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."
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.
...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 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.
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.
(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.
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.