OpenRealty Paid Support

Posted on January 25, 2010
Filed Under General, Real Estate Scripts | 13 Comments

What if OpenRealty Offered Paid Support Services?

What if OpenRealty were to follow a paid support model like we opted for with WPRealty? Would it help or hurt OpenRealty in terms of the product overall? I was in this discussion recently with a friend of mine as we discussed a post made by pbFlash some time ago about the lack of financial support for OpenRealty over the years.  I had mentioned that if it were my decision, I would offer standard community support for OpenRealty in the forums as they now do but would also extend a type of preferred support license in order to finance the development of the application.  Having built WPRealty with a forked variant of OpenRealty, had it not been for support licenses, many bugs and features may not have been fixed so promptly. Here is my logic behind this notion regarding OpenRealty;

I know from experience that when I publish a free GNU/GPL plugin that the support is the one thing that kills us in terms of time and energy.  Although the financial investment in doing so is not without motive the cost to benefit ratio isn’t easily or accurately identified.  Since most the time we are seeking link bait when we publish any our OpenRealty or WordPress extensions we usually try to include basic documentation in hopes that little actual end user support would actually be needed or better expressed as “not required”.  Minimal support requirements do not apply when it comes to products that are more complex and feature rich such as OpenRealty.  The time and energy it takes to deliver support for such products can often tank the development as most energy is spent dealing with the day to day support.  But why pursue a paid support model?

Although a relatively new trend with the GNU/GPL applications, the support model isn’t at all unique.  Having been applied by many WordPress theme developers the idea has begun to catch on with greater frequency among those that develop GNU/GPL products.  Many of the finest GNU/GPL WordPress themes in use today were developed as a result of the financial support that funded the effort.  I’ve been noticing that many products once freely available for download are starting to restrict access in some respects to those who pay a donation or purchase an annual support licenses for preferred service. Following the same recipe that worked so well for theme development would lead someone to logically conclude that applications would experience similar success.

If OpenRealty were to follow this model I would speculate that the following things might take place.

  • The reduction in relying on commercial addons to fund the applications development.
  • More active involvement by those I would deem professional end users.
  • Updates to core code with greater frequency.
  • I would also expect to see more professional end user results with their projects.
  • I think OpenRealty support would improve based on a simple idea that those that pay for support are often (not always) more capable end users.
  • Lastly, I think it would be taken more seriously by real estate professionals.

Anyway these were just ideas and far apart from insinuating that they would follow this model it would none the less be interesting if in fact they did. Facts are facts and OpenRealty is the only stand alone application for listings management of its caliber anywhere on the web.  I’m interested in feedback so don’t be shy.

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