GPL which stands for General Public Licence is a licence that developers release software under that allows users to run, share and modify it as they please. WordPress is released under GPL and in fact wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for GPL as it was based on another piece of software released under GPL.
It’s a great thing that allows the community to grow and improve software without any commercial motives (or at least reduces them).
The major of premium plugins that you can buy are actually GPL, but you pay for the ‘associated services’ the developer provides such as support and updates. This little known fact has given birth to many websites that offer a huge database of premium GPL plugins for free or for a membership fee. It’s obviously frustrating for the commercial providers of these premium plugins, but also a product of the very ecosystem WordPress is built on.
So whilst it’s a touchy subject and perhaps frowned upon, there are some serious dollars to be saved on being a member of one of these ‘GPL clubs’. But one of the main problems was the ability to update plugins on your WordPress sites, especially if you have a few. You would typically have to monitor these websites for updates and then manually upload the new plugin versions to each site. Painful, but still probably worth the saving in cost.
A new player to the game is GPL Kit who offers the same array of GPL plugins that the other clubs offer but have come up with their own plugin manager that you can install on your WordPress sites to gain access to not only the plugins but seamless updates as well. It seems strange but no other GPL club seems to have achieved such easy access to their plugins.
We just received notice that they have just added beta theme support to their plugin, and whilst the database is small right now they plan to expand the offering.
The downside to these types of clubs is that there is no support or help with the individual plugins. If that’s something you need it’s definitely worth supporting the original developers of the plugins and purchasing a licence. After all these guys put in the hard work to develop them in the first place. But if you don’t need that level of support, I hate to say it, but GPL clubs are a great option.
