USE CASE: Consider the iPhone/iPad application retrieval process... you can get retrieve a free or commercial product by doing a quick search and performing a couple of clicks.  From desire to acquisition, can done in only a handful of seconds.

This model could be employed to the acquisition of free and commercial NetBeans plugins from within the NetBeans IDE.

*** I strongly believe that announcing that building NetBeans plugins could yield the developers a few bucks (through this model), the engagemnt to the IDE will explode significantly.

Of course, the open-source model will not change, as the vast majority of NetBeans plugins will be free, but if the user wants to update the plugin to an enhanced product, he/she should be able to so with only a couple of clicks... assuming there credit-card info and alike is already stored in the system.

As I've read before, software products need to continuously mature and change or they will die.  While I don't think that NetBeans is at any risk of die-ing, I do think that NetBeans is ready to take the jump from being teenager (theoretically speaking) to being full-fledged adult. :)

In summary, this issue request adding a feature that allows the user to quickly search for, pay for, and acquire commercial NetBeans plugins through the IDE, similar to the iPhone/iPad model.

Thanks for the consideration.