Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

We continue to sell software with licenses that don't expire after 20+ years. If you want updates after 12 months, then you 'renew' for an additional 12 months of updates.

I spent six months working full-time developing Rune, an open-source music player and management software that offers a modern experience with a beautiful, Zune-inspired interface design.

As an open-source project in a niche market, establishing a sustainable development model has been challenging. I set the price at $10, which gives users privileged access to feature requests and effectively makes them stakeholders in the project's future direction. While I acknowledge this might seem high for open-source software, the development costs and ongoing maintenance require significant resources.

So far, I've sold about 60 copies. After platform fees of roughly 40%, the revenue covers only a fraction of the development costs. Some users have criticized this as "money-grabbing," but they may not fully grasp the complexity involved in creating such software from scratch. The development process demands meticulous attention to various aspects, including accessibility features, elegant design implementation, and cross-platform integration.

Maintaining my dedication to the project while seeing modest financial returns has been challenging. There's constant pressure to add value and justify the price tag, which is leading to burnout. Finding the right balance between making the software accessible to users while ensuring sustainable development has proven to be a complex challenge.

The path of independent open-source development, while rewarding in many ways, comes with its own set of unique challenges that aren't always visible to users.

This isn't an easy path to follow.

Source code here: https://github.com/losses/rune