Ian Wood wrote:
<http://www.thinkmac.co.uk/blog/2006/11/why-you-shouldnt-give-away-
your.html>
Roughly paraphrased as:
Hey buddy, can we give away 5,000 copies of your app for free?
What? Why on Earth would I want to create an extra 5,000 potential
customer support issues for no money, and piss off all my paying
customers?
------------------------------------------------------
Within your business model (whatever it is), I cannot think of any
reason at all why you would want to piss off all your paying customers.
But not everybody "thinks Mac", that's all. Diversity is (or rather
should be) the spirit of the modern world, and the kind of world where
you cannot give stuff away without getting into trouble for it is not
the kind of world I want to live in. With one tiny exception, all the
software at my site is entirely free, and although downloads (and
presumably usage) are constant, I have never had anything that I would
define as a "support issue". Could it be because the software is
relatively bug-free? Or is it that people feel awkward complaining about
something which is free in the first place? I may never know the answer
exactly. Of course, with the appearance and exponential growth of Linux
(often mistakenly associated entirely with the free software movement),
this is an issue that the Rev community is wrestling with (and
apparently "ostriching" about, to use a word from Queen Elizabeth's
vocabulary) and will eventually need to come to terms with. In line with
the idea of the importance of diversity (and perhaps contradiction in a
real living/livable world), even bearing in mind that I give away all my
own software (though I can least afford it living in Brazil), I would
not necessarily recommend for example that Rev/Linux should be offered
free (as RealBasic have done), or that professional programming and
earning a decent living as a result of developing Rev products is not an
honourable and dignified thing to do. On the contrary. Live and let live
is what I say.
Regards,
Bob Warren
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