Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source
Paul Keith:
They're free and MS includes them as a courtesy as part of the FS so they don't care about it?-wraith808
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That's one way to look at it but at the same time, again it goes back to not what it is but why it is there and what it means to users.
I wasn't quibbling on the word need. My point was that need doesn't drive consumption necessarily.
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Which is quibbling. I may be misusing the word here. Quibble here to me means closer to lightly (but validly) argue with the word than it is to take the word lightly.
It's why even for simple explanations it can get lengthy.
See it's quibbling if it's just directing what the word is. It's quibbling if it just directs the conversation to something impersonal i.e. "consumption" rather than something personal i.e. "needs by users".
In the other situations that you refer to (dropbox, evernote) it was marketing, also.
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Almost everything has marketing but not everything gains their success due to pure marketing.
Have we forgotten that evernote had negative marketing? Even in just reducing complaints, evernote has been poor at that. What evernote had was a focus shift on where they should take their direction. Just think how stupid it would be from a pure marketing perspective to alienate your fanbase and make your application worse.
Even today among new evernote users, you have complaints. The company is not yet heading in a totally right direction. What they have done though is that their focus have given them opportunities to be used in a very under utilized niche that is slowly getting bigger and they are slowly creating the space for Evernote users to simply be Evernote users and not look elsewhere unless Evernote fails them. (Even though it is really failing already in terms of just being a reliable product)
Dropbox is on the opposite spectrum. Marketing + design drove users in but it didn't determine the price people want to pay. You can't also just keep dodging file manager integration. That's actually a feature. It's the feature that made people tolerate the price despite complaints.
People discount marketing, then talk about the church of Jobs/Apple.
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...and this is why I used the term quibble. It's a valid argument but come on...
It's like superboyac just replying to my post and acting as if it's a video. Even if people discount marketing and then talk about the church of Jobs, at least consider my words.
You really think my writing a post that long can't even account for the statement of marketing, timing, being at a right place at the right time, celebrity status, etc.?
Even if I am unable to communicate my post, common logic has to apply that if you think I wasn't talking mostly bunk and I wrote it with that length - then it didn't discount marketing.
We can't keep moving the goal post in order to settle the quibble. It's the very reason that leads superboyac and many people to get an over-simplified "just focus on the users" statement.
It's not because there are no developers "ignoring the users" but we get into discussions like this that keeps moving the goal post to an entirely different argument that instead of getting back to the original intent of getting the users closer to donationware/fairware - we just quibble about Apple. No matter how valid it not only kills the spirit of our replies, eats away at what little souls our post have to make the problems of donationware rolling but it turns the philosophy of the thread to your point vs. his point.
At some point, that's what kills it for people like superboyac or others. It's not that they are saying Apple is not innovative/not all about marketing/etc. It's that to care about users at the end of the day has to be talking and analyzing the users. You can't do that if you're focusing on "they're not special". At least unless you're simply satisfied with the current state of donationware or have a different plan and am simply trying to insert a point about Apple which was already been understood.
At the same time, this is why I disagree with superboyac's usage of need and why I want to show that there's clues of duplication beyond Apple. Apple subjects are like religion or browser wars or some popular fuel to the thread that kills the thread and makes it as if everytime someone brings Apple, it's about comparing Apple exactly to a concept. It's too destructive. It kills the possibility that maybe people are bringing Apple as a meta-concept and not as a direct analogy.
The Madonna thing for example. If the ones who could actually duplicate Madonna, all would think Madonna can't be repackaged, rebranded, reduplicated - We would have no Lady Gaga. Albeit not everyone is a fan of Gaga (and I'm not a hardcore fan) but at the end of the day, it was this focus that gave us Gaga instead of the Madonna lites of pop stars in Icky Britney and all the blondes watering down on the slut concept to the teen slut clone with nothing "alternative" to offer except by name and some minor quibble (just like this thread, where Britney can't be duplicated but Christina is the better singer and Mandy Moore is the better actress so so and so is blah blah blah).
At a certain point, needs does not have to equal direct innovation. Innovation does not equal innovation. You want the ultimate debunker, look towards the entire history of the "personal" computer or the internet. Even at the surface level, there was no ideal rainbow nor truly cynical impossibility. It was a bunch of philosophy. A bunch of practicality. A bunch of experiments. A bunch of business model changes. A bunch of supply deployment changes - and yet even today the laptop can be duplicated into the netbook and the netbook can be duplicated into the e-book reader and the e-book reader can be duplicated into the e-ink reader while the e-book reader can head to the smartphone while smartphones get phased out for iphones and then iphones bring back smartphones in vogue and then that vogueness brings in Ipads...it doesn't have to be from a purely technical or specific or direct analogy. At the end of the day, it's just about donationware and talking and changing and pointing out and making analogies to donationware. If it's just about how Apple is so and so then we might as well throw out the entire context of this thread. It's beyond hijacking, it's hijacked hijacking. It's well intentioned people getting to the point but because Apple has to be discussed, we're willing to intentionally block the ball from rolling when it comes to sharing our perspectives about donationware/fairware/well intentioned ware. And once again, what keyword moves away from the actual "need" to be discussed? Users. Yes, users may be related to consumption, marketing ,etc. but the actual term of users gets buried under Apple, Apple, Apple, yes, no, Apple, Apple, Apple, the point is...fairware...donationware...Apple...Apple...Apple...no it can't happen, let's not talk about Apple...let's not talk about Apple...let's not talk about Apple...let's not talk about users...let's talk about donationware/fairware without the users...
superboyac:
If you truly do have an innovative technology you've developed, expect to either be bought out by one of the big companies - or sued out of existence.
This issue has been discussed so often that it's not necessary to say much more about it than that.
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And it's for those reasons that I say Apple's game can't be duplicated.
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Thanks 40. I'll have to reconsider my stance on all of this.
hsoft:
I'm also glad to see 40hz brought up the "most people don't care" point and that this prompted mouser's previously mentioned idea of a fixed price up-front with a "show me other ways to pay for this" option. I had forgotten about this idea but I remain very curious about it and I'd really like to see someone try it on an already successful app (so we have a basis for comparison).
-JavaJones (September 14, 2011, 06:04 PM)
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The thread got sidetracked a bit, but I wanted to let you guys know that I want to try mouser's proposal and implement a "dual-mode" for my software. After my upcoming dupeGuru release (in a few days, normally), we'll have a better idea of how well it works.
40hz:
I'm also glad to see 40hz brought up the "most people don't care" point and that this prompted mouser's previously mentioned idea of a fixed price up-front with a "show me other ways to pay for this" option. I had forgotten about this idea but I remain very curious about it and I'd really like to see someone try it on an already successful app (so we have a basis for comparison).
-JavaJones (September 14, 2011, 06:04 PM)
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The thread got sidetracked a bit, but I wanted to let you guys know that I want to try mouser's proposal and implement a "dual-mode" for my software. After my upcoming dupeGuru release (in a few days, normally), we'll have a better idea of how well it works.
-hsoft (September 23, 2011, 02:59 PM)
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Looks really interesting. Please let us know how it works out. I can't begin to tell you how much I want things to have changed - and for me to be proven wrong on some of the points I've previously made. :)
Luck! :Thmbsup:
PhotoComiX:
I found really weird the combination of Open Source, nagscreen and unlock key
I suppose may work better for donation, but the risk of forks IS very high...
It is low in the particular case of the sw discussed here but in case of something more fancy, let say a app to play music & convert Flac & alike to mp3, or to create texture for to 3D models, or more simply to customize Windoze looks...then the risk of fork will become much higher
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