free vs paid

[nemchik]

Chrome web store has this extension listed as paid. Granted anyone who would bother with git can have it for free (and will hopefully contribute), but I've got a lot of friends who would love to just have the media keys.

Maybe you could consider having a free and paid version. Things like the button with the player controls and album art would be paid features, notifications (once that's ready) could be paid, scrobbling could be paid, etc.

[msfeldstein]

Hey so i've gone back and forth on this. It used to be free, it got many more users, and many more support emails, complaints, and abuse (people who write mean emails about free things are the worst kind of people). I was considering shutting it down, but decided to turn it to paid instead. I'm certainly not making any real money off of it, but I don't really want to run a free extension again, especially one with this many moving parts.

I'd be open to suggestions about how to move it into more of an open-source project with real supporters and a real support avenue that isn't my email address.

[nemchik]

I can agree that people who complain about free stuff are horrible.

Maybe it would be a good idea to try directing more people here to github, especially for issue reports.
If you are forced to provide a contact email address, set up a separate account with a vacation responder that just replies with a kind message that links people to git for issues and tells them that the email account isn't monitored.

Also I think documentation will help with getting and keeping active contributors.

As far as controller support goes, make it widely known in your readme that support for controllers depends entirely on someone having access to the site and time to maintain it through change the site might make. If you get multiple reports of a controller not working maybe pull it from the project until someone can update it.

Of course these are all just ideas, if there's a better way or different things you prefer that's cool.

Thank you for your work, I got the extension when it was free, and I only started contributing because I was able to find your git project.

[fregante]

It's just $2… and the motivation for it is very valid.

I myself was building a very similar extension and I'd totally pay $2 to save me from working on that further.

[mbirth]

Funny thing is: I installed the extension when it was still free. And Chrome continued to update it. So I have it in the latest version without paying anything for it. But should it vanish from my Chrome profile, I'd buy it in an instant.