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Why is so much software cracked?

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Carol Haynes:
I think the last part of your comment is reasonable -  or at least would be if that were the situation. Lots of companies now do both - high prices and then only paid for support (MS & Adobe spring to mind on this one). Fortunately Adobe still provide free telephone support in the UK But I don't think they do in the US. But then UK Prices are generally up to 50% higher than US prices.

A good model to my way of thinking is:

1) Lower price software
2) Paid for support for professionals
3) Free web based peer-peer forums support for everyone who wants free help.

Option 3 is really good when the developers help with genuine problems and look for bug reports but for most support (where users are clueless rather than a software problem) peer-peer works really well.

If you look at Adobe as a model many pro users frequent their web forums/usenet boards (which duplicate each other so there is dual access) and most problems are peer-peer solved issues. When a particularly difficult issue or a true software related issue arises Adobe staff chime in. MS does similar with its volunteer MVP scheme.

Given this basis of support, costs actually go down because you are charging a lot for premium personal support (which Adobe/MS do) and the user base provides most of the other 'confusion' support for free. It also builds up a loyal user community base which means that people stick with the products through version after version.

mouser:
yep, i think it makes a lot of sense where you guys (especially carol) are going with this.
i think the open source community is also helping to shift things in this direction.
it sort of makes some sense to me that software may move more towards being "free" out of the box (or at least very cheap), and perhaps even open source, with Support Costs being where the real money is made from companies.  People who can't afford pay support can get support (and provide support) in the free public forums.  In this way, as carol alluded too, your free users could become a valuable part of the support system to everyone.  In a sense then, you are giving the software out for free in order to create a base of users to provide support to others.

The real fly in this ointment (especially for open source tool) may be the fact that 3rd party companies may step in and offer support services, undercutting the main company and making that approach a non-viable way to profit. maybe there could be some way to solve this?

app103:
While reading about the ideas of charging for support, something started to sound really familiar. Then I remembered...

One of the founders of Red Hat, Bob Young, who went on to found LuLu.com, wrote a book about making money by giving away software. (One of the books on my reading ToDo list that I haven't had the chance to read but will)

And guess what? He's giving it away ...if you download it (print edition is $4.83)

The older description of the book, at the time I downloaded my copy, kind of suggested that his approach was that you make your money in services provided after you give the software away..like support...and training.

-----

And if you haven't noticed, Microsoft is suddenly giving away a lot of very pricey things...or at least providing a scaled down version of many of their developer's tools. So even Microsoft realizes the benefits of placing it within affordable reach. So now there really isn't a reason for hobby programmers, those that work unpaid on open source projects, freeware authors, or students, to go after pirated versions of things like VS2005. And Borland has been giving away personal editions of their developer tools for a long time. And these are very usable products they are giving away here.

I hope more big companies decide to make this a real trend.

-----

Sometimes the volunteer support you get in forums is better than the support you would pay for...or is provided by paid employees of the company.

AOL discovered a valuable resource in its customer base of experienced users and allowed them to have their own area to offer free volunteer tech support to others.

My experience has been that they know the software better than the paid tech support guys, as they use it every day, and they know all the little tricks that aren't in the official script.

I know this from 2 angles: I have received help in their live user2user help chat with issues that even the paid guys had no solution for...and eventually volunteered, myself, back in the AOL 6.0 days. The volunteer user2user support is top notch and the first place I would suggest any AOL user to go to first, if they can. If it's not accessible, then pick up your phone and talk to the less knowledgeable paid guys.

f0dder:
Humm, since I'm a programmer, I'm against making software entirely free. Cheaper, sure, but free - no.

Why? I want to earn money by writing (quality) code, not by offering support. But of course, providing software of the typical GPL quality would mean earning a lot of money on support :P

mouser:
good point f0dder..
this actually reflects my fear about the current direction of financing open source projects - that middlemen support providers will make money while coders wouldn't.

i dont know if it's practical but..
imagine this scenario:

what if there was a law that anyone could provide support for any software, BUT
companies provifing support for free/open source software had to kick back 50% of profits to the software author.

i know it would be a hard law to implement, but that would actually address the issue and might be a good tradeoff of work vs. pay and put money where it belongs.

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