71–80 of 110 posts
Does anyone have any estimates for how much money WinRAR has made over the years, and for whom? Is it just a one man shop, a big company with multiple developers, or what?
There are some clues: https://x.com/WinRAR_RARLAB/status/1703723906945691890 Most of their revenue comes from corporate licenses.
> If you're familiar with WinRAR, the Windows file compression tool, you'll know where this is going. WinRAR became infamous for offering a "30-day trial" that never actually expired. I remember Paint Shop Pro being even more famous for this. I certainly got to day five hundred and something of the 30 day trial. I seem to remember an interview with the creator where he was grateful even to users that didn't pay becau…
PSP eventually got sold to some for-profit company [sic]
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If you use it or have it installed after 30 days without a buying, your company has violated the terms of the license.
Happens all the time. In the company I used to work at, everyone in the web development team used the obsidian editor. I mentioned multiple times that I don't think it's free for commercial use, no one even bat an eye. I feel like people just don't care, especially if they don't have a stake in the company (which is very understandable but imo still not reasonable).
1) the company too small to attract a lawsuit, and nobody cares 2) the company does not have decent IT training 3) the company does not have a competent IT department
At the place where I work, we have been told clearly that we are not supposed to install third-party software without approval, and if we did that and specifically used the software in a way that violates ToS, we'll get a serious chat as soon as IT finds out.
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And Western European too. Just ask about Italy, Spain, France in the 90's... Companies did for working environments, with big software from AutoCAD and such, but no one paid it for learning purposes.
> And Western European too. Just ask about Italy, Spain, France in the 90's... And Sweden and... I'm starting to think this was worldwide, or at least "anywhere-outside-the-US". Many memories of me and friends hanging out on DC++, using cracked applications wherever we could, and most people around me did the same too.
Did you guys have dedicated open-air markets selling CDs with "software collections", "Windows essentials", "The best of Adobe" for $2 ... ? I remember visiting one in Moscow and it was wild. Every piece of software, including like Oracle and SAP ... lol. All for peanuts.
Still a good post, but not what I thought it would be.
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You mean like on HN, a site initially for startups, where every single time there is a post about some tool with payment, there are enough comments about free beer clones? Because why pay for the work of others, when only we matter. As someone from southern Europe, where there was hardly any original software being sold during 1980's and 1990's, one thing I gladly do today is to pay for the tools I use in production.…
It's different from HN, because back than e.g. a license of Visual Studio could easily cost as much as an annual income of a person in some/many countries.
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You mean like on HN, a site initially for startups, where every single time there is a post about some tool with payment, there are enough comments about free beer clones? Because why pay for the work of others, when only we matter. As someone from southern Europe, where there was hardly any original software being sold during 1980's and 1990's, one thing I gladly do today is to pay for the tools I use in production.…
I'm confused - are you upset that people offer free alternatives to software, or that people opt to choose those, or that people share links to those?
Then every couple of months later everyone is complaining there is no money in FOSS, that there are too many subscription fatigue, walled guardens and what not.
Of course they are, there is no other way to make money from trying to sell software if it doesn't come with a ball and chain, apparently.
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> European/xUSSR cultural background, where nobody paid for IP, for something that could be copied Isn't that more of the global culture? I mean, ok, not in business environments, but for most people around the world? Only a small fraction of people can afford buying software to any significant extent.
On the consumer side it's definitely global, but on the productive side it's somewhat unique. Eastern Europe had an odd combination of having a lot of cracked programmers and scientific culture combined with really crappy economics, so you had a lot of illicit, hacky solutions at a surprisingly high and professional level. Take Sci-Hub for example. That you have a Soviet Kazakh girl who had been coding from ten years…
Also for Alexandra Elbakyan of course:
Immich recently introduced a similar pricing model - you can buy a license, but there are no major features locked if you don't. https://buy.immich.app/ I think that this model is a great indicator that the software/content distributed is of high quality. Because no user will purchase this before even using it, but only after they form a opinion that it deserves the financial support.
I would much rather pay for free software than proprietary addons to open-core software.
Proud Immich Server license holder.