hcgtv wrote:PunBB will remain free but Extensions will cost money down the line.
No plans. And all extensions MUST be under GPL while the core is GPL.
hcgtv wrote:It's the only viable way I see to keep PunBB going, since the staff of PunBB are paid employees, not volunteers.
Not all the staff is paid already. We welcome volunteers, so that they have other benefits from their work and have no any enforcement from PunBB owners. Paid work means deadlines and obligations. Free work means you may do just what you are interested in as long as you like it. (Though I really like my paid PunBB work very much ) We may give our experience and infrastructure to volunteers so that they can learn and become world-famous web-developers
hcgtv wrote:They can charge for access to a well done repository. A repository you can access from your admin screens, that checks for updates, let's you peruse what's out there and installs it for you. If an extension that's made by a member happens to be on the list of available, installable extensions, does that hurt or help said member?
Now if we want to compensate members for their work via some mechanism to track installed extensions, well that would be a win-win for everybody.
Are you ready to pay for this? We'll do this for you
Seriously, we have no plans of any kind of direct charging the users. This may be done just to support the extension developers. I personally was thinking of some non-commercial fund accepting donations: all it's money would directly go to extension developers only.
Informer's interest are end-users themselves. Our aim is to offer them other Company's services and to get money from advertising/charging there. We really would like to make all our services better (best with time) and to integrate them into forum extensions (as soon as it is requested by end-users).
Carpe diem