users to financially contribute.
Plugins are optional. The core obsidian product is core and that is free. Sync is optional and there are other ways to do sync. The issue I’m seeing is lack of financial support for developers and hence lesser incentive to create more plugins, and maintain them.
You do realise plugin developers have absolutely no reason to develop plugins for obsidian, don’t you? They just do it out of goodwill and have absolutely no obligation to create a plugin from scratch out of their free time, fix numerous bugs reported on github + reproduce issues, and then maintain them for breaking changes?
Rather than a subscription fee, maybe a onetime payment for uses on one account (on multiple devices). I would certainly buy a coffee for a person who has made my life so much easier on obsidian. The pool sounds interesting, but I’m not too sure how the logistics would work in that way.
This is also a good option. I just worry that the financial incentive would not be enough for plugin developers. Fundraisers allow renewed engagement with the community and also open the door for larger contributions than a flat fee. I am also not sure about the mechanics, but the community already has a yearly event for theme/plugin developers. I bet it could be an addition to that.
Being a developer myself I am thinking to develop a plugin to solve a problem I have, if I do so, it would really be to fix my own problem. If that happens to also solve someone else’s problem then that is great but I honestly would not have any expectation to be compensated financially for it.