I'm wondering, how is plugin developer intellectual property protected on Marketplace. Does iClone have any authorization mechanism for plugins, similar to content?

Imagine the following typical scenario:
- a developer publishes a plugin that might not work for everyone because of some 3rd party dependencies (external device etc.), therefore a trial version is offered first
- a customer downloads the trial version
How would the trial period be controlled, so that a person cannot continue using the trial plugin forever, considering that the plugins are open Python code and everyone can just extract it and copy it around?

Another scenario:
- a customer buys a plugin but decides that it doesn't work for them and wants a refund.
Does Marketplace provide refund options? And again - how to ensure that the person doesn't continue using the plugin after it has been refunded?

BTW, in the plugin developer registration guide page https://developer.reallusion.com/plugin/manage.html  the last step (Cash out) link leads to a dead link https://developer.reallusion.com/plugin/cashout.html which shows "Sorry! The page you tried was not found. "

Thanks, so, I guess, the only option is to protect a plugin by compiling as pyd files and maybe putting some trial time checks inside.

Hi midix,

Exactly. RL does not provide anything to integrate a proper trial check. It's all up to you to do that as well as protecting your code so that it's not too easy to circumvent the protection - compiling it into a pyd file is a good idea.
It is sad that no framework is provided as it is a lot of work to do it on your own. I've asked RL a while ago and was told it's up to the developer. Anyhow, if you plan to do more plug-ins the effort is ok. You can check my latest plug-in "iText" - I've set up my own serial number and trial check for that one after I released my first plug-in for free.

I think the developer can do some work instead of relying on RL. It would be a lot of extra work for them, and it is not a large company.

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"RL is not a large company".
True. True. But it is in all of our interests to turn it into a large company.
Regards

SeanMac

The problem is not whether RL is big or small as this does not matter here. If there was a consistent approach in commercialising a plug-in it would benefit the developer and RL. Because you need to implement all on your own you'll also have to do the sales yourself to stay in control of the process of issuing trials and full versions and the associated checks. Because of this RL is excluded from the revenue generated and also for a developer it's a burden to front up all the work without knowing if it pays off at all...some people have other things to do. On top of that potential customers are not always happy to provide their details on yet another site.
Besides all that the API is far too limited in functionality. iClone itself is limited but with the API limitations it's even harder to get useful things done. Most limitations seem to be on purpose for commercial reasons as RL does not want competition for their own extensions they sell..at least that's my impression. All that together explains why it's pretty quiet here in the forum I think...

You can of course vent all kinds of conspiracy theories, but RL has always said that the API is a work in progress. Extending the functionality might also lead to more broken plugins from so-called programmers and associated complaints. Anyway, there have not been many contributions thus far using what is available.

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There is no conspiracy here...let's get on to it then and contribute something related to the actual topic of this forum...