301
Developer's Corner / Re: My experience with developing a freemium browser add-on
« on: October 06, 2010, 07:32 PM »
Hmmm...Another tough question. What I find interesting here is looking at it from the consumer standpoint, I want my software to work and once I buy it, I don't want to have to buy it over and over and over again. More so when each "update" is nothing more than a featurepack that I am not interested in and/or a fixpack that should have been fixed when I bought it. That said, it does take time and effort for a developer to do these things and they do need to live. I guess what I am saying is I would like to see a scenario where software is reasonably priced for both parties, of high enough quality that critical fixes are rare or non-existant (and when they come they are free), and feature-packs are just that - if you charge extra, it should be an add-on pack that is charged - the core software should stay more or less the same. Now this gets a little more tricky when new OS's are supported or people are looking to change the hardware and keep the same software. Should a charge be made for these developments outside the programmer's control? Probably, but deciding when it should and shouldn't charge can be a tricky and slippery slope. What about fixes for OS service packs? Remember XP SP2? The service pack broke a LOT of people's installs, but not installing SP2 left you very vunerable to the security exploits it was to fix. Is this within the developers control making it a free update (because they could and should have developed more securely)? Or is this an OS update outside the developer's control making a charge feasible and understandable? This is why it isn't cut and dry, even with my idea, but that seems like the fairest way if we can just determine as a whole which situation fits which result. Of course it was like that once and now we are here.
Enough rambling, I guess I don't have anything of substance to add to this discussion after all.
Enough rambling, I guess I don't have anything of substance to add to this discussion after all.