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On paying for software

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Re: On paying for software

#181

Post by rocqua »

gaius wrote: post #176
pxeboot wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually find open source developers to be far more passionate about their projects than developers of commercial software. This makes sense to me, as they work on these projects because they want to, not because they have to.

Passionate about making the installation process seamless on every distro? And all the other mundane, tedious tasks that are expected by users used to commercial software? My OSS project, which I haven’t worked on in ages to be fair, I never made any effort to make it work anywhere but on Debian for example. I know some people used it in Suse and RHEL so it can’t have been too painful but I never had that as a goal.

This is the other issue with 'linux on the desktop'. The linux desktop is massively fragmented. Notably this goes for desktop environments and package managers.

This makes it hard to target 'linux' in general with polished software. The issue of package managers seems on its way to being solved by containers. However, the issue of desktop environments is much more thorny. As you can't really abstract away the metaphors with which a user communicates with his PC.

Re: On paying for software

#182

Post by justinclift »

jcoffland wrote: post #154
justinclift wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we please dispense with this notion and start realizing one simple fact: people will typically only pay for something if you make them pay. Things to appear to be changing for the better though. As an examply, Gina Häußge is working full time on OctoPrint (3D printing software) supported entirely by donations: https://www.patreon.com/foosel There are probably others too, I'm just not aware of them and have only…

Gina Häußge is the only one making reasonable money on Patron for a software project, last I checked. I exchanged several emails with her about this very topic. Despite her success in fund raising, even she was concerned about the long-term viability of this sort of funding. I also am the author of an active Open-Source project. I accept donations but they have never amounted to much.

There do seem to be others. The author of Vue.js seems to be doing ok as well:

https://www.patreon.com/evanyou/overview

And yep, I definitely agree. The long term sustainability of projects via Patreon clearly hasn't been established yet.

But, at least some _are+ actually now making decent money, so we can find out how sustainable things are over time.

Hopefully it mostly goes well, but yeah... it's unproven thus far. ;)

Re: On paying for software

#183

Post by sudouser »

jrs95 wrote: post #106
ropeadopepope wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with open source is, for some reason, the developers feel no sense of obligation to the end users or the people who donate to them. MacOS devs do and will go out of their way to make sure their software is not just usable, but a sheer pleasure to use in every way possible. Yes, there are exceptions (I'm looking at you, Apple, with your Xcode and your Finder) but for the most part that's just the way thing…

Speaking of exceptions to this...they really need to fix their damn multi monitor support. It’s one of the few things Windows is far better at. I get that a small number of Mac users are even affected by this, but man would I appreciate that a lot more than Dark Mode. And I love Dark Mode.

turn spaces on

Re: On paying for software

#184

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dalbasal wrote: post #25
jarym wrote: post #5

I have experience selling to companies and I’ve found that even when they realise they need and want to pay for a piece of software they have absolutely no clue how to figure out what it’s worth. Consequently they engage in endless hardball negotiation and invite other suppliers to provide quotes (even when your offering uniquely meets all requirements). In the end the challenge is to get customers comfortable that t…

This is a great point. No one wants to be ripped off. Software basically can't be objectively priced. You might be selling £50k per seat software that competes with £50, or free. It sucks to be making that decision.

>Software basically can't be objectively priced. //

Can anything be objectively priced, how?

Re: On paying for software

#185

Post by rocqua »

jrs95 wrote: post #164
xur17 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What issues have you experienced with their multimonitor support?

It takes a long time to wake from sleep, sometimes over 30 seconds with monitors flickering on and off. Which monitor displays which desktop will change after unplugging and plugging back in, or even after sleeping and waking back up.

I've had issues on this with windows when using DisplayPort Daisy chaining. Now I've switched to using separate cables.

The point being that anecdotally, windows doesn't have it down either.

Re: On paying for software

#186

Post by watwut »

Rjevski wrote: post #174
ropeadopepope wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passion isn't a barometer of anything but whether the developer likes his job. It certainly doesn't translate into better or more user friendly software.

In OSS I tend to see the opposite. The more “passionate” developers tend to be passionate about some implementation detail (like respect for a particular standard, the Unix philosophy, Stallman-compliant licensing, etc) without giving a crap about the actual user experience in day to day usage. I see more passion in paid software in macOS when I see a beautiful UI because it shows that the developer actually wants me…

It is more that well run project has testers and analyst and manager that will open tickets for what you are not passionate about and missed. So, you have to fix it whether passionate or not, it is more about result then whether you feel like doing it.

Then, there are also badly run commetial projects, which are crap despite being paid for.

Re: On paying for software

#187

Post by copesc »

jcoffland wrote: post #154
justinclift wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we please dispense with this notion and start realizing one simple fact: people will typically only pay for something if you make them pay. Things to appear to be changing for the better though. As an examply, Gina Häußge is working full time on OctoPrint (3D printing software) supported entirely by donations: https://www.patreon.com/foosel There are probably others too, I'm just not aware of them and have only…

Gina Häußge is the only one making reasonable money on Patron for a software project, last I checked. I exchanged several emails with her about this very topic. Despite her success in fund raising, even she was concerned about the long-term viability of this sort of funding. I also am the author of an active Open-Source project. I accept donations but they have never amounted to much.

Sindre Sorhus has a successful Patreon as well:

https://www.patreon.com/sindresorhus

but he's kind of a unicorn (pun intended). I am sure this would not work for everyone.

Re: On paying for software

#188

Post by sireat »

pxeboot wrote: post #116
ropeadopepope wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with open source is, for some reason, the developers feel no sense of obligation to the end users or the people who donate to them. MacOS devs do and will go out of their way to make sure their software is not just usable, but a sheer pleasure to use in every way possible. Yes, there are exceptions (I'm looking at you, Apple, with your Xcode and your Finder) but for the most part that's just the way thing…

I actually find open source developers to be far more passionate about their projects than developers of commercial software. This makes sense to me, as they work on these projects because they want to, not because they have to.

The problem with passion that it may not be focused to what the end users might most need.

Think about OSS software you've written and contributed to. 99% of time it is to scratch your own programmer centric itch.

Usability usually takes a backseat in OSS model as not many usability experts are working for free.

Same goes for documentation. It is autodoc or nothing.

Re: On paying for software

#189

Post by slig »

zerr wrote: post #178
mherrmann wrote: post #9

As an indie dev of desktop software, I have grown tired of complaints that my products aren't free as in speech and beer. I now reply to such criticism by linking to this post: https://fman.io/blog/dear-comrade/

As for the security (against illegal copying), I'm thinking having a basic stuff - so it won't be very easy to crack, but also it shouldn't be very hard, so people in 3rd world countries are able to use it - these aren't the loss sales anyway, and also help in popularization. What might be a reasonable price in the west, might be worth of monthly salary for some living in poor countries - I wouldn't want to charge an…

Maybe you can create a page on your software website "$softwarename key generator" or something like that. And on that page you can give away a free key for those that are going to pirate it anyway. Bonus points for having detailed statistics about the wannabe pirates.

Re: On paying for software

#190

Post by zerr »

slig wrote: post #189
zerr wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As for the security (against illegal copying), I'm thinking having a basic stuff - so it won't be very easy to crack, but also it shouldn't be very hard, so people in 3rd world countries are able to use it - these aren't the loss sales anyway, and also help in popularization. What might be a reasonable price in the west, might be worth of monthly salary for some living in poor countries - I wouldn't want to charge an…

Maybe you can create a page on your software website "$softwarename key generator" or something like that. And on that page you can give away a free key for those that are going to pirate it anyway. Bonus points for having detailed statistics about the wannabe pirates.

Not sure, that might be too easy - maybe some potential buyer will use it as well?
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