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amelius

Still, it is very hard to make developers pay for software.

So on a different level, perhaps it is hard to impress developers.

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it is very hard to make developers pay for software.

Have you seen the Magit kickstarter[1]?

Magit is one of Emacs' killer apps and it's known and loved by virtually all of its users, who are almost all developers..

When its maintainer opened a kickstarter to work on it for a year, it was more than fully funded by nearly 2000 backers.

So, yes, developers are willing to pay for quality software.

But, yeah, overall this is a gift economy where people take what's freely given but also give back to the community in some way.

[1] - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681258897/its-magit-th...

For every Magit, there are ten other projects that receive an unending shitstorm of criticism, and no support.

If you are one of the fortunate few who can thread that needle, congratulations, for you too can now revel in the financial security that only a moderately popular kickstarter can bring. Don’t spend it all in one place.

Yeah that's the biggest issue. Many developers (myself included) seem to refuse to pay for software. At least normal users are willing to accept ads and data collection in exchange for getting a free service, but we developers don't even accept that.

I pay for all sorts of software: time tracking, malware removal, video games, adobe suite, windows 10, music production software, a handful of SaaS products.

Assuming that a majority of developers refuse to pay for software is, in my opinion, an exageration.

I feel that we are in a position where we can estimate the amount of work and the dedication that a team has put into a great product. I have paid for many of the great softwares that run on my machine because of this knowledge.

I have a JetBrains all products subscription and a Matlab license. I'm happy to pay because it's fantastic software worth every dollar. If JetBrains doubled their prices I'd still pay.

I do think there is a significant segment of developers who are really gung-ho about free software politics and refuse on moral grounds to pay for software ever. So that might be what you're seeing.

> Still, it is very hard to make developers pay for software.

I don't think this is true. There are lots of things that developers throw money at, and each developer can easily think of multiple processes that would happily through hundreds or thousands of dollars at if those processes could be automated.

However, it is hard to build software that developers will pay for.

I.e., the demand is there and it is strong, but the products that meet that demand are generally Real Engineering Problems.

Or are developers more likely to pay for software, and pay more overall?

I personally have paid for software in the past, but I don't do it much anymore because:

A) Self-funding a startup has required me to become quite frugal

B) Giving money to competitors is almost always a mistake

Unfortunately that's the way things go. I would like to be able to afford more, but so would everyone else.

Great tools can save you an immense amount of time = money, so it should not be as black & white, even with startups in their early days.

I have also been at startups that wasted large amounts of time and capital trying to work with the wrong tools. The risk isn't worth it especially when a lot of other startups in the same ecosystem (competitors for the same VC dollars) will happily sell you an unfinished product and then shut down a year later and stop supporting it.

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