This absolutely KILLS Bubble's real potential

[vini_brito]

Hi @radarcg thank you for making my sunday internet feed a bit funnier! At first I was like “oh no yet another pointless thread about X thing in Bubble” but then I decided to make something useful out of this thread.

I’d like to leave some links for useful reads so one can improve his/her own thoughts on this.
There they are:

• About surviving on open source

• On entering the open source contributor realm:

• To make one think about what open source is and is not…

• A bit more food for thought, on an individual level.

• How Open Source Contribution Can Help You Make More Money

• And… who really contributes to open source in the world… angel-like selfless individual developers or just plain corporations that profits from using those softwares?

As a complement to this last link, think of Linux on desktop, oh super free open source Ubuntu… maintained by Canonical. Also, Linux on mobile, super duper free software on our pockets called Android… taken over maintained by Google.

So, if you want an open source plugin to truly blossom, get a tech company or tech-oriented company to need it. Get someone to make a lot of money with it, and the money will flow back into the software itself.

About the plugin marketplace system we currently have, there are several ideas tossed around in forum threads, but we all know it isn’t a top priority even for us, Bubble users. Almost everyone in here is much more interested in performance, reliability and scalability than refining even more the plugin system.

And to add my voice to the choir: unhappy about some plugin that is expensive without an alternative or just doesn’t exists? Please do it!

Also, do not worry, nothing in the plugin store is killing Bubble

[andrewgassen]

Lot of chatter in this thread, but the reality is, nobody here is wrong. Bubble is not as attractive to many folks as it could be. There are some ideas presented here to address that.

The flip side…none of those suggestions are preventing me from using the platform today. I don’t use paid plugins, and I don’t use any free plugins that aren’t built by Bubble themselves. This has not limited my ability to do what I came here to do, which is to build a business.

I’d like to see things stay a bit more civil, but the convo is a healthy one that we should be having. I interact with developers every single day as part of my day job, and none of them will touch bubble with a ten foot pole. It’d be great for that to change. I don’t know what the path is, but many of the concerns brought up by the OP are things I’ve heard when trying to get folks to hop on board.

[tom1]

I think I’ll use this as a good opportunity to put in my two cents about the plugins…

Most of them don’t work. It’s a real shame. They are developed/tested in an environment that has no other capability, i.e. if it works on a blank page they start selling it. I have spent hundreds and hundreds on plugins for bubble and it only takes moments to find the reason you can’t use it long term, or you end up changing your app to meet the specific (unspoken) demands of said plugin. For example, of all the plugins for tooltips (something you would think is super simple) there are none that are 100% consistent. I feel ya about the price, but that’s hardly my concern. I care about them actually working as advertised which they so often don’t. New bubblers should - and I say this to help bubble grow - stay away from plugins not built by bubble. The majority are a half-assed money grab. That being said I rely heavily on some excellent third party plugins that make my app a million times better.

[gnelson]

Personally, I think several of the plugins I use could have been priced higher, and still would have been worth the cost.

Bubbie itself is very inexpensive. Spending a couple hundred bucks for several plugins that make your app work the way you need it to shouldn’t be a problem. You’re still way ahead of where you’d be using another platform.

If you think Salesforce is a better deal because it has free plugins, then go for it. IMO too many people expect way too much for free. I’m grateful to those who’ve created the plugins I use and I’m happy to pay for those that aren’t free.

[keith]

No, plugins need to be AWESOME and priced to match. Open source = fool’s bargain.

But agree with you on the value of certain dev’s plugs.

[keith]

@seanhoots

Almost all bubble element plugins are created from existing javascript libraries including those that bubble uses in the editor themselves.

Yeah, and that’s the problem with them. There are near-ZERO plugs designed for actual Bubble devs.

[gaurav]

Few plugins in BDK e.g. Utilities, Repeatinggroup tools, Env variables are 100% library free

[seanhoots]

@keith

Yeah, and that’s the problem with them.

I don’t think its really bad to use existing opensource libraries for plugins.
In fact I will argue that the positives far outweigh the negatives.

The advantage of going library-free, bubble-first, is that the code will be leaner, more suited to bubble so likely going to be efficient.

But then you loose all the advantages of opensource development.
Some of these libraries have been developed over the years by several very experienced and good programmers, have been peer-reviewed by thousands of other programmers for bugs, performance and security vulnerabilities.

Are you going to trust a one-man effort, probably not peer-reviewed over codes that programmers all over the world have looked into and some used by some of the top companies in the world?

If the plugin is a to be a few lines of code, i will choose a well-written, library-free, bubble-first code. But if it requires several hundred lines of code I will chose a library-based one.
I’ve seen some of @gaurav and @mishav’s library free code. They’re short, very well written quality code and perform very well. I have one library-free plugin myself.

Its not that you can’t write a very bad one line of code. But the of risk of creating a buggy code which is several hundreds line of code is high especially if it’s not going to be peer-reviewed.

[keith]

@gaurav, your BDK plugins are uniformly awesome — regardless. (And I use your international phone input, which is the best implementation of int’l tel input.)

[vladlarin]

Hey, we’re late to the party though we were the first invited!

It does not look like there’s much left to be said here, and as @andrewgassen has pointed out - everyone here is right in their own way.

But we probably cannot say this better than @seanhoots did.

@seanhoots

So you’re saying i should go a pay $500 to use a library to create a plugin. Then put it out there for free for people to use in their commercial applications that they make money from.
Then provide daily support for bug fixes and feature updates.
I might as well be a father christmas.

Making (and maintaining) plugins, though seems simple - is super hard work, that currently does not yet pay off, neither in financial regard, nor in any other.
Especially if you have a few, like we do.

Most of the feedback we’re getting is people complaining about the pricing one way or another, so we’re getting used to it and we’re always happy to have this conversation and revise where we accidentally have an extra zero to the price

But the way this particular discussion started is straight out rude.

@radarcg

My criticism is not specifically of plugin developers, but the business model that exists with the plugin ecosystem.

It’s both that and the criticism of a particular plugin developer, let’s be honest

We understand that we just happened to be the scapegoats here, but you did specifically criticize us (simply to strengthen your point of course), but still (and we’re cool with that )

And by the way, we do agree that that was an overkill for that plugin you mentioned, so point taken - prices are already adjusted to what seems to be a bargain for the amount of work this requires to be maintained properly. 🎁 Massive Price Drop on Zeroqode Plugins

So to summarize, here’s our standpoint:

1. Should the plugins be free?
   Some - sure. All - probably not.

2. Will people all of a sudden start to contribute to open-source plugins if all of them will become OS?
   I don’t think so, but let’s see where this initiative (A call to all (free)plugin developers. Open Source Community) goes - we’ll watch and contribute with what we can

3. Does the developer currently have enough incentive to keep doing the plugins for the community?
   Nope, you will need to depend on other source of income and really love Bubble to keep going.

4. Will it always be like that?
   Of course not - Bubble is going to start explosively growing at some point, and that’s where everyone’s bet is, besides the willing to give back to community and being able to keep the lights on until then of course. This is probably the point when free plugins, OS community and many other things like low prices will kick in.

5. So should everyone be ok with expensive plugins and not enough support?
   Definitely not, and that’s another amazing use of the Bubble community.
   I say - keep patting the makers on the back to deliver their best, definitely pinpoint our shortcomings (wrong pricing, bugs, poor docs, you name it), for us all to understand where do we go next.

Bubble is (relatively) new and absolutely revolutionary, and the Marketplace for both Plugins and Templates is just starting to scratch the surface of what it can really become one day.

There’s no way plugins kill Bubble’s potential, but yes - we should all work harder to make it better, and we can only do that by experimenting, succeeding and failing (sometimes) on the way.

I say we do that together, and not by challenging if any of us produces anything of value I bet that did not feel too good to get a taste of your own medicine right there.

P.S. Although we got some of the “heat” here, we highly support @radarcg and any like minded individuals challenging some of the things that just are the way they are.

While sometimes there’s a very good reason for it - in a lot of cases this can and will give us all a right perspective, and we may all win

Kudos for that!

Vlad@Zeroqode

[codkod]

why don’t you make the same application and it’s free. Everyone must like you.