

Ask HN: is it possible to sell an idea for a UI improvement? - bitops

Say I have an idea for a UI improvement in iTunes. Could I approach Apple and pitch my idea for a potential "finders fee"?
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wmf
Probably not. There are potential problems where you disclose an idea, the
company realizes that it's something they're already working on so they don't
license it, then when the product comes out you sue them for "stealing" the
idea, and then they have to pay lawyers to smack you down. Also, the
transaction cost for negotiating such a thing may be almost as much as the
idea is worth (e.g. would you negotiate for a month to get, say, $5K?).

It _may_ be possible to get a patent and sell it, but that's a pretty
heavyweight process and doesn't have a good record of success.

~~~
bitops
Darn. It would be nice if there was a way to do it. I'd be happy to take a
one-time spot payment and then never bug them about it again.

With open-source, I could go in and make the change myself, but if the owning
entity will benefit from it, it only seems fair to me that they should share
that benefit. Even if it's just once as a way of saying thank you.

~~~
coryl
Just design a mockup of it in Photoshop (or code it, depending on whatever it
is) and post it up your blog. At least then you'll get credit for it.

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linguistbreaker
The only way I could see that happening is if you had a very good social
connection in the right place at Apple. Engineering that connection would
likely be much harder than mocking up or coding the fix.

If the software in question has an extensible architecture or plugin API that
could be your path to getting the feature you want though.

