Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
what's all the rucus about?
The ruckus is that MacHeist's professed goal is to help the Mac shareware community, but in the end MacHeist is taking a far larger share of the profits than the participants, and due to the structure of the deal, the greater the sales, the larger the discrepancy becomes.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Blame Gruber for what exactly? And he wasn't the first high profile Mac blogger to point out the disproportionate revenue distribution either, Gruber's post (the one you linked to) references Gus Mueller's blog post. If anything, Mueller's the one that probably started all this, he even disclosed the figure he was offered to feature his application in MacHeist.
But either way, neither Gruber nor Mueller is screaming bloody murder because of the MacHeist promoters' share of revenue. They arguing rather, that it's dishonest and downright misleading to declare the week to be "The Week of the Independent Mac Developer" when they stand to make a lion's share of the profit. Hello, you're praising independent Mac developers but then you allocate them a fixed rate?
I agree that all this bickering is good for no one but don't blame the guys that call a spade a spade.
I hate using crippleware. I don't think crippleware (unpaid for shareware)
Your terminology needs help.
Freeware: "Here's a program."
Shareware: "Here's a program. If you like it, pay me."
Sponsorware*: "Here's a program. It wants you to buy a new Lexus."
Postcardware: "Here's a program. If you like it, send me a postcard from your home town/state/province/country".
Crippleware: "Here's half a program. Pay me and I"ll give you the other half."
Nagware: "Here's a program. Pay me. Pay me. Pay me now. Have you paid me yet? If you pay me I'l shut up."
Expireware: "Here's a program. If you don't pay me, I'll take it back in a week."
Now, true shareware is virtually extinct; most of it is now nagware, crippleware, or expireware. But please don't confuse the issue any more than it already is.
*This used to be "adware," but "adware" has mutated since then.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
You guys are high.. it's not 20%, in fact it gets down to around 2-3%. If ONLY it were a 20% cut.
As a developer, I know that there are costs associated with the marketing and sales of my software, but I think 95%+ of the profits is too high a price. It is effectively worse than the mechanism that RIAA uses. I don't believe that RIAA does flat fee contracts for artists music. It may be a tiny percentage, but at least it's a percentage. The difference is that with flat fee, each additional copy sold means the price per copy goes down more and more.
Wil Shipley is probably doing it because DL 1 has been out for quite some time and he's soon to release Delicious Library 2. So this becomes a promo giveaway of the last version, with the hope of some of them upgrading to DL 2. I doubt he would be giving away Delicious Library 2 in this ordeal.
The Macheist version of Textmate doesn't include the upgrade to the upcoming Leopard version, whereas if you buy it direct it does. I noticed in a few cases, Macheist is basically the developers giving out their current version before a new version comes out.
#!/
That's a pretty strong statement, that really requires some proof.
For one, it reveals how much those developers who participated really value their work. I was rather disappointed to see TextMate in there. It is an extraordinary editor, and the "retail" price of it is higher than the price of the entire bundle.Why? The value of something, and its price of it are not related. This would mean that all F/OSS and freeware is worthless, and that Microsoft products are the pinnacle of software quality. I would suggest you are the one devaluing the software, if you only think of it as a price tag, and can't appreciate the developers' work independent of how much it costs.
And the developers who chose not to participate - who think their product is worth more - will be hurt. I will be a lot more hesitant to pay full price for something else. Because I will remember the foolish feeling of having paid full price when I saw this bundle.That doesn't make much sense. Why would getting this cheap stop you from paying full price elsewhere? To my way of thinking, it gives me more money to spend on other shareware. Example: when downloading one of applications from the Macheist bundle, I saw a link for an interesting product (from a different developer) on their website, - so I went and bought that as well. That developer happened to be Boinx, and I have been thinking about getting their iStopmotion product for quite a while - and getting a copy of Fotomagico in the bundle makes me think more of them, so I will probably go and buy iStopmotion as a gift for someone.
Basically, this is the beginning of a shareware spending spree for me. I probably would be buying Playstation games and gaming accessories otherwise, but I decided to spend that money on shareware this week.
but it also struggles against "should I pay or should I find a serial number." The greater the "overpriced" perception, the more like people are to choose the latter.And this reduces the "overpriced" suggestion by selling for very reasonable prices. So, people are more likely to buy this than steal a serial number, than they normally would. Let's face it, quite a few shareware titles are overpriced. Software developers aren't a charity, they need to compete in the real world with real economics, just like users do.
... and then they built the supercollider.
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.