Feedback from all frontend developers

Hey fellow frontend devs,

Me and two of my friends had a discussion about frontend, and that discussion kind of escalated into an idea... So here I am, asking you, the frontend community what is your opinion about this?

You can find the questions below, let's share opinions! https://csssnippets.typeform.com/to/MNAaMp

Before you think about selling code online, here's a couple questions to see if you're ready:

How would you feel if you found people stealing/sharing/pirating your code for free?
How would you feel if you found 5 people reselling your code as their own code, maybe even making more money than you?

When was the last time you bought a font? When I was in college I interviewed a type designer and spoke to a few others and they were all the most bitter group of people you could imagine. They were sick and tired of people always stealing their stuff and felt entitled to money they never earned etc etc. I had been considering moving into that field but I didn't want to turn into a bitter old man.

Later I've seen websites like Envato network where you can post code and people can buy it, and I'm sure they try their best to stop people reselling works they don't have a right to, but I'm sure it still happens, and you may never be able to track down who it is and get them to stop.

If this would bother you, maybe selling such an easy-to-copy and hard-to-enforce thing isn't the right move.

For me, the right move was to release all my code for free, open-source, and have people hire me to either write new code that doesn't exist yet, or to write the code that they need specifically. That way it doesn't really matter who has the code after it exists, or how many times it's copied, I get paid 1x to write it 1x and then it's out there.

Hey Tommy,

Great question! Thank you for taking the time elaborating on it.

Yes, that is something that happens not just in the software industry, but with movies, books and all sorts of things that are sold online.

My thinking goes like this: if there are people out there that do appreciate the effort that you've put in and are gladly willing to pay if it helps them in their projects, then someone stealing code would not matter that much to the point where you give up on an idea. As long as you are profitable to the point where you can pay your bills and cover your lifestyle, I don't think you lose anything.

So how would I feel if these scenarios occur? I would definitely feel worse than them not occurring, but I still think it would be a great experience to dive into and try to build something of it.

I am curious, you said that you considered diving into something similar? What was your thought process like? Was it similar or did you see things that I might be missing?

Thanks a lot for stretching my mind.

My wife sells artworks she makes on Etsy. Just yesterday she found her artwork on 5 other stores that were selling it and making money off it. You can contact Etsy and they'll take it down, but they don't really punish the thief, both the thief and Etsy made their cut on the pirated content and they just agree to stop doing it in the future.

Does that make you happy, or angry?

Personally I wouldn't want to deal with that. I give my stuff away so I hope people take it for free and I really hope people can use it to make money. So when I see my code out there making money I'm happy. There's nothing you could do to the stuff I put out there that would make me bitter or angry (and I've seen people selling CDs of projects I've worked on on eBay when I haven't ever gotten a penny from it. Not mad about that at all - I could also sell a CD of the same thing, and you could too! Everybody could. Good for them for cashing in on it).

Yes, I see your way of going about it. Makes total sense, props for framing it like that.

Just in response to this so you know why in detail. I find that this is more to do with WordPress or another framework similar so when I was building my Application/platform on WordPress I didn't know php very well and it does save time doing this at least with WordPress. I also recall spending almost up to £100 on certain integrations and features.

But because I've gone to the back-end and being a full-stack no chance I do this anymore :)

Thanks again, for your detailed feedback. Initially we were kind of thinking of not covering WordPress as there are already lots of platforms that have a lot of plugins, themes and what not. Instead, we wanted to focus on creating components for the frameworks that developers use these days, like React, Angular, Vue etc.

We will see how other devs will respond to this idea. :)

Just an FYI - the code of all WordPress plugins, and all WordPress themes is open-source due to being derivative works of WordPress and the license WordPress is under. When you 'sell' a WordPress theme or plugin you are selling the CSS, the image assets, support, all kinds of peripheral things around the code, but you can't actually copyright or lock down the code. Look into WordPress vs Thesis for a historic case about this and to understand the lay of the land.

Link should work now. Thank you.

Think you might have to re-post that link as not working

Yeah, thank you for pointing that out. Will sort that out now.

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