
On paying for software - gbugniot
https://seths.blog/2018/06/on-paying-for-software/
======
afarrell
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 use, especially without someone
willing to give me a walkthrough of the architecture and fundamental models of
the program. 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.

A developer targeting OSX knows they have an audience of people willing to pay
him money so he can spend his whole day doing usability tests and his evening
watching a little league game.

I do miss strace though.

~~~
wazoox
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.

~~~
ropeadopepope
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 things are in the MacOS app ecosystem.

Open source, on the other hand, is like trying to shave with a razor blade
with no handle. It's a hard sell to get people to donate to projects that they
know are going to cut them at some point.

~~~
pxeboot
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.

~~~
gaius
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.

~~~
rocqua
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.

------
mherrmann
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/](https://fman.io/blog/dear-comrade/)

~~~
matheusmoreira
Paying for software may be _moral_ , but it certainly isn't _natural_. As the
game's developer, you're the scare resource. Making copies of the finished
game itself costs approximately $0. Copyright makes your game _artificially_
scarce so that you can charge for it. It's a phony concept that exists to
support an unnatural business model. The real business model should be players
paying you directly to develop and update the game they want to play for as
long as they want to play it.

~~~
kaibee
> but it certainly isn't natural.

So what? Nothing about software development is 'natural'. I don't even know
what definition of 'natural' you're using here.

> It's a phony concept that exists to support an unnatural business model.

It's a social construct that we've adopted in society because it allows for
things we like.

> The real business model should be players paying you directly to develop and
> update the game they want to play for as long as they want to play it.

This is a valid business model for some games, but there are many games that
would not exist without such a model. I'd prefer that those games exist
instead of insisting that reality should be the way that fits nicely with my
arbitrary mental models.

~~~
matheusmoreira
>I don't even know what definition of 'natural' you're using here.

Copying data is a fundamental operation that all computers are able to perform
and it costs nothing. Therefore, data is _naturally_ easy to copy.

Software doesn't need to be _manufactured_ like physical goods do: the
software construction step is fully automated by compilers and build systems.
The cost of all this is approximately $0. Networks aren't free because of
bandwidth costs, but they still make it really easy and cheap to copy data to
a lot of computers.

Since games are software and software is data, it is rather easy to distribute
them to an unbounded number of machines. Even if you come up with some
complicated copy protection scheme, people only need to crack it once and
produce a DRM-free version of the game that will work everywhere and won't do
stupid things such as require an internet connection. Even cryptographically
secure platforms such as the PS4 eventually got cracked and the first thing
people did is enable the execution of unsigned software.

>insisting that reality should be the way that fits nicely with my arbitrary
mental models

That's exactly what copyright does.

~~~
Torwald
> Copying data is a fundamental operation that all computers are able to
> perform and it costs nothing.

That is not true. Running, maintaining, etc the IT infrastructure is costing
money, electricity etc. It doesn't come for free.

~~~
ttoinou
Marginal and transaction costs are very low.

But you are right on the principle : storing, copying and transferring data
always costs energy (in physics, temperature, energy and change of entropy are
linked together)

~~~
Torwald
OK, maybe you still have a point. What then, would be the threshold for
saying: now, at this point, the costs of X are not marginal anymore but
substantial enough to be taken into account?

~~~
ttoinou
Depends on what you are thinking about ? Such cost always need to be taken
into account, but IMHO in general we must always differentiate material things
(that are formed from matter and its organization) and information (i.e.
concept of entropy, ideas, thoughts, songs, language, jokes etc..) which have
temporary physical supports but exists apart from them

~~~
Torwald
Good distinction, I agree. This leads me to this: If, for example a song, is
not written down anywhere, but some brains contain it, this means there some
people who could reproduce this song by singing it, this song would still
exist. Is a brain a temporal physical support unit in our sense?

~~~
ttoinou
Yes of course. As long as we have electricity in our brains we can store and
process information. The very precise implementation of this would require to
study biology (it's already interesting to see that we run on electricity like
computers!).

~~~
Torwald
Ok, cool, now, how is the number eight, for instance. Does it exist only
because human brains have it in it? Or do numbers exist in the universe
outside our brains? Can we answer this? This would be an important step in IP
rights and all that…

~~~
ttoinou
It's a whole philosophical question...I would say yes maths and humans
abstractions exist independently !

------
andmarios
Most of the “software” mentioned in the post, are actually services (slack,
zoom, tidal, etc). For many people, it is easier to accept to pay for a
service rather than software.

While I do use paid services, I usually “pay” (donate) for free and open
source software. Why? It helps me get my work done, support is usually good, I
set the price and I know that people who aren't as fortunate as I (being able
to afford to buy software) can use it for free and get the same opportunities
as me. :)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
The marginal cost for software is zero, the marginal cost for services is non-
zero. This puts a floor under the price. People don't accept that they have to
pay, rather they are given no choice.

~~~
dalbasal
Often.. but for a lot of software businesses, the difference between being
software or software as service is a choice, and cost is often a minor
implication of the choice.

------
jarym
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 they’re paying a
fair price for what they’re getting. That however is much easier to say than
to do.

~~~
dalbasal
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.

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

Can anything be objectively priced, how?

~~~
RandomCSGeek
I can buy apples at a somewhat objective price by comparing the price provided
by other sellers in nearby stores. Also the price will be mostly affected by
supply vs demand.

OTOH, softwares prices can be affected by too many parameters.

Then again, IT industry is a child when compared to say, mechanical or Civil
industries.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Your first method just overprices/wrong-prices the whole market. I'd argue
that supply-demand doesn't give fair pricing (which presumably is what's meant
[in part] by objective), if you can make something very cheaply does that mean
you objectively deserve to be very rich simply because you've got a corner on
that market?

------
shawnfratis
I would not have a problem paying for software if what I was paying for didn't
suck. Case in point: I have never been very happy with Win 10 since I got it,
but in recent weeks it has become completely unusable, mostly because of their
constant upgrades and behind-the-scenes processes that slow my machine down to
a crawl. Out of frustration I wiped my drive and installed Ubuntu. Granted,
Linux has it's share of problems but still works much better for my uses. So,
one OS is paid and one isn't. Guess which? :/ My personal gripe is that it
seems to me, when it comes to basic customer service, we the customers are on
the bottom of the totem pole. Software companies spend more time worrying
about how to reassure their shareholders than they do about making sure we
have a usable, hassle-free product, and I've been seeing this trend getting
worse in recent years. So until that thought-process changes these people will
not get my money. As far as I'm concerned, at this point anyway, FOSS is the
lesser of two evils.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _So, one OS is paid and one isn 't._

Quoting from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_\(company\)):

 _Canonical achieved a small operating profit of $281,000 in 2009, however
until 2017 it struggled to maintain financial solvency and took a major
financial hit from the development of Unity and Ubuntu Touch, leading to an
operating loss of $21.6 Million for the fiscal year 2013.[19] The company
reported an operating profit of $2 Million in 2017 after shutting down the
Unity development team and laying off nearly 200 employees. The company now
plans to focus on its server and professional support solutions, which have
proved to be most profitable. By shifting resources away from Ubuntu Desktop
and cutting less profitable products and services, Canonical plans to maintain
solvency and achieve long-term profitability._

"one isn't" (your words) to the extent that they had to switch focus away from
the desktop OS to stay afloat. Much as people would like to pretend otherwise,
the almighty dollar/euro/yen/etc. is still what matters most.

~~~
michaelmrose
I'm not convinced that unity every added much value to ubuntu it seems like
they could have spent a small fraction of the money customizing gnome/cinnamon
or actually shipping plasma with up to date deps and come out way ahead both
for users and monetarily.

------
nebulous1
Even Stallman doesn't have anything against paying for software. Seth's point
1 is reasonable. Point 2 is about paying for support, not paying for the
software itself. Point 3 is no point at all, it's just rephrasing point 1 (ie
marketing is about the business, not the software).

------
lifeisstillgood
I see the use of OSS in government services as almost a moral imperative-but
the first point seth makes is crippling this "you need money to write the
software in the first place"

Take voter management software - the preparation of polls, counting of results
etc. all this software behind it is afaik propriety but used exclusively by
the public sector - which seems mad, and even risky when we look at electronic
balloting, but can one persuade any government to kickstart the process of
building new? i cannot

Edit: thinking of this, what chnage would a kickstarter project stand to build
a base of oss government software?

(I know things like GDS and 18F exist but they are not covering the full range
of services - see [http://oss4gov.org/manifesto](http://oss4gov.org/manifesto)

~~~
mikece
The software might be free, but nobody acquires mission-critical software
without a support agreement -- which is certainly not free -- unless they
don't value staying employed. We might not like Diebold (or whatever name they
go by now) but _someone_ has to be an accountable party for supporting
electronic voting systems.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
free as in beer is irrelevant - free as in speech that i can read, check
verify and is what matters - so i would envisage (and encourage) a network of
"certified in using votermachine-oss" contractors that can be called upon or
paid for, in a retainer fashion, and most importantly some means of priming
the pump

------
open-source-ux
Why is it so hard for developers to make a full-time living selling their
open-source software? Are the available options stacked against them?

Thousands of developers make money building products or services for clients
using open source software. But what if you don't want to be a consultant and
simply want to charge a business for using your open source product?

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) says that you can sell your free software
by charging for distribution (for example via CD-ROMs). Physical media made
sense in an era of dial-up modems and low-bandwidth connections, but no-one
can realistically charge for distribution today - not least when so many
projects are hosted for free on GitHub. See:
[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html)

So what are the alternatives?

\- There's the dual-licencing approach e.g. Red Hat. (Naturally doesn't work
with permissive licences. Requires a strong copyleft licence like the GPL).

\- The open core approach e.g. GitLab.

\- There's also the option of charging for support only - I'm guessing this is
an unattractive and unappealing option for many developers who'd much rather
be building their product.

\- Or there's the Kickstarter or Patreon approach which simply isn't a stable,
sustainable long-term solution.

There have been some alternative licence approaches such as the Fair Source
licence (fair.io). This is neither open source or closed source but allows
developers to charge for their software.

The large market for Wordpress plugins is an interesting case study. Wordpress
is published under the GPL v2, but many Wordpress plugins are not open source.
No one polices this, but those plugin developers are selling their software to
businesses who are willing to pay for the features of those plugins.

So who here in 2018 has made a success selling their open source software? Did
you follow one of the models above? And who has struggled to make it work?

~~~
pjmlp
As someone that was part of an effort to do this in the early .com days, it is
a lost hope trying to sell open source software to consumers.

While selling to enterprise can be made via consulting and training, most
consumers just want a one time shot paying for their software.

Well, if you do that with commercial software, usually the only way to avoid
paying is piracy.

In open source world, they can just go to another guy that is re-packaging
your work and making it available for free, thus killing your source of
income.

Which is the major reason most desktop software shops are going the store
model, hoping that higher control will prevent that kind of workaround (which
doesn't work with rooted devices anyway), or forcing consumers to migrate to a
SaaS like in the good old timesharing days.

I might add that FOSS developers are the first to blame, as contrary to most
professions, many go to great lenghts to avoid paying anything, while feeling
entitled their costumers pay them.

I am overgeneralizing here, but you see it every time someone comes up with
licensing changes as means to be able to keep working on the product that they
love, right away the forum gets flooded with free beer alternatives and vocal
complaints how everyone is going to migrate to something else.

~~~
tormeh
I don't think the primary problem is cost, but that when you build your
product tightly coupled with a propretary product that is hard to migrate off
of then the vendor of that product can shake you down, or they can go bankrupt
or what have you. It makes your business vulnerable, and no one wants that.

Also your production environment crashing because a license expired. Fun
times.

~~~
cableshaft
I agree with this. That's why I avoid most web and SAAS platforms for things
nowadays. I make an exception for things where I can get my data off their
platform in a format I want pretty easily (i.e. I will use Google Docs because
I can easily download the files as DOCX or PDF files) or the data I'm storing
with them is mainly settings or preferences (I.e. Youtube knowing I'm
subscribed to X publishers).

I've been burned a few times and lost data just because a company goes out of
business, or I decided I wanted to use a different platform and all my data
from before was locked in to this other proprietary system.

So yeah, if you're coming up with this hot new productivity/task software and
I can't either download the data in an open format or at least use the
software on the desktop, 100% offline? No thanks.

And in general I hate subscriptions unless I'm getting access to libraries of
content, i.e. Spotify, Netflix, or it's just for updates. By that I mean I get
the software and a year's worth of updates when I paid for the license, and
it's mine, you can't take access away from me, I have it for as long as I
want, and I only pay again when I decide I use the software enough and the
updates are compelling enough that I really want to update.

Which is another reason why SAAS and Web apps don't really work for me,
because they almost invariably charge a monthly fee and there's nothing to
download so I just lose access the moment I stop paying. There are exceptions,
but those are rare (mainly web hosting and cloud storage).

It's for this reason why I refuse to pay for Adobe Suite, because you only
have access for as long as you pay the monthly subscription. Screw that, my
copy of Adobe Illustrator pre-subscription still gets the job done fine
thanks. I might have upgraded by now if they hadn't switched to a subscription
model, but now I'm going to keep using that as long as humanly possible, then
search for an alternative.

~~~
ghaff
In all fairness, the software that you buy today is almost certainly going to
stop working at some point in the future as you upgrade your OS etc. So,
unless you can download data into some reasonably open format, you will
eventually lose access anyway.

That said, I don't disagree with your basic point. In the case of Adobe, I use
one of their programs fairly heavily. But most everything else is once in a
blue moon. As a result, their Suite subscription doesn't work for me as I'm
perfectly happy running something from a few versions back. Subscriptions only
make sense for things you use pretty regularly.

------
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.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
At least 3 of those are desktop software.

------
rolandas
Great post.

On the same note, paying for software has psychological benefits for the
person as well, which I wrote about recently [https://rolandas.blog/posts/id-
rather-pay-for-software-than-...](https://rolandas.blog/posts/id-rather-pay-
for-software-than-get-it-for-free)

------
ahati
I believe corporate red tape one of reasons to not-pay for a software licence.
If you download the trial or non commercial edition, works for you, you would
never go through chain of approvals to buy a cheap software.Meare player is an
example that you can think of. Araxis merge, Visual studio, Visio are some to
name a few.

~~~
mikece
Depends on where you work. I've been in shops where developers had a certain
amount of money -- $500 or $1000 -- to buy whatever work-related tools they
deemed to be helpful in getting their jobs done. Those tools could be software
(Beyond Compare and ReSharper being popular ones) or hardware (monitors!) and
up to that amount there were essentially no questions asked (the only caveat
being if you spent on stuff that was not needed you risked ruining it for
everyone else so you ran the risk of a getting a Code Red from the dev team if
you wanted to spend wastefully). As much as companies spend on finding and
keeping good developers, dropping $1k/each per year for things that make them
happy is chump change.

------
shawnfratis
>Ubuntu gives you a very clear option to pay for it when you download it.

If it works for you and you want it to keep working, making a donation/payment
may not be the worst idea.

Yes, agreed. However, one of the points I think I'm trying to make is that
that paying for a piece of software doesn't automatically make it better
quality. I think that a lot of people in the free software world do try and
put as much effort into making a good product as the ones in the paid world.
Even under the pressure of not knowing how they're going to pay their
mortgage. :/

------
jensv
Bruce Eckel had some ideas about a better model to fund open source projects.
[https://bruceeckel.github.io/2016/06/20/a-model-to-fund-
open...](https://bruceeckel.github.io/2016/06/20/a-model-to-fund-open-source-
projects/)

------
js8
I was thinking about this recently, maybe FOSS isn't quite ideal for the
developers.

As long as nobody is compensated, it is very fair system. But if somebody gets
compensated for their work, then if their work depends on other people's work
for free, the other people not being compensated is not fair.

For example, consider somebody producing Youtube videos using FOSS. They are
compensated, yet the authors of the tools they use are not (necessarily).

FOSS basically started as a radical revolt against copyright system, which is
somewhat dysfunctional, but its purpose was to make compensation fair.

But maybe a better copyright system would actually help. Say limit copyright
to 5-10 years. The short term would remove the huge gap between doing
copyrighted work and doing work for free, and make them more compatible with
each other.

~~~
ghaff
>FOSS basically started as a radical revolt against copyright system

FOSS _depends_ on the copyright system in order to operate. If you don't have
rights to created works you have no rights to impose reciprocal obligations on
downstream users.

~~~
js8
It kinda does, but it's an open question whether it's a requirement.

In recent years, many programs became BSD-like licensed and it didn't impede
the availability of their source code. Similarly, in the world of Minecraft,
many mods started closed-source but free, and eventually became open-sourced,
because it turned out to be beneficial on its own.

I actually like the free software philosophy, but it might be that the
copyleft clause is not required if there is enough rational self-interest.
However, in the current copyright system (where the copyright lasts
effectively forever), this self-interest commands to hoard the source code
(for the duration of the copyright).

~~~
dragonwriter
> I actually like the free software philosophy, but it might be that the
> copyleft clause is not required if there is enough rational self-interest.

At least RMS’s form of the Free Software philosophy sees preventing non-free
software, not encouraging free software, as the highest goal. In this version
of the philosophy, tools that prevent even a small amount of non-free software
being made are valuable even if they don't do anything to encourage free
software (and even if they impede it somewhat.)

~~~
js8
Proposal to shorten copyright to 5-10 years wouldn't prevent philosophy of
free software to function.

It would be additional incentive to release the source code after it enters
public domain.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Proposal to shorten copyright to 5-10 years wouldn't prevent philosophy of
> free software to function.

It would certainly not be helpful to the implementation of the philosophy of
the part of the Free Software movement (which includes RMS) that wants to
prevent non-free software from being created to the extent possible.

~~~
js8
I am not sure what you mean. RMS himself expressed many times that the
copyright term should be shortened.

Remember, the copyright was created in order to promote creativity. If the
term was short enough, then lots of useful software could be created based on
the source code that is in public domain which was previously monetized by
being closed source. This additional software would be an economic win for
everybody.

------
microcolonel
If more of the developers who work on the software I use had Patreons or
similar, I would pay monthly. Until that day I'm happier with a lot of the
free software that I can't even pay for, than I am with a lot of the software
I could pay for.

------
xstartup
There are many areas where you can create opensource projects, for example,
SaaS subscription management platform with plenty of payment, tax, fraud
detection plugins.

Last time I heard there are so many SaaS indie developers forced to add WHMCS,
amember pro or Woocomerce/Shopify for collecting payments using crypto,
stripe, and PayPal. I mean, these platforms aren't for SaaS!

Then offer a hosted version which implements high availability, load
balancing, robust failproof backups.

Most developers start their projects in areas which are unlikely to pay off, I
don't blame them for this as it's something they find interesting but we
shouldn't expect the market to pay for our interest.

------
mAEStro-paNDa
Although the author failed to mention, the comments here pointed out the
distinction between software from a little guy innovator and a huge
corporation. That content was glossed over in the article, but it seems to be
a very important part of the conversation about free/paid software.

Not only that, but there's an underlying assumption here that some person or
company has to receive a wage or profit for a software to be maintained or
repaired, which is simply not true.

~~~
afarrell
> there's an underlying assumption here that some person or company has to
> receive a wage or profit for a software to be maintained or repaired, which
> is simply not true.

Indeed, one can have unpaid maintainers. But it is more difficult to keep a
healthy team running when none of them can focus full-time on the thing
because all of them have to support themselves with other jobs.

------
vslira
Is there any license that makes software free (as in beer) for
contributors/maintainers and paid for everyone else? This way it would be
possible to alleviate the free riding problem while providing a mechanism to
use software free of charge. Maybe this could work with networks of projects,
so contributing to numpy would let you use scipy for free. Add exceptions to
personal/non commercial use if necessary. Something like that

~~~
arcturus17
At this point you're operating a propietary software company that offers a
"contribute and get the software for free" perk. You need to manage access to
your closed source code and decide what is a viable contribution, etc. Sounds
to me like this would have the potential to be a PR and legal nightmare.

------
tehabe
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.

~~~
justinclift
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.
:)

------
paulcole
> I like being the customer (as opposed to a social network, where I’m the
> product).

Interesting concept. Can anyone expound on what he means by this?

~~~
IncRnd
In a "free service" the service company often makes money by selling ad space
to third parties for displaying to users or by selling user information to
third parties. In each of these models, the user of the service, who isn't
paying money, is actually the product not the customer. Yet, many users
believe that these free services are being run for their benefit free-of-
charge, which is clearly a bad assumption to make.

------
carapace
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 both can repeat the process endlessly, then there is no
good reason not to give out the coin copies freely.

One model of a computer is a set of automatic functions that each solve some
human problem or need. We should all be working together to expand that
library of functions as rapidly as responsibly possible.

Attempting to extract value from the economy per-copy is retarding the whole
system. It's a selfish local optimization. My basic argument is that we should
use computers and software to globally maximize human happiness and
contentment, and avoid local optima.

tl;dr: "Don't be greedy."

So how do you make money? First, if you want a lot of money, open a bank.
Let's narrow the question: How do I make a living? House, picket fence,
family, doge and qat, gotta have a car, etc... Let's put a ceiling on it, even
if it's high. Let's also avoid discussion of financial meta-games, you save
and invest, so if you avoid misfortune you're more or less going to be okay,
right?

So, how are programmers supposed to make enough money to live the dream if we
don't charge per copy?

First of all, the best way to do it since the dawn of the internet is simple:
Get 10,000 fans who love you and sell them stuff. (Or just ask them to support
you, like the Zig creator is doing.) This is a simple, easy, universally
accessible method that's pretty much guaranteed to work.

Second best way: get paid to solve _new_ problems (one thing I am _not_ saying
is that you shouldn't charge people to work on a problem you otherwise
wouldn't work on, that's fine. Charging people to use your solution after it's
been developed is the stupid thing to do, IMO.)

Third(-ish, this list isn't precise nor prescriptive) teach people. I think
that learning the Turing Machine trick makes people think better, and learning
to program obviously empowers them. (I remember the first time I used an iPad,
I thought "this isn't a computer, it's a mall in your hand") The information
revolution is still happening, and people need your help to navigate it and
reap the full benefits.

Fourth, here's the meta-most: You should be living in a very-low-overhead way
_right now anyway_. We have to learn to live in harmony with Nature or we are
about to tank our whole civilization. Go outside, it's June, _where are all
the bugs?_

~~~
afarrell
> Charging people to use your solution after it's been developed is the stupid
> thing to do, IMO

I think this is the core of what I disagree with in your post. Imagine 3
scenarios:

1) I have a problem that I'd like solved and I go searching for a solution.
After a while, I come across a reddit post where someone says "oh, you're
trying to reticulate splines? You should buy ReticulatorPro for $50. I use it
and its great!" I see that someone built it 3 years ago and I go and download
the 1 month free trial, I'm happy with it and in 1 month, $50 comes out of my
bank account.

2) I have a problem that I'd like solved and I go searching for a solution.
After a while, I come across a reddit post where someone says "oh, you're
trying to reticulate splines? Someone is trying to fundraise to build it and
they seem pretty serious." I see that they've been trying for 6 months and
they are 70% of the way toward their goal. So I pitch in $50, but then I'm
waiting as the uncertainty of fundraising and software schedules takes its
toll. 18 months later the solution is released. I am less happy.

3) I have a problem that I'd like solved and I go searching for a solution.
After a while, I come across a reddit post where someone says "oh, you're
trying to reticulate splines? Someone is trying to fundraise to build that." I
see that someone built it 1 year ago and I go and download it for free and I
am happy.

In the current world, all of these are possible. In the world you propose,
option #1 is impossible. I argue that a world with Option #1 available is a
better world for everyone. Why? Because in the world of option #2/#3, the only
time period during which the developer can raise money is _before_ the product
has been created. That means only products with sufficiently good pre-
development marketing can be successful. (note: "Get 10,000 fans who love you"
isn't "easy" but at least moderately difficult.) In the world of #1, someone
who isn't good at pre-development marketing but _is_ good at building a
product and using the quality of the product to do post-development marketing
can succeed.

I want a world where someone can build a good product and get funding mostly
on the strength of their product.

> teach people

Is a valuable but different skill from building products.

~~~
carapace
> In the world you propose, option #1 is impossible.

You can still send $50 to the creator of ReticulatorPro?

But that's not quite your point, is it?

You're saying that I, as a developer, should be able to work on a product that
doesn't have enough qualified demand (pre-sales or crowd-funds) upfront to pay
for its development costs, and expect to cover my gamble by requiring
customers to give me money before allowing them to use it after I've already
written it? Is that right?

~~~
afarrell
Correct.

~~~
carapace
Okay, cool.

Meaning no disrespect, what I'm saying is, I think that's dumb.

Not the first part, that's a problem I face personally: I'm a developer
working on a product that doesn't have _any_ qualified demand upfront. (Heaven
help me, it's a _programming language_!) I'm really hoping the Zig creator's
plan works out because that would be my ideal life (modulus living in NY.
Wonderful city, but I like forest.)

The second part: attempting to limit copying of a digital artifact after it's
been written is really hard and I think that setting up your business strategy
to rely on it is pragmatically and strategically foolish. That's not to say it
can't be done. More like, imagine an alternate universe where Microsoft open-
sources DOS and Windows from the very start and Bill Gates has only $100M net
worth...

As an aside, in re: getting those 10,000 fans. I've found that a lot of people
are lacking one or two skills that would really help them succeed, and if they
can connect with other people who have those skills then together they can
really take off. If growing a fanbase feels daunting to you, that's okay, you
can get a consultant, coach or co-founder that can do it. Kevin Smith found
Jason Mewes whose performance in "Clerks" catalyzed both their careers.
Anyhow, for my own project, I am going to try "Tupperware parties"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupperware#Tupperware_parties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupperware#Tupperware_parties)

Finally, working on projects you love and believe in is great and I don't
knock it, I'm doing it myself, but if you're starting a business to make money
you really should pre-qualify your idea, and doing that by pre-selling and/or
crowd-funding gives you pretty $$$olid feedback that there's real demand for
your product.

