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App Developer: Android Designed For Piracy
Following news this week of a game developer who turned the Android version of a game free because of piracy concerns, software developer Matt Gemmell has written a lengthy post explaining why he thinks Android apps are laboring under a broken business model. "People have to get paid. There has to be a revenue stream. You can’t reliably have that revenue stream if the platform itself and the damaged philosophy behind it actively sabotages commerce. If you want a platform to be commercially viable for third-party software developers, you have to lock it down. Just like in real life, closing the door and locking it helps make sure that your money remains yours. Bad behaviour has to be more difficult than good behaviour - and good behaviour means paying for your software." He also has some harsh arguments about some of the assumptions and philosophies underpinning the an industry built on an open platform. "Nerds like to say that people care about choice at that level. Nerds are wrong. Nerds care about choice, and nerds are such a tiny minority of people that nobody else much cares what the hell they think. Android is designed with far too much nerd philosophy, and open is gravy to those people because it’s synonymous with customization. ... Open is broken as a money-making platform model, unless you’re making the OS or the handsets. Most of us aren't doing that."
What a jerk. He probably wants to eat food, buy a house, see a doctor, and raise a family. :-)
Open source sharing is great with programmers, but with the rest of the world it's a one-way street. Money is the only way that 99.9% of the world can support software because they can't code or do anything but complain about bugs. So money it's got to be. I would barter, but it's rather inefficient. Thank goodness for cash.
And you suggest that it being a poor game is a good reason to pirate it?
So, you're entitled to money just because you developed something? No. It should all be free for everyone and you will get paid by those people who wanted it originally. Why did Life of Brian get made? Because George Harrison "wanted to see it". No other reason. Someone wanted it done and paid for it. Everyone else benefited from this desire, and they were able to sell some copies here and there, but it was not through a sense of entitlement to someone else's money that paid for the work to be done.
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
Kid, (and you must be to have this attitude), I've met more than one developer who's had his application pirated by the basement kids and/or the Russians, Chinese or Indians. Years of work and investment down the drain in an instant. Instead of $15000 a copy for the engineering application, revenue drops to zero almost overnight as folks overseas bit torrent the cracked version and its attendant viruses.
So, the argument goes, you charged too much. Well, if you weren't such a moron, you'd realize that all markets have a finite size. If your market pool worldwide is 1000 specialized engineering organizations in foreign countries, you have to charge a certain amount to make it worth your while. You can't go down to $10. What's the point?
So yes, to have a viable business, you have to lock it down. The new distribution model is going to have to be difficult-to-pirate streaming apps, like it or not. Don't like it? Well, tough titty said the kitty. Don't use it. It's not skin off my nose. Companies and individuals usually pay up, once they have no choice.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Ironic that the Android fanbois are out in force to defend this. Piss off enough developers with this sense of entitlement, and they will simply leave, which in turn screws every Android owner. Whether the app is a good one, a bad one, or mediocre is irrelevant. The fact that people in here are claiming pirating is deserved because it's a crappy app is not exactly going to encourage quality developers to spend time on this platform. If it's crappy, don't buy it. Defending the theft of an app which hurts the larger community is just shooting yourself in the foot.
One needs to only look at the gaming scene for Linux to see where this is going.