Before Nova was even announced, I was pondering charging for Cold Blood, a TC from before the "TC" acronym was tossed about so freely. I don't think I investigated as thoroughly as you, Martin, but as I recall (though I have no documentation to proove it), I emailed Ambrosia SW to see if they had any issues with shareware plugins. They told me it wasn't a problem. Where they stand now, I don't know, but I wouldn't expect things to have changed a whole lot since then (perhaps three, maybe four years).
My next move was to see if Ambrosia would help me develop and publish my plug, and that's when I found out they had just recently agreed to do this for another developer, undisclosed, and this was to be all their EV activity for the time being. Those other guys turned out to be ATMOS, of course, and I'm glad they beat me to it, 'cause I couldn't have made something as good as Nova back then. But I digress.
Personally, I agree with those who have said it would have to be a fantastic, unique, spellbinding plug for it to be worth purchase. Likewise, I think Martin's point about it being a high standard of quality to strive for is strong. If you fail to impress, nobody buys, You'd have to top the last plug that people bought, and that might bring some heirarchy to the competition of plug authoring. The goal, in this case, could be as businesslike as making a higher profit in a quarter, which would be a sure sign your work is popular. Very quanitfiable, arguably. I'm not trying to say your only goal is money here, as the effort to money ratio is far from even a minimum-wage job. Satisfaction in knowing your work is worth something to people is the biggest payoff, at least in my opinion.
There is a problem, however, with those whose goals aren't so lofty. They see other folks charging for plugs, so why can't they? They could use a few bucks, after all. Minimal effort goes into something they price at $15. Sure, nobody is likely to buy it. But imagine a plug archive innundated with such hacks. When a new EVer explores the plug-in side of things, wouldn't ranks among ranks of $15 super-cheat plugs give them a second thought about participating? The community might possibly be robbed of a few new members, new blood, new potential.
All I'm saying is, no matter how widely agreed a shareware plug is to be top-notch and worth the dough, you're going to see people pleading the "he did it, why can't I?" defense for putting a monetary value on EV plugs. It's been a free system for so long now, such that introducing fees would be a major change to the whole community. Perhaps. I'm only being speculative here.
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(url="http://"http://www.pacifier.com/~kkey/shipyard/index.html")Onyx's EV Shipyard(/url)
