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On paying for software

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Re: On paying for software

#81

Post by thrav »

jarym wrote: post #5

I have experience selling to companies and I’ve found that even when they realise they need and want to pay for a piece of software they have absolutely no clue how to figure out what it’s worth. Consequently they engage in endless hardball negotiation and invite other suppliers to provide quotes (even when your offering uniquely meets all requirements). In the end the challenge is to get customers comfortable that t…

If you haven’t already, stop talking about what it took to create it and start talking about how much value they’re going to get out of it.

Figure out how much time / money it will save them. How much that is all worth. Tel them your software is less money than that.

I have the luxury of knowing I have the best product, but even if you don’t, you can’t give in to the hardball shit. Play hard to get instead. Dare them to go buy the cheap thing and let them feel like you know they’re making a mistake and you’ll see them in a few months when that doesn’t work out. It pays to be cocky in those situations. It starts to make them feel like you must know something they don’t.

It’s the only way. (I sell one of the most expensive software products there is, with loads of cheaper competitors)

Re: On paying for software

#82

Post by justinclift »

TimJYoung wrote: post #77
wazoox wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Linux and most free software projects allow donations. I even donated to projects I don't actually use, like FreeBSD. I donated money to many free software projects, Ardour, Mozilla, LibreOffice, OpenBSD, etc. This is clearly a false dichotomy.

Relying on the good will of others does not work , period. The fact that it works sometimes is not something that one can use as the reason to quit their job and start an "endeavor" (you can't really call it a business). Can we please dispense with this notion and start realizing one simple fact: people will typically only pay for something if you make them pay.

> Can we please dispense with this notion and start realizing one simple fact: people will typically only pay for something if you make them pay.

Things to appear to be changing for the better though. As an examply, Gina Häußge is working full time on OctoPrint (3D printing software) supported entirely by donations:

https://www.patreon.com/foosel

There are probably others too, I'm just not aware of them and have only really started looking at Patreon recently (for a project I'm involved with). :)

Re: On paying for software

#83

Post by mAEStro-paNDa »

Although the author failed to mention, the comments here pointed out the distinction between software from a little guy innovator and a huge corporation. That content was glossed over in the article, but it seems to be a very important part of the conversation about free/paid software.

Not only that, but there's an underlying assumption here that some person or company has to receive a wage or profit for a software to be maintained or repaired, which is simply not true.

Re: On paying for software

#84

Post by ghaff »

open-source-ux wrote: post #6

Why is it so hard for developers to make a full-time living selling their open-source software? Are the available options stacked against them? Thousands of developers make money building products or services for clients using open source software. But what if you don't want to be a consultant and simply want to charge a business for using your open source product? The Free Software Foundation (FSF) says that you can…

>- There's the dual-licencing approach e.g. Red Hat. (Naturally doesn't work with permissive licences. Requires a strong copyleft licence like the GPL).

Red Hat doesn't dual-license and sells subscriptions (support, updates, backports, KnowledgeBase, etc.) for open source offerings that use a variety of different licenses including permissive ones (e.g. OpenStack).

Re: On paying for software

#85

Post by matheusmoreira »

Torwald wrote: post #55
matheusmoreira wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't even know what definition of 'natural' you're using here. Copying data is a fundamental operation that all computers are able to perform and it costs nothing. Therefore, data is naturally easy to copy. Software doesn't need to be manufactured like physical goods do: the software construction step is fully automated by compilers and build systems. The cost of all this is approximately $0. Networks aren't free…

> Copying data is a fundamental operation that all computers are able to perform and it costs nothing. That is not true. Running, maintaining, etc the IT infrastructure is costing money, electricity etc. It doesn't come for free.

Suppose that a copy takes 1 second to complete and the computer's power supply unit draws 400 W of power during that 1 second. How much does it cost to complete that copy? Hawaii has the most expensive electricity¹ in the United States, averaging at 29.23 cents / kW * h. Let's use 30 cents / kW * h.

If we have 400 W sustained for one second, that equals 0.000111111111 kW * h. (400 Watt * second) * (30 cents / kWh) = 3.33333333 × 10^-5 U.S. dollars. In Hawaii, that one copy would cost $0.0000333333. If one were to make 100 000 copies of that same data, it would cost $3.33333333.

¹ https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/

Re: On paying for software

#86

Post by TimJYoung »

ropeadopepope wrote: post #79
pjmlp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that was part of an effort to do this in the early .com days, it is a lost hope trying to sell open source software to consumers. While selling to enterprise can be made via consulting and training, most consumers just want a one time shot paying for their software. Well, if you do that with commercial software, usually the only way to avoid paying is piracy. In open source world, they can just go to anoth…

What do you think of the viability of providing source code with the software that you sell? It would be open source in the sense that you could alter the software and contribute patches, but you had to pay for the software first. It would have to eliminate forking by necessity. I don't see that as being a downside, though. I think the open source community commonly forks code to save time when the correct technical…

This is how the Delphi and Turbo Pascal 3rd party markets have worked for a long time: you pay for 3rd party components/libraries, but they almost all come with source code or an option to purchase the source code for an additional charge. It works really, really well, especially for larger organizations that buy from smaller organizations that want to ensure the continued availability of the software and/or audit it for security purposes.

Re: On paying for software

#87

Post by rootlocus »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #65
TimJYoung wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No other business endeavor on the planet operates on "production time" when pricing products. Products are priced according to their value . Given a reasonably competitive market, that value will be accurate and fair for customers, and the customers will be able to find a similar product that does most or all of what they want at the price point that they can afford.

Products are scarce. Data isn't. What if everyone had a Star Trek replicator? Would they still pay for products according to their value? That's what a computer acts like.

You would probably pay for: the replicator, the recipe,the ingredients and the energy used by the replicator. However, Star Trek has a different economy from ours.

Re: On paying for software

#88

Post by ttoinou »

Torwald wrote: post #55
matheusmoreira wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't even know what definition of 'natural' you're using here. Copying data is a fundamental operation that all computers are able to perform and it costs nothing. Therefore, data is naturally easy to copy. Software doesn't need to be manufactured like physical goods do: the software construction step is fully automated by compilers and build systems. The cost of all this is approximately $0. Networks aren't free…

> Copying data is a fundamental operation that all computers are able to perform and it costs nothing. That is not true. Running, maintaining, etc the IT infrastructure is costing money, electricity etc. It doesn't come for free.

Marginal and transaction costs are very low.

But you are right on the principle : storing, copying and transferring data always costs energy (in physics, temperature, energy and change of entropy are linked together)

Re: On paying for software

#89

Post by ghaff »

cableshaft wrote: post #52
tormeh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the primary problem is cost, but that when you build your product tightly coupled with a propretary product that is hard to migrate off of then the vendor of that product can shake you down, or they can go bankrupt or what have you. It makes your business vulnerable, and no one wants that. Also your production environment crashing because a license expired. Fun times.

I agree with this. That's why I avoid most web and SAAS platforms for things nowadays. I make an exception for things where I can get my data off their platform in a format I want pretty easily (i.e. I will use Google Docs because I can easily download the files as DOCX or PDF files) or the data I'm storing with them is mainly settings or preferences (I.e. Youtube knowing I'm subscribed to X publishers). I've been bu…

In all fairness, the software that you buy today is almost certainly going to stop working at some point in the future as you upgrade your OS etc. So, unless you can download data into some reasonably open format, you will eventually lose access anyway.

That said, I don't disagree with your basic point. In the case of Adobe, I use one of their programs fairly heavily. But most everything else is once in a blue moon. As a result, their Suite subscription doesn't work for me as I'm perfectly happy running something from a few versions back. Subscriptions only make sense for things you use pretty regularly.

Re: On paying for software

#90

Post by TimJYoung »

justinclift wrote: post #82
TimJYoung wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relying on the good will of others does not work , period. The fact that it works sometimes is not something that one can use as the reason to quit their job and start an "endeavor" (you can't really call it a business). Can we please dispense with this notion and start realizing one simple fact: people will typically only pay for something if you make them pay.

> Can we please dispense with this notion and start realizing one simple fact: people will typically only pay for something if you make them pay. Things to appear to be changing for the better though. As an examply, Gina Häußge is working full time on OctoPrint (3D printing software) supported entirely by donations: https://www.patreon.com/foosel There are probably others too, I'm just not aware of them and have only…

Again, donations, etc. may work for some creators, but they will not work for all. There are always going to be products that are "Wow, I'm donating to her !", but the vast majority are more of the "plumbing" variety that are much, much harder to monetize in ways other than "pay me".
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