@Jennifer, if you want a suggestion though, I would suggest a Parse plugin. The current one is kind of left alone due to the Chronium project and a fully supported/maintained one would be a big win.
As I said before, I am not against the plugins to be charged or that they all should be free, I just like to have options and not a monopoly.
You guys says that this is not monopoly, but let’s see the facts:
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Only 1 group is allowed to sell the plugins
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The group says that anyone can use their platform, so, let’s say I develop a Paypal plugin and want to sell it for $1, Will my plugin be accepted in this ‘market’? I doubt… So, we have 1 group that control who/what can be sold via their platform
So, this is not a market place, it is a monopoly.
And guys, what really makes me worry is the future on it. Corona has a lot of features not (fully) implemented. Imagine that based on this experience they now hires a 3rd party to fix them all and that 3rd party charges YOU.
With that said, I totally understand that everyone has bills to pay and need to gain some money. I didn’t like the way that it was being sold (with the 2-dimensions cap). The year cap was now removed and I think this is great move from Gremlin and congrats them for listening the feedback. When we have a open market place, where everyone can post their plugins and charge whatever they want, I will be happy.
Only 1 group is allowed to sell the plugins
The group says that anyone can use their platform, so, let’s say I develop a Paypal plugin and want to sell it for $1, Will my plugin be accepted in this ‘market’? I doubt… So, we have 1 group that control who/what can be sold via their platform
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Come up with a plugin or two that are ready to sell and approach CL about whether they can be sold. If they say no, then this point *may* be true.
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Come up with a PayPal plugin for $1 and approach Gremlin about selling it. If they say no, then this point *may* be true.
But until those things happen, you’re whining about an imagined slight.
Imagine that based on this experience they now… (insert doom and gloom here)
Or, imagine that things will continue to get better and better and better. Based on the 2010 version of Corona SDK – or heck, even the 2013 version of Corona SDK – I’ll take what we have right now, any day.
So odds are things will get better, not worse.
Jay
I did not say that things are going to get worse. In fact, it is the opposite, I agree with you that things are getting better and better and will continue to improve. The question is at what cost…
@Renato, I don’t think there is a monopoly here. Its just that we are seeing the first effort of this kind. Hopefully other entreprenurs will come forward with similar offerings in due course and prove my point. In the meanwhile, why should this make the most eager competitor who happened to reach the market ahead of others the bad guy?
Corona Labs is operating in California. If we assume they are incorporated in California (which might be a wrong assumption but other states have similar laws) then we can assume that they will abide by the law in California which expressly forbids forming and operating monopolies.
I can assure you that if a worthy competitor comes along and asks Corona Labs for similar priviledges to host plugins on the build servers Corona Labs would have no choice but comply or face being sued. They have no reason to grant a monopolistic right to any one party. No benefit in it for them beside the fact that they would be breaking the law and risk getting sued for it which I doubt they would want.
Hope this helps. Repeat after me… It is not a monopoly… It is not a monopoly… It is not a monopoly… It is not a monopoly…
Reference :
Quoting California Business & Professions Code, Sec. 17040.
It is unlawful for any person engaged in the production, manufacture, distribution or sale of any article or product of general use or consumption, with intent to destroy the competition of any regular established dealer in such article or product, or to prevent the competition of any person who in good faith, intends and attempts to become such dealer, to create locality discriminations.
Thanks for the feedback. The initial goal is to get a wide diversity of plugins into the marketplace. So initially we don’t want several of the same plugins. With that said, anyone who wishes to sell a plugin via our platform decide the price of their plugin themselves. We don’t decide the price for them, they do.
I understand your opinion and can tell you with certainty that we want to make this as accessible and open as possible. We haven’t said anything in terms of what we will and wont accept to date, so lets all keep an open mind 
+1 Tapjoy plugin.
Current prices/licenses for the plugins offered seem reasonable for the functionality provided, especially given the limited number of potential customers. I truly hope the folks putting their effort into this experimental marketplace can make a living at it, or at least pay off their Enterprise licenses. Good luck!
-Stephen
UE4 has many issues right now that´s correct. But since they have given every developer access to their github page and the source code there might be some big improvements in the near future. There are already new features being added in UE 4.1 that have been made by random guys over the internet). And if the price drop of UE4 and CE4 causes other SDKs/Engines to go the same way then that is really great. I did not want to say that Corona “owns” 2D - it is just a little bit faster (for me) when it comes to small games and prototyping stuff. But this might just be the case because I have more experience in Corona than in Unity. (More libraries I can re-use in new projects for example).
But as you can see at my license I am not needing Corona Pro at the moment. If Orange is the new Bla… uhm… if Pro is the new Starter then this is great 
Surely a thriving marketplace with the right monetization strategy is a win-win for all?
As others have said I’m sure some developers with the right knowledge would look at the Enterprise license as a commercial strategy - as there would be plenty of developers willing to buy these plug-ins.
If Corona Labs can develop a solid infrastructure they can benefit by taking a slice; plug-in developers win by selling their code - and Corona’s base developers will grow by being enticed by the extra functionality that is on offer. The more consumers (base developers buying plug-ins) the better the overall economy, which benefits all.
OK so that’s a simple observation based on GCSE Business Studies - but I’d be interested to hear why that type of setup wouldn’t work? I can’t believe that CL fears it will cannibalise Enterprise sales…
SegaBoy - We don’t fear cannibalization of Enterprise sales, or anything along those lines. As I said earlier in this thread (I think): we want to do this, and we agree with everyone here that a plugin marketplace is a good idea. It is just a matter of prioritization and resource constraints. Everything else being equal, I’d love to have it in place tomorrow - but that’s not always possible.
And this is where many of us, the current paying customers, would beg to differ. Where CL chooses to expend its resources often does not support the needs of its lifeline. In the past year that the plugin marketplace has been promised and discussed many new features and changes have been introduced. I can safely say that I have yet to use or need any of them. However, I could have used many plugins which are out there in their developers hands had the plugin market materialized. The question ultimately comes down to how CL makes prioritization decisions…
Ksan - yes, indeed. We’ve had this discussion before
Every developer has certain priorities, and they are often very different. We have to find a way to make it all work. In this case, there has been a vocal group (in this and a couple of other threads) that believe the plugin marketplace to be the most important thing. And there are other threads where others are demanding other features.
That is one of the key difficulties of being a developer platform. You can’t please everyone - but we try.
So, again, we agree this is important. And we want to get to it. Until now, other priorities have intervened.
As I said in other threads: Corona Enterprise is an option and many developers have used it. I understand it may not be right for everyone, nor am I saying that because of Corona Enterprise we won’t do a plugin marketplace. I’m just saying that there are options - which is usually a good thing.
Corona Enterprise is not an option to most of the Corona Community. It’s far too complex, poorly documented,very difficult to work with and beyond what 99.9% of the Corona users want to be doing. But that 0.1% can provide tremendous value for Corona’s biggest shortcoming; lack of third party integrations.
The marketplace was promised well over a year ago. I understand Corona doesn’t want to be responsible for third party services integration, but you need to provide a system that allows the larger of your user base access to this. Venders are not stepping up and creating plugins to their systems, so someone needs to. In fact if I remember correctly, when you gave away Corona for free and doubled the price to Pro users to finance it, this was one of the promises.
Its hard to get to the bottom of this without defining who it is that CL listens to in terms of feedback and feature demands.
It is a clear fact that the ratio of starter accounts vs basic + pro + enterprise put together is still heavily biased towards the starters. Therefore I can only speculate that you hear from starters more than you will ever hear from all of the other account types. The current feedback site does not recognize who it is that is providing the feedback.
I fail to see the reasoning behind treating the needs and wishes of many many non-paying customers the same (if not above) those of us who put bread and butter on your table on a regular basis. This just does not make sense.
cspence - I’m not going to get into a big discussion about this because I have already stated where we are on this. In an industry like ours and with what we do, it is inevitable that things change in priority or timing.
What I will say is the following: Corona Enterprise is not “too complex”, “poorly documented” or “very difficult to work with”. It is actually just native development. I guess one of the great things about Corona is that it has made things very easy - so when some Corona developers go to use it, many find the native stuff abnormally difficult. Developers that use Corona Enterprise and know native development have found it just fine.
Hey David - don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t knocking CL - absolutely as massive fan and not particularly fussed when the framework doesn’t necessarily move in the direction I personally prefer. I was just saying that a Plugin Marketplace seemed to be (from an outsiders perspective) a win-win for everybody…
I must admit Corona Cards came out of nowhere - be interested in the decision making behind that, not that a private company needs to divulge such information…
Let’s not get too heated here - I’m pretty sure the vast majority of people in this thread are only so vocal because they care a great deal about Corona.
I have spoken with users who purchased Corona Enterprise and they all say there is almost no documentation or samples. I’m pretty sure very few people using Corona would want to use native development, that’s why so many want the marketplace.
As an enterprise user, I can say with confidence that I believe there is enough documentation and sample code to go on. The only thing that differs from pure native development and corona enterprise is the Lua C api and using corona’s classes and view controllers. That is documented online in good measure and the other things I mentioned are documented enough (and have sufficient samples) to work off.
The problem is that when someone wants to implement “x” and there is no example of how one should integrate that with the Lua Api and working with Corona’s enterprise apis, it may seem a little confusing. The learning curve isn’t that high in my opinion and once you have cranked out your first plugin, you will never look back.
Just my 2¢ on the matter
I also believe that Enterprise is achievable to developers who have previously feared venturing down that path, and you can start with our two new quickstart tutorials:
iOS: http://coronalabs.com/blog/2014/03/18/tutorial-corona-enterprise-quickstart-ios/
Android: http://coronalabs.com/blog/2014/04/01/tutorial-corona-enterprise-quickstart-android/
While Rob is the listed author of both, I worked directly alongside him to fine-tune these tutorials, test the code, and get both projects fully working on my side (tested and running on my devices). Since I’m not a “native developer” with many years of native coding under my belt, I feel that this is a small feather in my cap, and in the end it wasn’t that difficult. Yes, there are some complicated aspects. Yes, there are some settings that don’t make much sense initially. But by the end, I was able to get working projects in place and see how the native side interacts with the Corona side.
Brent
Ok. I’ll bite… Here’s an idea David…
Grant free license upgrades to your Pro customers so that they can use Enterprise with the purpose of running other dev’s plugins. This could be a one time deal until you get the Plugins Market running. This would basically deliver the ability CL promised Pro license holders more than a year ago… How does it sound?