

Kent Beck on why he charges for JUnitMax - hsuresh
http://www.threeriversinstitute.org/blog/?p=231

======
petercooper
_I’ve encountered the same attitude from other large, profitable companies and
large, profitable conferences. [..] My hosts are clearly planning to gain
value from my talk or they wouldn’t have said yes. In total they will spend
hundreds of thousands of dollars paying programmers to listen to the talk,
discuss it afterwards, and experiment with the ideas. But pay the presenter?
Inconceivable._

At RailsConf this year, I heard that the non-keynote speakers weren't paid and
weren't having their accommodation costs covered either. This _might_ be
entirely untrue (?) but I heard it more than once. If true, this decision
seems to have come at the expense of paying people like Tim Ferriss to espouse
truisms at big-bucks-per-hour instead.

I certainly hope that programming heroes like Kent aren't being left high and
dry because the money is going on pointless eye and mind candy at some of
these conferences..

~~~
autarch
The compensation for speakers depends on the _cost_ of the conference for
attendees, and also things like how many speakers they're bringing in.

I've helped organize a couple [small Perl workshops](<http://www.frozen-
perl.org>) where we charged $20/40 for the early bird rate.

At that cost, we really barely covered the workshop costs (venue & food
mostly) with some additional sponsorship. There was no way we could afford to
pay speakers at all. People come to support the Perl community and because
it's fun.

OSCON, OTOH, pays airfare, one hotel night, and $500 per tutorial to tutorial
speakers. But for "regular session" speakers, they just get in free. Of
course, OSCON costs $1740 with tutorials, and speaker can attend tutorials, so
it's not like you're getting nothing!

I would assume ORA did something similar for RailsConf. If you think the
conference is worth what they're charging, then free admission is a
significant value.

ApacheCon is a bit odd. When I spoke there way back in 2000 they paid airfare,
hotel, and something extra for all speakers. They can do that because it costs
about the same as OSCON but they have less than half as many tracks.

So each conference has a different value proposition for speakers and
attendees. Personally, I love the small community conferences, and will
happily pay out of pocket to go speak at them, because it's fun.

~~~
KentBeck
I have had good experiences getting paid by O'Reilly sponsored conferences.

------
stcredzero
The problem with trying to reason using the concept of "creating value" is
that "value" is such a transient, subjective, and ephemeral thing. Human
beings don't fully use logic when they assign value.

"Value" from the standpoint of markets is not the same as "actual benefit."
I'm not sure you can really measure the latter. If you try, you start living
Zen parables.

Let's take Adult Friend Finder as an example. It has "value" according to the
market. We know because it makes money. But the vast majority of its users
probably don't get what they think is the "actual benefit" they would've
wanted. But is even that an actual benefit? I now have a relationship with
mutual respect, love, and trust. I now see the goal of Adult Friend Finder as
a trap. The opportunity cost and risk of disease involved with finding casual
sex makes it seem less of a "benefit" to me.

It's like that story of the farmer and good luck/bad luck.
<http://www.timesquotidian.com/2009/04/17/good-luck-bad-luck/>

So where does this leave economics? There's still all of the game theory, but
the need for a more sophisticated outlook on human motivation is acknowledged
by the field.

~~~
adamc
I don't think Beck claimed it was a provable lemma; it was a leap of faith.

~~~
KentBeck
It was a leap of faith at first, but I also had 20 some years of data to back
it up after that.

~~~
trapper
Kent: I looked at your website and saw the price. 10usd per month for a
desktop product? That's pretty strange if you ask me. Subscriptions are
usually for server based installs or online value added services.

Price it like every other desktop dev tool on the planet: one off purchase +
with minor version upgrades + optional annual maintenance. Look at other
established players in the java dev tool market. Copy their pricing models.

Even though it's cheap I wouldn't consider it because of the pricing model you
are using. It just feels wrong.

~~~
stcredzero
_Even though it's cheap I wouldn't consider it because of the pricing model
you are using. It just feels wrong._

As I said above: human beings don't use logic when assigning "value."

------
10ren
_I proposed through a friend to give a talk on the project to his employer,
the research arm of a very large computing company.

If I insisted on being paid (as I have in the past) they would have said,
“Good-bye”._

Before forming an opinion, or recommending a solution, I need to get clear on
the situation: He's insisted on payment in the past, but he believes this time
they'll say "Goodbye". But he didn't ask them... so, it seems he's imagining
getting knocked back, without checking out the reality. Is that what he's
saying?

~~~
KentBeck
Thank you for following up before judging. I'll try to summarize more clearly.
I offered to give the original talk for the opportunity to get feedback on new
ideas and the opportunity to present JUnit Max (although it seems to me the
chances of significant sales are small). I also told them of my need for
revenue, to which they replied they had no budget. Then they asked to expand
the talk to a much larger audience and record it. I said "no" to that, which
triggered the post, because I haven't been in the habit of creating less than
the most value I could imagine.

~~~
10ren
It sounds like your talk was _partly_ a sales pitch... in which case
distributing it for free actually creates value for you (in terms of this one
aspect). By this interpretation, they _were_ reciprocating (in the only way
they could, given they have no budget).

"Technical skills make a technical success, but business skills make a
business success" - business skills being about how to make your product "easy
to buy". For example, a higher price can make it easier to buy, especially if
it fits into a category of products that the organization is used to buying -
and in the _way_ they are used to buying them. It's part of "positioning" it
in the customer's mind. This is all simply seeing it from the customer's point
of view. These things don't directly improve your product, but they do help to
communicate it to other people, which is also intrinsically worthwhile.

The economy is bad and perhaps also comp sci is finally ending its multi-
decade growth phase. There's always a place for anyone who creates value, but
perhaps the days of "it's raining soup grab yourself a bucket" are over, and a
different strategy is needed (Disclaimer: this is a guess. I'm not yet
sufficiently deluded to think I can predict the future).

More generally, I think I have had exactly your dilemma (and still do). I
don't have a solution, but perhaps some camaraderie. It's the philosophy of
doing whatever does the most good. It feels good (and I think it is good). I
believe that if you create value, someone will work out how to pay you. It's a
wonderfully inspiring and freeing philosophy - and it makes me feel happier
and feel like a pure, innocent person. Also, people want to help you. And for
me, it was also inspired by Bucky (his epiphany by the lake - which some
spoilsport pedant has apparently debunked as the exact place for it, claiming
it's more like a constructed founder's story. Anyway).

The disillusionment for me was in open source: for a developer tool I wrote,
people took the help I provided, but didn't give anything back [1] . I did
have sales [2], but because there was no pressure to pay, huge organizations
would take 3 months to pay [3]. I really hated waiting for the other shoe to
drop [4].

Today, I believe that if I create value, it is OK for me keep some of that
value. This seems to be right and true... but it doesn't make me happy, and it
isn't inspiring or freeing.

I'm currently working on a patentable enterprise developer tool, that I plan
to initially sell at a high price to large organizations. As the tool becomes
more general, I will lower the price, until eventually it is cheap enough for
anyone to afford. I think this is good, and sensible... but it also makes me
feel a little sick at heart. So I don't know the answer, but hopefully I've
offered some camaraderie. Do let me know if you work out an answer! :-)

    
    
        [1] which is part of the open source deal - I just didn't like it
        [2] dual licensing, like Ghostscript
        [3] to be fair: everyone who said they'd buy it, did eventually buy it
        [4] I'd much prefer they didn't tell me they were going to buy it,
        so I didn't have to worry for 3 months.

~~~
KentBeck
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I do feel a sense of camaraderie. Doing
things that are valuable and not receiving value is out of balance. Not being
funded to create the next increment of value is seriously wrong (non-optimal
for society).

I'm not asking anyone else to fix this for me. It's my responsibility to find
my place in this new market in a way that let's me contribute and benefit. I'm
glad to know my observations aren't just loony (or at least that I have
company).

------
adamc
Reading this story makes me wonder as to the basis for his complaints. Did the
environment really change (and is it more than the current slowdown)? Did
Beck's expectations gradually change? Are other leading consultants
encountering thin times? Is there reason to think they will persist? It's hard
to reason from anecdotes.

------
gojomo
Something like TipJoy (even if TipJoy isn't the first to find the right
formula) should eventually work for these free-floating givers-of-value.

But, somewhat as with musicians, there may be a lot more people who would like
to follow this path than the market needs -- meaning the financial
appreciation will be spread pretty thin.

