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I Think Your App Should Be Free

blog.earbits.com

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Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#161

Post by phaylon »

tucosan wrote: post #145
buff-a wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And indeed the market has spoken, and most android developers have listened: Apps Should Be Free(mium). That's the difference between startups and Big Music. Startups figure out how to make money out of free apps.

>Startups figure out how to make money out of free apps. I don't know if most of them do. If I look around in the android market there are some great apps, that very likely do not make any money although they offer actual value to the customer. I don't get it, why should apps be released for free? Especially on Android I am surprised as to how many free(mium) apps are available, which could and should be paid apps, s…

> All in all it seems that this trend of releasing apps for free does nobody any good, since it will stall innovation at some point.

It does nobody any good? How about the users? I don't buy the "it will stall innovation" argument. Having Linux be free didn't stall innovation, quite the opposite. I'd even say without it being free, we wouldn't be where we are now in regards to innovation. Large companies would still be in control. I know many companies depending on Linux, Firefox, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Python, Java, Flash, Apache, BIND, OpenOffice, irssi, Postfix; and the many innovations these free products provided and facilitated. If I think about the projects that weren't out to make money, but to do something good, the value of free software becomes even greater.

But at the base of it all: For some of us technology is still more about solutions and making life better, rather than just money. I have a job, I'm happy, why should I take money for software I would've written anyway?

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#162

Post by untog »

sid0 wrote: post #158
dextorious wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You take moral issue to "calling piracy stealing" but not to pirating. Riiiight. Do you actively believe that morality is "mix and match what suits you" or is that just an implicit practice?

Of course I don't believe that morality is whatever suits you. Morality includes property rights, but I do not think the moral rights of the creator of some intellectual property, once his creation is released to the world, extend as far as to be able to impose arbitrary conditions on it. A creator is free to keep his creations private, but once he releases his creation to the market (presumably with the goal of gain…

But your previous posts say that you don't buy it because it's too difficult to do so. Which one is it?

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#164

Post by dionidium »

dextorious wrote: post #121
snippyhollow wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't steal anything (nobody no longer has it because of you), you pirated it.

Really? What a clever and original distinction. It makes all the difference to the guy that wanted people to PAY HIM to use his work, but instead they just use it and don't give him a dime.

You're being sarcastic, but it's not really a clever or original distinction. It's an obvious distinction that should always be kept in mind when comparing physical and non-physical goods. Your moral outrage falls flat.

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#165

Post by TheCapn »

I know this is only thinly related but I thought I'd post something that I heard from an investor that I met with a few months ago that we decided not to pursue a career with regarding app development for enterprise blackberry stuff... Disclaimer: I'm just posting his point of view and don't necessarily agree with it despite seeing his side of the argument.

My partner (at the time) and I met with him regarding an application we developed during our last year of University that had seen a lot of industry interest during our formal presentation. He wanted to meet with us and discuss helping us market the app because he was close friends with my friend's family and helped students like us previously.

His only real question to us regarding the app was our marketing plan. "Sell it" is not a very good pitch despite us not knowing what-so-ever what we wanted to do with it (or what we were capable of doing without shooing investors away). He brought up the point that whether we want to or not we should not be giving it away for free. Why?

His argument was that if we were to put a few months of effort into development of an app to give away for free we were essentially robbing ourselves. I myself am a strong avocate for OSS and had a hard time agreeing with him, I gave him a perplexing glace in favor of a "wtf". He continued by saying that if we were to dedicate that much time only to give it away we were robbing ourselves of those hours of labour we invested as well as preventing any other student/developer/whatever from being able to make a living from the product line. By us giving away something for free that had a real-world value we robbed others from entering the market to make a dollar.

His argument was that we must charge something for our work and if we don't want to make any money to give the proceeds away to charity. By doing that we could allow others to enter the market and make a dollar to fuel future efforts and development.

Its sort of a funny way to think of things and sometimes I find myself agreeing with him but I'm never certain... I felt the idea of "free software" preventing the developers from making their share of the effort is a good example of how his side of things can be right in many cases.

Again, not saying this is my viewpoint so don't get all "up in my grill" :)

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#166

Post by sid0 »

untog wrote: post #162
sid0 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I don't believe that morality is whatever suits you. Morality includes property rights, but I do not think the moral rights of the creator of some intellectual property, once his creation is released to the world, extend as far as to be able to impose arbitrary conditions on it. A creator is free to keep his creations private, but once he releases his creation to the market (presumably with the goal of gain…

But your previous posts say that you don't buy it because it's too difficult to do so. Which one is it?

I don't see how my posts contradict each other. I do not think "buy an optical drive, pay through the nose and wait a month for an imported CD to arrive" is a reasonable condition when the trivial alternative of pirating it exists. It's up to content creators to set saner conditions.

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#167

Post by rick888 »

snippyhollow wrote: post #42
decklin wrote: post #37

I pirated some music today[0]. I went to my usual shops to try to buy it, and for some reason the label had explicitly decided not to offer downloads of any sort. Just vinyl and CD. I wanted it now, and I couldn't really be arsed with those choices, so I stole it. What would an honest Android-app allegory for this be? Perhaps a consumer is faced with these options: 1. An official shop, which accepts money (yay!), giv…

You didn't steal anything (nobody no longer has it because of you), you pirated it.

When the guy that wrote the thesis theme for Wordpress was being demonized for violating the GNU license, people used the word "steal" and "theft", even though no code was actually stolen.

It's interesting to me because when something involves free software being used in un-intended ways, many here in the HN community have no problem describing it as theft. However, when it involves copyright violation, there are huge arguments about word usage.

This is just a tactic to make theft more acceptable. When you use nice words like "copyright infringement", people don't associate negativity with it and over time, people don't have a problem with it.

Over the course of the last 10 years, it seems to have worked. It's sad that many from the open source community have to be so hypocritical.

Also,

Identity theft is still called theft, even though your identity is not actually stolen.

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#168

Post by rick888 »

lwhi wrote: post #110

The ideas inherent in selling any form of IP are not sustainable. Our economics are traditionally based on finite resources - and economics involving sale of intellectual property allows an infinite number of transactions. In my opinion, we can not expect to make money from the straightforward sale of any form of IP for much longer. New models are being developed and services industries are adapting to offer the valu…

"Our economics are traditionally based on finite resources"

The finite resources aren't the final product, but the work that goes into it. Create Adobe Photoshop for me (not copy, but build from scratch).

"this is where the future is heading"

I no longer write applications. Everything I release is a service. In the past, there would have only been a one-time fee for my work, but now everyone needs to pay a monthly fee for it.

This is the result of piracy: monthly fees for everything.

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#169

Post by jbl »

earbitscom wrote: post #106
dools wrote: post #105

Is there not a way of giving your app away for free, and then encouraging users to setup some sort of subscription or purchase from within the app if they like it? People regularly provide voluntary financial support (tips, street performers)when it's easy and they see benefit. Unless the ev1l pirat0rs actually compiled a different version of your app in order to give it away for free without those messages (which se…

That's a perfectly fine choice for an artist to make. If they do not want to do that, and instead would like each person who takes a copy of their work to pay for it, is that not also a choice they should have? Your choice as a consumer should then be to either pay that person for a copy, or not take a copy and move on. Nobody is arguing that giving away music isn't a viable model for success - simply that it's not e…

I think this point of the argument has been unfortunately lost in the kerfuffle over whether charging for apps (or app installs, to split hairs) is a viable business model.

It should be fine for a developer (or musician, or other creator of content) to charge for their wares. If the app being available really is valueless or if the prospective customer doesn't believe it's worth what's being asked, they are free to move along and select a different product or to develop their own. I'm not sure why this concept is so looked down upon.

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#170

Post by davesims »

earbitscom wrote: post #62
davesims wrote: post #59

If musicians had nearly as much stake in their distributed product, from a percent standpoint, as a startup founder has in his/her business, or if the music industry were remotely as equitable, all things considered, as the software industry, then the essay's apparent allegory might ring a little more true to me. But the practical reality is musicians don't have a similar stake, or a similar chance at making a sustai…

The simple fact is that most startup founders not only create the products that define their success, but drive that success almost entirely on their own, with modest help from their investors. As much as everyone likes to hate on record labels, the good ones do almost everything involved in the business of making your music successful. The artist is the product, but very rarely does the artist drive the business. Mo…

You make a great point, that artists usually are terrible business people, and in a label relationship are usually passive and unaware. I think that, as much as any other aspect of the music industry, is what artists need to change.

The average artist could learn the world from the average startup founder. Most don't have the temperament for it, and that's unfortunate. But those that do can take control over their income and business model in ways artists 20 years ago could never dream of. Earbits, Spotify and Pandora (which will pick up interesting unsigned artists, I hear them all the time) are great examples. iTunes and YouTube are still and will remain for a long time, viable and important ways to raise your profile.

This is the just the world we live in, and many artists I think are slowly realizing this as well. You can't passively rely on a distribution machine that operates in near total numeric obscurity to treat you equitably. Artists have no choice but to become business-minded, social networking and new media-savvy, and aggressively creative in that area.

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