http://www.flickr.com/photos/by-jack/

Takayuki MiyoshiThe creator of

Contact Form 7 plugin

Why We Should Choose

Free Plugins

There are two types of WordPress plugins: • Free plugins, and • Paid (so-called "premium") plugins

We should choose free plugins for two reasons:

1. Free plugins are of higher quality, and

2. Good for our community.

Why free plugins are of higher quality?

Paid plugins have paywalls. Only paying customers can access the source code.

=> Paid plugin authors can't get enough feedback.

Paywalls block important feedback including: • Bug reports, • Security incident reports, and

• Comments from other developers.

Free plugin developers can learn from feedback. Paid plugin developers can't.

=> Free plugins are of higher quality than paid plugins.

Why free plugins are good for our community?

Developers learn from other developers' code. The more good code is available, the more good developers there are.

Again, paid plugins have paywalls. => Can't access their code.

Free plugins help good developers grow. Paid plugins don't.

=> Free plugins are good for our community.

If good plugin developers don't grow, The WordPress community will be weakened over time.

To support free plugins, you can: • Use them, • Donate to their creators, or

• Develop free plugins yourself!

Let's keep our community open, and growing.