
The Developers Union - hs86
https://www.thedevelopersunion.org/
======
tropshop
I was hoping this was an entity for independent software developers to group
together to have access to health, dental plans, maybe a network to find
bookkeepers, lawyers, etc.

Seems like there is a greater movement towards the freelance economy, but
these things still suck to deal with when you are independent.

~~~
cjensen
Professional organizations provide access to health and other insurance plans.
ACM for CompSci. IEEE for Electrical Engineers. I recommend ACM for you.

ACM also comes with free access to Safari Books Online which gives me
electronic access to 95% of all professional books I'm interested in.

~~~
Nullabillity
> ACM also comes with free access to Safari Books Online which gives me
> electronic access to 95% of all professional books I'm interested in.

That's probably my only real gripe with unions. I want the benefits and
collective bargaining (of course), and I like the courses they occasionally
hold, but I have no desire to effectively donate money to parasites like
O'Reilly.

Thankfully my local union (Sveriges Ingenjörer -- Sweden's Engineers) doesn't
have the O'Reilly agreement, but I'm still stuck paying for crap such as
[https://www.nyteknik.se/](https://www.nyteknik.se/).

~~~
Bluestrike2
O'Reilly?

~~~
Nullabillity
Owns Safari, publishes a bunch of mediocre programming books.

------
noddingham
You call it The Developers _Union_

From the FAQ: >Is this a union union with dues and stuff?

>No, this is a non-union union created to bring developers and supporters
together for better App Stores for all by focusing on issues that best serve
those who create and use apps.

Nice execution, you're doing terrific. /s

------
theandrewbailey
> We believe that people who create great software should be able to make a
> living doing it.

> Today, we are asking Apple to commit to allowing free trials for all apps in
> the App Stores by the tenth anniversary of the App Store this July.

> After that, we'll start advocating for a more reasonable revenue cut and
> other community-driven, developer-friendly changes.

And what will you do when Apple refuses? The app store reached rock bottom
long ago, and they are OK with it. Apple can enter any market they want to and
roll over you.

~~~
cjensen
What do protestors do when the government refuses their demands? Keep lobbying
or give up.

~~~
untog
They strike. Don't think we'll see that here, though.

------
djrogers
Doesn't Apple already offer free trials directly? For apps that don't want to
go the subscription route, I've also used plenty that offered trialware via
IAP upgrades...

Just seems like a pretty small thing to start your big 'union' with.

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/subscriptions/](https://developer.apple.com/app-store/subscriptions/)

~~~
saagarjha
This is for the Mac App Store, which doesn't do subscriptions as far as I'm
aware. And this isn't just about free trials: upgrade pricing is difficult as
well.

~~~
ovao
This appears to be for all the App Stores. It refers to “App Stores” (in
plural), and many of the apps listed in the “supported by” section are iOS
apps.

~~~
saagarjha
Both iOS and macOS don’t do free trials, while macOS doesn’t do subscriptions.

------
Terretta
Developers with high quality apps or games and promotional ‘klout’ should
advocate for a single trivial change:

\- Ability to filter to _ONLY_ show apps that are Paid, with no IAP.

I have found paid apps, especially games, with no IAP, to be higher quality
and no broken game mechanics.

I give developers that make that choice my money. I purchase these high
quality games and apps just to be supportive of the model. When they release
sequels, I purchase those too.

I’m annoyed Apple added a filter for “Price” with only “Any” or “Free” instead
of “Any”, “Free”, “One Time Purchase”.

I’m annoyed the “Paid” and “Free” tabs both are littered with IAP.

There’s a ethos difference between recurring IAP to keep using or playing and
one time IAP for one time feature unlocks, such as Omni’s Basic and Pro
versions. I’m even ok with annual subscription like Ulysses, but that should
be classified differently too.

Really the filter should be something like: One Time Permanent Purchase
(including permanent feature upgrades), Recurring Subscription, Pay-to-Play
(including virtual currency and metered usage), Free.

The Trial option asked for by The Developers Union would allow reclassifying
apps using IAP to mock Trial period, back into One Time Permanent Purchase
category, to signal their high quality.

------
LyalinDotCom
All I will say is that this protest should be happy that Steve isn't in charge
anymore, he would not react well to something like this being "demanded" of
Apple. I think realistically Apple will just ignore these folks the way they
operate today, I just doubt they can impact such policy change but who
knows...

In the end of the day its good to see groups of people try to fight for change
they believe in. So no matter how I feel about this specific efforts chances
of success, its inspiring to see them try. Even if this fails it might
encourage other people to join forces and use collective efforts to push for
reforms.

If nothing else as the big corporations take more control away from us peons
this (union type efforts) is our last way of having any say in the big
picture, so we need more, not less of this kind of activism.

------
hoistbypetard
Hasn't OmniGroup solved both the free trial problem for Mac and for iOS using
in app purchases? I know when I bought OmniGraffle for iPad there were upgrade
options, and I used the free trial.

That's not to say asking Apple to improve this is bad, but is the first ask
not a solved problem?

~~~
larrik
Frankly, the in-app purchase style of free trials leaves a lot to be desired.
For instance, it's not compatible with family accounts, so I can't buy a game
via in-app purchase on my account for my kids to play on theirs. This means
that either I need to buy it for each of them, or have them use my account. In
the end, _I just don 't buy it at all_.

~~~
hoistbypetard
That's an interesting point. We haven't moved to a family account yet in our
family, so I haven't experienced that. I still do it the old way of logging in
on my wife's devices.

It strikes me as odd that app purchases are available across a family account
but in-app purchases are not. I wonder if they plan to change this.

------
pg_bot
Do not cede control of an important aspect of your business to a third party^.
In the case of app store distribution you find yourself in a principal-agent
problem[0]. The agent in this case are the FAANG's of the world who are
interested in having a wide array of quality third party apps available at
little to no cost for their customers. You as the software developer want to
extract as much utility[1] as you can out of the users of your software as
possible. These goals are often at odds and since you are not in control of
the decision making process you will lose. Some may make it rich, but the vast
majority are set up for failure.

^Unless you have a _really_ good reason to. ex: payment processing

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility)

~~~
abecedarius
Yes, this is a good example of “commoditize your complements” in action, with
us as the complement.

------
ksec
I don't think most developers are unhappy about the 30% cut, they are more
likely to be unhappy about the "services" they are getting for 30% cut.

App Discovery, Fake Apps, IAP Refund, No Trials, Long Review Times, all of
these have been long standing problems and Apple has made little to no
improvement in those areas. And it is likely Apple thinks the amount of
complain are minor, but if you look at it from a different angle, most of
these complaints comes from Apps Developers, not Game Developers. And the vast
vast majority of IAP, or App Store Revenue are in fact gaming. Take out gaming
and you see how many developers are unhappy with the current situation,
especially for Indie developers.

------
Mizza
I completely forgot about it this until I saw this, but I actually tried to do
the same thing in 2011 after Google ripped me off:

[https://andevuni.wordpress.com/](https://andevuni.wordpress.com/)

Stranger days.

------
quickben
So, between the lines: Money.

1\. Trial apps promotion: because once the regular new app promotion ends, so
do most of the profits for apps that can't quite make it.

2\. More money, in form of apple reducing publishing taxes.

------
digi_owl
Like watching an abused spouse returning to the abuser hoping it will be
better this time round...

~~~
ConceptJunkie
This describes customers' relationships with most large technology companies.

------
vkou
And what are they going to do when Apple ignores them?

Leave the app store? Start writing software for Windows Phone? Raise cabbages
in Sto Lat?

~~~
mynameishere
You just had to type "Windows Phone" there didn't you? You couldn't think of
any other type of phone.

~~~
vkou
It's generally understood among mobile developers that much of the money is on
the Apple platform, not that other one.

Or at least, it was, the last time I had coffee with my mobile developer
friends.

------
drivingmenuts
I'd like to see these developers make great software first, instead of yet
another todo app.

Then I might be convinced to actually _use_ the App Store.

------
zackmorris
This is long overdue and I'm hopeful that it extends beyond app stores. The
primary leverage here will (inevitably?) be an SDK that allows all apps that
are members of the union to be disabled remotely by vote should companies
overstep.

I find it interesting that they are starting with the low-hanging fruit of
something like free demos. I don't think Apple realizes the burden that things
like managing two versions of an app (free/paid) or implementing in-app
purchases imposes on developers. Apple has lost touch with developers in how
it emphasizes enterprise approaches for things that could have much simpler
APIs. They have hundreds of billions of dollars, so why force developers to
deal with push notification servers? There's a lot of buck-passing and not a
lot of service happening.

The red tape has been reduced in recent years due to better Xcode integration
of things like provisioning. But I personally find the way that they've
implemented entitlements for all of their niche services to be overly
pedantic. I recommend scrapping all of it and moving to a data-driven approach
where all entitlements are available and it becomes more of a fill-in-the-
blank approach. As in, generate sane defaults and provide tools to do this
stuff for us instead of throwing manuals at us. Look to things like Unity and
Steam for examples of how to accomplish a lot with a little.

Calls for satisfaction have largely fallen on deaf ears, hence the need for a
union like this. I don't mean to pick on Apple, I still think they are doing
better than most companies, but they certainly have the resources to treat
their developers as well as their users. Also to the original poster: drop the
"the". It's cleaner :-P

~~~
gizmo385
> The primary leverage here will (inevitably?) be an SDK that allows all apps
> that are members of the union to be disabled remotely by vote should
> companies overstep.

That sounds like a good way to piss off customers, rather than piss off Apple
and Google. If an app stops working, do you think people are going to blame
Apple/Google or the company that actually pulled the trigger on disabling
their favorite app?

~~~
jadedhacker
Gaining the sympathy of the public is an important elements in organizing a
strike. For brick and mortar business, a strike shuts down the business and
prevents serving customers. This isn't much different. I would think tho that
the SDK shouldn't disable local functionality, just remote functionality.
Disabling e.g. a calculator app on a phone seems too invasive and over the
line to me.

