OpenCart Community

Opencart is a great Open-Source project and, as with any OS project, I contribute what bit I can back either as free contributions or support since I benefitted from both when I joined. I love this sharing concept which has resulted in, for example, over 11,000 FREE add-ons/plugins/widgets within the Wordpress community.

Opencart receives bad press on two fronts. Firstly, it is often referred to as a 'one man band' project with no development team; secondly, it is beginning to get criticized for every minor extension being commercial which means you might as well use a commercial product. (Neither are my words or sentiments).

Since the commercial section was added to Extensions, there have been masses of often trivial extensions added for a few dollars and even I am beginning to think "Sod it, I'm not going to add any more free extensions when I have to pay for any I want to use".

Donations is something else entirely. I have frequently donated when something has been especially useful or saved me a few days work.

I think there ought to be a much stronger split between Opencart project (free) extensions and linked commercial ones.

I think the main difference between opencart and wordpress is that OC will make people money, where as WP is a blog. I'm not saying wordpress isn't great because it is, but it's main function isn't to generate revenue, therefore people are less inclined to pay for extensions (plugins). That said, there are definitely extensions out there for WP that are commercial, as well as themes and so on. I always find it quite funny how someone will pay $100 for a theme but won't pay $20 to get a feature they want as an addition. Also, with OC's complex method of modules, it means a lot of the time you've got to hack a finished module together, where as WP has an API defined, clear documentation and a huge following, therefore people will develop for it more often, and thus free extensions are more prevalent

My2c Worth with no malice aforethought:

It has become quite disappointing in some respects. There are module developers who have been developing modules for OC from very early days and provided many free modules or if not, reasonably priced modules ($10 - $25) - and there are still some of them about who believe in helping the community in between earning their living. Also OC and Daniel benefitted because a lot of the free modules were incorporated into the core that have made it what it is today.

Unfortunately OC seems to be attracting some Johnny-com-Lately's who are on a feeding frenzy. In good faith I believe that before anyone is allowed to contribute to the commercial section they have to contribute at least 2 free mods, hacks or other community contribution.

Some documentation may be the way to go - 2 topic/contributions toward user documentation or a step by step tute on, say, module building. OC is lacking in documentation and if they are developing then they must understand how it all works eh?

There is a lot more that could be said but that would take me down a rabbit hole.

Cheers

mystifier wrote:Firstly, it is often referred to as a 'one man band' project with no development team

Well, Noah's Arc was built by one man
The Titanic was built by a team of professionals

yeah, but one was real and one was imaginary...

JAY6390 wrote:yeah, but one was real and one was imaginary...

I'm pretty sure the Titanic was also real

This is a pretty common business model these days with MMO games.
Combat Arms, Drift City, Need for Speed World, etc

The game is free
10 guns are free
10 cars are free
And the system is usable out of the box.

But for the extra powerful bullets or the extra fast engine, you buy them to add them to the game.

This is a shopping cart system.. the idea is for you to sell your items online and become entrepreneurs. That's our idea too

I agree, tho it can be frustrating that you have to pay for additional functionality you need.

But see it the other way, you get a lot for free, you can find some additional functionality for free and get special functionality for a small amount + the support you need if problems occur.
All this so you can make money, and a lot if you are good at it.

Did I mention that OpenCart is free and that Daniel, Qphoria and other community members here support this product for free?

Needless to say that if you make money with this free product a donation towards this product or one of its supporting members is a small thing to do

jty wrote:

mystifier wrote:Firstly, it is often referred to as a 'one man band' project with no development team

Well, Noah's Arc was built by one man
The Titanic was built by a team of professionals

While the Titanic was built by a team of professionals, it was captained and sunk by one man who didn't read the operating instructions.

In my ideal world, uploaded contributions would attract credit points based on merit, downloaded contributions would cost credit points based on value. If I didn't have enough credit points, I could use cash payment. And all is fair.

I don't have a problem with commercial contributions. I have bought some because they are useful, I have paid for bespoke additions and payment module, I have even bought a couple just to see how they work.

My initial post was making the point that Opencart is beginning to attract comment that you have to pay for every nut and bolt so that, by the time you have a working system, you will have paid as much as you would for a commercial offering.

Again, this is not actually true; Opencart is perfectly functional 'out of the box' for most applications, and better than many standard commercial carts. And there are many very good free contributions - but that is not the impression some newcomers seem to be getting and they are reporting their findings elsewhere.

Qphoria wrote:This is a shopping cart system.. the idea is for you to sell your items online and become entrepreneurs. That's our idea too

I like that idea. Many people use Opencart to sell to customer, and the other sell some support to help people sell their goods.

Yopu have to have commercial addons. you can not expect people to keep updating their work for free and support it forever. if there is a bit of money in keeping extensions uptodate then ppeople will stick with the project.

Daniel is right, There are a lot of free abandoned modules out there.. granted some of that has to do with the lack of backward compatibility support by subsequent versions (like removing url classes!!!! >:( )

Hopefully starting with 1.5.0 we can all be on the same page that a module made for 1.5.0 should work all the way through 1.5.9 at least

But still, commercial modules are about supporting the module as well. Linux is free.. but if you want Red Hat Linux support, it actually costs more than Windows and Windows support. If you have a serious business you are going to want things to work.

so let's the commercials and free together with OC

This thread has gone a bit off the rails.

I wasn't suggesting for a minute that there should be no commercial add-ons, templates etc. I was suggesting that there should be a stronger separation; for example, Contributions, Commercial Add-ons. A cursory look at Extensions makes it seem to some potential users that they will need to spend lots of $20 to build a cart.

Free contributions are effectively (internal) donations to the project and may be absorbed into the core whenever desired. Commercial donations are (external) links to developers that want to retain ownership and sell them.

mystifier wrote:This thread has gone a bit off the rails.

I wasn't suggesting for a minute that there should be no commercial add-ons, templates etc. I was suggesting that there should be a stronger separation; for example, Contributions, Commercial Add-ons. A cursory look at Extensions makes it seem to some potential users that they will need to spend lots of $20 to build a cart.

Free contributions are effectively (internal) donations to the project and may be absorbed into the core whenever desired. Commercial donations are (external) links to developers that want to retain ownership and sell them.

don't kid yourself Daniel absorbs commercial functionality all the time.

Daniel wrote:Yopu have to have commercial addons. you can not expect people to keep updating their work for free and support it forever. if there is a bit of money in keeping extensions uptodate then ppeople will stick with the project.

Totally agree and added to this I don't see a problem with an extension that was initially provided as FREE ultimately being charged for as they are updated and/or expanded.

I have spent more $ on techie help and modules than I have done for a "commercial" product out of the box with everything I needed. Not complaining, my choice and all is good. The modules and support I have purchased have been great because the people who have developed them knew what they were doing and have proven themselves, not only with their "free" contributions and help throughout the community, but also with a background of thorough knowledge of OC and how it works - proof of the pudding is in the eating - so to speak.

Lately the commercial extensions area has been filling up fast (not a downside) however there are a few modules that don't appear, based on comments attached to the extension, to work very well for some of the community. Though it is ultmately a developer issue it does not reflect well, in some form, for OC.

My2c worth

Xsecrets wrote: don't kid yourself Daniel absorbs commercial functionality all the time.

lol there is absorption, and then there is separate code. I can assure daniel is way to picky to use anyone elses code. But he does take inspiration from all over, just like we all do.

Qphoria wrote:

Xsecrets wrote: don't kid yourself Daniel absorbs commercial functionality all the time.

lol there is absorption, and then there is separate code. I can assure daniel is way to picky to use anyone elses code. But he does take inspiration from all over, just like we all do.

yeah that's why I said functionality. I in did not want to imply in any way that he's grabbing the code.

I like your idea and it was a good way to provide people some free modules which will be helpful to them. Also people who update their work and update the module should be paid some amount. So that they are encouraged to do such kind of work. Also there are many modules on OpenCart which I finded free of cost with basic functionality. But if we want additional functionality then we should pay some money. I hope people like your idea and reply with their good suggestions.

I've merged the topics about the extension store into this thread:
http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php ... 53#p112653

as there was a progressive discussion on the same store enhancements ongoing as well