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RANT: High Software Prices!

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Curt:
This is exactly why software piracy is such a thriving business.
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No, software piracy thrives because the pirates are thieves.  I don't like high prices either, but we don't have a 'right' to low cost software.  The prices will be as high as the market will bear. -pro3carp3 (April 17, 2007, 07:17 AM)
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I totally agree with you on this, pro3carp3. The Adobe market is not us, the private users, but the companies. And they will  have to pay whatever Adobe thinks the market will bear. And history shows that if AnyCompanyInc put up a low Private-Home-User-Only price, the companies will cheat. So they keep the high one price only policy. And the private home user is the victim. Too bad. Adobe and AnyCompanyInc are very well aware that the world is crowded with people who will demand to receive everything for free, without even saying Thank You, but only demanding to have more, more, more, never paying the price. Why should any company try to please such non-customers? No, of course not.

app103:
It has come to the point where I don't know what a reasonable price for anything is any more.

What would be reasonable to someone that has a lot of money in their pocket isn't the same as what it would be to someone with nothing in their pocket.

The thing that will keep me from ever becoming a shareware author is the idea of reasonable pricing. I am afraid to set a price because no matter what I choose, it could be unreasonably high to someone somewhere who might need it....or unreasonable for what I am providing. (is it really worth the price I am asking?) :-\

I'll just let the user decide what is reasonable...it's a whole lot easier.  :Thmbsup:

But I am seeing that a lot of what mouser said about donationware is very true.

From my personal experiences a few things have become very clear to me:

1. If I had $1 for every time someone downloaded one of my programs, I would be a very wealthy woman.  :D

2. With the amount I currently make on my software, I would have to produce 6-8 new applications a month to earn enough to barely cover my bills. (and I am a very frugal woman) :o

3. When I create something, I do it because I enjoy it. But it is work...and it can be frustrating, exhausting, hard work. It's not something I can do all day, every day. I would quickly burn out.  :huh:

4. I am not qualified to go work for some software company on their projects. I am not all that qualified for anything, really. And that was one of the reasons why I wanted to learn programming in the first place. I hoped some day I would know enough to be able to do it professionally and make enough to pay my bills....and be able to enjoy what I am doing. But it doesn't look like that will ever happen. I still have a lot to learn, I am not learning it any faster, and I am not getting any younger.  :(


Which brings me to my announcement:

As of today, I am increasing the prices on all my software 150%.  :-[

Wait a minute....

I am charging $0...a 150% increase is still $0.

Guess that means you are safe.  :P

Seriously though...I am developing a deep hatred for money. Or rather should I say developing a deep hatred for needing it. I am disgusted at the prices for everything...from software to food to housing to education to medical care...everything.

I can't even look at it as a necessary evil...it's just evil.

And I think we are all sharing the same feeling of being trapped.

Perry Mowbray:
I had never really thought about this in this area before... but I've been saying/complaining for a long time that when banks moved their customer focus from the people who put money in their banks or borrowed money from them to their share holders there was a significant drop in what a bank will do for me as a money depositing customer.

I guess the big software companies have gone the same way, where their main customers are their share holders, i.e. that's who they ultimately answer to?? Obviously you still have to turn a profit, but it gets pretty murky when you're divided between the two.

And I agree with you App: that this thing of money having to dominate every decision we make as an individual, company or country is just plain evil.

zridling:
So right, App103, so right. Look around at other things, too. A quart of oil to put in your car is now $7 here; gas, $3/gallon, hell even macaroni & cheese is a freakin' $1.11 now. I LIVED off that stuff for years. It just seems that if you're not constantly giving them money, i.e., "revenue stream for their stock, etc.," then you can't play with their toys. All the more reason to support open source when you find something you like.

TOMOS, if you haven't seen the movie Network, make sure you rent it. It was released over 30 years ago, but could have been written yesterday. HERE is just one clip from the movie, among its many memorable scenes. The great thing about the internet and blogs is that they are so much better than newspapers and traditional media. Heck, a blogger got the story right about the Virginia Tech shooting yesterday, and every single amerikan network had the story completely wrong. "If you want to the truth, go to the internet."

Darwin:
Yup, agree with pro3carp3 and Curt but I *think* that we're straying into the philosophical realm here in that I don't think that people who use cracks, hacks and serialz are necessarily career criminals but rather people who... ah fuck it. They're thieves and there is no justification for it.

When I can't afford (or won't pay) a vendor's high prices, I look for alternatives (Open Source, shareware, Freeware, Donationware), rather than running a pirated version of something. This is, for want of a better word, a moral decision on my part, because I don't want to be a thief!

My gut tells me that there is a distinction lurking here to be defined but, on balance, I know lots of people who run pirated software and most of them can more than afford (from my perspective - what do I really know about anyone else's finances) to buy the software that they steal - all of them are better off than me (I'm essentially unemployed and a student dealing with mortgage payments and two kids - I'm not doing it alone though... :)) and yet I've been asked on a couple of occasions to provide my legitimately purchased registration details so that they can use some software that I use and they like for free. Nice. The really odd thing is that usually they're lookng for the serial for a $30-$80 program, not PaintShop Pro, not Xara Xtreme Pro, not PowerGrep - you get the picture (they run hacks and cracks of PhotoShop, Office, and CorelDraw - i.e. the packages that require activation). For some reason, I can't convince many of them that they are stealing. Why steal Office, for example? OpenOffice is more powerful than most people's requirements - I know PhD candidates using it to collect and analyse genetic and morphological data and to write it all up.

Unfortuantely, software occupies twin spaces right now - it's SEXY and people buy into marketing hype (want to edit your three year old's birthday party snaps? Nothing other than PhotoShop will do) and it's become part of the range of things that people use for self-validation (I have and use PhotoShop, woo hoo. You use PhotoFiltre, sniff). So that it's becoming something that people fewel they need to have in order to keep up with the Jones'...

app - you're right, too. What is a reasonable price? It's like the housing market. Five years ago, I could have bought both halves of a nice, brand new duplex for under $200,000 Cdn. but didn't want to live in a duplex (or be a resident landlord, either). Three years ago, I thought that $179,900 was too much for a nice, solid 1950's post and beam home on a hill overlooking the harbour and the mountains in the background and waited for prices to drop. Last year I paid $211,000 (priced $10,000 below assessed value - owner was military and being posted) for half of an 8 year old duplex! New duplexes run $240,000 and up (for half of the dupex!) and that house I looked at and and passed on in 2004 is back on the market with fresh paint and a new deck for $550,000! Now when I'm looking at real estate in the paper I think "Oh, wow, a single family home for $350,000. What a bargain! Can I come up with the financing?" (the answer to that question is NO - my parents gave my wife and I the mortgage on our place...). My point is that over a five year period my perceptions of what is reasonable to pay for a home have changed DRASTICALLY. Software is the same. There was a time when I dithered about paying $20 for downloadable shareware. Today, anything under $50 seems fair and anything between $50 and $150 can seem reasonable, depending on the software's function...

app - I share your aversion to money. Actually, my real aversion is to the increasing, and alarming, utilization of credit to be able to "have it all and have it now" instead of building toward goals. Part of the problem with this is that I know so many people that have, literally, 20+ credit cards (and growing) and just keep bouncing credit from one card to the other to avoid paying for things. I don't want to live in a duplex but I do for now. I'm barely employed and my wife is a contractor for the school district. We live where we do because if we both lost our jobs tomorrow, we could still make our mortgage and car payments if I went back to my first real job - flipping burgers at McDonalds. We also bought something big enough to accomodate our family and that is comfortable, so if we can't "move up" we're fine right where we are. Don't even get me started about my brother-in-law...

Sorry, folks, long rambling post...

PS LOVE the movie Network. Coincidentally, it was on cable this weekend!

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