On Thursday, 8 January 2015 at 12:06:18 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad
wrote:
On Thursday, 8 January 2015 at 10:37:57 UTC, Joakim wrote:
supply/demand curve for his product. In this variable pricing
model, the customer also takes some of that risk, ie you'll
pay more if enough other people don't also want the product.
Businesses don't like risk. They need to estimate the total
cost before starting the project. I don't think you can
advertising "less bugs" as a feature. It has to be a real
feature like better performance.
Yes, I've already established the risk aspect, this variable
pricing model is fundamentally about better risk sharing and the
customer not being very price-sensitive. As for estimating the
total cost, the seller also needs to estimate his expected
revenue, ie how much demand there is and at what price. With
this model, you are allowing the seller to get a better estimate
and more certainty. Meanwhile, the buyer takes on more risk, but
if he wants that product to exist, he may be willing to do that.
I have no idea why you're talking about bugs and performance, as
a variable pricing model has nothing to do with those software
features. Maybe you're talking about the paid patches idea I
laid out earlier, but that's a completely separate concept from
this variable pricing model. Suffice to say, paid patches can be
written for both bugfixes and performance: I never limited it to
just bugfixes.
Your assumption is that businesses start on a project and then
later discover that they cannot work within the limits of the
tools and are willing to pay a premium for it. Sure, that is
possible, but your business model is flawed because it is based
on your customers having a embarked on a project with a flawed
plan in order to become a customer.
I assume nothing about when a business discovers limits.
Presumably you're talking about the completely unrelated paid
patches idea here, but if D becomes much more capable because of
paid patches, companies will be much more willing to come in new
and use D, regardless of whether they have to pay or not. Sure,
the first to pay will be existing companies using D, but you
could attract a lot of new companies with paid patches, as what
they really care about is having access to good tools.
