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."

Comments

MacHeist made me spend money

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:GPL

[Hektor_Troy]

Problem is, what if your application is made well enough, that you hardly ever get any support requests? Yes, it happens - especially when the application comes with well made and thurough documentation.

Then it still costs a fortune to make, but we're not supposed to charge for that.
Still costs next to nothing to make copies of (disregarding the cost and time of burning to a media or traffic for downloads)
Still costs next to nothing to support.

Where are we supposed to make money?

If our application costs $100,000 to develop, implement and document, and we expect 10,000 users, and expect maybe one percent of our users requirering our support, are we supposed to charge them $1,000 for support, just to break even? Or should we be allowed to charge $20 per copy/licence to make some money?

Charging for support can be profitable I suppose, but I believe it also breeds an artificial need for bad documentation and buggy software. After all, if the documentation is perfect and the software hardly in need of support, where are you supposed to make your money?