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

Re:I fail to see why there is any controversy

[Hatta]

a small shop that sells their ware for $25 a pop is missing out on $1,250,000 if only 50,000 people get a copy of Widget 3.0 via bittorrent, and that's more than enough lost revenue to go out of business. Now, I know, you're going to say "They still have the software to sell! They lose nothing!" But if even HALF those people were going to buy it, but decided not to because, meh, it's already here... That's $625,000 that they DO lose.

Think about it this way instead. 50,000 people could get Widget 3 for free at no cost and no harm to anyone. Instead, because of ridiculous laws, they are forced to purchase it at $25 a pop. That's $1.25 million that's going into the pocket of someone who's not providing any useful service. That money is, in essence, stolen. And it's far more reasonable to call this theft, once my money is taken, I don't have it anymore.

If the small retailers want to stay in business, they need to provide a service people need. Forcing us to use them by law is just extortion.