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The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

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Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#171

Post by jinushaun »

steve8918 wrote: post #60

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…

How is $10 even an argument? Expensive software companies get acquired all the time, not just $1 App Store devs.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#172

Post by JumpCrisscross »

The solution to this is insisting on guaranteed support periods/contracts for software you use - if this comes free, great! If you have to pay for it, so be it.

Paying more for something just so you can nurse a philosophy you like is textbook irrational. If you are paying more for something vague, pin down what you want and pay for that precisely. Here we have a fear of software we love disappearing - pay, explicitly, for it not to disappear.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#173

Post by thirdsun »

mgkimsal wrote: post #131
thirdsun wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me about it - several of my friends who aren't very tech-savvy would nevertheless go to great lengths in order to have someone jailbreak their iPhones - not to escape the walled garden or other greater reasons, but simply because they heard there's free stuff to get. Of course this isn't limited to software as those are the same people that haven't bought an album in years.

Did they go so far as to pay someone to jailbreak for them? Or buy a jailbreak utility?

No, they just ask, express their interest and I usually try to explain that it isn't a very good idea to jailbreak - especially if you don't know what you're doing.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#174

Post by briandear »

joe_the_user wrote: post #166
jusben1369 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this argument at all. None of it. It's odd and quite frankly silly. It doesn't matter if the app was $10. Enterprise software companies, that sell for 5, 6 and 7 figures get acquired all the time. Their offerings then get EOL'ed many times. Free doesn't help you. $30 doesn't help you. $1 million doesn't help you. If a larger company believes that acquiring smaller company is attractive and writes a…

Open source helps if your app has a functioning eco-system. Oracle couldn't kill Open Office for example.

Open Office killed Open Office.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#175

Post by briandear »

kenjackson wrote: post #72
ben1040 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is spot on. Thanks to the App Store, the days of paying $30+ for boxed software and paying again every year or so for version n+1 (assuming it comes out at all) are pretty far back in the rear view mirror now. I paid $10 for Sparrow and got far more than $10 in value from it. So while I am disappointed that the best email app I have seen is EOL'd now I did get a decent value and I can't complain a whole lot. I a…

"Not everything can or should cost a buck." When I talk to many developers they tell me that everything should be free. How do you recalibrate the consumer's perception of the value of software, when so many developers don't value software either?

Exactly! When the torrentfreak folks start bitching about Kim Dotcom's problems, I think about that very point. How can anyone expect to be paid for their labor in creating something while at the same time arguing for wholesale software/music/movie theft under the shoddy justification that the marginal cost of digital content is nearly zero.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#176

Post by Peaker »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #94
tlogan wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some of us believe that copyrights impoverish society, and that paying for copyrighted content is encouraging the draconian copyright regime.

I personally use free software, but I'd rather pirate something than encourage copyright-ridden software.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#177

Post by lmm »

briandear wrote: post #174
joe_the_user wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source helps if your app has a functioning eco-system. Oracle couldn't kill Open Office for example.

Open Office killed Open Office.

Openoffice was dead to begin with; it never had a dev ecosystem outside of the people sun paid. All it did was kill more promising linux office projects (koffice, the gnome efforts).

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#178

Post by lmm »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #147
thirdsun wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me about it - several of my friends who aren't very tech-savvy would nevertheless go to great lengths in order to have someone jailbreak their iPhones - not to escape the walled garden or other greater reasons, but simply because they heard there's free stuff to get. Of course this isn't limited to software as those are the same people that haven't bought an album in years.

I know someone who jailbroke his iPhone so he didn't have to pay for a $10 navigation app to use to navigate his $40,000 Mercedes.

It's weird what triggers one's aversion to spending money. I had to really struggle with myself to buy the GBP4 app that let my GPB400 tablet do the very thing I bought it for. It feels actually offensive to be asked to pay for internet, though I'll happily pay for overpriced drinks in a place that does "free" internet.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#179

Post by Create »

lmm wrote: post #177
briandear wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open Office killed Open Office.

Openoffice was dead to begin with; it never had a dev ecosystem outside of the people sun paid. All it did was kill more promising linux office projects (koffice, the gnome efforts).

https://www.libreoffice.org/ is what it became, aside the ORA-IBM Apache project.

LO is actively developed and supported by both local and really Small ME-s, and the https://www.documentfoundation.org/

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#180

Post by wiz21 »

Pfff... The market has just "adjusted" : the value of a mail client is close to 0. That's what you pay almost zero for it; and that's why Googl payed almost 0 for its developers as well. Selling a mail client in the 21st century ? Let me laugh... There's 0 added value in it. All you do is provide a mrginally better experience and all the devs get is to solve the exponentially harder support issues. Their business model was wrong. Because a business model is not how to make money, it's how you are useful in the global scheme. Sparrow was not that useful it seems...
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