Slashdot Mirror
Unrestricted vs. Limited Shareware, In Dollars
mklopez writes "There is a belief in the online world that people will be more willing to compensate an author for a downloaded program that has full functionality, versus paying to unlock features in a shareware version. Someone actually put this idea to a test with surprising results."
Does it run on LMOS?
Opensource alternatives.
I don't think I've ever purchased software that came crippled in the trial version. For me to do that, the following conditions would be necessary:
1) I need the software
2) No Free/Open Source alternative is available (I'd happily pay for free software before proprietary stuff)
3) I don't feel like/for some reason can't write my own version.
It hasn't happened yet. I've purchased proprietary software after using the trials, but so far crippled versions have always ticked me off just enough to go look for another solution...
Now, if only I was that smart with music -- I wouldn't be stuck with a bunch of iTunes albums that I can't play on my Linux box (and Apple's iTunes no longer installs on the version of Windows I used to use -- XP-64). I had to learn the DRM lesson the hard way...
I don't find the result surprising at all. In the real world, there are more people who will pay up if it's directly in their interests than will pay up simply out of respect/gratitude/charity/whatever, not least because one set is likely to be almost entirely contained within the other.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Who thinks, man I just have to have these bingo cards right now, but I don't have the time to make them by hand. Wow, theres a program can make them for me and its ONLY $25, where do I sign up?
The result of this study is rather unsurprising to me. What is suprising is that this fairly trivial piece of software, created entirely for the purposes of this experiment, earned its author $34,075 in one year. Wow. And there was probably a good deal more money to be made if it always ran in restricted functionality mode.
Now, granted, he has an established company, so he probably has some good connections with download sites and magazines to get his program included, but that's a tidy sum for "a couple of days" of work.
Summary links to some guy's blog who briefly mentions the test then explains how he cripples his software.
The actual test is here
Yeah, I can't help but think that anyone who thought the unrestricted version would make more is rather naive. To me, it's more of a decision of conscious for the developer, as to where you want to be on the greed/altruism scale.
...because you get full use of the application. This is important if you are doing serious evaluation. And let's be realistic--if you are seriously evaluating a program, you should be able to effectively do so within the time limits as long as the time limits are reasonable. And if you really need to run over the time limit, Try contacting the company and ask them to extend it. Many (but not all) companies are more than willing to work with you if you are serious about evaluating their program.
I think we can all admit that we have, at one time or another, used a less-than-legal copy of software. Many times, it's a one-shot "need", but in many cases, it's to evaluate a program that's otherwise crippled. And for me, there are many, MANY times when the ability to have unrestricted use led to purchases.
-Jim
http://jimstips.com/
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Here's SmartDoc, the actual program used in this experiment, and a screenshot It certainly looks pretty basic.
I don't find the results very surprising. While he's trying to prove to Slashdotters the reasons for his methods he only responds with the financial ones. The reason developers on /. are generally against crippling software is because it just feels wrong to do it. If we can write software to perform a task then want to do it and give it to those who want it. The method of profit becomes secondary to the functionality of the software. Therefore we feel slightly better offering a trial period because the user gets to really use the software in all its glory. But we'd prefer to pass out our software fully functional and hope some who like it offer us something back.
I think figuring out the way to profit is a difficult problem. Not because it's hard to pick between trial periods and crippling. But because we want to feel good about the software we write and at the same time make a living from it.
Developers: We can use your help.
I find that crippleware is the more annoying than nag-ware. With nagware and timebombware, at least someone can still test it in a real world setting, whereas crippleware no one can. Whenever I come across crippleware, I don't care how useful they claim it will be, If I can't check to see if it will fit my needs, I uninstall it and look for something similar. If I can't find anything similar, I decide I don't really need it so badly. If the features are not restricted in any way, I will check it and If I decide it is worthy to purchase, I will do so.
IMO, cripple ware was one of the things that has pretty well killed shareware.
BTW, here are a couple sources for unrestricted shareware/freeware.
No Nags
Association of Shareware professionals
Or perhaps his algorithm was flawed and generated five times more crippled versions than non-crippled ones.
(It was my blog, incidentally. I don't know why the submitter had interest in a days old blog about a years old experiment, but eh, I'm happy you found it interesting.)
e -register-shareware.html as or more interesting as my blog summary of it, which strips out all the detail in favor of talking about another example (Movable Type) and two current programs (one mine, one somebody else's) and their different crippling strategies (features vs. time).
Slashdotters will almost certainly find the original article at http://hackvan.com/pub/stig/articles/why-do-peopl
(I would have modded the parent up but I get 2 points for free and modding only gives the AC 1. Sorry, AC.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
If he'd have given the user a reminder, say once a week for the first two weeks, I bet he would have gotten more.
Giving the user only one chance to donate, before they even get to use the software? How the hell are they going to know if they like it or not. Maybe this wasn't the case, but this is the way it sounds in the article.
Why go fast when you can go anywhere? O|||||||O
I work in the public sector, and I have a sizable budget for IT expenses. I can justify expenditure on just about anything simply by saying I need it. However, the purchasing department wouldn't let me give money to a project if I can get the same software free of charge. We're very carefully audited to make sure our software is licensed, but if the license permits usage at no cost then there is no way we can justify giving a donation. We would be in big trouble if we were found to be `wasting' taxpayers' money in this way.
Even in the private sector, a corporation has a legal responsibility to its shareholders to reduce costs, and runs the risk of being sued by them if it donates money unnecessarily.
Neither public nor private organizations are allowed to be charitable with their patrons' money.
There was one nag screen on every startup, one on every shutdown.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
If I understand things correctly, the author of TFA is the creator of bingo-card making software for teachers to use in classroom activities. The shareware version is restricted to only create 15 cards, on the assumption that this will not be enough cards for every student, so the teacher (who also assumes that the teacher will probably use this for one lesson and then never again), wants to charge the teacher (who has over 15 students, so obviously not a teacher in a private or well-funduded suburban school) 25 USD just to teach a single lesson, or rather a single activity. Teachers don't exactly have expense accounts, and don't get paid well-enough to be expected to pay out of pocket (although they usually do anyway). As a teacher myself, I have often found myself stumbling upon such software (for learning games, quiz creation, etc), but since I spend enough already on my classroom (and my school only reimburses 50 USD per yaer) I have usually just uninstall it when I realize that it is crippled and now restrict my search to Sourceforge (and what's bundled with Edubuntu). That being said, the vast majority of such tools are not FOSS and only run on the Windows platform. They are crippled shareware apps that ususally cost about 25 USD, and are often poorly written since they are designed for one-off use. Perhaps a better solution might be for more open-source educational projects (which there are, but not nearly as many as by commercial vendors), but teachers are a time-poor lot who don't usually have time for such endeavors.
The point being made in TFA is all very well and good, for a developer who writes his own programs from scratch, or derives from public domain resources which he then closes into shareware. However, the proposal has a very limited future.
Not too far down the line, it will become completely impossible for any fully independent developer to compete against the collosal pyramid of software resources being constructed by the FOSS movement. And that includes the Redmonds and IBMs of this world, not a chance. A thousand fully paid developers beavering away without the benefit of standing on the shoulders of a thousand times that many unpaid giants will get absolutely nowhere, comparatively speaking.
This is just a simple matter of geometric growth of FOSS capability, and the trend is absolutely unstoppable (except possibly by patents, hence the worry there). To stay on the leading edge, your application will have to ride that collosal resource, because to not do so will mean spending an extreme amount of time and money reinventing the wheel and probably failing anyway. And that precludes shareware, because of licensing.
While some people don't like the intentionally viral nature of the GPL, it is instrumental in making sure that this stunningly huge resource continues to grow and to be ever more beneficial to the community that uses it. While that doesn't make its use compulsary, and non-dependent developers like in TFA will probably always exist for small projects, the general trend is clear: if you want to write something beyond your ability for total reinvention, you won't be able to make it shareware.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
(Hiya, I'm the author of TFA and Bingo Card Creator). Here's the closest OSS program to my software: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bingo-cards/ . Feel free to use it if it fits your needs better. (I'll be perfectly honest: I think I do a much better job. For example, I have features such as "actually runs on a Windows PC instead of crashing on install" and "prints without leaving the program". If I didn't think I could do a better job than what was available for free, I wouldn't have invested my time and money into the project.) If not, you can do things the traditional way by paying your educational publisher of choice $15 a bingo card set. If you plan on doing this activity twice, ever, I really do save you money.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
The "days of yore" for shareware could have been the early 90's. It would be interesting to see if the same result is obtained now - I think the difference might be less now, as people have become more used to the idea of open source and supporting it regardless of it being free.
Then again, maybe not....
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Ok, it didn't specify (two nag screens???)...the whole thing was written after the whole "coin flip" on installation - a one time task. Maybe I need more coffee???
--bows head shamefully for being a moron--
Why go fast when you can go anywhere? O|||||||O
Except one thing: Usability. I've encountered few pieces of FOSS software that I would consider truly usable. Firefox is a delightful exception, as well as Adium (IM client for OSX), but for the most part it's just a dreadery of buttons and panels that only a coder could grok.
That's all fine and dandy for the "background" type of FOSS, things like Apache, MySQL, PHP and whatnot, where your target audience are of the technical inclination.
That is also why I have serious doubts about the ability for FOSS to unseat consumer-level software. Until FOSS administrators and coders wake up and realize that usability is a key cornerstone of effective software, people will continue paying for proprietary software that gives them just that.
You can read here, linked from TFA that it was from April '94 through February '95. I rather doubt that the numbers would be much more different now -- take a look at the Movable Type example cited later in the article, which covers totally voluntary donationware in the 2000s.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Keep in mind that this is a perfect experimental design: there is a control group which is guaranteed to be indistinguishable from the experimental group, and nobody but yourself knows whats going on.
This was NOTIt determined in a purely random manner on a straight 50/50 basis A Psuedo-random number generator is NOT truly random. The random functions in most software languages i've used result in very un-random results. I've seen a number of PCs generate the same 'random' numbers.
2. guaranteed to be indistinguishable Colin Messitt is assuming that none of the users of this software ever discussed the software with any of the other users, something I highly doubt.
3. but every fourth page of extracted text was reversed and every fourth printed page was replaced with an order form. The end-user could still see it was going to do the job, but he couldn't make beneficial use of it without registering. Could see it how? Some might assume the software is buggy (yes, a lot of users are that stupid).
4. Assuming that if all copies had been restricted the monthly registration count would have risen by the difference between the "PoNC" and "Restricted " figures total sales Hes even ignored the Unknown registrations in his 'conclusions'. What if ALL of those registrations were from the uncrippled version, that makes the ratio 512:851 which is a lot closer and within the margin of error caused by all his other assumptions.
A few other things that could also affect the results..
Was there any alternative software available or did any become available?
Change it so you know exactly how many people had each version.
Was there any bugs in the 'cripple' code (something which could seriously affect the results)?
Making each user aware of the differences between freeware, crippleware, nagware etc (a lot of people think freeware=shareware)
Which OS was it written for, which did the users run and was any kind of improved help printing added to Win3.1, WfWg or Win95?
His conclusions are also flawed.. His results could be used to make a different point if just a few different assumptions are made.. That this just proves that his software wasnt really worth paying for but some just had no other choice.
Without a proper experiment, its not possible to really gain anything from this.
I was not stating that the results seemed correct to me - merely that they were stated much more precisely than "it depends". Thank you for your time.
Yet for all this supposed power of the FOSS movement, if the author of this bingo card creator is to be believed, there isn't even a really good open source bingo card creator.
We're mighty and powerful, and you can't compete with us....oh, bingo card creator? no we don't have a good one of those.
Another downfall of FOSS is thier inability to conduct expensive usability research studies. A thousand times that many unpaid giants will get absolutely nowhere towards making usable software without standing on the shoulders of those who actually make the money and can afford to do the usability studies. Every single FOSS product I've tried either has a sucky interface, or it has a nice interface which is more or less modelled after the closed source commercial software it tries to replace.
it will become completely impossible for any fully independent developer to compete against the collosal pyramid of software resources being constructed by the FOSS movement.
Most of the open source libraries I use are bsd licensed or lgpl or something comparable. On the other hand, I use plenty of gpl applications. I suspect this is the natural order of things. If you gpl an application, you don't cripple/restrict people who want to use the application. If you gpl a library, you do, and it can be every bit as annoying as downloading a shareware program and finding half the features have been disabled.
Look at it this way. If you write a gpl application, everyone can use it as much as they want and with a few exceptions, no one has a reason to write a non-gpl version. However, with a library, if it is something useful, there are hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of people out there who would benefit from a version with a less restrictive license like lgpl therefore people will be motivated to make one.
Anyways, I don't think the gpl library resources will grow faster than other open source licenses that are compatible with closed source development.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
>I don't know why the submitter had interest in a days old blog about a years old experiment
because it was on Digg yesterday.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Did anyone else find it more than slightly ironic, given the discussion about Moveable Type and its move from donationware to crippleware, what the guy's blog is run with?
... WordPress.
That's right, it's
You know, the FOSS/GPL competitor to Moveable Type, which gained popularity in no small part because of the exodus of users from Moveable Type circa version 3.0, when they tried to cripple the free personal version. (I won't say that WP was created in response to that, because it wasn't and has existed as far back as 2001 in various incarnations, but it's hard to avoid noting that it definitely got popular as a result of MT's licensing fiasco.)
I think it's also worth noting that Moveable Type has since restored their personal version to full-feature status; although I don't know what their exact motivations are, it seems inconceivable that the competition from Free sources wasn't part of the decision.
I think there's a lesson here, but I'll leave determining what that is as an exercise for the reader.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
If Bingo-Card Creator is aimed at the educational market, he could probably make more money by giving it away. Once the fair-market price has been established, any copies that he distributes to legitimate educational institutions provide him with a tax write-off. Of course, if you don't have any other income, this won't do you any good. However, most (not all) shareware developers do it as a side business.
There are also many other "customers" that fall into the same category as educational institutions. Non-profits, charities and even members of the active armed forces can qualify under the current tax code.
Exactly my point. Despite your claims that
"it will become completely impossible for any fully independent developer to compete against the collosal pyramid of software resources being constructed by the FOSS movement"
there are literally thousands of niche areas that are completely ignored by FOSS, and many more that are not ignored but not well done either. I never said they COULDN'T create a good bingo program. Just that they HAVEN'T. And I bet new niches pop up just as fast as the FOSS movement could fill the existing ones (if not faster).
How do most people buy and use software?
1) Fully functional software that is pre-installed on their computer
2) Use a light, but fully functional version, that is pre-installed on their computer
3) Buy the full version of software needed at a store. Or, buy the pro version of 2), that has more features.
4) Do internet research and find a list of shareware and freeware and try to find the best of the bunch for the lowest cost
5) Get a list of FOSS/freeware from a knowlegable guru to install on their computer.
Once someone gets software on their computer, they are usually very hesitant to get rid of it, especially if they like how it works. For example, I currently use CamFrog, which is slightly crippled. It only allows you view one camera at a time in a small window. Otherwise, it is fully functional. Now, as I become more addicted to using the software, I want to watch more than one webcam at a time, and in bigger windows. The marginal utility for the $50 pro version is huge!
If the software is so crippled that I can't try it out, or have a chance to become reliant upon it, paying $ to use it might not be worth it.
On the other hand, if its not crippled at all, and its fully functional, I have no incentive to give money at all, except altruisticly.
"There is a belief in the online world that people will be more willing to compensate an author for a downloaded program that has full functionality, versus paying to unlock features in a shareware version. Someone actually put this idea to a test with surprising results."
I'm not certain that iD would agree with this. Doom was released as shareware without all the levels. When they did try a shareware release with everything. People didn't purchase.[1}
[1] Reference: Masters of Doom,ISBN:0-375-50524-5
Have you used a modern GNOME or KDE desktop? They're very usable.
At least with GNOME, many new computer users I've tried find it easier than Windows. Naturally people who are used to Windows have some switching difficulties though (button order, menu names etc.). There are always improvements that could be made, but they are very nice to use (at least the core apps). Also, I am a programmer and use GNOME, and I've never had issues with not being able to do something. If there's no GUI for some advanced task, there's the command line, but usually those sort of tasks are ones which normal users won't be doing.
Personally, I find many of the cheaper proprietary apps (~$15 etc.) are clunky and badly designed from a usability aspect, and much opensource software is better. The reason for this is that very cheap proprietary apps (even ones that are popular) usually have only 1 or 2 developers, and their skillset is usually just coding and whatever the application is used for (graphics, sound, whatever). With popular opensource and large proprietary apps, there are often people contributing to the code who are specialised in usability.
Much of Windows' usability issues probably come from the marketing aspect (lets make hundreds of things appear at once so it seems powerful!) and backwards human compatibility. Microsoft get burned every time they change a string on their interface, unfortunately this results in strange UI conventions that exist only because developers and users are used to them, and every release the interface becomes further disjointed from the backend which can be a pain from a developer/power user point of view. Vista seems to be cleaning some of this up, however.
This is wishfull thinking. your thousands and thousands of developers are answerable to nobody, with little incentive to band together and get organised. In a company where people are paid, someone has the job to decide if conflicting feature A or B goes in. with FOSS its just a free-for-all. It just doesnt scale. Why do I care if developer 455 thinks my commenting style sucks? he's not my boss. Nobody is...
Its got sod all to do with patents. Most people chosoe windows over linux, because most people want compatibility and some sembelance of tech support. How many different versions of linux are there? doing virtually the same thing. Theres no way it will ever be as easy to use as windows will.
I don't recall class sizes of 15 at my own well funded suburban school district, but that's neither here nor now. I realize teachers definately have a severe budget constraint, which is probably why giving free stuff pulls in a lot of clicks from teachers. Certainly, I'd expect the best public school teachers to be masters of getting something for nothing. But I think the author's banking on the idea that if a teacher finds the budget for it, they'll eventually use it as more than just a one-off activity. Certainly, my fourth grade teacher used some word search software for students on a weekly basis for spelling / vocabulary words.
But figuring out where these open source projects will come from is going to be a challenege. I think there's a lot of untapped potential here within schools. Most of these programs are simple to write if you can write software at all. It would be interesting to see high school students do an advanced / 2nd programming course duplicating the functionality of such a program at the request of a local teacher. Of course, it would require students to be taught a suitable language in the first place, so qbasic might be out, no matter how fun Gorillas and Nibbles are. You could even put the results on sourceforge and might get help from Edubuntu if they want to include the software.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
I have a new shareware program I plan to release soon and I'm trying to decide if I should stay with shareware or go with donationware. TFA is a very important plot point for me. My primary motivation for considering donationware is the hassle of dealing with registration codes. I've done everything I can think of to make the code easier to enter. It just seems that people are unable to perform a simple copy and paste.
So, this article tells me that donationware really isn't a good idea. It also says that if I do want to stay with shareware, I will need more motivation than just a nag screen. If I am going to get hassled by people who can't enter a registration code, I might as well get paid for the effort.
No doubt there will be niches, but I doubt most of them can be filled by shareware.
As I see it...
Pure proprietary software will be pushed into "hard and specialized" niches, mostly math intensive stuff that only so many people can do well, FOSS in this domain is and will continue to be mostly unpolished university research. As the problems get better understood FOSS will move in and big players on to other grounds. This could go on for a long time.
Bussiness applications will be mostly a thinlayer of proprietary stuff on top of a FOSS stack and in house software based directly on copylefted FOSS. This shouldn't shrink too much as long as new bussines methods are intorduced.
Proprietary games will contine to sell mainly on expensive artwork, with the latest generation of engines beeing proprietary and older ones either directly freed (as id does now) or feature-duplicated by FOSS developers. Creating content for FOSS engines and experimental gameplay might be a niche for shareware authors.
Mass market software will continue to be what dedicated FOSS developers do and as people come to trust it will replace most boxed software (maybe in the same boxes, we'll see how Xara does) and shareware. Shareware might continue to serve power user needs because it's developers are often close to users and can stay ahead in specialized features, but FOSS isn't weak in this aspect either.
Single use applications (where traditionaly shareware has been very strong) and plug-ins will increasingly be implemented by power users as FOSS high-level programing languages, development enviroments and libraries mature.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
One piece of software I have has a "try it" or "buy it" startup screen. Clicking on the "buy it" button brings up a screen were you enter pertinent information, and the server provides an internal code to the software once the purchasing process is complete. No C&P involved. Totally automated.*
*If you're worried about people circumventing the lock as it were. Remember the trialware can be partial, and the act of purchasing downloads the rest for full functionality. This also reduces the incentive for a purchaser to share the full version.
So it should be of no surprise that most people who download from p2p will not buy the content they pirate, despite claims to the contrary. Actual consumer data shows this "try before you buy" theory is false, but that doesn't stop people from claiming it's true. It is nice to see some hard data from the software world that backs this up.
Agreed with everything. That's part of the reason you're seeing more "software as a 'web' service" (you know? the thing the FSF is trying to shut down). For me that's why I've abandoned the "retail" market, and deal strictly with businesses. More work, but less problems like you're mentioning.
"Not too far down the line, it will become completely impossible for any fully independent developer to compete against the collosal pyramid of software resources being constructed by the FOSS movement."
There are thousands of niche apps created by small vendors that have no open source equivalent, and never will. Give your head a shake, and stop dreaming.
Realise that there will always be a place - a very large place - for proprietary, paid-for software. Usability, strange niches (like bingo cards), custom projects, games, and so on will always mean a huge marketplace for software. And yes, I have written Linux kernel code, contributed to projects like KDE and Asterisk, and so on and so forth. But I write closed source software for a living, on contract, and let me tell you, there is so much work out there it's crazy, and it's only getting bigger.
This is wishfull thinking. your thousands and thousands of developers are answerable to nobody, with little incentive to band together and get organised.
They don't need to be organized. All they need to do is to add to the volume of FOSS resources, and they are doing that admirably and in collosal amounts. The size of the FOSS mountain is just mind-boggling already, and always increasing.
However, there is another way of looking at this which perhaps will suit you better:
They *ARE* being organized, not by management, but simply through the act of making things compile. It is the various APIs that ensure that people's separate efforts all work together. There's your "management". It's light-handed, but it works, superbly.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
That of course is true, but you missed the key point:
Sure, people will continue paying for proprietary software that gives them what they want, if it exists. But the proprietary developer will have to continually reinvent everything he needs to create such products, and that places him at an immense disadvantage against those who make similar products based on FOSS code.
If you extrapolate this trend, and give FOSS time to shave off the rough edges, it leads inescapably to vendors of closed products being entirely unable to compete with FOSS on product features, quality, and of course cost. This really leaves very few avenues for profit.
Consequently, the days of proprietary code (for the masses, not bespoke) are numbered, except in niche markets not yet covered by FOSS capability.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
BINGO is, like, trivial to implement. Once you know your dev environment, it is literally an afternoon or two of programming.
It does make a good topic for a homework problem in an algorithms class, I suppose, or a good sample for showing the capabilities of a dev environment.
But most of the work is in understanding your dev environment, whether the old Claris/AppleWorks spreadsheet with a bunch of referenced cells and a neat range for random-sorting the referenced cells, or an old basic interpreter with its implicit mono-spaced English output and maybe line graphics, or the original Mac "system" that was more a collection of techniques than an OS, or Java (with or without netbeans or eclipse), or Apple's new project builder and the OS it's embedded in.
It would make an even better topic for homework assignment in a class on business models.
The problem here is that you want people to pay you for things they should be trivially able to do for themselves, but can't very well with the current set of tools. If you could see the tool that wants to be built here and build it, you'd have a product that people would pay you to work on, whether under the dead "proprietary" model or under the dying shareware model (which, considering how Microsoft's products get around, is the only successful "proprietary" model that ever worked), or under the more open business models of so-called f/oss.
If you can't see the tool that wants to be built here, crippleware won't take you very far either.
I was not stating that the results seemed correct to me - merely that they were stated much more precisely than "it depends". That depends on how you view his "experiment". If you view it as a test for HIS SOFTWARE, his results were pretty clear. But as he stated himself, THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO ALL SOFTWARE, as not all software lends itself to being crippled. Therefor, IT DEPENDS on what kind of software you are trying to peddle. Read TFA again.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
While I definitely believe in for-pay software, this analysis misses out on the really critical sharing effect. That is: Presumably every person who successfully adopts a piece of software increases the chances of more people using it. Especially now (as opposed to 94/95) that effect is huge - people like this guy talk on their blogs about software they love. This is SOMETIMES pay software... but when people get hit with the disabling features, SOME of them pay up and SOME of them simply stop using it.
If you can guarantee 100% of people who might want to use your software will hear about it and evalutate it (might approach being possible in some narrow fields, maybe) then this is unimportant to you.
I'm not saying it should always be free, but I'm saying the analysis is flawed without trying to take this into account. Personally, I think for a large class of inexpensive software I would try very hard to get users permanently addicted and using at least a basic version so they can talk about it.
(Also in my opinion competing with a bunch of other free alternatives - a la Movable Type - is the antiperfect situation for getting a lot of donations. I think the Moveable Type data was seriously flawed for comparing to potentially novel software you might write. )
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
might be that you assume an awful lot about the assumptions that others have.
Number one, in any particular school district, there is at least one hobbiest programer with the skills to slap together a word bingo card printing program in a reasonable small number of his spare time hours. Probably there is at least one such programer at any particular school. Okay, I'm restricting the scope of this conjecture to US schools, but I am assuming existing technologies. (I happen to have a couple such programs I have used to polish my own programing skills.)
That said, this is the sort of problem that ordinary computer users ought to be able to create such a program as a word processing document. That such is not the case reflects just how misdirected the current application tech is.