Monday, July 22, 2002
Charging for Software
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 08:16 AM
http://articles.pocketnow.com/content.cgi?db=articles&id=87
Russ Smith has written a column on the evolution from freeware to commercial software in the Pocket PC community, triggered by the recent announcement by the Pocket TV team to charge $49 US for the Xscale-optimized version of their free-for-personal-use Pocket TV MPEG player. I have mixed feelings on this - people deserve to be rewarded for what they do as a service to others. That reward can be money, praise, or just the warm fuzzy feeling they get knowing other people appreciate their work. The question is, will you pay $49 for a video player? Quite honestly, I will not. I'd have no trouble dropping them $10 or $15 via PayPal for a good video player, but $49? No thanks - that's $75 CND, which is the price I just paid for WarCraft III. It would take a Pocket PC "uber app" for me to pay that much. I'll just stick to WMV formats or use Pocket DivX.
I do want to add this thought as well: creation involves sacrifice, if nothing else other than time, and someone who is sacrificing has every right to ask for compensation. If you don't want to buy the product, don't buy it - but don't get angry with the creator for asking in the first place. If you can do better for free, do it - but don't complain about it and do nothing. Russ' blurb:
"Within the Windows CE community, there are mixed opinions. Maybe we're spoiled by the larger number of decent quality freeware programs out there. Maybe we're put off by the fact that the cost of software can easily add up to more than what we spent on the machine that runs it. Maybe we're just cheap. Whatever the reason, we've come to expect that we should be able to get something for nothing most of the time.
Part of this is normal to the evolution of a hardware platform. When the Apple ][ first hit the market, the vast majority of early programs written for it were freeware. That's because the vast majority of early owners fell into the "enthusiast" category. Most of us enthusiastically shared the fruit of our labors. It was a kind of "Look what I did!" approach. As the personal computer became used in more and different environments and, particularly with the advent of VisiCalc and widespread use in small business, freeware and shareware began to take the back seat to professionally written software which cost real money. Some people had trouble making the transition. Some put on eye-patches and began sporting parrots on their shoulders. I was actually apprenticed to such a pirate (apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan) for about a year. I was naive enough at the time to wonder why he needed more than one "backup copy" of his software and why he kept on "losing" them."
Russ Smith has written a column on the evolution from freeware to commercial software in the Pocket PC community, triggered by the recent announcement by the Pocket TV team to charge $49 US for the Xscale-optimized version of their free-for-personal-use Pocket TV MPEG player. I have mixed feelings on this - people deserve to be rewarded for what they do as a service to others. That reward can be money, praise, or just the warm fuzzy feeling they get knowing other people appreciate their work. The question is, will you pay $49 for a video player? Quite honestly, I will not. I'd have no trouble dropping them $10 or $15 via PayPal for a good video player, but $49? No thanks - that's $75 CND, which is the price I just paid for WarCraft III. It would take a Pocket PC "uber app" for me to pay that much. I'll just stick to WMV formats or use Pocket DivX.
I do want to add this thought as well: creation involves sacrifice, if nothing else other than time, and someone who is sacrificing has every right to ask for compensation. If you don't want to buy the product, don't buy it - but don't get angry with the creator for asking in the first place. If you can do better for free, do it - but don't complain about it and do nothing. Russ' blurb:
"Within the Windows CE community, there are mixed opinions. Maybe we're spoiled by the larger number of decent quality freeware programs out there. Maybe we're put off by the fact that the cost of software can easily add up to more than what we spent on the machine that runs it. Maybe we're just cheap. Whatever the reason, we've come to expect that we should be able to get something for nothing most of the time.
Part of this is normal to the evolution of a hardware platform. When the Apple ][ first hit the market, the vast majority of early programs written for it were freeware. That's because the vast majority of early owners fell into the "enthusiast" category. Most of us enthusiastically shared the fruit of our labors. It was a kind of "Look what I did!" approach. As the personal computer became used in more and different environments and, particularly with the advent of VisiCalc and widespread use in small business, freeware and shareware began to take the back seat to professionally written software which cost real money. Some people had trouble making the transition. Some put on eye-patches and began sporting parrots on their shoulders. I was actually apprenticed to such a pirate (apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan) for about a year. I was naive enough at the time to wonder why he needed more than one "backup copy" of his software and why he kept on "losing" them."
