Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is selling software so weird?

zeptonaut.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 154 posts

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#121

Post by Existenceblinks »

paxys wrote: post #11

While all of this is mostly true, this problem isn't unique to software by a mile. The model of high fixed cost, low marginal cost applies to pretty much every consumer good or service sold in the industrial age. If you think publishing the first copy of a piece of software is hard, try setting up a new production line in a factory, or opening a restaurant, or producing a music album or movie. Yes it is hard to break…

Is there equivalent of "open source alternatives" and free forever plan for those other industries?

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#122

Post by photochemsyn »

Selling software is more like selling the blueprint to a house than selling the actual house itself. The blueprint may need to be customized for the local situation, just as software users may need to configure their software for their particular use case. Software runs on hardware, and probably the major cost should be the hardware, not the software.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#123

Post by wolftune »

This is just software folks trying to speculate about economics and not finding the right sources to make sense of things.

The KEY distinction between software and house is abundance vs scarcity.

Once software and house both exist, software can be used all at once by every single potential user. But the house can only be lived in by a few people at a time. Everything else about the economic distinctions flows from these facts. The "marginal cost" idea is correct but is a symptom of the fact that houses are *rivalrous* and software is not.

I gave a talk about this recently with further context at LibrePlanet (so it's aimed at software-freedom advocates, keep that angle in mind): https://framatube.org/w/ssYsun1bEXuL1nm5cT9ckw

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#124

Post by marcosdumay »

photochemsyn wrote: post #115
bob1029 wrote: post #49

> Low volume software is not a good business to be in. I disagree very strongly with this based on my experience so far. Being in the business of low volume software is fantastic if your customers are other businesses . The advantages of low-volume/complex B2B software biz are incredible to me. Contract terms are measured in half-decades. Your users can actually be trained and held accountable in many cases. You don'…

My only experience using really expensive software comes from the academic biotech sector, in which (for a while) there was a thriving high-end software business, with research groups paying $10K+ for a limited license for DNA sequencing and analysis software, and also software that came packaged with instrumentation, things like mass spectrometers, that cost $100K+. The stand-alone software for DNA analysis has been…

> from the academic biotech sector

Yes, academics will rewrite proprietary software. Collaborating is what they do, and Free Software is done basically the same way they do everything. They would rewrite it if it was free too.

Business will have a harder time doing the same.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#125

Post by kelseyfrog »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #37
gumby wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software still has the lowest marginal cost... I invite you to switch sectors to the pharma world. I worked on a program for a drug planned to be sold at $2,000/dose with a projected cost of $0.0025/dose. That figure included amortization for all the manufacturing equipment, QC etc and raw materials.

Having friends in pharma too, I never hear anything about the commercial end that I don't find disgusting. I get that like any business the goal is maximizing wealth, but feeling empathy for the "customer" makes the margins and decisions seem sickening. Honestly, the idealist in me says healthcare/pharma/research should be publicly owned and operated.

Pharma has the additional problem of inelastic demand. Deciding to purchase a candy bar or not is qualitatively different from deciding to purchase cancer treatment or not. Personally, I extend your idealism to any good that has highly inelastic demand. Using markets to price goods efficiently is not a goal I have in mind when I'm considering the distribution of these type of goods.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#126

Post by scott_s »

lr4444lr wrote: post #91

The main problem here is that houses and software have wildly different marginal costs It is "a" problem, I'll even admit a major one, but it's not the main problem. The main problem is the expectation of continual customization and improvement at the input of the customer. Imagine if houses were built by you contracting with the developer, and after the initial blueprint and plans were agreed to, every two or 4 week…

As others point out, that does happen sometimes with homes. There's a British tv show, Grand Designs, where it happens constantly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Designs

But, in support of your point, it usually does cause the builds to be over-budget and behind schedule.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#128

Post by ohwellhere »

zeptonaut22 wrote: post #109
depaya wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the very low-tech solution of simple HTML anchors to link back and forth?

Definitely! That's what my goal implementation will be compiled to, anyway. I use Hugo, a Go static site generator, to build the markdown posts into the site. Adding footnotes is just a matter of figuring out how to use the right syntax in the markdown, output the right anchors in the HTML, then sprinkling a little CSS on top. I'm 99% sure Hugo can do this, I've just learned to be wary of putting things in between my…

Hugo Markdown guide says yes: https://www.markdownguide.org/tools/hugo/

With link to syntax: https://www.markdownguide.org/extended-syntax/#footnotes

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#129

Post by [deleted] »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #74
xmcqdpt2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, the article doesn't take into account the fact that many developers work on in-house software and developer tooling that are not directly sold to anyone. Custom in-house development follows much the same principle as B2B products: the very high marginal cost are considered worth it by the business because of the degree of specialization they need or the advantage they gain over the competition. Of course I…

Caveat here is that you need to be a sufficiently large shop for this to pan out. Need the economies of scale on your side. I've seen several times smaller organizations attempting to adopt this model (because Google does it or whatever), with the result of the tools team being an enormous bottleneck for the organization.

[deleted]

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#130

Post by qiskit »

bob1029 wrote: post #49

> Low volume software is not a good business to be in. I disagree very strongly with this based on my experience so far. Being in the business of low volume software is fantastic if your customers are other businesses . The advantages of low-volume/complex B2B software biz are incredible to me. Contract terms are measured in half-decades. Your users can actually be trained and held accountable in many cases. You don'…

> Being in the business of low volume software is fantastic if your customers are other businesses.

And governments ( local, state, federal ). Security software ( network, dbs, servers, etc ) along with support can be quite expensive. Niche software to meet regulations ( especially in finance but I'm sure in other industries as well ) can be quite lucrative. Not everything has to be bulk or ads.

Post reply on HN