Comments on: Developers? Let them eat cake!

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 26 May 2006 07:16:31 +0000

@Smorr, Andreas and Peter,

How will this happen? Will you developer guys get together and try a joint email to MU and VT?

By: The Plaid Cow

The Plaid Cow — Thu, 25 May 2006 17:20:16 +0000

The lack of users willing to do anything for the software they use is sorely depressing. I haven’t asked for money for any of the script I have released–just an email telling me where you found about the script from. Maybe one in twenty actually responds to the email that delivers the script.)

By: Peter Maurer

Peter Maurer — Thu, 25 May 2006 14:15:30 +0000

I couldn’t agree more with you, smorr. Actually, I’ve been there before, but both MU and VT felt it was too much of a hassle to add another category to their databases.

I do think, however, that a combined effort might change their minds. After all, we are the ones that keep those sites running. And come to think of it, MU’s Joel Mueller owes me one for MUMenu anyway ;-)

–

On a side note: I really love the way you’ve outlined the itch -> donationware -> shareware path.

By: smorr

smorr — Thu, 25 May 2006 13:19:53 +0000

I think one thing that we can collectively do vis a vis donationware is to write to both MacUpdate and VersionTracker and ask them to add “donationware” to the license list. Maybe encourage them to add a sidebar that notes the subtle difference between free and donationware.

By: John Maisey

John Maisey — Thu, 25 May 2006 06:44:23 +0000

As a first time developer I offered the software as donationware. After a few months and ~6000 downloads I have received only 3 donations. (This is possibly an indication of the quality of the software ;) As I’m not relying on this for income this is ok, but for the amount of work put in it is slightly depressing.

If I released another piece of software, I think it would probably be shareware.

John M

By: Andreas Amann

Andreas Amann — Thu, 25 May 2006 02:43:15 +0000

When I was reading this entry this morning I decided to write down my thoughts about it once I got home in the evening. Looks like a few people felt compelled to do so as well and others already put it much better than what I would have been able to (i.e., I pretty much completely agree with Scott/”smorr”)

The number of people donating to my applications is also way less than 2% - for a total number of roughly 100,000 users (conservative estimate from number of downloads on VT and MU as well as monthly traffic on my site) I have received a total of less than 200 donations over the course of about 4 years) - but then, the donation link is not that prominent either ;-) Apart from actually developing the app, I still have to spend several hours a week responding to feedback from people (some of them apparently can’t be bothered to read the instructions) and I have to pay for the web hosting (seems like Apple tries to really start enforcing their monthly bandwith cap…) and I definitely start seeing the burn out Scott is talking about.

Andreas

By: Marcel Bischoff

Marcel Bischoff — Thu, 25 May 2006 01:46:45 +0000

For me, it’s a pretty simple thing: if you use it, make a donation. Many developers don’t even ask for a specific price to be donated so you can choose regarding to your income. I always buy software I use daily. Because if I don’t use it that often, chances are that I don’t really need it at all.

By: Jon

Jon — Wed, 24 May 2006 23:23:29 +0000

As a developer of several donation-ware applications, I’d be thrilled with 2% donations. As it is, my most popular software (Preferential Treatment, used to ferret out corrupt plist files) has been downloaded a few hundred thousand times, gets rave reviews across the board (Macworld Mac Gem, 5-stars on versiontracker.com, etc.), and yet has only garnered donations from about 300 people over the past two years. Assuming that many of my downloads are from people who have upgraded to new versions or downloaded on multiple machines, I suspect I have about 100,000 users out there. If I could get 2,000 donations, that’d be great. Don’t get me started on my other donation-ware titles (total contributions have run about 0.001% of downloads)…

On another note, over the years I have had several opportunities to trade emails with Peter and he has always been very generous with his time and even his code. Butler is a tremendous piece of software and something I couldn’t live without. I made a donation for his menu clock before it was sold and became shareware and I received a free license to the shareware version when it was released, just as anyone who contributed to Textpander will get a license for TextExpander, I believe.

If you use software from independent developers, please, please, please support them (and me).

By: engrowe.com

engrowe.com — Wed, 24 May 2006 23:12:38 +0000

Will You Pay for the Next Version of MailTags?…

I ran across a post on Hawk Wings stating:

At any rate, I am almost certain to make the next iteration of MailTags a significant upgrade (2.0) and implement a registration system allowing access to advance/new features via registration.
Scott

So it l…

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 24 May 2006 22:50:57 +0000

Scott Morrison writes:

In any case, I am almost certain to make the next iteration of MailTags a significant upgrade (2.0) and implement a registration system allowing access to advanced/new features via registration.

Excellent news. It’s not uncommon to see Mail Act-on and MailTags referred to as “freeware” on the web, so clearly the same confusion about donation-ware is at work.

I say this is excellent because, first, the plugins easily warrant a shareware level fee (easily!!) in themselves, and secondly, because I hope it will encourage you to develop more. That would be the best outcome for Mail.app.