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Pricing a Software Product
prostoalex writes "Eric Sink from SourceGear shares his experience on software pricing. Whether you're developing open-source or proprietary software, the money has to come into the business in some form, and the article suggests several strategies as well as the pitfalls for managing software pricing. Sink claims it's tough to compete on price, dangerous to run seasonal promotions and almost impossible to avoid criticism on being over-priced."
better color
Service, support, advertising, publicity, and brand-name recognition, for starters. By giving away software for free you are reducing one of the biggest barriers to entry in your market. Those who charge money for a similar product cannot compete, except by their own brand recognition and goodwill. By making a product that is sufficiently well-known you make a name for yourself which supports your business in other regards: winning development contracts, consultation, and hits to your web-site, which can be monetized with internet advertising for what can sometimes be surprisingly lucrative sums. Noone would use Internet Explorer if they had to pay a fee to go download and use the newest version each year.
At the risk of feeding a troll, the programming language doesn't matter. Bad coders will write bad code no matter what language they use.
SYS 49152
Joel Spolsky (of Joel On Software) published his views on software pricing a little while ago too. Worth a look to see how someone else thinks about the topic.