OpenRealty Paid Support
Posted on January 25, 2010
Filed Under General, Real Estate Scripts | 12 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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Great post Jared. I was a commercial real estate broker in Dallas for 18 years, have an MBA in marketing and finance from Emory University in Atlanta, and have been doing websites for several years.
I use O-R for several clients and I agree with you completely. Their support sucks. They basically know zip zero nada about marketing or support. Their main support guy is some jackass that goes by the name of SandKing, sandbag or, as I like to call him, douche bag. He is an A Hole of the first degree.
Ryan, the lead programmer of the project, seems to be a good guy. But I am not sure he has the marketing skills to make it work.
Enough of my rant. I agree with your article. It’s too bad O-R or T-T won’t take your advice.
Joe, open realty would benefit from paid support but not by the existing support persons. I can’t call it open realty that often since there has been a complaint pursued by none other than the chief dude himself. Guy thinks that by using his trademarked name in writing about his product as a bad thing.
FYI: I have come to learn that Sandking is in fact Ryan Bonham himself. After learning this, it came together and made sense. Its no longer a mystery.
Jared are you saying that they should follow the support model your people are doing at WPRealty?
No offense intended Jared but there are complaints about WPRealty everywhere that support sucks there too.
I do agree with you however that paid support makes better sense for many products, I think OR would benefit from it.
Mark I had to edit your comment to remove their trademark name. Even though its perfectly legit to use it in writing, we prefer to use open realty lower case letters.
As for the support model, yes, like WPRealty. Support at WPRealty bends over backwards to help people and its taken major public hits because of its lack of documentation. I defend the efforts put forth and If I were in a better position I’d spend way more time helping out in that area. WPRealty suffers from lack of documentation.
I’m thinking you would be correct Jared that they should offer paid support. Who would do it though? pbflash and sandking are more than rude. I think alsmith and casaraisa are friendly enough what are your thoughts. I’m actually thinking of hiring Al Smith for a project of mine.
I’m not sure Randi, I’m no longer in this business and following their forum hasn’t been important to me so its hard for me to say. I don’t know who casaraisa is. As for alsmith, lol, good luck. I think Paul (pbflash) can be very helpful because he is smart and knowledgeable but my guess he is also very very busy.
OR 3.0 Released!
Jared I guess you are quite the little genius. I just came from Open Realty and they announced that they are going with commercial support just as you suggested. I almost bet you are happy as pie to say I told you so.
Well here is one you didn’t predict. They are encrypting the code. Charging for annual licenses and they have new features.
Damn I see someone beat me to the punch. You were the very first person I thought of when I read about this in the OR forums this morning.
Dude what kind of effort is this? They just killed their third party developers and contributors didn’t they? It seems like it anyway.
LOL well this is the last thing I need right now. People coming here as a result of more OR drama. Well to let everyone know before you go any further. I’m NOT in the business right now. I have changed my focus to social media and managing an open source project I’d rather not mention here in my blog at this time. Good luck to the people at OR. Ohhhh and SkyBoss, yes, “I told you so”.
J
I’m not sure what encrypted does for them. I guess they claim they are having their license taken out by end users. Its an unusual way to try and enforce a license.
hi jarrid i was wondering if you have open realty as a fork still since they now chager for open realty and spit in all the member faces for developing code. i like open realty but now its not possible to have it like we want as a code project we can edit.
There are two forks available. One is Revenge Ware and the other is a legitimate fork. I’d stick with OSRealty if you do wish to follow a fork.