101–110 of 202 posts
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This makes me wonder if you could open source a project like this and still sell it through the App Store. Then there would be a paid version (that's easy to acquire and pay for) as well as the code being shared with the community. Anyone could still get the app for free, but I'd be willing to bet most people would financially support the project if given such an easy and integrated means to do so.
Isnt GPL banned on iOS AppStore?
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I guess they are meaning "free as in freedom" which is something that comes up time and time again thanks to the FSFs insistence on using poor wording. I don't think that developers don't "value" software. It would be a push to suggest that people who use Linux,Apache or Emacs don't see any "value" to them. I'm sure if they though about it they could probably assign a high dollar amount that would reflect the utility…
> I guess they are meaning "free as in freedom" Not necessarily. Most of the software developers use - from IDEs/editors, through version control, synchronization, web stack, to server software and even the basic but important tools like ls or grep - is free. Free as in "free beer". We are used to get tremendous value for free. We are used to give away value for free. And I'm not surprised that many developers (mysel…
A huge amount of OSS is fairly "developer facing" too, with possible exceptions of stuff like firefox of VLC (few people would imagine paying for a media player or browser today).
I agree though that bad FOSS evangelism may be partly to blame, if you tell everyone to "use Linux because it is free, all software should be free!" without explaining that price not the important part of the equation and you are a software developer yourself then I guess you can't be too surprised if people see that as endorsement to pirate Photoshop.
Perhaps we should only pay for development of open-source software, so we actually own what we're paying for.
I don't believe that changes the situation at all. An example of this is Quicksilver on the Mac. It's considered to be one of the best Mac apps ever and the developer who made it, decided to open source it after he decided to take a job at Google. Quicksilver development fell apart afterwards. My point is that people who used the app did so because of the talent of the developer. A community can't always make up for…
Techspansion, however, was a good citizen and when a Mac OS X Lion broke VisualHub, he released a patched binary, so I'm still able to use VisualHub four years after it was EOL'd! :)
Unfortunately, this is what you get when you pay $10 for an app. There is a huge disparity when it comes to the cost of apps these days vs the salaries required to sustain the engineers who make those apps. Even at $10/pop, you need to sell a lot of apps just to sustain the salaries of very good engineers, and THIS is what makes great products vulnerable to acqui-hires. The problem is that the $0.99 model of the App…
This is very very true. Their overall top grossing US rank (on iPhone) was stabilizing in the 500-700 range (after generally declining for months[1]), which equates to tens of thousands of dollars per month from my understanding. I'm sure they made some from their Mac app as well. This is GOOD MONEY, don't get me wrong. But you'd have to really love self-employment to take this over a $2M payout and a $200k comp pack…
Who knows what was happening internally, but on the surface: strong team of 5, $1-1.5m revenue their first year, tremendous reputation and another product in the pipeline. What more could you ask for to make a long term go of it?
Unfortunately, this is what you get when you pay $10 for an app. There is a huge disparity when it comes to the cost of apps these days vs the salaries required to sustain the engineers who make those apps. Even at $10/pop, you need to sell a lot of apps just to sustain the salaries of very good engineers, and THIS is what makes great products vulnerable to acqui-hires. The problem is that the $0.99 model of the App…
Many users actually think everything should be free. And they even claim they are 'ripped off' because the free version of software does not do 'X'. And they post bad reviews and send hate emails. (First hand experience). Somehow, thanks for Facebook and Google, people feel entitled to free software and service.
Because the thing is, I think this app is quite wonderful the way it is right now. I don't need any more features. As long as I can keep using it, I will keep being happy with it.
Unfortunately, this is what you get when you pay $10 for an app. There is a huge disparity when it comes to the cost of apps these days vs the salaries required to sustain the engineers who make those apps. Even at $10/pop, you need to sell a lot of apps just to sustain the salaries of very good engineers, and THIS is what makes great products vulnerable to acqui-hires. The problem is that the $0.99 model of the App…
Maybe that's just a short-term effect (yay, sale!), but based on the week they sold Sparrow for $4.99, there's a good chance they would have made more long term.
App store economics are weird.
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Many users actually think everything should be free. And they even claim they are 'ripped off' because the free version of software does not do 'X'. And they post bad reviews and send hate emails. (First hand experience). Somehow, thanks for Facebook and Google, people feel entitled to free software and service.
I actually think we have Piracy to thank for this and perhaps to a lesser extent Open Source. There seems to exist a group of people who feel that piracy isn't just something that you do because you can't afford product X and feel marginally guilty about doing but something that is somehow a fundamental human right in a "people who pay for software are mugs" sort of way.
This could have been avoided if their software were open source, or if they committed to open sourcing it should they cease development on it.