Why software shouldn't be free | Hacker News Reader

Why software shouldn't be free

devletters.com

7 pointsaviaryan9 comments

I never tried to be a publisher on the Apple, Google or Microsoft app stores, but judging by my own consumption of both apps and content, I see no significant issue beyond discoverability in those ecosystems. It is, of course, harder now than it was in the 70's to make money out of, say, a spreadsheet or text editor, but that's beside the point - the market, any market, changes and what was a cash cow a number of years back may now be either a crowded landscape nobody can expect to profitably enter or an ecologic disaster with only the most resilient and aggressive lifeforms in it.

If you operated a mall that costs money to enter, then you will put only the stores that give free samples at the front, to attract more customers. In that environment the stores will compete to give bigger and flashier free samples, and at the same time work on ways to monetize the customers.

If you had a store that just sold your product upfront you will be pushed far to the back. You don't attract customers to the mall, and everyone else is offering free samples.

Google and Apple's incentive to feature and promote free apps created what is a very toxic race to the bottom in their app stores. They put the platform ahead of the product. This is their doing rather than a natural occurrence. Nintendo has been selling game for full price for decades but even it couldn't do it on the app stores, and they had to resort to variations of gambling and f2p.

The other way to think about it is that the model of selling software is dying and the thing to do now is free admission and in-app purchases.

The only way to compell someone to overpay for something that is cheap to distrubute is to develop a personal relationship with them.

Customers must understand that if they don't support creators, eventually the stuff they love will either go away or never come into existence.

It's a tough sell. 99% of people don't think like this. They want to buy things off the shelf for next to nothing and be done with it. And people have a hard time saying no to "gratis".

You are right. Selling, when done by an individual is considered evil, especially when the cost to the seller is so low (i.e. not sitting everyday in a physical shop, not coming door-to-door to one's house, not managing a factory with unsatisfied employees).

I guess this is something that can only be fixed with time.

Thanks for writing :) I see the tides turning. The internet is allowing a lot of people to draw an income from crazy niches. Patreon proves this.

But, it's not stable, and walled gardens are always a problem.

It can be quite stable if you have multiple sources of income. And that is not that tough with the Internet.

In fact, I think it will be more stable (~reliable) than having a single traditional source of income.

Consumers are driven by self-interest. Reminding them about some kind of "morale" that is driven by your own self-interest as a developer will not change that.

Your product has to deliver a value beyond what it costs me or otherwise I won't purchase it.

If there is a competitor offering a product or service for "free" that solves the same problems as yours, then why should I pay for an alternative?

That's the benchmark you have to compete with.

Agreed. Consumers will and should do what is best for them.

But, there are some consumers who are rattled by the priced software and give the developer a hard time for it.

They think the money being charged is too much when it's mostly not the case. And they are the same folks who pay $$$ for an overpriced physical entity. This article is targeted mostly at them.

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