Template and Plugin Licensing Clarification

Perhaps this is a question for Bubble support, but it’s probably good for anyone who purchases or sells in the marketplace to know…

I just became aware that there are two types of free licenses for templates (and presumably plugins) in the marketplace - MIT open source license and commercial license priced at $0. That’s certainly not clear in the Bubble marketplace policies; nor does there appear to be any distinction made between different free items in the marketplace listings.

So my question is, how does one distinguish between the 2 free variants? And does it in fact apply to plugins as well as templates?

I’m not 100% sure but I think commercial plugins and templates have to be at least 3 dollars? Are there marketplace items that display as $0?

Not that I’ve seen, but I was told by a template developer that “free” can mean either MIT license or commercial license priced at $0. I was under the impression (based on the wording of the marketplace policies) that all free items were MIT license, but apparently that’s not the case.

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I wonder if it has something to do with being allowed to look at the code with the MIT license but not with just a free license.

Yeah I too was a bit confused about the differences and upon first assumption thought that ‘Open Source’ would simply be a free to use template ($0) that can be used in any form, multiple times and the commercial is for paid only templates, $1 and above and one time use per payment, similar to the paid plugins structure. But it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Just for some context I have a free template that is set to commercial @fayewatson @sudsy - whats odd though is that this template was originally set to ‘Open Source’ and was $10 - before I decided to then change to free, but in order to do so, I couldn’t change the type nor access to the price, so I have to remove it from the templates store and re-add as what is shown below:

To be honest, I can’t remember the process of setting a price on the template I submitted at first with the ‘Open Source’ type and I guess the price can only be set once during the submission process.

I also have another template that is free, but this is ‘Open Source’ - I also cannot change the license type for this either (or the price), but I guess it makes sense, as its initially added as free, so can’t be then paid right.

But yeah, it would be nice if Bubble could make things a bit clearer on the template page about what the licencing means, does ‘Open Source’ allow other users to add the template to their dashboard, make changes and then resell as a commercial template - I’m not sure? And why can you set the price of a template that is ‘Open Source’ when publishing and then not change the price there after (maybe a bug I experienced or it has since changed)?

@neerja please could you shed some light on the different publishing licenses for the templates, it would be helpful moving forward

Cheers

Since the open source license is MIT, it would indeed “permit” that, but how easy the marketplace UI makes it, I don’t know.

What is clear is that the marketplace listing does not seem to make a distinction between “free commercial” and “open source”. As @fayewatson hinted, perhaps the former should appear as $0 and the latter as “free”. Maybe it would also be a good idea to add a line beneath the thumbnail with the license type - either “MIT License” or “Commercial License”.