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Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source
40hz:
. Lastly, I am saddened to see that the concept behind this site, which both WORKED, and has GENERATED GREAT REVENUE, is now being relegated to the 'gray areas' as boundaries are pushed back and ethical tolerances lowered.
-db90h (October 12, 2011, 07:29 PM)
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?????
I'm afraid you've lost me there. Could you maybe elaborate a bit more on that point? Because I'm confused about exactky what's being said. :)
db90h:
. Lastly, I am saddened to see that the concept behind this site, which both WORKED, and has GENERATED GREAT REVENUE, is now being relegated to the 'gray areas' as boundaries are pushed back and ethical tolerances lowered.
-db90h (October 12, 2011, 07:29 PM)
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?????
I'm afraid you've lost me there. Could you maybe elaborate a bit more on that point? Because I'm confused about exactly what's being said. :)
-40hz (October 12, 2011, 10:22 PM)
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Reference previous discussions in this thread, where mouser speaks of shades of gray, and his perception that there is some sort of failure here (despite how much income it is generating). It is a natural tendency to lose one's ideological beliefs, see the world in shades of gray. Here is what *I* see, and I know I'll be crucified for saying this:
* DonationCoder itself brings in *decent* revenue, at least from what I've seen in its Annual Fundraising Drives (or whatever). This site pulls in more revenue than MORE THAN 95% of shareware authors I guarantee you.. Yes, that's a wild guess, but only rarely do Shareware authors make much money.
* The DonationCoder authors bring in *decent* revenue with respect to the time they put into their software. If they are unhappy with the rewards here, then they can always sell it elsewhere. However, I can imagine no scenario where authors here make MORE money elsewhere than they do here for the tools they write.
* The allowance of bundling into this site is what I most object to for reasons listed here: https://plus.google.com/110469164034872408057/posts/D2ma1kV4D6L . Yes, yes, they pay the bills so ppl can make freeware.. but so would drug trafficking. If you want to make more money from your software, you should straight up charge for it. I consider bundling an inherently deceitful abomination. If it is NOT, then untick that bundle install checkbox by default. Do that and you have no problem with me. It should have NO place anywhere on this site, in my opinion.
* Years ago mouser would never see these shades of gray, or be hinting and fundamental shifts in everything, at a time when revenue is good enough to say the concept *does* work.. it just needs to *expand*.
It is very hard to profit from most software as a lone developer. Some do, some don't. Those that profit at all should consider themselves lucky.
This concept, DonationWare, works. Don't mess with it.
Fairware -- Noble intent, BUT -- Look, I AM a F/OSS author myself, but if I want to sell something, I'm not making it F/OSS, it would just get stolen and someone else would be selling a fork of my own project (licensed to do so or not).
Do you see what I'm trying to say? DonationCoder *IS* all working, yet all I hear is concession, defeat, and: "We want more money, we gotta change it all up" ... Yea, I know, not to "get rich". Yes, we all have bills, I understand. If you want more money then you may have to get a job, that's just life. Maybe author MORE tools here... maybe code MORE... maybe advertise HERE (better than bundling if you ask me, if done nicely).
I am baffled that advertising is disallowed here, but bundling is allowed. Totally baffled by that. The community's size and site traffic are a huge benefit, and EACH author could advertise on their own micro sites.
Everyone always wants more money ... that is just the way our world works. But you can only squeeze a lemon so much before there is no more juice. Quit squeezing and get back to work coding snacks and such. NO NEW 'METHOD' IS GOING TO WORK MUCH BETTER THAN ANY PREVIOUS 'METHOD'. People who will for software will (via donations or purchases), and people who won't, won't.
My two cents, which normally people don't like to hear because it has too much truth. You can not tell me with the amount of money pulled into this site that it is somehow 'failing'. If you are ENVIOUS of traditional businesses, then that is another issue.. but I would NOT be. You have a GREAT concept at DC, and I do not want to see it decay.
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UNRELATED CAUTION ON PAYING YOUR TAXES ON TIME: Since I've been (poorly) self-employed for a decade, most of it doing contract work, I know that it is *easy* to get behind on your taxes. You don't want to be there. I've always reported my income honestly, even when I couldn't pay the bill. That's why you must pay quarterly estimated taxes, unless you have really good discipline. Now, if the IRS were to catch you with unreported income from a few years ago.. do you know how high the bill (or jail sentence) would be? My God... Just a warning, some I've talked to haven't reported their 'hobby' income at all. Trust me, the IRS does not care where the income came from (speaking here in the USA). The fact that taxes are DUE on your DonationCoder earnings should be stated somewhere here.. just to remind people, before they go spend it all, and/or forget to report it to start with (thinking of it as some sort of untaxed hobby).
40hz:
@db90h - Umm...I'm still not 100% sure what it is you're saying since I've reread the entire thread and I don't see any indication of the philosophical disconnect or abandonment of ideals (i.e. sellout) you seem to be seeing. So I'm a bit confused. But part of that most likely comes from what seems to be your individual preference to deal with issues as dichotomies (black and white) rather than as a continuum (shades of gray). Whereas I'm a much less sure about my own ability to discern absolute truth - assuming such a thing exists to begin with.
So be it. :up: Differences in personal perceptions and beliefs are a good part of what makes for an interesting discussion around here. At least as far as I'm concerned.
Thanks for getting back. :)
mouser:
I am baffled that advertising is disallowed here, but bundling is allowed.
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I have huge respect for db90h, but I'm also confused about the bundling comments..
As i understand it, when you say bundling you mean when the installer for one program tries to get you to install other programs right?
We have never done that or even discussed doing that with the DonationCoder software. In fact we just finished screaming our lungs out because of CNet trying to do that with our software.
As for advertising.. It's something we've tried on the site way back in 2006 i think.. We even had a system where donors could choose not to see ads. Eventually I decided that for the money it was bringing in ($4 a day at the time i think) that it would be nicer to put our own adverts on our pages, and that's why you see those "Cody Quote" boxes on our software pages now instead. Occasionally it's been discussed whether we should try ads again, and it's something we should probably experiment with every once in a while just to see what it feels like and how much money comes in from it. Personally I found the ads jarring and like the feel of the site without them, and hate the way the whole web is advert filled, but showing them only to non-donors is something worth trying again perhaps. I do think it might discourage donations and participation in the community though because people will say to themselves, well this is a site where they dont need my money they make their money on adverts, rather than from donations, so that has to be factored in.
I think perhaps there may be some confusion about when I/we talk about issues with regard to programmers who hang out at the site vs the more-or-less "official" software hosted on the site.
I/we have always tried to keep an open mind about the programmers who hang out here, who are a very diverse lot. There are commercial software developers and open source advocates. Some of the indie programmers here have used and discussed "bundling" of their apps, some use adverts. For the DC member website pages we provide I often encourage the coders to experiment with putting advertisements on them. Most choose not to. We try not to be dogmatic in telling other programmers what they should do, though that doesn't mean we endorse everything we discuss..
There are lots of things this site (DC) could do "better". I mean one thing the site does not do nearly as good a job of as it should is helping the other coders who hang out here to get more attention for their software. We try, but we could do a lot better. The site needs to move to a proper CMS which we've talked about at length, so that we can more easily feature other coders and help them get an audience.
Almost all of what we talk about when we talk about improving the site has to do with making it less confusing.
DC *is* working. It's a wonderful surprising exception in the software world I think. When i sometimes talk pessimistically about donationware, I'm just trying to convey to people considering it as a way of making a living, how much of an uphill difficult struggle it is to make work even in the most minimal way. Some people think that if they have a popular freeware program they can just slap a "Donate" button on their site and it will all take care of itself. It's just not realistic. But I should probably make clearer that I love the concept of donationware and don't want to or have any plans of changing that. And I should do a better job of conveying just how nice it feels to get voluntary support and encouragement from your users.
But I also understand the huge cultural alienness of it to most people, and the huge uphill struggle that an author will be up against if they choose this path and try to make a living from it, which is almost certainly unrealistic in the current culture. I'd like to see a day when donationware authors can survive on the money from their donationware software instead of it being a side hobby for someone with a "real" job. When i discuss the general concept of donationware -- and if i am searching for ways to improve the model -- it's through this lens.
This thread was about a new twist on donationware approach and I think it's always worth exploring those ideas. As for changes to DC.. For me the thing that always gnaws at the back of my mind, and that we have discussed regularly every year, is the complexity of trying to explain the stuff about the 6 month renewable license key stuff, and the way the whole thing may discourage large numbers of people. So i'm always interested in thinking about and talking about ways to improve that. The main lesson that I think i've learned over the years is that complexity kills and so i'm always interested in discussing on threads like this different ways to make donationware "work" and improve the process and simplify it. And by work i mean what i always mean when i talk about "success", which is to be fulfilling as the center of one's life, and which makes enough money so that you don't wake up in the middle of the night worrying if you will be able to pay your bills. Any discussion about ways that the donationware model can get closer to that is a good one.
Edit: A few more thoughts on the nature of DonationCoder and its goals.
I've always considered DonationCoder an experiment.. An experiment to see if the concept of donationware could work and how and why and when. The goal of DonationCoder never was and never will be to "maximize profit".. The best thing about the site is we live well within our means.. As we can afford it, our hosting has grown from a $20/month shared server account to a $400/month dedicated server with multiple virtual machines. If and when donations start to dwindle to the point where we can't afford such luxurious hosting, we can always scale down our hosting. But at the same time -- if we ever reach a day when there is enough money coming in from donations that I and a few other coders could work on DC as a "full time job" then I would pop the champagne and celebrate and do so -- but if the opposite happens and donations stop, i'll still be here coding and doing stuff in my off hours.
I think the strange and unexpected thing (at least unexpected to me when the site started) is that at this point a main goal of DonationCoder is.. to remain true to the forum community, which is the most interesting and rewarding part of the site for many of us. This is a bit of a balancing act of course, since the hardcore forum members represent a very very tiny fraction of the users of the software on the site. But i think we do a pretty good job of balancing the two. I still want us to explore and experiment with different ways to do things, while still keeping true to our ideals and the spirit of Cody -- otherwise life gets boring. And there are some things we don't do well that i think we have an obligation and incentive to improve.
db90h:
@db90h - Umm...I'm still not 100% sure what it is you're saying since I've reread the entire thread and I don't see any indication of the philosophical disconnect or abandonment of ideals (i.e. -40hz (October 13, 2011, 03:56 AM)
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Perhaps part was taken from other discussions... it is just the general feel that, "things aren't working, we must make more money".. when, in MY opinion, given the tools created, you have profited from them more so than anyone could have hoped (in all cases). Yes, I realize now the debate has changed to "we want things to work better".. come on, we were talking about increasing revenue..
All this is way OT from the OP. Best wishes to DC, as always.
As for the bundling - mouser expressed his neutrality at Open Candy (or whatever) - the mouser I used to know wouldn't have done that. Just keeping the peace I guess he was. I know some of the authors here use bundles (maybe at their own sites), but did not mean to claim he does. So, there are no bundles on this site, anywhere? On any of the micro-sites?
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