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More thoughts on micro vs macro donations and the turning point for donationware

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mouser:
Put much more concisely, the new idea is to frame the "work" involved as: Work performed to save money.

Start off with a high value for our product, and let them bring that down to an amount they are comfortable with (including $0) by asking them to do just a little bit of mental effort.

And "work" may be as simple as making the mental effort to actually understand the system of donating what you want.  Don't underestimate the mental cost of having to read and absorb this information and decide on an amount is.. It's non-trivial to many people unfamiliar with the idea.

cranioscopical:
mouser

I do understand the points that you make. Unsure how I feel about them.

I do feel that there's quite a strong immediate disconnect between DonationCoder and $100 price.

How does all of this help with those who simply want to hang out rather than grab software?

JavaJones:
OK I think I'm understanding a bit more where you're coming from but the concept still seems a bit hard to get one's head around. That *may* be partly because I know how it already works though. I do wonder how new users would perceive it.

Most importantly I agree that a fundamental flaw with the current system is the lack of clearly established value. So we should I think be looking at addressing that one way or another, whether it's using the approach you're suggesting here or something else.

On another (hopefully related) note, what are your (and others') thoughts on the support-driven model that many open source projects use? It occurs to me that we already provide a *lot* of support for most DC apps, everything from "how to" to videos to documentation (at least in some cases) to (and this is a rarity) quick turnaround feature requests and bug fixes. Truth be told it's almost like we're already following that model, we're just not clear about it and don't benefit from the higher fixed pricing that usually accompanies it. Something to consider?

- Oshyan

mouser:
Most importantly I agree that a fundamental flaw with the current system is the lack of clearly established value. So we should I think be looking at addressing that one way or another, whether it's using the approach you're suggesting here or something else.
--- End quote ---

yes.

what are your (and others') thoughts on the support-driven model that many open source projects use?
--- End quote ---

i have always had very negative gut-level reaction to this -- only because it seems to me to have the potential to end up where the coders get nothing and the marketing company which knows how to sell support services gets rich.  i know that in practice this doesn't tend to happen.. but it just makes me uneasy.

i think for some projects it may make a lot of sense.. though i'm not sure if it makes sense for desktop applications.  i think it does kind of encourage a phenomena one sees a lot in the open source community which is basically that the source is available but few people can get it to work without a lot of "support".  it's not too paranoid to imagine that making things easy to use is a pretty low priority if the basis for your financial support is people needing help figuring out how to use it.

but the middle ground here may again bring us back to the idea of updates.. and having donors get some benefit in terms of updates, ease of updating, etc.  as we've discussed on other threads.

one really interesting model that some open source companies have been adopting is where the newest version is not open source, but the open source version is always 6 months or 1 version behind, etc.  One could do the same thing with free vs. pay versions, where the previous version is always free, and the latest version is only for supporting members.

JavaJones:
Coupla things. Responding to your last point, that just goes right back to the idea expressed elsewhere of delaying access to the latest versions for non-donors, which has the problems I mentioned above, mainly the lack of bug fixes in older versions (which in severe cases can be a real issue).

As far as your feelings on the support model, I totally know what you mean, but it seems like all that only applies to other products and/or not already established products and/or open source systems where some other company can take the source and publish their own version of the product and sell support for it. None fo that really applies here, and it occurs to me that maybe we have a chance to do that model "right". In other words to take the stigma of that model and turn it on its head and make it actually work, for devs, for users, and for those providing "support". Essentially it's just a redirection of the payment *conceptually* but not necessarily practically.

It may not work for some philosophically, but essentially I see it this way: you justify providing the product for free/cheap (the alternative to your "just buy it" option above) by making the purchase price be for providing support. This doesn't mean you *don't* provide support for people who don't buy or donate, just that the buyers get "priority" if and when it comes to that. From experience I can say it seldom does, at least for the products I've dealt with. The purchase price though still goes to the author of the software in this concept, at least I think it should, partly because often the software author is the one providing the "support" (along with bug fixes, updates, custom features, etc. which can all be seen as support).

The problem I see immediately with it is the suggestion of payment for support, when support is now free and often provided by people other than the authors or you (mouser). Why are those people not getting paid? Well, again it's a bit of a conceptual zig-zag, but the idea is that the support purchase cost is really just a way to get people to pay a fair value for the software. Just as in your example where the value is somewhat imaginary (they could take the free/donate route). I'll grant though that in this it is perhaps a bit more disingenuous. Still maybe there's a way to get it to work. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with getting people to pay for what they already get for free, that happens all the time and is essentially what this whole conversation is about. People pay for support all the time and don't necessarily get much *more* out of it than they might otherwise, e.g. sometimes the forums/community are the best support anyway.

So... more to think about perhaps.

- Oshyan

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