

Make it free or fail – a real world test (launch day) - kanebennett
http://kanebennett.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/make-it-free-or-fail-%E2%80%93-a-real-world-test-launch-day/

======
TimJYoung
I'm kind of with you on this. I'm not sure that certain segments of the
software world have done themselves any favors by giving businesses and
consumers the idea that software should always be free. No other industry
works this way, where the core product is given away for free and the actual
income must be garnered through donations/advertising/?.

Developing a product for fun is one thing, but taking the extra several
months/years to polish it and make it saleable, along with setting up the
necessary infrastructure to do so, is something that requires some possibility
of profit. Without this possibility, most developers won't bother, and we end
up with a ton of half-completed software projects that may have been something
good if seen through to the end.

I see this as especially a problem with developer tools/languages, which are
experiencing serious fragmentation and "language of the month" symptoms on the
free side of the market, while also experiencing significant consolidation
among the big players on the for-profit side of the market. A symptom of this
dysfunction is that the biggest platform (for all intents and purposes, it is
a "platform") in the world right now, the browser, only uses a single language
- Javascript. I can't think of any platform in the past 40 years that only
allowed the use of a single language.

Just to clarify: trial software and any business model that allows potential
customers to try out software before buying is a perfectly legitimate business
model. Giving away software for free, getting a bunch of users, and then
dumping the project because you can't afford to support it anymore, is not.
Such a model is a recipe for chaos and an industry in constant turmoil.

------
frobozz
I can't see how this experiment will work. By making this announcement, Kane
has skewed the results in favour of the free model.

The "control" group will consist almost entirely of keen early adopters and
well-wishers, with a handful of people who stumble upon the software without
seeing this blog post or anything related to it. Everyone else will wait for
the freemium period to start.

