One of my plugins is used in a test or production Moodle Workplace environment. They complain that my plugin is not 100% compatible with Workplace.
Moodle Workplace is propriety software, so I cannot see nor test my plugin in this environment. Therefore, my contributions cannot be used in closed source environments.
What happens if I change the software license of my plugin(s) and add a sentence like: "Can only be used in 100% Open Source environments."?
Hi Renaat, plugins listed in the moodle.org plugins db must be GPL licensed - excluding the ability for organisations to use it in distributions like workplace (but there are several other forks/distributions of Moodle that could be considered "closed source") would likely mean your plugin would not comply with GPL and therefore not be able to be listed within the plugins db.
You could potentially break your plugin into components - with a free version providing some limited set of functionality and sell/or give away access to a "premium" plugin that adds further features into your plugin - there are a few examples of this within the existing plugins db.
I can definitely see being annoyed that people install plugins into workplace and then they break and not being able to resolve it yourself as a plugin developer because workplace costs money to acquire for testing.
At very least moodle hq should have a toggle on the plugindb entry that indicates if a plugin has actually been tested against workplace and require a waiver accept popup when installing plugins not tested on workplace with instructions to contact moodle workplace instead of the plugin author.
Hi Renaat,
I don't know the nature of the incompatibility that you are talking about, actually, I would really like to talk to you about the problem itself.
Going back to the question that you have originally asked, I think there may be some misunderstanding of what Moodle Workplace product is. It is not a fork or something completely different from Moodle LMS. It just adds functionality ON TOP OF moodle.
In the majority of cases, Moodle LMS plugins do not need to have any modifications to be compatible with Workplace. They may not FULLY work with multi-tenancy, but it's not a bug, it can be considered a feature request and we definitely would encourage premium partners who are interested in such feature to fund developer's work.
Here is an article in our documentation about plugins compatibility with Moodle Workplace https://docs.moodle.org/en/Workplace_plugins
In my opinion, there should not be any need for plugins to specifically claim that they can not work with Workplace because in the majority of cases it would mean that they can not fully work with the granular permission system in Moodle (i.e. they use course-level capability to access users or other system-level entities, or do not respect course listing visibility).
Again, if you want to talk to me about the problem that was reported to you, I'm here.
Regards
Marina Glancy
@marina - i am sorry but I disagree with you on your statement :
In my opinion, there should not be any need for plugins to specifically claim that they can not work with Workplace because in the majority of cases it would mean that they can not fully work with the granular permission system in Moodle (i.e. they use course-level capability to access users or other system-level entities, or do not respect course listing visibility).
The reasons is that is always good to inform users that plugins are not tested, maintained or developed for specific (Moodle) software products. Because as you mentioned there can be used, and they are not 'bugs' but feature request. But terms as bugs and feature requests, are terms we use in developing things, but most end users don't see or even (want) to know the difference. When you give clear information on the plugin database that your plugin is NOT tested on Moodle Workplace , then you give them clear information at the exact moment they need to know this. And they know that there might be issues.
Yes, it did not take off because people don't report to us when something works, only when there are issues
You will be surprised, how many of open-source plugins are actually used with Moodle Workplace around the world and the creators do not even know about it because everything works fine.
I think the best solution will be to advise the users when something has known problems. For example, a statement on the plugin page saying "This plugin should be used with caution on Moodle Workplace" and a link to the reported issue.
I like your idea that a statement could be added, though I believe this should not be some extra text line, but a checkbox that can be marked by the developer.
The reason is that some of us have long text, warning , information on that page and we see on a daily base that people are in general 'bad' readers.
As well - if it's text we have to think about it. If it's a check box then it's easily to do.
