Thanks for this input. Given the plugins are useless without a subscription, or without contacting the vendor for a trial, I have changed DeepL so it is also "Paid".  I think that reflects the true nature of the plugins.  If they operated immediately with a certain amount of characters for free for example then I think we can call them free, and specifiy the parameters under which they are free.  But they don't.

My 2 cents: That contradicts with the meaning of "paid" and "free" for other plugins, where it denotes whether user has to pay to get the plugin itself or not.

So from my perspective, the only correct and transparent way is to mark the plugin itself as Free AND add a clear note that it needs a paid 3rd party service for its functionality.

Evzen Polenka said:

My 2 cents: That contradicts with the meaning of "paid" and "free" for other plugins, where it denotes whether user has to pay to get the plugin itself or not.

It is an interesting discussion point Evzen. On one hand I think we need to go through all the plugins and follow this rule:

1. If it offers any free functionality as it is then it's free

2. If it offers no functionality without having to pay then it's paid

That provides a simple two rule consistent approach. I know there are slight adaptations to these principles but that doesn't change the two points above from being correct.  I think being able to get a "free" plugin that serves no useful purpose whatsoever without paying for an additional software can be seen as more of a falsehood.

I used to be of the same opinion as you, but the more I think about it the more I think it's disingenuous to do anything else. The "free" QA plugins such as Verifika and Antodote for example... certainly the plugins are free but they serve no purpose unless you have a paid licence for the Verifika and Antidote applications.

I do see your point, and probably the best solution would be to have an additional field rather than just mark them all as free and add a comment.  Users filter on free and whilst you would not know this, I can tell you I often receive complaints from users who didn't realise they also had to pay for the other software... sometimes saying they only purchased Studio to be able to use this "free" plugin.

So I do think we need more definite clarity over this and adding notes into the description alone isn't enough.  We really need an additional filtering field so it carries more weight when users look at it.

Well, but then you are not marking the plugin as free or paid, but are marking as free or paid the 3rd party functionality or service mediated by that plugin.
And that's completely different thing than what the free/paid attribute has been telling so far.

Moreover, what if the 3rd party changes its conditions one day? A free one can start monetizing, and vice versa.
Are you going to check the conditions of all the mediated services every single day in order to provide the correct information? I don't think so.

And what if the mediated service is BOTH free and paid (freemium model)? How are you going to solve this?

I really don't see any reason why on earth would you have to (or want to) replace a users' common sense... it's their responsibility to use their brains and it's their responsibility to understand how things work.
Are you really willing to take the risk that some brainless user will sue you because "your website claimed XYZ and it's not true"?

It's absolutely NOT about any disingenuousity... it's about keeping the responsibility for making decisions on users themselves, so that they are not degenerating more and more every day just because companies for some weird reasons frantically clean every possible piece of decision-making from their way, contributing massively to the degeneration of (western) human race :( :( :(

Paul said:

Users filter on free and whilst you would not know this, I can tell you I often receive complaints from users who didn't realise they also had to pay for the other software... sometimes saying they only purchased Studio to be able to use this "free" plugin.

Then it's your role to politely explain them that they are just dumb and simply did not get how the things work... and that next time they should READ and UNDERSTAND the available information FIRST.

I'm sorry, but just rushing to a shop and blindly paying a couple hundreds of Euros for something what they don't even know how it works, is simply dumb. And only confirms that humans are alarmingly degenerating!

Paul said:

certainly the plugins are free but they serve no purpose unless you have a paid licence for the Verifika and Antidote applications

So you will get complaints from users saying "what?! I paid for Verifika and now I have to pay for the plugin as well?!" just because they CAN'T THINK and won't understand what the "paid" attribute means...

Evzen Polenka said:

Moreover, what if the 3rd party changes its conditions one day? A free one can start monetizing, and vice versa.

That's actually the most compelling thing you've said. Although the providers would tell us if they changed their conditions.

Evzen Polenka said:

Are you going to check the conditions of all the mediated services every single day in order to provide the correct information? I don't think so.

No, why should I. It's the providers of the plugins who provide the text, not me.  If the conditions change for the plugins we have developed then we'll change the text, but otherwise it's up to the developer.

Evzen Polenka said:

It's absolutely NOT about any disingenuousity... it's about keeping the responsibility for making decisions on users themselves, so that they are not degenerating more and more every day just because companies for some weird reasons frantically clean every possible piece of decision-making from their way, contributing massively to the degeneration of (western) human race :( :( :(

I hardly agree here at all. It's about clarity and providing the best approach to ensure everyone understands clearly what's on offer.  If we took your view there's a lot of things we would not have to do at all... even things you often complain about.  Our more senior developers for example often wonder what your problem is but they don't visit the forum and tell you how stupid you are because you are unable to find out things for yourself that they would do as a matter of course.

But as I already said before you turned this into a rather distasteful discussion it is an interesting discussion point and we won't make any more changes until we've talked this through internally.  It was useful to read your very strong feelings on this and I do think we need to address this with changes to the website as well as the text, whichever way we decide to go.

Hi Paul and Evzen Polenka

I did not know what avalanche I would trigger with my little post... I share Evzen's understanding of "free" though - the plugin is free. When I looked at the costs I thought, well I pay for ModernMT and I will have to pay for this plugin too! (Which is not the case as I found out after installing it.)

Some Apps are what I would call "Trial", they offer reduced functionality unless the user pays (e.g. Excelling Studio), some are genuinely free like CADF or TermInjector, some are paid, you have to pay to get the plugin or to get it to work.

Then there is that connector type like DeepL etc. which are free, but useless without a subscription.

Can't you define more than "free" and "paid" as field values?

Free - CADF, TermInjector ...

Freemium - Excelling Studio

Paid (and I would include "Trial"-Software here) - RyS Termbase & Translation Assembler

Free Connector to Paid Service (you'd have to find a suitable name here) - DeepL... all MT providers, Rigi ...

Just a thought. 

Daniel

BTW your "Pricing information" field does not seem to accept HTML:

Paul said:

It's the providers of the plugins who provide the text, not me.  If the conditions change for the plugins we have developed then we'll change the text, but otherwise it's up to the developer.

So there will be chaos over the time. No one is going to do that... either because they won't care, or they will simply forget.

Paul said:

It's about clarity and providing the best approach to ensure everyone understands clearly what's on offer. 

Sure, that's what I said - one or two simple and clearly worded sentences is what it takes.
Just like one can see e.g. in descriptions for mobile apps which require data plan - these usually say something like that using them "may incur additional fees"... so such simple notice that "using the 3rd party service mediated by this plugin may require separate paid subscription with the service 3rd party service provider" and that users should "check the service conditions" should be perfectly enough. That's all.

Paul said:

senior developers for example often wonder what your problem is but they don't visit the forum and tell you how stupid you are because you are unable to find out things for yourself

I would be perfectly fine with that, if it's accompanied by a pointer to where I can find the information by myself.
That's the point - I end up asking here only after spending hours and days by my own research (and often after being basically sure that there is a problem somewhere else than on my side - let's admit that I do have quite some experience). Still, it can be that I'm totally off and wrong, no problem...
If someone says "hey stoopid, it took me 2 clicks in Google to find it at http://blablabla", I'm perfectly fine with admitting that I'm indeed stupid that I didn't find it myself...

Paul said:

before you turned this into a rather distasteful discussion

I don't understand what you're talking about...
There is nothing "distasteful", there just a naked truth... It's not my fault that the truth is so hard that it can be difficult for some to face it.

Unknown said:

Can't you define more than "free" and "paid" as field values?

Free - CADF, TermInjector ...

Freemium - Excelling Studio

Paid (and I would include "Trial"-Software here) - RyS Termbase & Translation Assembler

Free Connector to Paid Service (you'd have to find a suitable name here) - DeepL... all MT providers, Rigi ...

I'm afraid not... trivial though it may sound.

This of course is a good solution and we did make a request to have a change similar to this introduced last year. But internally there is rather a large backlog and this change has not made it anywhere near to the top of the list yet.  I imagine if anyone read this thread it might help our cause!

I'm going to reverse the change I made to the DeepL plugin on the basis I'm now outnumbered 2:1 and will instead make the correction to the ModernMT plugin and mark it as free with an appropriate change to the text.  Hopefully we'll get to a better solution sooner rather than much later.