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Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

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mouser:
A main point of 40hz which i think is important is:

"most people don't seem to care all that much."
--- End quote ---

Part of the problem for DonationCoder and Fairware too i suspect, is that there are two groups of people we would like to request support from.


* The first group is the small core group of people who really do care, want to be involved, and provide the most important thing -- spiritual support, camaraderie, encouragement, and often generous financial support.
* The second group is many orders of magnitude larger -- and that's the group of people who use the software, and who are open to making a financial payment.  But for these people, most of them are like 40hz users -- they do not want to hear all about ethics and new financing models, etc.  In fact all this stuff just makes them want to leave and find someone they can make a normal purchase from.  The more you try to do something unusual the more these people will not want to waste the mental energy to deal with you.
Which brings me back to an idea i had a couple of years ago, which would be to make simple but distinct paths for users..


* So imagine a software page where it had a fixed price on it: $29.95 which you click to buy like normal software purchase.
* But also a button saying: Show me alternatives to paying this.
* If they click on that button they have choices like: I want to choose how much to donate; I cannot afford to pay anything now; I am not willing to pay anything but I would still like to use the software; etc.
This isn't really a major change to the functional way things are done.. it's more of an attempt to make a path that is easier and more familiar for "people who don't care".

hsoft:
I agree about your care/don't care classification and I like this idea a lot, mouser. The devil's in the details, as always, but I think it's an idea worth thinking about more seriously.

40hz:
+1

I think Mouser's idea is a clean and elegant way to both deal with the issue, and possibly change some people's way of thinking in the process.

It's also something that would be relatively simple to implement and experiment with.

At the very least it would go a long way towards moving the basis of this discussion to observable fact and behaviors - and away from the "I feel" nature of many of these conversations.

Why "believe" or "feel" or "suspect" when a little real-world testing could provide much better information? Like James Thurber said: "A pinch of probably is worth a pound of perhaps."

Note: when I used the phrase "don't care" I meant it in the sense of "not being actively concerned about" rather than  "not mattering ever or at all." Just thought I should clarify that point.
 :)

wraith808:
Which brings me back to an idea i had a couple of years ago, which would be to make simple but distinct paths for users..


* So imagine a software page where it had a fixed price on it: $29.95 which you click to buy like normal software purchase.
* But also a button saying: Show me alternatives to paying this.
* If they click on that button they have choices like: I want to choose how much to donate; I cannot afford to pay anything now; I am not willing to pay anything but I would still like to use the software; etc.
-mouser (September 13, 2011, 09:46 AM)
--- End quote ---

That reminds me a lot of that payment form where you choose to take a deal instead of paying cash for the project (I can't remember what the name of it is now).  I wonder how different their conversion rates are because of that option... though this is a bit different, it still falls into that pattern of "I have to click something else to get the other options, so maybe I don't want to" trap.

I think that perhaps the humble indie bundle way might work better, i.e. show all of the options up front, but show the average donation, and one of the options is the average in addition to the set price.

mouser:
So I think this could solve the issue of scaring away the no-nonsense-just-want-to-click-buy people, which would help a lot.

I think this still leaves the most difficult nut to crack -- which is how do you deal with the problem where it takes 10x as much effort (and perceived risk) to donate vs clicking the button that says "i can't/won't donate".

I talk about the approach of trying to fix this in my essay as "work equalization" -- making sure that it's not so much easier to not donate compared to donating.

Right now this principle is used to give people free license keys so they don't have to pay for our software or see any nags -- by giving out a license key after you sign up and register.  But this does create some inconvenience and ill-will.

It's not an ideal solution because it annoys people.  It would be nice to find an alternative approach that wasn't so annoying to people but still achieved the goal of having some way to make people not choose the path of least resistance of not donating.

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