I'm developing a WordPress plugin. I'd like to charge somewhat for it, because I'd like to be developing related things, for a living. I also want to make it easy for people to e.g. contribute patches and bug fixes. So I'm thinking about hosting the source code at GitHub.
Does anyone host the source code for a premium plugin, or theme, at e.g. GitHub?
Do people actually pay for that plugin?
Or do people share the link to the GitHub repo, and download via GitHub?
Please note: I don't mind if some people download the source code without paying. But if everyone does that, and no one pays, then that'd be problematic, perhaps I'd have to get a "real" job.
What if there was a compilation and build step, so you could not use the source code directly. Then perhaps most people would buy the plugin? So they'd get a downloadable .zip file that they understand how to use? (Instead of unusable source code.)
make dist or something, and that would compile the Coffeescript code and build a .zip file.)