Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Shareware and Unix?

Posted by Cliff on from the forgotten-niches dept.

McDoobie asks: "Is there a market for low cost shareware in the Linux/BSD and Unix market in general? Would it be worthwhile to have a small home based business next to ones regular day job producing well made, but small, shareware for an environment that is dominated either by large corporations or Open Source developers? If so, what should a potential developer/publisher focus on to make their products/price range attractive to customers? What type of customers are most likely to look into such software? SOHO? Small Enterprise? Home users? In a nutshell, where should one begin when investigating the potential of the Un*x (and perhaps Apple) environment for the small time developer who's interested in earning a few dollars on the side?"

13 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. I think it is going to be hard. by Xner · · Score: 5, Informative
    If you want to actually make money from your programs, I believe it might take quite a large effort. You are going to operate in a world where most software can be had for free. It is rather hard to beat that price.

    Furthermore, people are really used to not paying for software. If you want them to register you'll have to be very annoying about it (risk losing users/customers due to percieved harassment), implement some technological countermeasure (also very irritating, and potentially useless against technologically sophisticated people) or just be nice and hope for the best (with the risk of people not really noticing/caring caring that your application is not BSD/GPL licensed.)

    You best bet is probably giving registered users small benefits and services that others do not. How you would implement this exactly depends on your line of business.
    Just remember not to piss off your userbase with too many nags/copy protections/long serials/spyware etc.

    --
    Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
    1. Re:I think it is going to be hard. by Fastball · · Score: 3, Interesting
      You do not have to be annoying about registration/full purchase to avoid losing customers. Add genuine value to your full, registered version. I submit Doom as an example. You get the game engine and the first part of three series of levels. After playing that first level, we were damn hungry for more.

      It's probably easier to do this with a game than it is for some sort of productivity app, but my gut tells me that there's plenty of niches for Unix platforms. Tax preparation software comes to mind, especially in light of recent events. Was it Quicken that tried to coerce folks to upgrade by not provided tax tables?

      Every few months someone asks on Slashdot where they can find a good 3D modeller. There's Blender among others. It'd be interesting to see someone could take Blender, build a service or development company around it, and sell a brand of it much like Redhat does with Linux. Redhat is still in business right?

      Yes, we Linux, BSD, etc. folks are used to not paying for software. But look at it this way. How many of us Linux nerds have a Windows partition handy for gaming? And we're buying those games (and burning a copy here or there).

      Shareware for Unix can be done:

      1) Develop a righteous product. Nobody gives a hoot about poorly designed software, free or retail. If what you want to produce and offer isn't good and appealing to folks, if it isn't exciting, don't bother.

      2) Perish the thought of nagware. Nothing shaves down your user base like nags.

      3) Above all else, empower your user. Sounds stupid, but software companies have walked away from this basic principle. Software is supposed to give users the ability to accomplish something they otherwise could not, not tithe in the name of the shareware gods.

      Go for it! Shareware software won't make inroads on Unix platforms unless somebody shows up to do it.

  2. No by WasterDave · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Basically, no. There was something on here a couple'o'months back about ... ahhh ... some text editor or something, can't remember. Anyway, the point is that the author had sold 'n' thousand copies for the mac, ported it to Linux and sold something like four copies.

    So, quality shareware for Linux? F*ck that.

    Commercial, expensive server software may have a market. Particularly if it enables interoperability with Windows (-1 Unfashionable).

    Mac OSX? Now that's a different question. Here we have a target market that we *know* pays for things, otherwise they wouldn't have macs. The big danger is that whatever you write will be released at macworld as iWhatever three days before you release it and the market will be dead. Witness OmniWeb and Safari -> owned. Imagine making photo editing software for the mac now. Or an MP3 player. Or some presentation software. Or an email client. Or calendaring. You get my drift?

    Shareware for Linux? Do get a grip :)

    Dave

    --
    I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
    1. Re:No by larry+bagina · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The program was Pepper (now available again).

      I know there used to be a common shareware X image viewer (common, as in installed by Red Hat 4), which was distributed as source code.

      The problem is, people don't like paying for things, especially if they can get something for free. And this is especially free on slashdot, where people claim to want "free as in speech" but take "free as in gnutella". Everytime music swapping/file sharing is mentioned on slashdot, most people justify under various excuses (RIAA sucks! The artist only gets $0.50 per CD anyhow, so it's ok! My CD collection was stolen! Information wants to be free!). And not registering for shareware doesn't require any effort!

      Shareware needs a large user base to overcome the freeloaders, something linux doesn't have (The macintosh user base may or may not be smaller, but they have an entirely different, no FREE, culture).

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  3. Shareware is too risky by amorsen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Support may cease anytime, and continued development is uncertain. With Free Software you can pay someone to fix problems when the original developer is gone. With shareware, you are screwed.

    --
    Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    1. Re:Shareware is too risky by cioxx · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I wonder if there is a specific licensing term in existence stating:
      "This is a commercial application and will continue to be so as long as company is committed to developing and distributing it based on market demand, but in the event when software no longer supported and deemed as abandonware, full source will be released under GPL/GNU/LGPL/Whatever to give previous software owners/OSS crowd the option of making it un-obsolite"


      This will basically safeguard the customers/users from being milked by companies, tied to software, then be left in the dust at the EOL.

      Just a thought. Wouldn't it be great if many windows-based apps had that going? (or maybe there is such a uniform clause in license agreements I'm not aware of).
  4. What about... by RyoSaeba · · Score: 5, Insightful

    a kind of 'service' company, instead ?
    As pointed out, shareware on a free os doesn't sound that great. On the other hand, wouldn't people be ready to pay a small fee for having their database / browser / random application correctly installed & configured ?
    Using SSH/Telnet, you can easily hop over that person's box, and do stuff directly. Of course that requires some trust between you & the user, since you'd prolly be able to trash the whole system ^_^

    Another suggestion which comes to mind: develop software on-demand, and release the source as Open Source. Like, someone says 'ok, i need a small app that does this thingy, can't find it. i pay you some price, you make it, and release sources under an Open Source license.'
    This has the advantage to ensure you do software which'll actually be used (even if by only one user !), and people will less likely be afraid of the 'company goes boum, source lost, money lost' scenario, since sources will be available...

    Just me 2 cents of euro...

    --
    Tsuyoikoto ha taisetsu da ne, dakedo namida mo hitsuyousa (Strength is an important thing, but tears too are necessary)
    1. Re:What about... by tchuladdiass · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As to your second idea, I had an idea back a while ago about combining the likes of SourceForge with something like RentAcoder. The basic idea is to provide a site for half-finished open source projects. Customers can then submit sujested to-do items. Multiple customers would then pledge money for completion of those todo's. Once there is enough money pledged for a particular feature, that would then draw an open-source programmer to complete that item, and the completed code and pledge money would then be collected into an escrow account, and appropriatly distributed once all work is completed. Then the code would become gpl'd (or whatever the original project's license was).
      Of course, there would be problems with either people pledging money and not paying up, or not being satisfied with the resulting code, in which case they would be inclined to withdraw their pledge. So, the programmer would have to agree to complete the code in exchange for say 80% of pledges to be collected. Other details, of course, would have to be worked out, but in general, it would function similar to Elance.com, or rentacoder.com, with the variation that multiple customers are putting up money, and the resultant code would then be made gpl'd...

  5. Patented Algorithms by turgid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe shareware on Linux would be a way to distribute relatively inexpensive niche programs that use patented algorithms, such as wavelet encoding for image compression. Because money is involved, the patent could be used and paid for legitimately. Obviously this doesn't help the fight against software patents...

    --
    Stick Men
  6. Who does the deeming? by Xner · · Score: 3, Insightful
    "This is a commercial application and will continue to be so as long as company is committed to developing and distributing it based on market demand, but in the event when software no longer supported and deemed as abandonware, full source will be released under GPL/GNU/LGPL/Whatever to give previous software owners/OSS crowd the option of making it un-obsolite"

    The intention is honorable, but the wording could be clearer. For instance, who decides whether the company is committed enough? Or whether it's meeting demand? When it's insupported? Who deems it ``abandonware''?

    Personally, I think much could be gained by using concrete and verifiable criteria, such as "at least a major/minor/mainenance release in a twelve month period" or "the company's website being unavailable for a period of 30 consecutive days".
    Just be careful, because weaseling out of such an agreement will not be quite as easy as it would be with a more abstract one.

    --
    Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
  7. Depends on the niche by Sam+Lowry · · Score: 3, Informative

    Your software should be unique, irreplaceable and of a very good quality. It should also occupy a specific niche unreacheable for large corporations.

    Example: Vuescan

  8. Sad.. by Aknaton · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think that it will be hard to do. The free-Unix crowd is used to having their cake for free and even if you came up with something unique, some developer would probably create a free clone of it.

    Since you mentioned MacOS X, I would suggest developing for them as your primary audience. Offer a version for Unixes as well, provided you can do so without killing yourself, as paying users on those platforms will probably be few.

  9. Shareware sucks by Outland+Traveller · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Since the vast majority Linux development tools are Free and installed by default by many distributions, there's less justification for someone to hack out a craptapular trivial app, closed source, and charge money for it. Most shareware apps are not advanced enough to compete with open source equivalents. If the shareware app is a simple accomplishment, which many are, someone will eventually scratch an itch, make an open source work-alike, and ever-after that open source app will gain the benefit of a wider pool of developers.

    It would make more sense for someone seeking light income to either create a closed source app that is truly above-and-beyond anything currently open source, or to make their app open source and charge money for it under an honor/donation system, or for support, or for automatic updates, or in exchange for additional customization/integration work, or one of the other various schemes others have come up with.

    It's the example MS and other closed-source OS vendors set with the exclusive and expensive licensing of developer tools and developer documentation, that encourages closed-source shareware. Thankfully, Linux is not hampered by these barriers to development.