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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."
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.
Sure, but everyone says "I'd rather donate money to a worthy Open Source project than pay for crippleware," but how many of those people actually do? I'm guessing that a very small fraction of the people that claim to be willing to monetarily support Open Source software actually do so. Most people will download and use the software, and maybe post something to the effect of "I'd have no problem paying for this." But along with that statement is the implied "...but I don't have to, so I won't."
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.
If you want to actually make money, the best is probably a combination. When first downloaded you get full functionality, for a time. This gets you hooked on all the features. Then the trial period runs out and the features are limited. You know the features are there, and you can still use the program, but to reactivate all the features you need to pay.
Simply shutting down the program at the end of the trial period, for me at least, means I will stop running the program and thinking about it. I'll probably check to see if there is another way to do what I need, without using your program. If you want me to pay, you need to keep me using it, but disable enough that I think paying is worth it.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
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
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.
I prefer time limits that actually time how long you use the program, rather than how long it's been since you first ran it.
If I install something with a 30 day trial, have a quick fiddle, and then get distracted by Real Life[tm], those 30 days could have run out by the time I find the program in /Applications and remember that I hadn't finished trying it out. Now what?
A program that lets you run it on 10 separate occasions would have been much more useful, because I'd still have 9 shots left at evaluating it. Even better would be changing the 30 day limit to a 10 day limit, but only counting days that you run the program - that way, if you accidentally hit Quit and immediately restart, you don't get dinged for it.
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
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.
Actually in the article, they say that for a specific product the average donation was 0.38 cent.
Anyway, who pays ? I pay. I'm a developer so I gladly pay because I know what's behind the development of a software. But I guess I'm the exception rather than the norm. ( yes, I have license for everything on my computer. If I cannot pay (or I don't think the price is right, like DVD) I don't use it. )
But I look in my family and friends that are not in contact with development world.
There are 2 categories:
1. What happen if I don't pay. Nothing, so why to pay ? ( the younger in this category generally add some dirty joke about the stupid looser than gave its work for free and how they are 1337 to use it without paying - the parent on the other hand are generally only proud, which is almost as annoying )
2. That's just a {insert any program category}, that's not difficult to do ( we are talking about non developer people, the most they can do is an Excel macro ) why to pay for something so basic. I would pay for something that's really worth it.
And if you little program ( I'm talking small, not apache or linux here ) is used in a big company, just forget it. Don't even dream about it, if there is a way to use legally a program for free, the company will not even consider paying. ( Have you ever worked for a company that pay for winrar ?? )
Nobody cares about your baseless opinions unless you have some motivation we can relate too. It is like describing your poop, nobody cares about how big it is or what color since it doesn't help us to know random facts about your internal state. It doesn't really help us unless we are doing some sort of poll. We aren't doing a poll.
"I think soup is good." "I like trees." "I won't buy a tire that doesn't have white letters on the side." "I don't buy shareware that is crippled."
Congratulations on thinking something about something though.
"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.