Hi all,

I haven't been using October for a while and was therefore surprised about the licensing changes when I wanted to update one of my old projects.

Do I sum things up correctly:

• you have to pay to get access to the forums, which used to be free and open to everyone
• you have to pay to be allowed to contribute to the core code
• besides paying for a marketplace plugin, I also have to pay for a license, or I won't even be able to install that plugin. So I am actually charged twice to use a marketplace plugin. And this double charging strategy also applies to old projects which are still running October v1 and which were working fine before the licensing changes.

Is that about right? Having to pay for a plugin itself and another fee to be able to use that plugin seems like an odd strategy which I can't remember to have seen before. If I understood the notes about contributing correctly, paying to contribute to a project seems very unusual too

Hey there, thanks for your questions.

you have to pay to get access to the forums, which used to be free and open to everyone

This is correct, this helps to focus the community and to reduce the number of support requests so we can build a better platform.

you have to pay to be allowed to contribute to the core code

The code source is open to all license holders, so technically anyone can contribute code by making a suggestion to us via email and discussing it with us first. This is preferred over investing time in a contribution without any indication that it will be accepted.

The code repository, however, is currently private and partners can request access to this so we can collaborate with them directly as stakeholders. Again, this helps reduce the support burden and allows us to focus on improving the platform. This decision may be reviewed in the future depending on several factors.

In either option, all code is carefully reviewed by us to ensure the platform is kept at a high standard from a code quality and continuity perspective.

besides paying for a marketplace plugin, I also have to pay for a license, or I won't even be able to install that plugin

The license fee is not applied retroactively for existing sites, they can continue to be updated without paying for a license.

The license does apply to sites that are currently in development, for which there is still a residual support component. Installing a new plugin suggests the site is being actively developed and therefore a license is required and support for the platform is offered.

The announcement blog post covers the strategy in detail: https://octobercms.com/blog/post/october-cms-moves-become-paid-platform

Our goal is to focus on professional users -- those that are paid for what they do, and therefore have no issue forwarding on a modest fee of $9. In saying that, we understand that there are circumstances where this doesn't make sense for some people, such as plugin authors who are not actively developing with October CMS but still need to maintain their products. We ask that you contact us via email (hello@octobercms.com) so we can organise something for you.

I hope this helps

daftspunk said:

besides paying for a marketplace plugin, I also have to pay for a license, or I won't even be able to install that plugin

The license fee is not applied retroactively for existing sites, they can continue to be updated without paying for a license.

If that is true, the project management area is not very clear about this, because it warned me about a missing license for one of my "legacy" projects that also uses a bought plugin from the marketplace. Besides that, I had to pay the fee anyway to post in this forum to clear up my confusion.

Our goal is to focus on professional users -- those that are paid for what they do, and therefore have no issue forwarding on a modest fee of $9.

After posting our question, we have read a lot of articles about the future of OctoberCMS. Although we are professional users, the new mindset behind OctoberCMS will unfortunately mark our departure from the system. Using open source software is not just a monetary decision, but also a decision based on principles.

@login15776 I've sent you an email to clarify our reasoning behind the decision to change the business model. Unfortunately, there is a lot of negative publicity being intentionally spread about the project.