On Thursday, 8 January 2015 at 10:37:57 UTC, Joakim wrote:
You're on the right track: I've talked in the past about a more
advanced version of such a pricing model, that could be used
for any intellectual property, not just for software. How it
would work is that the developer sets a price for all the work
to develop the feature, say $3k, and picks a reasonable minimum
amount of customers, say 20. So he then sets the initial price
at $150, which may seem high for a single feature.
But assuming he gets to 20 customers, the price drops for each
subsequent customer, and the first 20 get a proportionate
refund.
So when he gets to 30 customers, each of the last 10 to buy
get charged $100, not $150, and each of the first 20 customers
get their prices dropped to $100, so that the total for the
developer is always $3k. Right now, this may work better for
an up-front payment model, say on a site like kickstarter, or
some such marketplace where the customers have ongoing accounts
and it's easy to credit money back to them without having to
keep issuing refunds to their payment provider, avoiding the
accompanying fees.
What are the advantages of such a model?
Another advantage is that the developer avoids being perceived as
a money-grubbing scoundrel, which seems to be a significant issue
in open-source development. There seems to be a moral hazard if a
developer, whose work is not substantially different in quality
or quantity from the work of myriad others who contribute for
free, stands to reap royalties indefinitely.
Actually, this could work even with the existing developers. A
marketplace is opened where developers offer features they would
be willing to work on. It's like the bounty system but where
developers also have a say in letting customers know what they'd
be willing to do. The functionality of this system relies on the
devastating fact that while hobbyists would like to always work
on their own pet projects for free, they also need money just as
much. This gives a way to compromise between what customers
(bounty posters, i.e.) want, and what developers want, saying
what they'd be willing to divert their attention towards if the
price was right. And, seeing that actual money was to be made in
programming for the D community, more programmers might just
start jumping in.
The big key is to make it so hobbyists who already contribute so
much great work for free don't feel in any way abused. Inviting
them to post their own offers on the marketplace might actually
work. I mean, isn't the real problem with the bounty system that
existing developers with the time and resources to do great work
don't even really have a say, other than "yes" or "no"? Well,
that and it's not always perfectly clear when the terms of a
bounty have been met, due to more parties than just the developer
and the customer being involved.
This kind of variable pricing model would have been too costly
decades ago, with all the paper bookkeeping and chargebacks.
It would be trivial to implement today though and would be a
much better model for many products.
Yeah, the internet's great.
Why isn't it done already? People are stupid, no other reason.
Or, they are distrustful of new ideas, afraid of change, and need
to be shown good things first - all of which are perfectly
understandable. Also, don't tell people they're stupid... it's
bad for business! :-)
