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MacHeist "Week of Mac Developer" Causes Schism
ernesto99 writes "MacHeist began selling a software bundle of ten highly sought-after OS X applications last week with the stated goal of raising the profile of Mac shareware developers. 25% of the money brought in goes to charity. The bundle sale will go down as possibly the biggest success in Mac shareware history, as total revenues are approaching $650,000 after only six days. But some observers, including Daring Fireball's John Gruber, have called into question the ethics of MacHeist. MacHeist advertises itself as 'The Week of the Independent Mac Developer,' yet the MacHeist organizers stand to make vastly outsized gains relative to the very developers they have championed. Gruber calculates that MacHeist will record double, if not triple, the profits of all ten participating developers combined. (In fact the promotion has done so well that the promoter-to-developers profit ratio now stands at about four to one.) In an interview, Delicious Library developer Wil Shipley defends his involvement in MacHeist, saying that the publicity and reach of MacHeist has already paid him dividends. The whole affair has created a heated dialogue, resulting in a direct clash among some of the biggest names in the Mac community."
While I've never worked on a retail shrink-wrap piece of software, I've yet to work on any piece of commercial software in a corporate setting where the developers get anywhere near a quarter of the revenue generated from the sale of that software.
If the individual developers have agreed to the terms and conditions of participation, and said terms and conditions were clearly stated, what's all the rucus about? I'm failing to see how this is newsworthy....
I normally do not spend money on Mac shareware, but MacHeist offers one price for a bunch of apps which makes it worth it, because the odds that I'll end up using frequently one or more of them is high.
On the other hand, I would not have bothered to download and try each of these sharewares individually, because I hate using crippleware. I don't think crippleware (unpaid for shareware) really gives me a good idea whether I'll use it or not. In fact, normally I won't use crippleware because it is annoying.
I bought the bundle and I'm very glad. It was clearly worth it for me.
Like me, I suspect most people who bought the MacHeist bundle would not have bought the software on normal terms. I think that the developers should be glad, since it brings them more revenue without any expense on their part.
TextMate is easily worth paying for. The best programmer's editor I have ever used. I know how you feel about free software, but there are occasional exceptions. TextMate is one for sure.
often stands to make the most money (margin wise).
Compared to typical Retail sales, unless they reach there $400K target, it is approaching, or at least similar to typical Retail markup.
If you ask these developers what they expect to make in a typical week, and it's less than $5-8K then the fact is, they are increasing their cash flow.
Which may increase their sales in the next Upgrade cycle.
http://macheist.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=1874
Speaking as a devoted Mac user and advocate for the platform, this whole affair has shown the worst aspect of the Mac community and why so many people continue to write off the platform (an assembly of particular hardware and software) because of a small percentage of the user base (an assembly of people who use the hardware and software).
Ultimately, though - and I say this as a more-than-daily reader of the Daring Fireball website - John Gruber of Daring Fireball is to blame for this. He is the one that posted the initial exposé of what he perceived the financial situation of the MacHeist promotion to be, even though he admitted multiple times in the article that he didn't have any first-hand knowledge of how the thing was actually structured. John is often a fine voice for the Mac-core community, which is why I read his site, but this is one of those times (and there have been others) where his sharply-worded articles have done much more harm than good.
Ultimately, it benefits no one for developers to be running around calling each other four-letter names because of perceived injustices. Both sides - but especially the anti-MacHeist side - need to stop talking at a volume and profanity level that makes casual observers think somebody is being tortured. Perhaps both sides should just stop talking about it period.
One thing is very clear from this: while the Mac-core constitutes probably fewer than 5% of all Mac users, they continue to give a bad name to the entire assembly of very well-designed and nice-to-use software and hardware. As they've done practically since day one. Am I the only one that thinks they sound like televangelists sometimes?
Someone packaged up a bunch of useful stuff and promoted it. What a crime.
I really didn't know about this and besides this "schism" thing I think it's incredibly interesting that they managed to sell $100K+ worth of software per day for six days. This tells us a lot about the relative size of the OS X installed base and the willingness of said base to buy software. I think the shareware model could do a lot for the Mac, much as it did for the Windows platform 10+ years ago. The more quality software (applications) available for a platform, the more people will be able to consider switching to it.
Where there's a good margin, competition will follow.
Quite. The developers should look at this as money that they'd otherwise not have got. That someone else made more money at the same time is largely irrelevant.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Oh please, you paid what you thought was a fair price. Now you're upset because someone else gets a better one than you did, completely by chance? There's no reason to begrudge anyone because they got lucky or because the developers found a way to pick up some extra cash -- You got exactly what you paid for.
But, why? You obviously were willing and able to pay the price you did for a product you felt you needed. If in a week he offered a sale, would you be as outraged? What about if in 6 months he has a new version but continues to sell the old version for half-off? Differential pricing doesn't hurt anyone (at least for this type of product and this type of differentiation).
Video game consoles sell at a premium when they first come out, and people are willing to pay that premium. Later on, the price goes down, people who wanted it but couldn't afford it before pick it up. The manufacturer still turns a profit, but a smaller one. They still get more product out into the marketplace.
What if he sold at a different price to China, Zimbabwe, and the US? It it still as heinous?
The number listed on Macheist.com is the total raised for charity, not the total sold. To get that you need to multiply by 4.
Right now it's at $160,062. That comes out to $640,248 of shareware sold at greatly discounted prices. That's a LOT of sales.
I think the largest part of the gain for the participating developers isn't actually the money they'll make through the bundle selling well. It's going to be more through the fact that when you get over ten thousand additional users of your program, some percent of them will click the buy button when a "Version 3.0 is now available. Would you like to upgrade?" pops up a few months down the line. They also stand to gain more sales at regular price due to the "wow factor" when people who bought the bundle show off the beautiful programs like Delicious Library to their friends. Macheist is centered around the power user demographic, and there are a lot of average people out there who will want this stuff.
And that BTW is how Richard Stallman came up with the whole idea that software represented an artificial economy. When in actual practice a good costs:
-- a lot to make the first copy of
-- very little / nothing to make additional copies of
-- a lot per copy for support
The obvious places to charge for the good are on support and initial development. A per copy charge is completely irrational given that price structure for production.
I purchased a few of those apps at full price. I now find that the amount I've been charged was inflated, because clearly the developers are happy to settle for less.
Sorry, but based on the principles of capitalism, the prices were not inflated. If the developers managed to stay in business selling to you and others at the price they charged, then they were clearly charging a price that the market would bear. You are the market, you decided you could bear the cost, end of story. Especially in shareware, where you can easily evaluate value vs. price before you buy.
Anyone who feels that developers (hardware or software) should not charge more than a sliver above actual costs has absolutely no business buying a Mac. Apple's entire business model is based on premium perceived value funded by high margins.
As for MacHeist, I don't see much problem with it. So what if developers get a smaller cut of the initial sale. As far as I can tell, developers are going to get 100% of their products' upgrade revenue from this point forward.
That's the way it's always been. Windows XP is at least $99 retail (excluding coupons), whereas with a computer it's actually a lot less. There's also student discounts. Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc. are a lot less expensive at the University store than at CompUSA.
the upgrade cycle thing may be VERY valid. OS X 10.5 is due in the next 6 months or so, and it sounds like there will be upgrades for that. 6 months to really try these apps out (beyond the normal trial period) might make users really grow to like them. personally i have installed an app and only used it once or twice before the trial period ended. i never *really* got into the habit of using it, so i often don't end up buying it.
we'll only see something like this again if the developers think it was beneficial in some way. that will be the test.
ask your boss
Do you get angry when stores have a post-Xmas sale on a product you bought? What about the extra time you got using the software? If you needed the software a month ago, what use would it be waiting to buy it on sale? You would not get the use out of it when you needed it. this underlines one of the benefits of Macheist - it targets people who didn't feel they needed this software before, and might never have bought it. They may find they like the software and start using it. They may never use it - but the developers still get cash anyway.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Man, I wish I had mod points. Mod parent up!
I, for one, denounce the Catholic Church overlords.
... and then they built the supercollider.
... unheard of in the rest of the community.
...
Richard Stallman on the other hand
These developers saw an opportunity to increase sales volume through a highly-publicised discounting scheme, and some decided to take that opportunity. None of them seem particularly interested in others who've come to their "defense," as the linked blog entries show. They all knew the terms of this deal, and participated willingly, knowing that they will be better off as a result. Ergo, the developers win, users win, and charities that otherwise wouldn't receive sales revenue from shareware sales win.
Those complaining simply don't believe such participation to be a good deal for them, and because of that, believe everyone else is being screwed as a result. There is no schism here-there are only a couple people mad that they were never offered a good deal, and that the MacHeist administrators had the leverage to attract other developers instead, who do believe they're being offered a good deal. Gruber and Mueller don't believe that MacHeist should be making the profit that it's making, ostensibly at the expense of the developers. They're free to believe that, but that doesn't change the fact that actual participating developers have considered the gains that they will be making, and find MacHeist's own profits to be perfectly acceptable.
Slap fight.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
While the MacHeist promoters have gone out of their way to actually _move copies of OS X shareware_ and move them swiftly, Gruber is being nothing but a negativist naysayer, and he's among the MacOS advocates that make me ashamed to be a Mac user every time he opens his mouth. Worst of all, at a fundamental level, he's engaging in this behavior in order to drive up hits to his blog, and drive up his profile in the community. It's all about increasing his personal revenue at the expense of others. He's nothing more than a John Dvorak-style rabblerouser for the iCult. I miss the days when NeXTStep was a largely disused platform, because back then, you could have an intelligent conversation with a core-level advocate. Now the quality of discussion is just 2 or 3 shades of gray different from ESR rambling about guns. The bottom line: Business is business. The MacHeist bundle is good business. The bundled price is going to encourage people who've never dropped a dollar on shareware ever at any point to drop dollars. One dollar, or even two, recovered for a shareware author is significant versus the zero that often gets spent on their software, often by scofflaw-like long-time piratical users. The bundle also achieves exposure for some of these products that would've been unattainable otherwise. Would I, or anyone I know, ever have spent money on a Pangea game? Nope. Never. iClip? Maybe.. I know others that like it.. but I shy away from user interface altering things like that. For FotoMagico? At $79 normally priced? I would've thought them crazy. Now that I have these things from the bundle? Hooray! Quite cool software. I'm sold on the benefits. I'll be an upgrade customer for at least some of them. The same goes for at least a few other bundle tools. Getting a license for TextMate and Delicious Library on the cheap is an amazing deal.. and now that I'm invested, however tinily at the outset, each of those developers has potentially made a long-term sale that will result in many times the revenue lost on the individual copies in upgrade revenue. Newsfire's author was particularly cognizant of this issue.. the MacHeist license doesn't come with lifetime upgrades.. but for a tiny figure of 10 dollars more, it's an option right out of the gate. Instant revenue turnover. It's a good, good thing. I honestly wish that I -had- subscribed to Gruber's blog in the past, so I could have the pleasure of saying to him: "No, John. No holy wars. No whining. Sit down, shut up, and give me my money back."
I generally agree with the parent, that if I as a developer agree to give away my product for free to increase visibility, no one should complain about that. And as the sibling post says, everyone wins in this deal...
TFA is highly misguided.
But this deal is much BETTER than that. First, promotion is hard. The idea that promotion bringing much greater sales isn't worth anything implies the speaker doesn't know anything about business. I bet there's NO product where you couldn't spent 100,000 in advertising correctly and manage to get 10,000 in sales. (Obviously, that would be stupid.) But the better you do it AND the more money you spend on it the more sales you get. The idea that MacHeist didn't bring TREMENDOUS value to the table in terms of successful marketing.
Second, MacHeist put up all the money for it. They took a gamble on their successful promotion. If they hadn't sold enough, they'd have lost a lot of money. The developers only risked the possibility that a lot of people might get licenses to their software... adding to their mindshare and marketshare in historically valid software marketing. (The traditional downside is that people will see your software as valueless if you gave it away... but wait, in this case they paid for it.) The other way to run MacHeist (the only really different one I can think of) is to COLLECT a bunch of money from each developer for marketing and then split the profits. The analogy of a "manager or agent" from TFA is NOT appropriate. An agent MIGHT loan some money to an artist for advertising expenses, but they DO take that money back out of the artist's cut.
Third, TFA's quote: "...developers a flat fee in exchange for an unlimited number of licenses tilt grossly in the favor of the MacHeist team" is OBVIOUSLY wrong. _Perhaps_ the AMOUNT of the flat fee was too low... But $1,000,000 would still be a flat fee, and no one is claiming that would've been unfair to the developers. This deal is structured how it should be: The developers have no differential say in the success or failure of the sales numbers. Their contribution is static (existing software) and unchanging. But everyone wants MacHeist to have a strong incentive to sell a lot of copies. SO MacHeist should get the vast majority of the value from the Nth copy sold as N approaches a high number, to make them make maximum marketing effort to get to high numbers.
Entire TFA is based on the idea that MacHeist being really successful makes them evil. Profitable marketing and distribution engines without heavy developer investment are EXACTLY what shareware needs. The more profit they can make without costing the devs, the better.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
...using this software in some legitimate business primarily. You can all try and compete in the tool selling and tool polishing business, or you can use the tools to go build stuff in the real world.
hint: there's a lot more money in using tools then selling tools.
Society can stand a few home depots, and granted it's a huge company and makes money, BUT, compared to the entire construction industry, it is small potatoes. Software is useful to the rest of the planet because of the business it helps, and that's where the real long term money is. And it doesn't matter closed source or open. Closed source is harder to try and sell,plus because it is digital we have for all practical purposes star trek level "replicators" for digital bits now, something to honestly try and grok what that means long term, whereas open source right off the bat you get to use all the other thousands of devs stuff freely, which to me seems a better deal, you get paid immensely "in kind" which gives the open source guys this *huge* freely shared toolbox which is useful for their various companies to go build stuff and do stuff with and "make money".
Guess what I am saying is if you keep trying to keep inside a tiny niche and profit from it, software sales, when we have hit the age of the replicator, you'll be...in a tiny niche, compared to using the software. If your software can't really be used to do much in the real world,making it very hard to sell, well..perhaps reconsider how you are going about things.
You are facing a sinmilar deal as the RIAA pushing cheap digital bits at exorbitant prices. It is not needed any more. software is rapidly approaching that level especially with open source, the money is in customization-artist equivalent to the "live concert" and it what added value it can bring to the table with other legitimate products. Stand alone?? Good luck, dodoville really, as a stand alone product in a standalone shop it is a buggywhip business model, except as a boutique niche product funded by patrons, which is back to the "live concert" analogy. It will take some time, but all the big houses will be going out, preceeded by most of the smaller and mid size houses. Devs will find employment in the millions of other businesse around the planet, using software and tweaking for it in-house.
So my understanding is that they paid a flat fee to developers, and are making money based on the fact that there are high sales. In essence, they assumed the risk that there would be little or no sales. If this had happened, they would be praised, or more probably, ignored. The developers understood this risk, they decided that the flat fee was worth more to them than a percentage of the profits, and so they signed. Based on their marketing, MacHeist overcame the risk, sold a bunch of software, and profited. This is justified by the fact that they assumed all of the risk, so they have a bigger share of the reward, and the increase in sales is a result of their marketing. If sales this large were normal, the developers would not have agreed to the flat fee, or to such a low flat fee. In either case, they came out ahead. You have to judge their actions at the time they signed the contract, when the risk was real, not in hindsight. Now, we can judge the use of their profits. If they re-invest them in marketing and promoting independent developers, then what's the problem? If they close down, and the owners split and run, then yeah, there are some issues.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
Say it aint so! They never complain about anything at our IT support desk. :)
The large software vendors have something like a 60% ROI meaning that /all/ costs add up to less than 40% of the capital invested.
The difference here is that MacHeist do not have such a stranglehold over the software industry such that it is impossible (or even significantly more difficult) to get exposure without them. This is merely the first attempt at something which may in time become the most popular way for small-time software developers to market their wares. There are a large number of people and organizations in this world that can market something like MacHeist - they are not the only ones. With competition we will eventually arrive at a happy equilibrium between the promoter's margin and the developer's margin.
Until MacHeist starts demonstrating that they are intending to monopolize the whole "pack 'n sell" shareware market, I have no concerns.
What does TextMate do that other editors don't? It's the only application in the bundle that looks interesting to me(well, the Delicious Library looks fun, but not actually useful), so can you justify to me that it is worth $49?
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Most people who follow Slashdot's groupthink probably initially gave a libertarian reaction like yours. But that would mean that marketing is good, and everyone around here knows marketing is evil. But if marketing is evil, then the good people arte those who want me to pay for software that won't even run on Linux!
You see the dilemma.
Record companies aren't a monopoly. There are craploads of competing labels, and plenty of indie sources that act like labels without being abusive, such as CDBaby.
The "RIAA" is simply a lobby group that pushes a legal agenda in favor of various record labels. It's no monopoly.
Software is HARDER to break into, not easier. Sure, anyone can put up a website and send out shareware, but there are not many ways to distribute work in a way that small developers can benefit. They certainly can't compete against big developers, and the piracy of software is far more widespread than music. At least music acts somewhat like an ad to create fans. Nobody buys shareware 1 because they stole shareware 2 from the same developer.
Mac Heist's flat fee means that not only are developers in an abusive contract, but that they don't even make royalties! That's much worse than the RIAA style contracts.
The Danger of DRM
I guess you haven't used BBEdit, then.
I think the real story should be "why is all OSX software just shiny buttons and no useful purpose?"
Oh please.
There are plenty of avenues for getting your software seen. You can post it to VersionTracker, MacUpdate and Apple's databases. Send out a few free reg codes to high profile blogs that review software and ask them to check it out and do a review if they like it.
Word of mouth works surprisingly well, especially if you've made a quality product.
None of these developers were forced to play ball. None of them were forced to work with macheist to get their products out. Hell, didn't one or more of them win an apple design award?
How many of you who say there isn't a problem here, but speak out against the RIAA when it comes to music? I don't see any difference.
Business as usual. get over it.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Things like MacHeist are a tide that floats all boats - making people more aware that there is great Mac shareware around helps other products, even those not directly involved in MacHeist.
To me, the MacHeist people are like those big expensive madison avenue marketing firms. They are damn expensive, but as MacHeist developers can attest it is more expensive not to hire them, in terms of lost revenue. Some have compared them to the RIAA but that's not at all a good analogy since the MacHeist role is more a pure marketing play.
Lastly, please everyone consider what THAT kind of money being dumped into the small Mac ISV means for the market of mac software as a whole - with an obvious sum of real money hanging around, more new developers will give Mac software a shot. And I don't think the mac developers that have gotten great gains from this event are just going to buy an island in Bermuda - they are probably going to roll at a lot of this into R&D & new products. Frankly to me this is a much healthier way to build a market rather than most software coming from one or two big players.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We don't speak out against MacHeist because they're not treating paying customers like criminals.
/. zen: Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf clusters...
I blame the developers for being stupid enough to sign for $5,000. They deserve to be eaten by the snake in the grass (phil ruy) if tehy are dumb enough to sell out for so little. Phil ryu is the best scammer I've seen in quite a while.
I like their description of the RapidWeaver editor:
"Before RapidWeaver, creating a slick, original website was about as easy for the average Joe as booting up Photoshop and handcoding pages of HTML in a text editor."
Perhaps starting Photoshop really is a tough task?
Or should I try to make a website encoded in a photograph... I'm sure that will be a challenge!
Mac Heist's flat fee means that not only are developers in an abusive contract
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. MacHeist has nowhere near the market power of the major recording labels. Nobody's success is made or broken by being included in the bundle or not. MacHeist offered a deal, some developers declined, some accepted. I find it baffling that so many people think they are more qualified to make business decisions than the actual owners of the businesses.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Also, with software there are a LOT of costs in QA and support that simply don't exist for music. I'm sure there is someone somewhere that you can call that will tell you which side of the CD goes down in the CD player but for the most part once a disk is sold, the RIAA is done with it (unless you try to copy it...).
I would venture to say that software companies have significantly higher costs than the RIAA, at least in those regions where they havnt forced themselves to have higher costs (such as paying people to play your music, paying lawyers to sue your fans, etc).
Bottles.
and not only does everybody seem to be winning, a large number of people have been introduced to software and publishers they (seemingly) were previously unaware of.
This campaign has hugely raised the profile of all involved. If a similar scheme is launched again then the success of this one will ensure that the publisher at has the option of offering a higher flat-fee. If nothing else a large number of people have no paid for shareware software and this can only help the developers shift to them upgraded versions and other products in the future.
Well the developers didn't think it would lose them $5k of sales, or they wouldn't have entered into the contract.
MacHeist took the risk, by coughing up the cash on the assumption they could shift enough software to cover their fixed costs. They managed to, well done them, what's the problem?
What's the alternative, MacHeist pays out a load of money, doesn't recoup, never repeats the exercise?
Having bought into MacHeist, it was interesting to note that most of the developers involved sell upgrade paths as a seperate purchase. In other words, buying MacHeist gets you the CURRENT versions of these programs (with a few exceptions) and when the next version rolls out, you'll probaby have to pony up to the developer directly for the new version. A nice little in for developers - get people hooked on full versions of your software who might otherwise never bother with it, while getting a little money and more users paying to update.
Their crime was to take on upfront risk against a potentional profit - and succeeding.
QA and support don't apply here - these apps already exist, have already been in distribution, and have already won awards and whatnot. Any support and/or QA issues are the sole responsibility of the developer- the one getting only 25%. It's not like MacHeist has any distribution costs, either, as the software is downloaded, and licenses are acquired through email.
This is WHY we have record companies that pay for big marketing and why artist perfectly capable of putting their own stuff on iTunes still want to be part of a "label". I don't have a new mac yet, but I'm almost curious to buy this while it lasts! I've thought the small companies should band together like this for a while. After all, the one turn-off of the Mac shareware scene for me is that there are so many little companies that want $39.95 for little utility apps... not that I'd mind paying, but tracking all those little charges from year-to-year and version-to-version would be a real PITA over time! In the online world it would make sense for a website to act as "publisher" and collect a bundle up for a better price, and give a cut to the developers. After all, a $39.95 app probably costs most developers $10 to $15 just to invoice and bill you.. even online.. after credit card fees and labor charges to have somebody monitor it. If they drop the cost in the bundle, and let somebody else pick up the cost of invoicing they probably end up ahead. Perhaps the MacHeist people accidentally stumbled upon a better way to get developers PAID for their work!!!
80% of profits for salesperson - 1.5 % of profits for creative person! Ha ha ha ha! That's plainly unethical - no matter how the salesperson couches the entire pitch (the charity idiom, more often than not denotes a business scam - legal but unethical. But the latter is a standard business practise for those who love to get rich off the backs of others (this is often called salvery).
Never trust a salesperson - that is a used car salesperson, a new car salesperson, a real estate broker (salesperson), stock broker (salesperson), financial planner (salesperson) and of course siding salespersons.
You're an idiot. The RIAA is a cartel of all major labels. As a group, those labels have a monopolistic presence in the music distribution industry.
MacHeist took on risk in exchange for a flat fee. They paid these developers a set amount. If MacHeist had done poorly, they would have lost money. If they did ok, they would break even. If they did well, they would profit. If they did extremely well, they would make an extreme profit. Their current profits are due to the risk they took in the first place.
Assuming there has been no sudden, unrelated spike in interest in these products, these sales are purely the result of MacHeist's marketing efforts. If the individual author's thought they could make more doing their own marketing, they wouldn't have signed on.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I'm fine with business is business, as long as it is represented honestly.
The MacHeist folks were pushing this bundle as being much more beneficial to the independent developers than it really was. Case in point, several folks have said "Hey, I wouldn't normally buy this -- so they got an extra sale from me and I feel better about supporting the developer." The reality is that independent developer got maybe a $1 (if they're lucky) from the guy and can only pray that they won't have to answer a single support call.
While I don't agree with the terms of the bundle (and would decline the offer myself), I don't have an issue with them making the deal. I *DO* have an issue with them marketing it as benefiting the small independent developers. If they would have left that out -- I think it wouldn't be the issue that it currently is in the community.
Business is business and being dishonest about your motives is being dishonest about your motives. But of course, the whole point of their "Week of the Independent Developer" was to take advantage of the belief that buying this bundle was a way to support the efforts of the developers involved. The facts thus far seem to question whether this is actually the case.
It's not unlike a charity that claims to help some disadvantaged kids/group and it turns out only 5% or less of the contributions ever makes it to those kids/group. Would you be as willing to partake in that charity if you knew that 95% of it went to pay for lofty salaries, corporate perks, and what not?
Good call, /. This is a slam dunk - honeypot for Mac Jihadies. ;-)
I have. I got 16% of net, which was 16% of 40% of the retail price, after costs. Except that it was 16% of 20% of retail because they subcontracted production and sales to another company for 50%, and after marketing and packaging design and other expenses were taken care of I never saw a penny after my advance.
And it turned out that other company was owned by the same guy as the first, and that 50% basically went into his pocket.
If I could have gotten a flat fee for him to make NON exclusive sales, and ended up with 25% of what he got in his pocket, I would have been much better off.
Look, if you're a Vim or Emacs wizard, this app probably isn't going to do much for you that those editors don't do. Except, perhaps, rendering Markdown and a variety of wiki markups (works very nicely with DokuWiki for one.) If you're coming from Homesite or Joe, like, oh, say ... me, this editor gets you nearly to the power of Vim/Emacs in a much shorter timeline.
I think the best way to see what its capable of is to watch Macromate's screencasts. For me, the columnar editing (and I found a somewhat flakey bundle that lets you mark several points in the buffer to insert the text you're typing simultaneously) has made a lot of my common HTML editing tasks way less painful.
You say recording labels have "more market power," but that's not true. It just sounds good. In any case, market power is not the issue.
In both cases, small and fairly powerless people are trading their talent in a marketing contract. The only difference is that the RIAA gives artists a flat fee + royalties, and Mac Heist just hands them a small flat fee and no royalties. I made no judgement there, just stating what it is.
What's being criticized is Mac Heist positioning itself as some sort of group in the public interest of software. It isn't. It's a pimp, and its a harsher pimp than the RIAA. Just facts to consider.
Nobody thinks they are "more qualified" to make decisions. People are just pointing out the hypocrisy of going apeshit indignant over the RIAA and then celebrating the far more abusive Mac Heist, which does less (not recording or providing any prodduction services) and takes more (no royalties, less upfront) from small developers. The fact that those same developers signed up does not mean they are getting a fair deal, just that there aren't really any options for them.
Some people have the capacity to see unfair situations and call attention to them. Just because you're not involved or injured doesn't mean there is no abuse going on in the world.
People would be surprised how little the makers of software get when you buy from a third party - catalog or online store. In almost every business, so-called 'cost of sales' is 50% +/-5% of the price. This is true whether the purchase is direct, through a distributor, or from a retail store; it just gets distributed differently. It may be that the computer hardware business is different these days - I haven't done the numbers.
In my own case, a while back I had a very nice application for the NeXT, called 'MailQuery'(TM) - using full text semantic search, it turned NextMail into a kind of intuitive document management system. I looked into getting it into the big catalog for the NeXT - Next Warehouse? I forget the name. Unfortunately, the numbers didn't add up. The catalog took 50% off the top - plus I had to PAY THEM to put my product into their catalog, as I recall about $15000 for placement plus advertising, and I had to GIVE them a number of promo copies. (I don't recall any of the numbers exactly, so these are all approximate.) Since I was also licensing the search engine from Thunderstone, in order to make $10 on the product I would have had to sell it for over $500 per copy, and then sell over 100 copies - and the catalog came out every three months, so I had to do it again each time. Needless to say, this was not going to work.
Some time before that, working for a test equipment manufacturer, I learned that if a product couldn't be built (including fully loaded mfg. cost, and amortised development costs) for 20% of retail, it wasn't worth it for them to get into the business. 50% for sales costs, 15% operations & management, 20% manufacturing, leaves 15% profit. Even in this technology leader, engineering costs were under 5% of the product cost.
Software is a bit different, but the bottom line is still the same - there's a lot of mouths between the developer and the end user, even if the end user is another developer.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
I was working on a slideshow presentation for a client and had been using Keynote when I heard about the MacHeist bundle. I noticed Fotomagico and saw that it's normal price is $80, so I figured $50 for the whole package is a great deal. The last few days I've been playing around with them as I have time and basically here's how it runs down for me.
... I dunno, I think including this in the same package of DevonThink kinda lowers it's usefulness. I'll have to fool with it a bit, but doubt I'll be using it much. I pretty much just use text clippings on the desktop then clean them up later. I don't really think to start another app just to copy some stuff.
I picked Enigmo since I played the first version and liked it, but didn't feel like purchasing it. So that's money from me Pangea wouldn't have gotten.
Delicious Library is cool, but I don't really see how I'm going to USE it. Still fun to scan my stuff and I'll have to remind myself to scan things before I loan them to friends, I'll probably use it every now and then. Doubt I'll upgrade but it's nice to have in it's current form.
DevonThink I've never heard of before, but I'm trying to get into the Getting Things Done workflow and I think it'll help me out there. It's just so flexible and does so much I'm still not sure what to do with it, but I'll definately start trying to put some projects on it and hope I can get the flow going with it. A definite keeper, more $$ they never would have gotten from me. May even upgrade someday if I really get the hang of it.
ShapeShifter... I'm not a themer. Yeah some are cool looking, but I'm not a Pimp My Ride kinda guy. There's another developer that got dinero of mine they'd NEVER have seen otherwise.
Disco. I may need this someday, nice to have in the Utilities folder, better burning than the OS has built in... not sure when I'll ever use it.
RapidWeaver. Already started using it, I tried to make a basic page before with iWeb and it just wasn't working out. Fooled with this a few minutes and got my page up and running. Very nice.
iClip
Newsfire. I don't keep track of many sites, Safari's RSS does the job for me although I know it's limited. If someone ever asks about a better RSS agent than Safari I'll have one in mind.
TextMate. I'm not really a programmer so we'll see if I ever use this.
So then, out of 10 apps I only would have actually bought ONE of them. No, let me take that back, I wouldn't have bought Fotomagico on it's own since I don't really feel like shelling out $80 for it.
So really NOBODY would have gotten any of my cash at all without this deal. But especially the four apps I'll never ever use. There are the 6 which I have some interest in, but only 2 or 3 I'll use regularly from now on.
Still, they've gotten me to at least download and try out all 10 apps, maybe later on I'll recommend one of them to someone even though I personally don't use it. It builds awareness and spreads goodwill for ALL of those developers. So now if I talk to some Mac user who remembers with fondness the old WinAMP interface and wishes he could have it back, I'll tell him to pick up ShapeShifter and mod his OS. Someone asks about information saving and organizing I'll mention Freemind first of all, and then point out DevonThink has a different focus but is still very slick and worth checking out.
Compare this to magazine subscriptions, as I understand it costs an average of $40 of advertising and free giveaways for everyone 1 subscriber. So overall the developers involved in the MacHeist got themselves way more than $1,000,000 worth of advertising and mindshare with this. Goodness how do you market software? These guys made out like bandits here.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Realistically speaking, how many of the people who purchased would ever have purchased if not for the "Heist"?
I've been on the fence about Delicious Library since it's release, because it's something that I'd kind of like to have, but not something I absolutely need, and while it's something that I want, the utility of obtaining it didn't overcome my inertia in not going through with purchasing it.
I personally didn't feel motivated enough to steal it, but the existence of mass quantities of pirated software on the P2P nets shows that others are motivated enough to do so. Any amount of reasonable sales are better than no sales at all.. and upgrade revenue is extremely lucrative.
I think the principal problem is one of sour grapes, besides. This is really all about their success, and the fact that their proportion of profit ended up being much greater in the scheme of things than is perceived as "fair".
In the context of the financial success of the MacHeist project, did perhaps developers get a less than ideal deal considering how it turned out? Yes. Do I think that the promoters of the project would be able to pull it off with such a large personal profit margin again? No. Did, realistically, the authors of any of the top-level unlockable pieces of software think they'd even end up having the liability of ponying up the licenses? If I'd been TextMate's author, I absolutely would've taken the chance for some free money and not having to pony up licenses for the purchasers in the end.
In the calculus of financial decisions there's a lot of unpredictability. If only 10,000 in sales had taken place, or maybe 20, do you think the same quantity of anger would've been expressed? If they'd taken a loss, everything would be, "Oh, those poor MacHeist guys. They're not bright. Pity about their effort, but it was a stupid idea." ..and that would be the end of it.
And what about the other motivation? The quantity of money given to charities isn't a small quantity. Would I have been willing to drop the money, even at such a low price, if part of it weren't going to those causes as well? Nope. Definitely not. I already own my TextMate license after all.. The particular twist the MacHeist promoters pulled was pretty brilliant, and pretty different versus past shareware aggregation schemes. I hear a lot of hoobajoo about thinking different(ly) being a good thing. How is this not an example thereof?
I might be more apt to agree with you overall, if I hadn't dealt with working in a nonprofit situation, and I hadn't tried to sell my own shareware besides. Shareware authorship is a Pain In The Rear. Maybe, -Maybe- 10% of a given userbase will pay.. and there's the pile of others who don't, and won't ever. There're the people who'll cheerfully, gleefully break any copy protection you implement, and laugh in your face for keeping trying.. Getting dollars in hand for something done on the side isn't bad at all.. and for those who spend their entire lives working on shareware- it's nice security to get cash up front, rather than depending on sales that might or might not come in depending on mood and the phases of the moon.
The charities to which donations were to be made were all relatively worthy, the authors got some money rather than no money (Cf. The Pirate Problem- the puzzle, not the software sales problem), and perhaps most critically.. not a one of the shareware authors themselves have complained.. and there's just No Problem There. So far it's one outsider who refused the offer as given, one talking head who's repeated the meme, and a bunch of other outsiders who're complaining. It's rather a bit like telling someone who needs very much to sell a piece of property for their own motivations, and who is comfortable with making the sale: "Hey, you c
Astounding? Flabbergasting? Just ignorant? I'm honestly at a loss to describe your little anti-Gruber rant here. Hell, even most of the people who don't agree with his take on MacHeist -- who seem to be largely missing the point of what his gripe is, but never mind that -- have positive things to say about his self-published column otherwise.
Over the years he's pointed many of us at great apps, written one utility more than a few people on many platforms find to be a godsend for online writing, and had some very well-constructed, insightful things to say about not just the Apple market but the software and technology industry at large. Whether or not you agree with him, he explains exactly why he believes what he does. On any given subject. I don't always agree with him, but I always see why he came to his conclusion because he lays his cards on the table.
And this reminds you of John Dvorak how, pray tell?
The complaint Gruber made about MacHeist was primarily the flat-rate compensation: the better MH does, the better the MH "organizers" do in relation to the developers. And, the better they do, the lower effective per-copy revenue the developers take home, which carries a cost (hard to quantify, but nonetheless non-zero) in support. These really aren't disputed facts -- it's just a subjective call as to whether those negatives outweigh the "positives" of (anecdotally) increased market visibility. Obviously smart people disagree with Gruber and Gus Mueller. (Wil Shipley is undoubtedly a smart guy himself, although one might snark that he's demonstrating that in part by getting a few bucks from the 1.x version of Delicious Library he probably wouldn't have otherwise given that 2.0 is right around the corner.) I really wouldn't have any quibble with you disagreeing with Gruber, either, and I'd still say, "Hey, that justbill might be a smart guy."
But for you to post a massive "John Gruber is destroying the Mac community, he makes me ashamed, it's awful every time he opens his mouth, waaaah!" whine, y'know, that makes me wonder what chip you have on your shoulder, or just what crack it is you're smoking. It's so far out of sync with reality that it's... it's... flabbergastounding. (And to end it with "No whining": whoa, Irony Giant, man.)
"Sour grapes" seems to be the favored response to anyone that questions this effort.
To clarify again (I've said this in several posts now). My issue is not that they fleeced the developers, my issue is that the MacHeist team is claiming this altruistic actions. Both the "Week of the Independent Developer" and the portion to charity are part of the marketing plan to appeal to people's sense of not only getting a great deal -- but also doing something good in the process.
As for the giving a portion to charity for good will -- I have no problem with that. It's a good marketing approach, benefits the charities and makes the customer feel they're doing good in the process. The (RED) label items like iPod (RED) and the AMD Lance Armstrong laptop are examples of this.
Now the "Week of the Independent Developer" is the only issue that I have. *I* believe that this is misleading. The terms of the agreement (as they've been described) don't really offer the benefits to the developer that seemed to be professed. If they would have simply said "We've got a bundle of cool software and a portion of the revenues are going to charity", I wouldn't be chiming in.
I'm pretty sure I know why Wil Shipley joined in. DL 1.x has been out a while and is in fact near the end of its cycle. I'm sure DL 2.x is coming within a few months and Shipley hopes to increase sales not only from exposure with this, but also getting some portion to upgrade from 1.x to 2.x -- thus the soon to be deprecated DL 1.x becomes a promotional tool before it leaves.
I agree that if the developer chooses a bad deal for themselves, it is their doing. I don't have a gripe with the deal. The gripe I have is that MacHeist themselves as carrying the sword for Independent Mac Developers. The current "benefit" is that developers are getting $0.29 per unit. The reality is that they're not carrying the sword. And if they wouldn't have tried to claim such, we wouldn't be here now.
But they don't care, because all this publicity just increases their sales.
Is that contract exclusive?
Can the makers of, say, TextMate market their product outside of MacHeist?
Does One Pangea have other bundling arrangements? (hint, they used to have one with Apple)
Can other competitors come up that are not members of the "MacHeist consortium" and do the same thing?
Is there any long standing contract where one side holds the power?
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Why, were you planning on re-selling the software?
Nobody put a gun to your head when you bought it, and its function is in no way altered by the developer offering it at a different price. If you wanted it cheaper, then you should have just waited; most products get discounted eventually.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You say recording labels have "more market power," but that's not true.
Yes, it is. If you can't see the difference between a cartel of record labels and a brand new website selling software, you have lost all sense of perspective.
In both cases, small and fairly powerless people are trading their talent in a marketing contract.
Delicous Library, "small and powerless"? Do you know anything at all about the Mac shareware industry?
I made no judgement there, just stating what it is.
Great. And the developers by all accounts are pleased with the arrangements. (Unlike artists and the RIAA in many instances). Perhaps your moral sanctimoniousness and self-righteousness could be better directed toward people ctually in need of help.
People are just pointing out the hypocrisy of going apeshit indignant over the RIAA and then celebrating the far more abusive Mac Heist
Right, no judgement there whatsoever.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I see a few significant differences:
:)
1) the developers participated willingly in this promotion ( I believe... sorry, didn't RT full FA. )
2) this was an INCREMENTAL distribution channel to what the developers already have in place
3) there is nothing preventing the developers from continuing to sell the software elsewhere, or do other promotions in the future with the SAME content.
4) The developers still own the content and all rights to it.
Try that with anything a musician records on an RIAA-controlled recording contract.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Wrong. The fact that you bought these apps did not help these Mac shareware programmers. They do not get more money because you bought it. They get the same flat fee, regardless of whether you buy the apps or not. But now they have to support you, so right now, the fact that you bought these apps hurt them.
Unless you buy an upgrade to one of these apps, your buying of these apps helped them exactly not at all.
There are lots of posts like yours, so I'm just going to reply to one of the better written ones.
You're right, but what you say is pointless. Lots of people think like grandparent. The value of the software sold in that promo is pretty much destroyed in the eyes of these people. Most people aren't going to think about what you write.
One learns something new everyday. I though mac was the North Korea of software. I am guessing some dissidents also write open source for mac.
Actually, in this case, yes. Generally, I expect to pay the price of manufacture plus some overhead for profit. It may be unAmerican but I like to think people should make a living by producing goods and services and not by controlling markets (DVD region codes anyone?). If they are offering different prices to different people, it means that that price isn't based on cost. Should lawyers pay more for milk than bus drivers do because they have more money? Of course not. Milk is a product that has a fixed value independent of the person buying it. But software doesn't have such a value. So vendors figure they can base the cost on the amount of money in the person's pocket. Well, fuck them. I won't buy it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that this situation is about a group of developers that sold resale rights for a fixed sum and then some had seller's remorse after they saw how much product the reseller moved. No piracy there. That isn't much different than a former employer of mine selling their vertical application I helped develop for tens of millions of dollars per license and while paying us grunts in the trenches tens of thousands.
I thought it is worth... but poor that it doesn't support those asian language. It claims that support UTF. Yup! It really supports UTF, but lack of support on those double-bytes CJK characters.
I really hope it can be fixed soon, otherwise it is not much useful to me.
But that is another point to consider, the marginal profits vs the marginal costs for the original developers. Selling redistribution rights to a distributor had very little marginal cost but a very significant marginal profit. It was as close to free money as you can get at the margins. Given that every who purchased the bundle is now a customer and far more likely to buy the next version, you could even look at this as the distributor paying the developer for the privilege of marketing the product.
The MacHeist organizer took on _all_ the risk in this venture. The developers got a flat fee, apparently regardless of how well the bundle sold. MacHeist stood to lose everything they put into the deal or gain in proportion to sales if it did well. I would not be surprised to learn that some developers who turned down an offer to participate in MacHeist did so because they would not receive a percentage of the profits.
For us customers, we are getting a hell of a deal with that bundle. The developers got a nice little bit of change, plus a lot of visibility for their applications. Whatever financial arrangement was made between the organizers and the developers, is nothing more than that: a business deal. Nobody put a gun on their heads, or threatened to run them into the ground and out of business. It is nothing more than a business deal.
I already registered two of the applications that come with that bundle, and I feel that just these two are worth more to me than what mac heist is charging for the full bundle.
This is a free country, people are free to arrange these kinds of deals. Sure, the organizer is going to make a ton of money, but the developers are going to reach a broader base. When people renew these licenses the money will go to the developers, not the organizer that happened to sell them the previous version.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
I'm a bit surprised to see TextMate in this too, but one thing you missed is that this license for TM is for version 1.x ONLY, while regular v 1.x buyers get a free upgrade to 2.x
Macheist buyers will have to pay a reduced price to get v 2.
So it doesn't mean TM is not worth it's price, it means TM 1.x is not worth the full price as v2 is coming soon.
BTW, if you think TM is "pricey", that means you don't really understand what you can do with it... I think EUR 39 is cheap for that beast!
Windows XP sold retail includes support from Microsoft. Windows XP sold with hardware includes support from the hardware manufacturer, not Microsoft. If you buy an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) CD at the discounted price (~$79 instead of ~$99), you should note that it does not include support from Microsoft and if you call their support line they will redirect you to the manufacturer of your hardware (even if you built it yourself). I believe you can still get support from Microsoft with an OEM CD, but you will pay through the nose for it (I recall $1000 incident fees, but that may have been for businesses - there may be something cheaper like ~$35-$55 fees for home users, or whatever the going rate is now).
As for student software (and hardware), that is a different issue - companies realized a long time ago that people will generally stick with what they learn, so if they learn Photoshop, they will push Photoshop at full retail price for businesses they work with, or try to find a job at a Photoshop house. They will not switch to GIMP or Paintshop Pro or other software unless there is no other choice. Apple would have died a long time ago if they hadn't been feeding machines to school kids and gaining lifelong fans.
in America, money wins. period. you got it and you can do whatever you want, even (a la oj) get away with murder, literally.
this is the system the US has had since it was founded. Often the merchants with money own and run things, and they know it is only because the have money they get to stay in control.
so a few guys did a thing and got some money. woop do doo. a few hundred k. that's the game folks, at least in the US. grow up and either live with it, or work to change it, or leave.
now go out and get some for yourself or stop whining and complaining like hurt children. those developers chose to participate. they knew the deal, and took it. macheist folks were (mostly) OPEN about their books. most small business endeavors are not - they take all they can from everyone and most people NEVER KNOW just how much is taken.
frankly, I think money worship has gone way too far in the US, and I think the money-only game is sick and makes people unhappy. I am working to change it, but I don't complain any more.
The power of small developers is equivalent to the "market power" exercised by bands on MySpace.
The RIAA labels that you find it so easy to vilify make acts and artists rich. There are no rock star developers. You portray RIAA artists as unhappy about the money they're making, but I don't think you know any developers who are struggling to run a business in a climate where most people don't see any need to pay for software.
Being pimped by a self agrandizing marketer is not anything new, but generally people are not so naive about it when they see it. You seem to fail to understand reality.
New Daringfireball article:
There's an argument to be made that the devs got into this willingly and know what they got. There's really no argument to be made about how much they got. Nobody disputes these numbers.
Now I can, from Phil Ryu himself:
So basically, Gruber was right.
You're wrong, and it shows just how much you really don't understand what you're talking about. Phil Ryu tried to dispute them, but he actually confirmed them. He said that "Doubling [Gruber's] estimation of dev fees would bring it closer to reality, but even then, not quite."
So basically, doubling Gruber's numbers is pretty much where it's at. That means that MacHeist's share of the profits was 75%. Straight from the horse's mouth. Gruber was right.
Additionally, it seems that they doubled the dev's share only after Gruber's blog post, so they should thank Gruber for that additional money, even if it doesn't change his original point: MacHeist got most of the money, the devs got very little.
As I said, you're totally missing the point. I'll quote Gruber's article:
Whether MacHeist got 85% or 75% doesn't change Gruber's point. In fact, Gruber's worst printed scenario in the original, non-updated article had MacHeist's share at 71%, lower than it ended up being. So Gruber was right, thank you very much.