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

On paying for software

seths.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 279 posts

Re: On paying for software

#191

Post by justinclift »

Rjevski wrote: post #172
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but this sounds like an opportunity for something like “Uber for FLOSS support.” Or perhaps it would be more like OkCupid. But you could pay money and your FLOSS problems get researched and solved for you by a developer who is experienced in this area. In practice I can see this as a forum where people make minimal effort posts and skilled people give them quality support. Just as I was forming the previous sent…

The issue is that even if he managed to find a good developer to pay to improve some FLOSS software, it would come out very expensive in the end, first because the UI frameworks & libraries you get in the Linux world are nowhere near what you get on macOS, so the developer will require more time, and also because you won’t be selling that software later on to make any kind of money back since it’s FLOSS, and even whe…

Hmmm, that seems to forget that there's a large amount of Open Source software available on macOS too. :)

With the UI frameworks and libraries, what's your take on things like Qt then, which is cross platform and pretty decent for developers? At least the C++ ones anyway. :)

Re: On paying for software

#192

Post by heurist »

carapace wrote: post #115

I've always felt that charging money for software is dumb. I, as a programmer, think about saying to other people that they cannot use a piece of software that is already written unless they give me money, is a damn ridiculous idea. Software is wealth. If I had a gold coin that had the property that I could give it to you and still have it, and that both coins would increase in value when I did, and that you and I bo…

Software usually provides a unique service, so typically you'll want to charge for the service based on the value of your service's differentiator. But the exact pricing scheme will vary by industry/vertical. Some software may be priced by usage, some by subscription tier, some by seats or licenses. Pricing is usually the last thing developers want to think about because the best pricing is often counter-intuitive and tightly coupled to the customer's needs and mindset. Enterprises, for instance, understand seats and licenses because they've been buying software that way for 30 years. The subscription model we're focused on now is a recent development (last 10 years). Selling seats, licenses, copies etc is a sales tactic, not an engineering decision. That concept is changing but will only change as fast as the slowest megacorps. I'd say consumers are similar in that they're used to purchasing "copies" of retail goods at the store, so it's familiar to them. Trying to sell in an unfamiliar way usually fails. Why put that obstacle in front of yourself?

Personally, I put a lot of effort into my software and want to get as much as possible in return so I can be financially independent ASAP and enjoy family, nature, and hobbies to their fullest.

I think the bugs are all at my house, by the way ;)

Re: On paying for software

#193

Post by droidist2 »

afarrell wrote: post #158
jancsika wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is waaaay more efficient for these to be fixed by an engineer working not in their spare time, but as their full-time job. You miss the possibility of simply offering to pay a developer with the relevant expertise to fix one of these bugs for you. I can tell you from experience that there are FLOSS developers out there with sufficient expertise and professionalism to do this.

If I'm running an enterprise, perhaps then I can budget enough time and money to communicate about and pay for that and deal with the uncertainty inherent in software schedules. In my personal life...that sounds like a stressor that I'd be willing to pay money to avoid.

> In my personal life...that sounds like a stressor that I'd be willing to pay money to avoid.

Exactly, and a single citizen typically doesn't have the means to commission a software project, or even non-trivial fixes to an existing software project.

Re: On paying for software

#194

Post by justinclift »

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.

Depends on the individual I guess. :)

Years ago, I went through a phase getting the installer working well (cross platform) for a PostgreSQL replication project. FreeBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, RHEL, ... there might have been others too, it was a long time ago. ;)

Re: On paying for software

#195

Post by Animats »

To name a few, I’m glad to use and pay for: Overcast, Feedblitz, Discourse, Zapier, Dropbox, Roon, WavePad, Bench, Nisus, Zoom, Slack, SuperDuper, Mailchimp, Hover, TypeExpander, Tidal.

Those are services, not standalone software. (Tidal may be standalone, but it's from 1979.)

It's not like people are still buying Walter Bright's C++ compiler.

Re: On paying for software

#196

Post by justinclift »

afarrell wrote: post #151
cup-of-tea wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in the... You could donate to the FSF, OSI, or directly to the developers of most projects. Did you even bother looking?

I am well aware I can do that. But I don't have enough money to ensure that there is enough donation to ensure that there is enough support for those working on the projects to focus on it full time. The systems-level change of allowing developers to use copyright to require people to pay for their work comes much closer to ensuring that. > "did you even bother looking?" Also, when someone is building a product for m…

> When someone is building a product without a business goal focused on pleasing someone else, they are far more likely to be either passive in waiting for people to report things on mailing lists or to be actively annoyed with the reports and to occasionally express that frustration in a way that belittles users.

This seems (to me) like a cultural thing. In this instance, by "cultural" I'm meaning it depends on the culture of the Open Source project.

Many projects do seem to have developers that aren't really hmm... "user friendly" might be correct description. But not ever project is like that.

The PostgreSQL, SQLite, and DB Browser for SQLite Communities are all pretty user friendly.

As in, it's pretty rare to see a display of bad attitude towards someone reporting a bug, asking a simple question, or doing pretty much anything else in good faith.

Re: On paying for software

#197

Post by shmerl »

afarrell wrote: post #49

One of the reasons that I switched from Linx to OSX was so that I could pay for more of my software. Why? Because then I more of the software I used could be maintained by someone who had the time to dig into bugs and UI problems and to fix them. But in Linux, couldn't I just edit the source myself? Realistically, no. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to source-dive in a totally new project in a language I never…

This logic is flawed. FOSS software doesn't need to equal software that no one pays for. You want to support FOSS development? There are tons of projects which take financial support, feel free to contribute. You can also support companies which directly work on developing FOSS.

Re: On paying for software

#198

Post by justinclift »

tehabe wrote: post #26

I think I have never read a piece in which the word "single-minded" is used in a positive way. Mostly people refer to it as a bad thing. Also I don't think that single-mindness really helps developing good software people want to use. Because you already have to think about two things here.

Hmmm, people can be "single minded" on delivering a good experience for end users. Our project (DB Browser for SQLite) definitely has developers that are. :)

Re: On paying for software

#199

Post by dizzystar »

wazoox wrote: post #60
afarrell wrote: post #49

One of the reasons that I switched from Linx to OSX was so that I could pay for more of my software. Why? Because then I more of the software I used could be maintained by someone who had the time to dig into bugs and UI problems and to fix them. But in Linux, couldn't I just edit the source myself? Realistically, no. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to source-dive in a totally new project in a language I never…

I use Linux and most free software projects allow donations. I even donated to projects I don't actually use, like FreeBSD. I donated money to many free software projects, Ardour, Mozilla, LibreOffice, OpenBSD, etc. This is clearly a false dichotomy.

These are already supported by corporations. They pay millions vs your handful of dollars.

Re: On paying for software

#200

Post by user5994461 »

jancsika wrote: post #153
afarrell wrote: post #49

One of the reasons that I switched from Linx to OSX was so that I could pay for more of my software. Why? Because then I more of the software I used could be maintained by someone who had the time to dig into bugs and UI problems and to fix them. But in Linux, couldn't I just edit the source myself? Realistically, no. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to source-dive in a totally new project in a language I never…

> It is waaaay more efficient for these to be fixed by an engineer working not in their spare time, but as their full-time job. You miss the possibility of simply offering to pay a developer with the relevant expertise to fix one of these bugs for you. I can tell you from experience that there are FLOSS developers out there with sufficient expertise and professionalism to do this.

Expect 500 euros per day for a cheap developer in Eastern Europe. Maybe similar for Indian outsourcing or Latin American.

Expect over a 1000 dollars per day for a qualified developer in a first world location.

Point being. No individual can pay that much and the develop should rather get a day job unless the software has high earning potential.

Post reply on HN