A popular topic among developers and users alike is the price and value of various software. It's something that has been on my mind lately and many occasions in the past. So I'm going to try to clear up the jumble of thoughts in my head by spilling it out here.
Open Source - what a great thing!? I love open source stuff, it drives such a big part of the developer community. It amazes me. But I truly don't fully understand it. How can people find the time and energy to come up with such amazing software? Those people that are the true creators in the open source software movement are actually few and far between imho. The rest of us are contributors in various ways: 1) We contribute small bits of code. 2) We talk up the gospel of "open source" to our friends to seem like we are hip with it. 3) We shamelessly use it and really have no clue about how much time and effort has gone into creating it. (which is fine too, as that is the purpose of creating something...to have it be used by someone) Or we are Microsoft. ;)
Then we move up a notch on the software ladder to "freeware". I suppose the only distinction in my mind is that freeware is not necessarily open source.
The thing about both open source products and freeware that sometimes amazes me is the tremendous costs that the developers can incur (both in time and money) in creating and distributing it. I am sure my jaw would drop at the numbers of some of the big projects out there such as PHP. It is not cheap to host a site with the kind of bandwidth they must use. Here at Unsanity, we actually offer more "freeware" products than any other. Why? They cost us a significant amount of money...espescially when they are popular. I suppose we are a microcosm of the open source thing in some small way. We create something that we feel is useful, and decide that others could benefit from it also, but don't feel right charging for it. (though I'm not actually trying to compare our meager "contribution" to the mac community to the big boys of open source)
Climbing up one more rung on the software ladder...shareware. That's our bread and butter (literally). Our first product, Unsanity Echo (RIP), was released as shareware. The idea is great, you create a product, distribute it, and if someone likes it, they pay for it. Of course there are the little additions such as timeouts, crippleware, demos, etc. (all of which we've played with in some form or another) We started Unsanity LLC with several purposes I suppose. But first and foremost was and is the desire to make a living doing what we love. Creating cool software for the Macintosh. (really the basic idea behind any ideal job right?) Which brings me to the next thought, product pricing. If I may assume a bit here and possibly go out on a limb, I believe we provide some of the best bang-for-the-buck (or seven) software out there. I don't think we've received many of the "your software is overpriced" complaints that come with this territory at times.
Which brings me up to the top of the software ladder...commercial software. What makes it "commercial" ? Price? Boxed? On-a-CD? Popularity? Along with those questions, is our progression as a company. In case anyone doesn't know, existing in the shareware business is not easy. Take a look at how many products you've used in the past still have a company behind them. To survive, a company must grow, expand, and evolve. Sitting still with the same old stale strategy, marketing, and product lineup is a recipe for failure imho. We don't want to end up forgotten along the roadside to Mac software company success. (and we'd like to think our users don't wish that either ;) )
So given I've just admitted the odds are against us, our plan to accomplish or goal of becoming a mainstay in the mac developer community is what then? Can we survive by selling $7 software? (I've even heard grumblings among other developers that our low prices are causing their users to be less-than-enthusiastic about higher prices) Quite frankly, I have no idea. :) I don't think there is a particular price we are going to stick with despite the current $7 trend we have going. What I believe I do know is that our strategy of providing quality software at a great value is one which seems to make our users happy and gives us little warm fuzzies too.
My point in all this? There isn't one. Sorry if you read it all hoping for something earth-shattering. ;) But I would like to put out a big Thank You to our users. I think we're in a win-win situation. We are doing what we love to do, and generally speaking, our users seem to be very happy with our software/value.
Posted by brian at 08:19 PM
| Comments (4)
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I think commercial software is normally boxed and normally does not have demos? Nix the second point, actually.
Posted by: Etan on October 11, 2002 8:50 PMYes, Brian, we are very happy with your software/value. Keep up the great work and doing whatever it is that you do right.
Posted by: Ken on October 12, 2002 2:22 AMBrian,
thanks for the comments... it's great to really 'get to know' the people behind the company.
john
Posted by: john on October 12, 2002 10:58 AM