MacHeist "Week of Mac Developer" Causes Schism

ernesto99 writes "MacHeist began selling a software bundle of ten highly sought-after OS X applications last week with the stated goal of raising the profile of Mac shareware developers. 25% of the money brought in goes to charity. The bundle sale will go down as possibly the biggest success in Mac shareware history, as total revenues are approaching $650,000 after only six days. But some observers, including Daring Fireball's John Gruber, have called into question the ethics of MacHeist. MacHeist advertises itself as 'The Week of the Independent Mac Developer,' yet the MacHeist organizers stand to make vastly outsized gains relative to the very developers they have championed. Gruber calculates that MacHeist will record double, if not triple, the profits of all ten participating developers combined. (In fact the promotion has done so well that the promoter-to-developers profit ratio now stands at about four to one.) In an interview, Delicious Library developer Wil Shipley defends his involvement in MacHeist, saying that the publicity and reach of MacHeist has already paid him dividends. The whole affair has created a heated dialogue, resulting in a direct clash among some of the biggest names in the Mac community."

I fail to see why there is any controversy

While I've never worked on a retail shrink-wrap piece of software, I've yet to work on any piece of commercial software in a corporate setting where the developers get anywhere near a quarter of the revenue generated from the sale of that software.

20% of lots or 100% of nothing

Quite. The developers should look at this as money that they'd otherwise not have got. That someone else made more money at the same time is largely irrelevant.

Re:20% of lots or 100% of nothing

You guys are high.. it's not 20%, in fact it gets down to around 2-3%. If ONLY it were a 20% cut.

As a developer, I know that there are costs associated with the marketing and sales of my software, but I think 95%+ of the profits is too high a price. It is effectively worse than the mechanism that RIAA uses. I don't believe that RIAA does flat fee contracts for artists music. It may be a tiny percentage, but at least it's a percentage. The difference is that with flat fee, each additional copy sold means the price per copy goes down more and more.

Wil Shipley is probably doing it because DL 1 has been out for quite some time and he's soon to release Delicious Library 2. So this becomes a promo giveaway of the last version, with the hope of some of them upgrading to DL 2. I doubt he would be giving away Delicious Library 2 in this ordeal.

Re:How many..

QA and support don't apply here - these apps already exist, have already been in distribution, and have already won awards and whatnot. Any support and/or QA issues are the sole responsibility of the developer- the one getting only 25%. It's not like MacHeist has any distribution costs, either, as the software is downloaded, and licenses are acquired through email.

Re:I fail to see why there is any controversy

Bullshit. This may be true for large corporations like Adobe or Microsoft, but what we're talking about here is small developers. These are typically one-man shops that rely on these sales for a living. Piracy does hurt them. If their software isn't selling due to piracy, they're forced to go out of business, meaning the people who did pay are now screwed, as there will be no support, no upgrades, nothing. All because someone decided that it "hurt no one". You, my friend, are a fuckwit.

Re:I fail to see why there is any controversy

I'm not sure if this is poor sarcasm, or if you're real. If you're real, you are the posterboy for software piracy. Small software shops of one or a few people are significantly hurt by software piracy. Granted, MS isn't going to wind up laying off 25% of it's workforce if a million copies of Vista are pirated, but a small shop that sells their ware for $25 a pop is missing out on $1,250,000 if only 50,000 people get a copy of Widget 3.0 via bittorrent, and that's more than enough lost revenue to go out of business. Now, I know, you're going to say "They still have the software to sell! They lose nothing!" But if even HALF those people were going to buy it, but decided not to because, meh, it's already here... That's $625,000 that they DO lose.

I'm not going to be stupid and say software piracy support terrorism or drug use, but to say it hurts no one is a fallacy.

If the individual developers have agreed.....

If the individual developers have agreed to the terms and conditions of participation, and said terms and conditions were clearly stated, what's all the rucus about? I'm failing to see how this is newsworthy....

Re:If the individual developers have agreed.....

Exactly.

1. MacHeist makes a lot of money. They obviously win.
2. The developers agreed to participate because they thought it was a good deal. They win too.
3. Customers are buying this package like crazy. They also win.

What's the problem exactly? Yes, it could be "more fair", but as it stands now, all participants are voluntary (in a true sense) which certainly makes it fair in my book.

Re:If the individual developers have agreed.....

What's the problem exactly?

It hurts the industry. For one, it reveals how much those developers who participated really value their work. I was rather disappointed to see TextMate in there. It is an extraordinary editor, and the "retail" price of it is higher than the price of the entire bundle. I bought it before this bundle. It was pricey, but eventually I accepted that the developer really thought it was worth that much. OK, so I paid.

And now I see that he really doesn't think it's worth all that much. I can't see it as being promotional - I think pretty much anybody in his target audience is already aware of it.

And the developers who chose not to participate - who think their product is worth more - will be hurt. I will be a lot more hesitant to pay full price for something else. Because I will remember the foolish feeling of having paid full price when I saw this bundle.

I think basically it says that shareware is not really worth what people are asking. And shareware is in a funny position. It's not simply fighting "should I pay or do without," but it also struggles against "should I pay or should I find a serial number." The greater the "overpriced" perception, the more like people are to choose the latter.

Re:If the individual developers have agreed.....

It hurts the industry.

That's a pretty strong statement, that really requires some proof.

For one, it reveals how much those developers who participated really value their work. I was rather disappointed to see TextMate in there. It is an extraordinary editor, and the "retail" price of it is higher than the price of the entire bundle.

Why? The value of something, and its price of it are not related. This would mean that all F/OSS and freeware is worthless, and that Microsoft products are the pinnacle of software quality. I would suggest you are the one devaluing the software, if you only think of it as a price tag, and can't appreciate the developers' work independent of how much it costs.

And the developers who chose not to participate - who think their product is worth more - will be hurt. I will be a lot more hesitant to pay full price for something else. Because I will remember the foolish feeling of having paid full price when I saw this bundle.

That doesn't make much sense. Why would getting this cheap stop you from paying full price elsewhere? To my way of thinking, it gives me more money to spend on other shareware. Example: when downloading one of applications from the Macheist bundle, I saw a link for an interesting product (from a different developer) on their website, - so I went and bought that as well. That developer happened to be Boinx, and I have been thinking about getting their iStopmotion product for quite a while - and getting a copy of Fotomagico in the bundle makes me think more of them, so I will probably go and buy iStopmotion as a gift for someone.

Basically, this is the beginning of a shareware spending spree for me. I probably would be buying Playstation games and gaming accessories otherwise, but I decided to spend that money on shareware this week.

but it also struggles against "should I pay or should I find a serial number." The greater the "overpriced" perception, the more like people are to choose the latter.

And this reduces the "overpriced" suggestion by selling for very reasonable prices. So, people are more likely to buy this than steal a serial number, than they normally would. Let's face it, quite a few shareware titles are overpriced. Software developers aren't a charity, they need to compete in the real world with real economics, just like users do.

Re:If the individual developers have agreed.....

what's all the rucus about?

The ruckus is that MacHeist's professed goal is to help the Mac shareware community, but in the end MacHeist is taking a far larger share of the profits than the participants, and due to the structure of the deal, the greater the sales, the larger the discrepancy becomes.

Re:If the individual developers have agreed.....

"Who has been wronged, exactly?"

Just because someone makes a stupid decision, all of free will, doesn't mean they have not been wronged.

I co-owned a company that does the occasional software development that got involved (not of my doing) of something entirely similar to this. All in all, the partners thought it was a GREAT idea and pulled enough votes to get past my normal roadblock. Ended up devaluing the software to the point folks felt it was only worth a couple bucks and then the piracy rates went up (thats another story). Ended up just licensing the stuff wholesale to someone else and cutting the losses. Come to think about it, I think that was why the business went under.

As for folks being wronged, from what I get, the developers were told they were all getting exactly the same deal -- yet were told not to discuss the details with anyone else. Turns out, they were all getting different 'equal' deals...or so some of the developers have hinted. Sounds a bit like fraud to me if this is true.

Having said this, I picked up a bundle. Sounds like crap to the developers, but you know what -- their ain't no law to stop people from making bad deals (nor should there be).

Re:If the individual developers have agreed.....

And how have they NOT helped the shareware community?

I bought one of these, and now have copies of software I've never even heard of before.

When it comes time to update to the next version, who's getting the cash? Macheist? No.

People are just pissed off that they aren't sharing the profits as a percentage of the gross income. That's stupid and short-sighted.

Maybe it was the simplest arrangement to deal with in the long term? Maybe there was no guarantee that they would sell ANY of these packages, but still had to pay the devs the cash, regardless? Maybe they took all the risk for the sales/marketing? Maybe they didn't want to deal with the headaches of any future royalty payments for upgrades, etc?

How about the fact that the developers entered into the agreement and THEY seem to be happy with it, so everyone else mind their own business and quit making a stink where there isn't one?

Re:If the individual developers have agreed.....

It's newsworthy because people who aren't involved are trying to be heard. MacHeist claimed to be promoting Mac Independent Developers, so really they stuck their foot into it with this line. Gruber (and others) are saying that MacHeist has no interest in the general state of Mac Independent Developers (and/or asks MacHeist to prove it). MacHeist claims that these people are sour-grapes for not being invited and are riding on the coat-tails of Mac Heist's success, plus that any popularity is good for everyone so quit yer bitchin'. It became a pissing match on a grand scale, and that's only half of what makes it newsworthy.

Of all this, only two things are really known:
1. MacHeist bundled a bunch of apps, made a bunch of hype, paid out a flat fee to developers, and gets to keep everything else.
2. Some people are very vocal that this is a bad model to follow.

Most of the Pro-MacHeist defense comes to, "Who loses?" I think this is disingenuous because the best answer is, "We don't entirely know yet." This is not a reason to stop talking about it. In fact, that's a only a good reason to continue talking about it.

And that's the other half of what makes this newsworthy.

MacHeist made me spend money

I normally do not spend money on Mac shareware, but MacHeist offers one price for a bunch of apps which makes it worth it, because the odds that I'll end up using frequently one or more of them is high.

On the other hand, I would not have bothered to download and try each of these sharewares individually, because I hate using crippleware. I don't think crippleware (unpaid for shareware) really gives me a good idea whether I'll use it or not. In fact, normally I won't use crippleware because it is annoying.

I bought the bundle and I'm very glad. It was clearly worth it for me.

Like me, I suspect most people who bought the MacHeist bundle would not have bought the software on normal terms. I think that the developers should be glad, since it brings them more revenue without any expense on their part.

Re:MacHeist made me spend money

I hate using crippleware. I don't think crippleware (unpaid for shareware)

Your terminology needs help.

Freeware: "Here's a program."
Shareware: "Here's a program. If you like it, pay me."
Sponsorware*: "Here's a program. It wants you to buy a new Lexus."
Postcardware: "Here's a program. If you like it, send me a postcard from your home town/state/province/country".
Crippleware: "Here's half a program. Pay me and I"ll give you the other half."
Nagware: "Here's a program. Pay me. Pay me. Pay me now. Have you paid me yet? If you pay me I'l shut up."
Expireware: "Here's a program. If you don't pay me, I'll take it back in a week."

Now, true shareware is virtually extinct; most of it is now nagware, crippleware, or expireware. But please don't confuse the issue any more than it already is.

*This used to be "adware," but "adware" has mutated since then.

The dominant middle man

often stands to make the most money (margin wise).

Compared to retail sales it's likely very fair

Compared to typical Retail sales, unless they reach there $400K target, it is approaching, or at least similar to typical Retail markup.

If you ask these developers what they expect to make in a typical week, and it's less than $5-8K then the fact is, they are increasing their cash flow.

Which may increase their sales in the next Upgrade cycle.

John Gruber/Daring Fireball to blame

Speaking as a devoted Mac user and advocate for the platform, this whole affair has shown the worst aspect of the Mac community and why so many people continue to write off the platform (an assembly of particular hardware and software) because of a small percentage of the user base (an assembly of people who use the hardware and software).

Ultimately, though - and I say this as a more-than-daily reader of the Daring Fireball website - John Gruber of Daring Fireball is to blame for this. He is the one that posted the initial exposé [daringfireball.net] of what he perceived the financial situation of the MacHeist promotion to be, even though he admitted multiple times in the article that he didn't have any first-hand knowledge of how the thing was actually structured. John is often a fine voice for the Mac-core community, which is why I read his site, but this is one of those times (and there have been others) where his sharply-worded articles have done much more harm than good.

Ultimately, it benefits no one for developers to be running around calling each other four-letter names because of perceived injustices. Both sides - but especially the anti-MacHeist side - need to stop talking at a volume and profanity level that makes casual observers think somebody is being tortured. Perhaps both sides should just stop talking about it period.

One thing is very clear from this: while the Mac-core constitutes probably fewer than 5% of all Mac users, they continue to give a bad name to the entire assembly of very well-designed and nice-to-use software and hardware. As they've done practically since day one. Am I the only one that thinks they sound like televangelists sometimes?

The interesting thing here

I really didn't know about this and besides this "schism" thing I think it's incredibly interesting that they managed to sell $100K+ worth of software per day for six days. This tells us a lot about the relative size of the OS X installed base and the willingness of said base to buy software. I think the shareware model could do a lot for the Mac, much as it did for the Windows platform 10+ years ago. The more quality software (applications) available for a platform, the more people will be able to consider switching to it.

margins attract competition

"Gruber calculates that MacHeist will record double, if not triple, the profits of all ten participating developers combined."
 

Where there's a good margin, competition will follow.

regarding the schism

I, for one, denounce the Catholic Church overlords.

Just one thought comes into mind

Slap fight.

Motivations. Pure and Otherwise.

While the MacHeist promoters have gone out of their way to actually _move copies of OS X shareware_ and move them swiftly, Gruber is being nothing but a negativist naysayer, and he's among the MacOS advocates that make me ashamed to be a Mac user every time he opens his mouth. Worst of all, at a fundamental level, he's engaging in this behavior in order to drive up hits to his blog, and drive up his profile in the community. It's all about increasing his personal revenue at the expense of others. He's nothing more than a John Dvorak-style rabblerouser for the iCult. I miss the days when NeXTStep was a largely disused platform, because back then, you could have an intelligent conversation with a core-level advocate. Now the quality of discussion is just 2 or 3 shades of gray different from ESR rambling about guns. The bottom line: Business is business. The MacHeist bundle is good business. The bundled price is going to encourage people who've never dropped a dollar on shareware ever at any point to drop dollars. One dollar, or even two, recovered for a shareware author is significant versus the zero that often gets spent on their software, often by scofflaw-like long-time piratical users. The bundle also achieves exposure for some of these products that would've been unattainable otherwise. Would I, or anyone I know, ever have spent money on a Pangea game? Nope. Never. iClip? Maybe.. I know others that like it.. but I shy away from user interface altering things like that. For FotoMagico? At $79 normally priced? I would've thought them crazy. Now that I have these things from the bundle? Hooray! Quite cool software. I'm sold on the benefits. I'll be an upgrade customer for at least some of them. The same goes for at least a few other bundle tools. Getting a license for TextMate and Delicious Library on the cheap is an amazing deal.. and now that I'm invested, however tinily at the outset, each of those developers has potentially made a long-term sale that will result in many times the revenue lost on the individual copies in upgrade revenue. Newsfire's author was particularly cognizant of this issue.. the MacHeist license doesn't come with lifetime upgrades.. but for a tiny figure of 10 dollars more, it's an option right out of the gate. Instant revenue turnover. It's a good, good thing. I honestly wish that I -had- subscribed to Gruber's blog in the past, so I could have the pleasure of saying to him: "No, John. No holy wars. No whining. Sit down, shut up, and give me my money back."

Re:Motivations. Pure and Otherwise.

I'm fine with business is business, as long as it is represented honestly.

The MacHeist folks were pushing this bundle as being much more beneficial to the independent developers than it really was. Case in point, several folks have said "Hey, I wouldn't normally buy this -- so they got an extra sale from me and I feel better about supporting the developer." The reality is that independent developer got maybe a $1 (if they're lucky) from the guy and can only pray that they won't have to answer a single support call.

While I don't agree with the terms of the bundle (and would decline the offer myself), I don't have an issue with them making the deal. I *DO* have an issue with them marketing it as benefiting the small independent developers. If they would have left that out -- I think it wouldn't be the issue that it currently is in the community.

Business is business and being dishonest about your motives is being dishonest about your motives. But of course, the whole point of their "Week of the Independent Developer" was to take advantage of the belief that buying this bundle was a way to support the efforts of the developers involved. The facts thus far seem to question whether this is actually the case.

It's not unlike a charity that claims to help some disadvantaged kids/group and it turns out only 5% or less of the contributions ever makes it to those kids/group. Would you be as willing to partake in that charity if you knew that 95% of it went to pay for lofty salaries, corporate perks, and what not?

Risk

So my understanding is that they paid a flat fee to developers, and are making money based on the fact that there are high sales. In essence, they assumed the risk that there would be little or no sales. If this had happened, they would be praised, or more probably, ignored. The developers understood this risk, they decided that the flat fee was worth more to them than a percentage of the profits, and so they signed. Based on their marketing, MacHeist overcame the risk, sold a bunch of software, and profited. This is justified by the fact that they assumed all of the risk, so they have a bigger share of the reward, and the increase in sales is a result of their marketing. If sales this large were normal, the developers would not have agreed to the flat fee, or to such a low flat fee. In either case, they came out ahead. You have to judge their actions at the time they signed the contract, when the risk was real, not in hindsight. Now, we can judge the use of their profits. If they re-invest them in marketing and promoting independent developers, then what's the problem? If they close down, and the owners split and run, then yeah, there are some issues.

Mac users complaining?

Say it aint so! They never complain about anything at our IT support desk. :)

Filling the bathtub

Things like MacHeist are a tide that floats all boats - making people more aware that there is great Mac shareware around helps other products, even those not directly involved in MacHeist.

To me, the MacHeist people are like those big expensive madison avenue marketing firms. They are damn expensive, but as MacHeist developers can attest it is more expensive not to hire them, in terms of lost revenue. Some have compared them to the RIAA but that's not at all a good analogy since the MacHeist role is more a pure marketing play.

Lastly, please everyone consider what THAT kind of money being dumped into the small Mac ISV means for the market of mac software as a whole - with an obvious sum of real money hanging around, more new developers will give Mac software a shot. And I don't think the mac developers that have gotten great gains from this event are just going to buy an island in Bermuda - they are probably going to roll at a lot of this into R&D & new products. Frankly to me this is a much healthier way to build a market rather than most software coming from one or two big players.

Photoshop for making webpages?

I like their description of the RapidWeaver editor:
"Before RapidWeaver, creating a slick, original website was about as easy for the average Joe as booting up Photoshop and handcoding pages of HTML in a text editor."
Perhaps starting Photoshop really is a tough task?
Or should I try to make a website encoded in a photograph... I'm sure that will be a challenge!

Ever sold software through a regular publisher?

I have. I got 16% of net, which was 16% of 40% of the retail price, after costs. Except that it was 16% of 20% of retail because they subcontracted production and sales to another company for 50%, and after marketing and packaging design and other expenses were taken care of I never saw a penny after my advance.

And it turned out that other company was owned by the same guy as the first, and that 50% basically went into his pocket.

If I could have gotten a flat fee for him to make NON exclusive sales, and ended up with 25% of what he got in his pocket, I would have been much better off.

No surprise here - distributors usually get the $$

People would be surprised how little the makers of software get when you buy from a third party - catalog or online store. In almost every business, so-called 'cost of sales' is 50% +/-5% of the price. This is true whether the purchase is direct, through a distributor, or from a retail store; it just gets distributed differently. It may be that the computer hardware business is different these days - I haven't done the numbers.

In my own case, a while back I had a very nice application for the NeXT, called 'MailQuery'(TM) - using full text semantic search, it turned NextMail into a kind of intuitive document management system. I looked into getting it into the big catalog for the NeXT - Next Warehouse? I forget the name. Unfortunately, the numbers didn't add up. The catalog took 50% off the top - plus I had to PAY THEM to put my product into their catalog, as I recall about $15000 for placement plus advertising, and I had to GIVE them a number of promo copies. (I don't recall any of the numbers exactly, so these are all approximate.) Since I was also licensing the search engine from Thunderstone, in order to make $10 on the product I would have had to sell it for over $500 per copy, and then sell over 100 copies - and the catalog came out every three months, so I had to do it again each time. Needless to say, this was not going to work.

Some time before that, working for a test equipment manufacturer, I learned that if a product couldn't be built (including fully loaded mfg. cost, and amortised development costs) for 20% of retail, it wasn't worth it for them to get into the business. 50% for sales costs, 15% operations & management, 20% manufacturing, leaves 15% profit. Even in this technology leader, engineering costs were under 5% of the product cost.

Software is a bit different, but the bottom line is still the same - there's a lot of mouths between the developer and the end user, even if the end user is another developer.

My experience...

I was working on a slideshow presentation for a client and had been using Keynote when I heard about the MacHeist bundle. I noticed Fotomagico and saw that it's normal price is $80, so I figured $50 for the whole package is a great deal. The last few days I've been playing around with them as I have time and basically here's how it runs down for me.

I picked Enigmo since I played the first version and liked it, but didn't feel like purchasing it. So that's money from me Pangea wouldn't have gotten.

Delicious Library is cool, but I don't really see how I'm going to USE it. Still fun to scan my stuff and I'll have to remind myself to scan things before I loan them to friends, I'll probably use it every now and then. Doubt I'll upgrade but it's nice to have in it's current form.

DevonThink I've never heard of before, but I'm trying to get into the Getting Things Done workflow and I think it'll help me out there. It's just so flexible and does so much I'm still not sure what to do with it, but I'll definately start trying to put some projects on it and hope I can get the flow going with it. A definite keeper, more $$ they never would have gotten from me. May even upgrade someday if I really get the hang of it.

ShapeShifter... I'm not a themer. Yeah some are cool looking, but I'm not a Pimp My Ride kinda guy. There's another developer that got dinero of mine they'd NEVER have seen otherwise.

Disco. I may need this someday, nice to have in the Utilities folder, better burning than the OS has built in... not sure when I'll ever use it.

RapidWeaver. Already started using it, I tried to make a basic page before with iWeb and it just wasn't working out. Fooled with this a few minutes and got my page up and running. Very nice.

iClip ... I dunno, I think including this in the same package of DevonThink kinda lowers it's usefulness. I'll have to fool with it a bit, but doubt I'll be using it much. I pretty much just use text clippings on the desktop then clean them up later. I don't really think to start another app just to copy some stuff.

Newsfire. I don't keep track of many sites, Safari's RSS does the job for me although I know it's limited. If someone ever asks about a better RSS agent than Safari I'll have one in mind.

TextMate. I'm not really a programmer so we'll see if I ever use this.

So then, out of 10 apps I only would have actually bought ONE of them. No, let me take that back, I wouldn't have bought Fotomagico on it's own since I don't really feel like shelling out $80 for it.

So really NOBODY would have gotten any of my cash at all without this deal. But especially the four apps I'll never ever use. There are the 6 which I have some interest in, but only 2 or 3 I'll use regularly from now on.

Still, they've gotten me to at least download and try out all 10 apps, maybe later on I'll recommend one of them to someone even though I personally don't use it. It builds awareness and spreads goodwill for ALL of those developers. So now if I talk to some Mac user who remembers with fondness the old WinAMP interface and wishes he could have it back, I'll tell him to pick up ShapeShifter and mod his OS. Someone asks about information saving and organizing I'll mention Freemind first of all, and then point out DevonThink has a different focus but is still very slick and worth checking out.

Compare this to magazine subscriptions, as I understand it costs an average of $40 of advertising and free giveaways for everyone 1 subscriber. So overall the developers involved in the MacHeist got themselves way more than $1,000,000 worth of advertising and mindshare with this. Goodness how do you market software? These guys made out like bandits here.

Mac Shareware?

One learns something new everyday. I though mac was the North Korea of software. I am guessing some dissidents also write open source for mac.

MacHeist Organizer Took on Risk

The MacHeist organizer took on _all_ the risk in this venture. The developers got a flat fee, apparently regardless of how well the bundle sold. MacHeist stood to lose everything they put into the deal or gain in proportion to sales if it did well. I would not be surprised to learn that some developers who turned down an offer to participate in MacHeist did so because they would not receive a percentage of the profits.

This is a non-issue

For us customers, we are getting a hell of a deal with that bundle. The developers got a nice little bit of change, plus a lot of visibility for their applications. Whatever financial arrangement was made between the organizers and the developers, is nothing more than that: a business deal. Nobody put a gun on their heads, or threatened to run them into the ground and out of business. It is nothing more than a business deal.

I already registered two of the applications that come with that bundle, and I feel that just these two are worth more to me than what mac heist is charging for the full bundle.

This is a free country, people are free to arrange these kinds of deals. Sure, the organizer is going to make a ton of money, but the developers are going to reach a broader base. When people renew these licenses the money will go to the developers, not the organizer that happened to sell them the previous version.

American mentality and childishness

in America, money wins. period. you got it and you can do whatever you want, even (a la oj) get away with murder, literally.

this is the system the US has had since it was founded. Often the merchants with money own and run things, and they know it is only because the have money they get to stay in control.

so a few guys did a thing and got some money. woop do doo. a few hundred k. that's the game folks, at least in the US. grow up and either live with it, or work to change it, or leave.

now go out and get some for yourself or stop whining and complaining like hurt children. those developers chose to participate. they knew the deal, and took it. macheist folks were (mostly) OPEN about their books. most small business endeavors are not - they take all they can from everyone and most people NEVER KNOW just how much is taken.

frankly, I think money worship has gone way too far in the US, and I think the money-only game is sick and makes people unhappy. I am working to change it, but I don't complain any more.

Re:Paying for software?

TextMate is easily worth paying for. The best programmer's editor I have ever used. I know how you feel about free software, but there are occasional exceptions. TextMate is one for sure.

Re:Users too

Oh please, you paid what you thought was a fair price. Now you're upset because someone else gets a better one than you did, completely by chance? There's no reason to begrudge anyone because they got lucky or because the developers found a way to pick up some extra cash -- You got exactly what you paid for.

Re:Users too

But, why? You obviously were willing and able to pay the price you did for a product you felt you needed. If in a week he offered a sale, would you be as outraged? What about if in 6 months he has a new version but continues to sell the old version for half-off? Differential pricing doesn't hurt anyone (at least for this type of product and this type of differentiation).

Video game consoles sell at a premium when they first come out, and people are willing to pay that premium. Later on, the price goes down, people who wanted it but couldn't afford it before pick it up. The manufacturer still turns a profit, but a smaller one. They still get more product out into the marketplace.

What if he sold at a different price to China, Zimbabwe, and the US? It it still as heinous?

GPL

And that BTW is how Richard Stallman came up with the whole idea that software represented an artificial economy. When in actual practice a good costs:
-- a lot to make the first copy of
-- very little / nothing to make additional copies of
-- a lot per copy for support

The obvious places to charge for the good are on support and initial development. A per copy charge is completely irrational given that price structure for production.

Re:GPL

Problem is, what if your application is made well enough, that you hardly ever get any support requests? Yes, it happens - especially when the application comes with well made and thurough documentation.

Then it still costs a fortune to make, but we're not supposed to charge for that.
Still costs next to nothing to make copies of (disregarding the cost and time of burning to a media or traffic for downloads)
Still costs next to nothing to support.

Where are we supposed to make money?

If our application costs $100,000 to develop, implement and document, and we expect 10,000 users, and expect maybe one percent of our users requirering our support, are we supposed to charge them $1,000 for support, just to break even? Or should we be allowed to charge $20 per copy/licence to make some money?

Charging for support can be profitable I suppose, but I believe it also breeds an artificial need for bad documentation and buggy software. After all, if the documentation is perfect and the software hardly in need of support, where are you supposed to make your money?

Re:Users too

That's the way it's always been. Windows XP is at least $99 retail (excluding coupons), whereas with a computer it's actually a lot less. There's also student discounts. Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc. are a lot less expensive at the University store than at CompUSA.

Re:Users too

Do you get angry when stores have a post-Xmas sale on a product you bought? What about the extra time you got using the software? If you needed the software a month ago, what use would it be waiting to buy it on sale? You would not get the use out of it when you needed it. this underlines one of the benefits of Macheist - it targets people who didn't feel they needed this software before, and might never have bought it. They may find they like the software and start using it. They may never use it - but the developers still get cash anyway.

Re:Mac Heist is the RIAA of Mac Software

The difference here is that MacHeist do not have such a stranglehold over the software industry such that it is impossible (or even significantly more difficult) to get exposure without them. This is merely the first attempt at something which may in time become the most popular way for small-time software developers to market their wares. There are a large number of people and organizations in this world that can market something like MacHeist - they are not the only ones. With competition we will eventually arrive at a happy equilibrium between the promoter's margin and the developer's margin.

Until MacHeist starts demonstrating that they are intending to monopolize the whole "pack 'n sell" shareware market, I have no concerns.

Re:The biggest names in the Mac community are ...

The "rest" of what "community" is that you're talking about, again?

I'll call the WAAAAHbulance.

Differential pricing eh? $40 for me, $1 for someone else so you can get an extra $1? Just doesn't sit right with me.

Was the software worth what you paid for it? If so, you made a good decision. What someone else paid is Ear Elephant. Most products are sold at different prices at different times (ever hear of a SALE?), for volume discounts, or even humanitarian reasons (drug companies routinely charge much more for their products in the US than they do in Africa, where the patients can't afford to pay as much.

Business as usual. get over it.

Noooo, that wasn't the crime

Their crime was to take on upfront risk against a potentional profit - and succeeding.

Re:Users too

Why, were you planning on re-selling the software?

Nobody put a gun to your head when you bought it, and its function is in no way altered by the developer offering it at a different price. If you wanted it cheaper, then you should have just waited; most products get discounted eventually.

-jcr