Captain Woo and the Island of Misfit Extensions

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August 8, 2013

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Last week WooThemes made a pretty big, and controversial, announcement regarding policy changes to their WooCommerce extension platform. The changes include increased prices, a consolidated licensing system, dropping their unlimited pricing tiers in favor of a 25-site license tier, and capping support and updates at one year. They also grandfathered any purchase made before their announcement to receive support and updates for 2 years. The lifetime purchase that many people had made was now good for 2 years. This was a big change for a lot of people, as you can see from the roughly 500 comments on the original post.

A few days later the WP Avengers entered the scene. As a premium WooCommerce extension developer the site immediately caught my attention. The site’s owner, the self-dubbed Captain Woo (seriously), plans to make a membership based site in which the subscribers will have access to 36 WooCommerce Extensions. There are a lot of problems with this plan, so let’s look at a few of those issues.

Selling WooCommerce Extensions They Didn’t Create

One of the biggest problems is that Captain Woo is actually selling WooCommerce Extensions that he didn’t create. Not only is he selling these extensions in his membership bundle, but he doesn’t actually tell the potential customers this fact. Yes, all of the extensions are released under the GPL, so technically there are probably no laws being broken, but shouldn’t the customer know what’s going on? If you were purchasing a premium software product from a website, wouldn’t you want to know if the website owners didn’t actually create that product? Of course you would!

Supporting WooCommerce Extensions

Now that we know Captain Woo is taking other devs’ extensions and reselling them, he also boasts that he will fully support these extensions going forward. This includes not only bug fixes, but also new features and premium support. I’ve been developing WordPress plugins for a long time. I’ve even written the highest rated book on WordPress Plugin development. I can promise you that maintaining 36 extensions, regardless of how basic they may be, is a monumental task. What if WooCommerce makes a change that affects every single extension available? What if WordPress makes a similar change? Are you trusting that a guy named Captain Woo is going to have the time and resources to update every single extension, thoroughly test those updates, maintain some form of backwards compatibility, and deploy in a timely manner?

Getting Back at WooCommerce

It’s obvious with the WP Avengers smear campaign website that Captain Woo wants to hurt WooThemes directly. The problem is, that’s not what they are doing. They are hurting the extension developers, who are not WooThemes employees, by stealing the products they’ve spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours developing and supporting. The good majority of extensions listed are developed by third-party developers, not WooThemes. If you really wanted to get back at WooThemes, why not fork WooCommerce directly? Better yet, why not create your own E-Commerce platform for WordPress? CaptainCommerce, that’ll show ’em!

Good People Don’t Hide

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about online business: NEVER buy from a source who stays anonymous. A real business is not anonymous. A real person is not anonymous. Hiding behind a name like Captain Woo (I shake my head every time I write that name) proves that whoever is behind this idea knows what they are doing is wrong. They knew there would be a huge backlash so they decided to hide behind their mask and cape.

Run Away as Fast as You Can

Just reading some of the comments on the original Torque article, Postat.us, and Twitter, it’s obvious that anyone associated with the WP Avengers is going to have a bad time. Developers should stay clear of getting involved with Captain Woo and his team of misfits (assuming there is a team). Customers should absolutely stay clear of ever joining a site like this. This is a lose-lose situation for all involved and I really hope it dies quickly.

In the words of The Dude, “You’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole.”

Brad Williams is the co-founder of WebDevStudios.com, a co-host on the DradCast podcast, and the co-author of Professional WordPress (1E & 2E) and Professional WordPress Plugin Development. Brad is also one of the organizers of the Philadelphia WordPress Meetup Group andWordCamp Philly. Brad blogs at http://strangework.com and tweets at @williamsba.

There are 20 comments

August 8, 2013 #

George Stephanis

“Captain Woo” did unveil himself as Nathan Walker in the FAQ at the footer of the site — so not exactly anonymous, just not really advertising the identity terribly hard.
- August 8, 2013 #
  
  Brad Williams
  
  Nathan Walker is not a real person as far as I can tell. They aren’t listed as a Woo Extension developer, so all signs point to that being a fake name.
  - August 8, 2013 #
    
    George Stephanis
    
    Searching for “Nathan Walker WooCommerce” Google turns up this Google+ profile:
    
    https://plus.google.com/100230589936263690465/photos
    
    With this being the results entry:
    
    http://cloud.stephanis.info/image/1e2y1W093h13
    
    Which makes me think Google knows something that was cached but now taken down. Then the trail goes cold.
    
    Anyway, a name is at least provided, even if its veracity is in question.
    - August 8, 2013 #
      
      BobWP
      
      I agree with Brad, it probably is fake. And even if its real, the site and his google+ profile tells nothing. In my eyes that’s as bad as a fake name 🙂
    - August 8, 2013 #
      
      Brad Williams
      
      Also this tweet by WP Avengers sounds like he hasn’t truly shown his identity: https://twitter.com/wpavengers/status/364911563167109121
  - August 8, 2013 #
    
    Björn Sennbrink
    
    What about the time of postings on Twitter? There must be a pattern than can pinpoint the time-zone he/she is in.
August 8, 2013 #

George Stephanis

Perhaps most telling is the fact that this was not a response to the price or policy change on the part of WooThemes. Archive.org seems to show that they were trying to resell the premium plugins sold for WooCommerce as far back as April of this year?

http://web.archive.org/web/20130424135332/http://wpavengers.com/
August 8, 2013 #

Ben Lobaugh

Excellent article Brad. I agree with you the the extension developers are being hurt here. What I would have liked to have seen is this “Captain Woo” reach out to the existing extension developers about porting over to the excellent new system he developed for eCommerce on WordPress. I would be 100% behind that.
August 8, 2013 #

hookedonweb_usa

Software is forked all the time. A developer who says the Avengers are reselling 6 of his extensions and is pissed off but also says that his extension have been forked by others and is selling on codecanyon and says he does not mind that competition.

If someone just takes a 100% copy of your work and sells it under GPL as their work then they are bit bucket bottom scum but if they improve it, make it better is that still a problem?

It’s no secret that WordPress is a fork of B2 Cafelog and look how those improvement have changed the website world (18% of all sites are running a CMS that started as a fork.) In fact that very fork has lead to creating the very marketplace here others can sell their own code. Is that hypocritical? It’s ok for WordPress to be a fork but it’s not ok if someone forks my code and perhaps do a better job.

Name one industry or marketplace where clones and forks do not happen, Its just the nature of business. Sure, as a developer if someone is to clone your work do it as a ground up build not on the back of your hours but that is not world we work in or the license we have to work within.

Has anyone actually bought the Avengers membership and can say for a fact that they are bit bucket bottom scum for not improving the forked extensions or paying proper attribution in the code to the OEM?

I disagree with the author in that I don’t think the majority customers will care it they bought a forked work or not. They only care if it does the job and at their budget. Heck unless your knee deep in the business will the average customer know what a fork is?

I would buy a fork (and I write code) without concern as long as the fork is well supported, has improved features I need, and I would even pay more the the OEM version.

Having you work copied is just another day at work.

I am not negative or affirmative towards the Avengers. But if they are to pull this off they have to improve the extensions, give good support, offer frequent upgrades and provide proper attribution where called for.

What I do like about what they and Woo are doing is causing lots of good banter, banter that is much needed.

If your work is forked then respond by improving you work, do a better job then you have in the past and stay a few steps ahead of the forker. Bottom line make it so that people have no choice in who’s work is better. In other words don’t be optimizepress and sit for two years without any improvements other then a few bugs and security holes.
August 8, 2013 #

wpavengers

Let’s review Brad’s arguments one at a time.

> One of the biggest problems is that Captain Woo is actually selling WooCommerce Extensions that he didn’t create.

First, we are not selling anything yet. If you read the site, it clearly states that we don’t have this ready yet. It’s that we will include those 36 plugins in a club membership style offering.

We do clearly mention that most of the extension names are picked up from Woo’s directory.

Having same names does not mean we are “stealing” / “forking” / “selling something we did not create”.

Even if we forked some of the existing work, we will certainly have improvements and value additions. Plus we will comply with GPL.

> maintaining 36 extensions, regardless of how basic they may be, is a monumental task

And you assume we don’t understand how much work that would be. And that we’d have no capacity to maintain them going forward. And that third party extension developers that made these plugins are the best developers in WordPress world…

I don’t deny that maintaining 36 extensions is lot of work. But it’s possible. Also we don’t plan to have 250 extensions.

> Captain Woo wants to hurt WooThemes directly

WooThemes pricing changes were the tipping point. Like George Stephanis mentioned here, and I’ve mentioned in my comments over at wpavengers.com, building an alternative source of “affordable WooCommerce extension club membership” is something we’ve been working on for nearly 8 months. We planed to launch in Feb 2013. Then kept it on hold. Thought about it again. Still kept it on hold. Mainly because we thought things would improve. But it only kept getting worse.

Any competitor can hurt the market leader. Be it Code Canyon, WordPress plugins repo, WP Avengers or indie developers..

> They are hurting the extension developers

Classic emotional argument which is not actually true.

First, extension developers get 50% of the price of single site license – irrespective of the license customer purchased. Developers are also the people who do enhancements and bug fixes. Sometimes even customer support on behalf of Woo. Basically, majority of the work is done by developers. Yet, they don’t really get a larger share of the sale.

If Woo increased commissions to 75%, that could cover fall in revenue for extension developers that WP Avengers (or other competitors) may cause.

Second, the number of indie developers selling extensions on their own is rising – many third party extension developers on Woo sell additional stuff on their own. Why would they do that? Because they think it would be more profitable to sell on their own then on WooCommerce.

A great alternative – that may save us from taking the trouble to build WP Avengers – would be if all extension developers sold entirely from their own site – at affordable prices. In such a case, we could happily serve as a “directory”.

Third, it is the greed, desire to dominate and fear that’s making everyone nervous when they think about WP Avengers.. “What if these guys cracked it out?” “Why should the inevitable happen so soon??” “Oh.. I will make less money…”

Get real guys! Competition heats up in all markets as they “cross the chasm”. And frankly, nothing bad will happen if you are good.

> CaptainCommerce

Nice name Brad! Thank you!

> Good People Don’t Hide

Anonymity seems to be the biggest put off for the “elite” crowd around the bubble! A lot of super heroes stay anonymous. Their focus is on doing the right thing, rather than flaunt around. We too want to focus on creating a solution for WooCommerce users.

> anyone associated with the WP Avengers is going to have a bad time

That’s your personal opinion. And it’s premature. Let people decide what they want to do!

Acting as if you are sitting on a high throne and passing judgements seems to a popular activity!

Makes me chuckle…
- August 8, 2013 #
  
  Ben Lobaugh
  
  Have you thought about reaching out and working with the extension developers instead of taking on the task yourself? As someone who has built many plugins both public and private I agree it is a big task to maintain them all, especially if you did not write the existing code yourself. Perhaps you can review the plugins and provide suggested updates to them for inclusion in your product. And as added incentive you could provide the developers a percent of the sales.
  
  I see both sides of the argument here, but I know you will have a much easier time getting your project off the ground and working in the most awesome way possible if you embrace the community rather than simply taking things internally like big corporations tend to do.
- August 13, 2013 #
  
  ChrisChristoff
  
  > First, extension developers get 50% of the price of single site license
  
  Inaccurate at best
August 13, 2013 #

Rebecca Gill

Just plain funny. The whole entire thing. Nice reading an article that articulates many of the points we were all thinking. This whole thing just needs to go away so we can all go back to doing what we love in the community we love.