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.
Should Obsidian raise there prices and giving this money to people how producing good plugins, for each active user of the plugIn?
The PlugIn could automatically deactivated if not used for a month or longer.
After that the active users could be measured. And people could get a monthly revenue, so that they keep a plugIn alive.
How much is a free developer is really getting from there users?
Probably not enough, so that they not keeping there PlugIn alive.
I now that that is maybe not the way of obsidian. Maybe I should think about to just paying Obsidian, so that the can by more good plugIns. If they do this stuff.
Or should I think about to paying my mostly used PlugIns ?
Ok, if Obsidian is noticing that the free dev getting not enough they maybe would consider to this step by themselves. But for example there is the PlugIn “persistent graph view”, which seams not being supported anymore, but is a cool PlugIn. Ontop it is difficult to get obsidian integrate a new function. Maybe the dev is lost, then a other dev can’t take the git (I think so), and obsidian probably also can’t take it by itself. All people just have rewrite, because a dev didn’t would like to continue. That is meaning: wasted potential/energy.
A solution could be that every dev is giving the rights to obsidian and getting a monthly revenue. If they don’t support there PlugIn anymore, Obsidian can binding it into Obsidian or letting it lying around, or giving it to a new dev, if someone is asking. So obsidian is the person to speak with and the content is getting a bit more centralized.
The prices the people pay for obsidian itself are already voluntary so they can stay, obsidian just would raise the voluntary prices a little bit. To buy the dev for there supporting time or after for getting the license.
A thought wich I currently have is, that they on this way maybe would get a lot useless licenses. But because they don’t pay for every license, and just doing it for those which getting actively used, it maybe would ok.
And also obsidian just could use the extra money, to directly increase there team and buying useful often used plugIns. So it is not really clear for me which is the better way. But finding it interesting to think about it.
I also wanna add a command to thinks I had read here. Yes fundraising like wikipedia, would be really great and would fit to the project, I think so.
I think maybe it is just to much work to pay every Plugin dev by myself. I also can’t pay 1.45ct per used day. But obsidian could maybe set up this kind of revenue program. So smaller dev, also would get compensated.
I think Obsidian has a lot of potential. But is at the same time a total mass in the points of how splintered the world of obsidian is. I think on the obsidian specs page, which also could directly be integrated. Or in total the plugIn world. I think that just really new features should be community plugIns, every rest should be integrated. But there the world of pricing is starting.
Is there even a option to donate the rights for your plugIn? Probably you can make the git puplic so that just everyone can take the code. But maybe people just wanna allow obsidian to take over or people who wanna use it for the world of obsidian. Not that other companys taking over the code.
The big benefit of Obsidian is the plugins are open source. This means anybody can fix things that break.
What we need is a bounty board for plugins that allows people to put up money for bug fixing and feature improvements. Original authors should get the first chance to “win” the bounty but there are a lot of plugins with inactive developers these days and we need a system that incentivizes continue development.