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Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

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Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#81

Post by giancarlostoro »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #22
jchw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sandboxing is a useful property, but do Desktop Bridge apps even get sandboxing? If not it calls the whole thing into question. Android has an app store with mandatory sandboxing and you can't always trust it, even Apple with probably the most strict rules and review process have had some incidents. I would like sandboxing in general, but as a feature of Windows Store it's definitely not enough to win me personally o…

Desktop bridge apps can request "full access" permission, which effectively evades sandboxing, but those apps are heavily scrutinized on review. In comparison, the Play Store has no manual approval process and an automated malware scanner that's industry-worst according to independent review. ;) Apple does a pretty good job though, and would be my general recommendation for mobile security. Note that while Android an…

I still find it a shame that Microsoft didn't get to succeed with Windows Mobile. Now instead of "everyone having one phone" we have "everyone having two types of phones" essentially. I love what Apple does because it makes them profitable, even down to their app store. Any competitor that arises needs to mimic that to remain profitable, I would prefer something where the main things are proprietary but as long as the company's only focus is making a phone OS and not an advertisement platform.

I also find it a shame that Canonical instead of redoing the Desktop Environment for Ubuntu didn't invest that effort into just Ubuntu Mobile (or whatever it was called) and lastly, Mozilla almost had a reasonable thing, they really should of produced a Chromebook competitor first though. I yearn for a sane ChromeOS alternative that's fully open source and runs Firefox by default.

In a parallel universe Microsoft and Canonical team up to make a sane Android competitor that overtakes the market, and build the first Linux distro to be able to run Windows applications in a sane sandboxed environment.

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#82

Post by GordonS »

eigenvector wrote: post #47
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #18

I've built a small tool that I distributed as "free for personal use, contact me for a commercial license", without technical enforcement, not even a nag screen. I made one (1) sale, despite receiving e-mails from several people thanking me that they're happily using it at work, and that sale was to a company who wanted customization, and only ended up actually paying the invoice when they asked for another round of…

Companies have successfully convinced themselves that anything software is some form of black magic that can only be procured by the IT department and through a small army of Business Development Managers. In my job I have fairly broad discretion to purchase things, generally up to $100,000 I need only write a one-paragraph justification of what I'm doing as long as I'm working within an approved budget. Except 'IT'.…

> knowing at the end of it that we paid 3x the market price to get it from our 'Preferred Supplier'

It's not even just the cost of the item itself - I often have to spend hours of time over a period of months to get something purchased, with multiple levels of management also having to spend time on approvals and chasing people up. The cost of all that time can easily exceed the cost of the item.

Sometimes I hate working for a megacorp :(

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#83

Post by monokai_nl »

huhtenberg wrote: post #80
monokai_nl wrote: post #77

My color scheme https://www.monokai.pro is downloadable for free for Sublime and VSCode. It has a nag screen a la Sublime Text that tells you it's free for evaluation, but needs a license for continued usage. A small percentage of people purchases a license, but for sure not all 200K of them.

To put it bluntly and I mean no offense whatsoever - you come across as completely nuts trying to charge 10 EUR for a damn color scheme . That's basically what 200K people think when dismissing your nag.

It's a color scheme, user interface theme and icon set in one. Why do you think it's nuts to charge €10 for that? Do you think it should be free?

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#84

Post by charlesdm »

mherrmann wrote: post #31

I've been developing a cross-platform file manager [1] for the past 2.5 years. It is shareware with a nag screen. It currently makes ~$500 per month. Generally, I would say yes, shareware still works. But it is hard a) to write desktop software [2] and b) to convince people to pay for it. I would not give people the sources. It would make them feel even more like "I don't need to pay for this". What works for me is t…

I don't want to be overly negative, but I have launched quite a few indie 6 figure apps over the last five years, and something generating $500 a month isn't really working (in my book).

Have you even tried to just sell licenses for it? If your software delivers value then that should convert better than a nag screen. Worth giving users a 30 day trial and seeing how that converts.

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#85

Post by charlesdm »

huhtenberg wrote: post #80
monokai_nl wrote: post #77

My color scheme https://www.monokai.pro is downloadable for free for Sublime and VSCode. It has a nag screen a la Sublime Text that tells you it's free for evaluation, but needs a license for continued usage. A small percentage of people purchases a license, but for sure not all 200K of them.

To put it bluntly and I mean no offense whatsoever - you come across as completely nuts trying to charge 10 EUR for a damn color scheme . That's basically what 200K people think when dismissing your nag.

The fact that 200k people have downloaded it means it has value.

I'm actually more surprised 200k people have downloaded a custom colour scheme. But since they have, I don't think 10 EUR is excessive to charge for something like that.

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#86

Post by jabl »

rusk wrote: post #60
eigenvector wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies have successfully convinced themselves that anything software is some form of black magic that can only be procured by the IT department and through a small army of Business Development Managers. In my job I have fairly broad discretion to purchase things, generally up to $100,000 I need only write a one-paragraph justification of what I'm doing as long as I'm working within an approved budget. Except 'IT'.…

.. and knowing at the end of it that we paid 3x the market price to get it from our 'Preferred Supplier’ Very clear what’s going on there once you get to the end. Somebody’s got themselves a nice cash cow sewn up.

Doesn't need to be a conspiracy, where somebody is getting rich at the company's expense.

At work we have something similar, where every few years the IT department tenders the 'preferred supplier' for general IT stuff. The logic is basically that by promising the vendors exclusivity, they will bid lower. So yes, sometimes that means we'll pay 3x for a keyboard compared to the price we'd pay at the local discount computer store; I think in general the prices for the stuff that is in the 'tendering portfolio' is very competitive, otherwise it's list price.

OTOH, we save money since the billing from the preferred supplier is worn-in standard procedure, and also employees don't waste company time searching the web for the cheapest/best/whatever keyboard.

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#87

Post by huhtenberg »

monokai_nl wrote: post #83
huhtenberg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it bluntly and I mean no offense whatsoever - you come across as completely nuts trying to charge 10 EUR for a damn color scheme . That's basically what 200K people think when dismissing your nag.

It's a color scheme, user interface theme and icon set in one. Why do you think it's nuts to charge €10 for that? Do you think it should be free?

Rationally it makes some sense, but irrationally - charging money for such triviality as a choice of colors is ridiculous.

I can see buying _icons_ being a bit more justified, because it implies at least some amount of non-trivial work on your end, but I don't really know anyone willing to pay for better code editor icons.

Also the fact that you offering to buy a "license" is off-putting, again considering the context of selling a set of RGB values. It's too grandiose, which too contributes to this looking nuts. Just say "buy" the scheme and it'll already be much better.

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#88

Post by imhoguy »

mherrmann wrote: post #31

I've been developing a cross-platform file manager [1] for the past 2.5 years. It is shareware with a nag screen. It currently makes ~$500 per month. Generally, I would say yes, shareware still works. But it is hard a) to write desktop software [2] and b) to convince people to pay for it. I would not give people the sources. It would make them feel even more like "I don't need to pay for this". What works for me is t…

I like your open source promise. So I guess you have some private GH repo which needs switch to public to fullful the promise, right? I just wonder how you implemented the family eventual part.

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#89

Post by jolmg »

anoncake wrote: post #48
jolmg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I didn't know Patreon published info on what creators are earning. Wouldn't that be a design flaw? What's the benefit to anybody? It seems to only deter potential sponsors.

So people can avoid sponsoring creators that already have a fair income level.

Like john_moscow has pointed out, though, that deters people from becoming Patreon creators. It's very normal for people to underestimate the difficulty of what others do or the real worth of their work. Besides that, supporting someone economically in a capitalist environment is giving them your vote for them to continue doing what they're doing. Not voting for them, when you otherwise would, solely because you can see they have some quantity of votes already, disrupts that.

I would like this type of economy to flourish, as it seems like a very viable way to get good economic support for open-source. However, if this is a common occurrence, it seems developers will continue to be better off working on closed-source.

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#90

Post by darkr »

aasasd wrote: post #19
abalone wrote: post #14

“Still work”? Was there a time that shareware worked? Serious question.. citations appreciated. Also it sounds like you are doing enterprise software. Shareware was more of a consumer pricing model. With enterprise you want to make it totally free for small scale grassroots adoption by champions and then monetize large scale adoption.

Both Carmacks had themselves each a Ferrari before they put out Doom. “Commander Keen” bought those Ferraris. Though I'm sure it was always a game of chance like everywhere in business.

You mean both Johns? (Carmack & Romero)
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