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A world where people pay for software

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Re: A world where people pay for software

#351

Post by dbrueck »

A root of the problem is using economic models for physical items with digital goods and services.

IMO the most sensical low level* economic model for digital things would be one where you pay a really tiny amount every time you derive value from something. A fraction of a penny each time you play a song, each time you edit an image in some software, each time you visit a website.

There are a boatload of obstacles to getting to a model like this, but as a thought exercise it's really interesting to consider an alternate universe where this model got established instead of, say, everything being ad-based. Not only would it provide a model for monetizing software, it would also for example completely reframe DRM (making it both far more ubiquitous but also far less antagonizing to the user, since it would be aligned with what the user is trying to do instead of being at odds with it).

* The idea being that this low level economic would exist but for practical reasons (like overcoming human psychology) you might need to overlay a higher level model like a monthly "unlimited consumption" subscription or tax.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#352

Post by ForHackernews »

thorncorona wrote: post #342
smolder wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are potentially other carrots aside from material wealth that can motivate people to do unpleasant work. Currently it takes significant pay to get people to do certain important but thankless jobs. We could thank them. A legacy is important to many people. They may enjoy an immutable commemoration of their work, if they're secure in a material sense.

This is the exact same answer every leftist I've talked to says when I ask them who will run the garbage system, and who will clean the sewers.

C'mon, robots obviously! Cleaning sewers doesn't sound like any fun, but designing or remotely piloting a fatberg-blasting sewer shark bot? That sounds kickass!

Re: A world where people pay for software

#353

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

jhbadger wrote: post #300
pmcp wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if you are trolling or being serieus, because me and literally everyone i know would use this feature extensively. For powerpoints, school presentations, birthday cards. 50% of the time I fired up Word, it would be for that feature.

I seriously have never seen this used ever. But it sounds like you are talking about children using it, which I hadn't considered (I was already an adult in the 1990s).

Are you kidding? That would actually make presentations fun again.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#354

Post by valval »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #306

Computers have an unprecedented ability to reproduce value for free. Programmers need a relatively fixed amount of resources to thrive. (The value of resources varies by location but we all need things like food, shelter, transportation, clothing, tools, etc etc) If we can find a way to make sure every person has what they need to thrive regardless of their income, programmers can open source all of their software an…

I mean, I’ve seen worse arguments for socialism, but you seem to be painting an overly rosy picture. Yes, computers can reproduce software at zero marginal cost, but there’s still a considerable investment in the initial creation and ongoing maintenance. While I’m all for a world where programmers and engineers are able to fully devote themselves to open source projects, it’s not as simple as just making sure everyone has their basic needs met.

The incentive structures are complex, and money still serves as a potent motivator for many to push boundaries and innovate. Remember, open-source doesn’t always equate to high-quality or innovative, and proprietary doesn’t always mean restrictive or uncreative. A balanced ecosystem where both proprietary and open-source software can coexist might be a more realistic and productive approach. I’m afraid that balance isn’t too dissimilar from the one we have now, so I’m sort of forced to go with Occam’s razor here.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#355

Post by smolder »

thorncorona wrote: post #342
smolder wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are potentially other carrots aside from material wealth that can motivate people to do unpleasant work. Currently it takes significant pay to get people to do certain important but thankless jobs. We could thank them. A legacy is important to many people. They may enjoy an immutable commemoration of their work, if they're secure in a material sense.

This is the exact same answer every leftist I've talked to says when I ask them who will run the garbage system, and who will clean the sewers.

I know it seems crazy on its face. And I'm sure those leftists you refer to didn't have a coherent concept of how such a system would actually work. There's no way we could just replace paychecks today with rations and social credits and have a functioning system. It'd be an extreme destabilizing change to a system we built incrementally over a long time to be self reinforcing. But I also have the view that people are very malleable and can conform to all sorts of social structures and belief systems.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#356

Post by cbovis »

CBarkleyU wrote: post #139
robalni wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that is a possible problem. Partially, that problem exists with everything; advertisements make people buy from the most popular brands even if they are not the best. Other than that, the developers in this cooperation have to trust each other so if someone is just popular and doesn't make any good software, they would not be accepted by the other developers to join.

>doesn't make any good software What if the person does make decent software, but is a huge influencer? Why not opt for the Spotify model? Usage = money. Why turn this into a popularity contest?

More usage doesn't necessarily equate to more value when it comes to software, you could easily argue the opposite.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#357

Post by rootusrootus »

thorncorona wrote: post #342
smolder wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are potentially other carrots aside from material wealth that can motivate people to do unpleasant work. Currently it takes significant pay to get people to do certain important but thankless jobs. We could thank them. A legacy is important to many people. They may enjoy an immutable commemoration of their work, if they're secure in a material sense.

This is the exact same answer every leftist I've talked to says when I ask them who will run the garbage system, and who will clean the sewers.

How often do you talk to people this far to the left? I live in a family full of liberals and none of them even remotely think the world should operate this way. I think you could take every person in the US with ideology this far out to the left and put them in a single medium size stadium.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#358

Post by ben0x539 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #332
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #306

Computers have an unprecedented ability to reproduce value for free. Programmers need a relatively fixed amount of resources to thrive. (The value of resources varies by location but we all need things like food, shelter, transportation, clothing, tools, etc etc) If we can find a way to make sure every person has what they need to thrive regardless of their income, programmers can open source all of their software an…

One problem is that most necessary projects aren’t fun, and most fun projects aren’t necessary. Does anyone design dishwashers as a hobby, as an easy example? How do you propose we motivate people to do work that isn’t fun? Currently the carrot of higher pay or ownership in a more valuable thing is doing that, so we would need something to replace it if that goes away.

I'm 200% convinced there are plenty of people out there who could easily be nerdsniped into building an open source dishwasher! Hackers get up to all kinds of stuff that doesn't seem traditionally fun!

Re: A world where people pay for software

#359

Post by mixmastamyk »

dbrueck wrote: post #351

A root of the problem is using economic models for physical items with digital goods and services. IMO the most sensical low level* economic model for digital things would be one where you pay a really tiny amount every time you derive value from something. A fraction of a penny each time you play a song, each time you edit an image in some software, each time you visit a website. There are a boatload of obstacles to…

Interesting to think about. However, for that to be feasible I believe the draconian "copyright forever" laws would have to have never happened. I'm against paying rent to corporations to access the work of dead people on principle. Or past say, fifty years even if they lived.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#360

Post by dizhn »

conradfr wrote: post #330
karaterobot wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, this describes my reality pretty accurately. Apple, Figma, and Adobe all try to lock you in with cloud storage and proprietary storage formats: the more you invest in their products, the more you'd lose by not paying them. I used to run some websites off Squarespace, and there's no way to export them and move somewhere else, so you end up paying ~$200 a year to host a static web page, else recreate it from s…

You can connect an IMAP client to Gmail and retrieve all your emails.

Which is something everybody should do before they remove that feature.
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