Developers? Let them eat cake!
I was surprised today by the reception that greeted Textpander’s re-emergence as TextExpander, in particular by the response to the app’s new USD 29.95 price tag.
Posts on MacUser 
, TUAW and comments here on Hawk Wings all lamented the new cost and the passing of what some of them called “freeware”.
One even implied that Peter had “let down” the whole Mac community by selling Textpander on.
Two things about this were surprising. First, the idea that Textpander was ever “freeware” in the first place. A request for donations is prominently displayed on the web pages of all Peter’s apps. And rightly so.
Probably like three other developers I have spoken to, only 1-2% of the people who downloaded his stuff actually donated. 98% were happy to take the software and run.
Ironically, people who equate donation-ware with freeware may well be a key factor in Textpander’s sale. When SmileOnMyMac turned up, Peter may finally have seen the adequate return for his time and energy which the Mac user community by and large refused him.
Secondly, I am surprised that people find the new price too high.
I don’t think that the price is too steep for something that offers such productivity gains.
Say that it helps me work 5% faster when I am writing. I only have to earn USD 600 for it to have paid its way, and after that I am reaping the benefits in perpetuity.
Mail.app is beautiful straight “out of the box”. But the existence of fabulous plugins makes it even more beautiful, more powerful and more useful.
It’s worth remembering that developers make these plugins. They do not fall like manna from heaven out of the sky. Real people make them and maintain them with time stolen from their families and jobs and other projects and passions.
So, pay up. Pay up in acknowledgment of the work that goes into donation-ware. Pay up to make sure that someone will create the plugins of the future. Pay up just to remind yourself how lucky you are to have this software on your Mac at all.
Here endeth the sermon :)
UPDATE: Peter himself also has something to say on the subject.
Related posts
May 25th, 2006 at 1:24 am
I think the point about donation-ware needs to be emphasized. Donation ware is a great thing. It allows the developers to make money off of their contributions while still letting people try out the full version of the software and decide how valuable it is to them. (it’s like donating to NPR)
Personally, I think the donation-ware platform produces really great software. It’s completely merit based. If you want more people to donate, you make a better product. Someone producing shareware who has no other competitors may be able to make a product that is “just good enough” to serve a purpose and over-charge for a practical version of it.
People need to support donation-ware. At least donate ONCE. A $35 donation for a lifetime of a good product is a STEAL. $35/year for such a product is hardly too much to ask.
And how TextExpander is shareware… Which means that its future features will be based completely on marketing and competition. It’s not about the merit anymore, and the people who loved TextPander who didn’t show their love are probably the ones to blame.
May 25th, 2006 at 1:45 am
Ted wrote:
Interesting. I hasn’t thought about merit and marketing, substance and rhetoric in this connection before.
May 25th, 2006 at 3:01 am
Ted, you might believe that “the donation-ware platform produces really great software”. It’s not the business model that produces great software, it’s the de
May 25th, 2006 at 3:04 am
Aah… Stupid fat fingers. What I was going to say was:
it’s not the business model, but the developers who make great software. In fact, the doation model is, IMO, discouraging for the developers who see people using their software but not valuing it enough to pay for.
May 25th, 2006 at 4:54 am
Wasn’t this in one of the last CocoaRadio interviews “make your app shareware from the beginning, you only make lots of enemies if you ever change your mind. and no, 30 Bucks is a fine price, don’t be too cheap, this will scare people away”.
Ahh, the mac shareware market - something unique and full of roses… ;)
May 25th, 2006 at 5:02 am
I completely agree with Tim and Peter on this regard.
Donationware often starts as a result of a pastime, hobby or interest. The thinking that goes behind it is not marketing or product development, but I have an itch I want to scratch so I am going to develop something that does it. Then it moves to, hey this is pretty cool and I want to share it but I don’t want to get involved with support and actually demands for product development, so I will put it out there as donationware — If people want to send me money so much the better.
Then as the product develops and the downloads increase (fast) and the donations increase (very slowly), the developer has more and more demands, and the hobby mutates into less of a hobby and more of an extra job — albeit often an enjoyable one.
In anycase, the only thing that happens is burnout partly due to a feeling that the vast majority of people are taking advantage of a lot of hard work and good will. It is not that any one individual has ill intent, it is just that the feeling and burn out is a result of few donations and many requests and desires for support. When the project has evolved to being much more than a hobby development and support takes time and energy and burnout is likely to occur. It is classic tragedy of the commons.
The most likely outcome is that the developer will burn out and decide it is not worth the effort. In this scenario everyone loses because what may be a great product dies. (both in the support and future development departments). The other outcome is that the developer decides that his/her time and effort is worth more than what he/she recieves for it and decides that people should pony up a nominal amount. In this scenario, most people win. The developer wins because he/she is being rewarded for hard work. The people who donate win because the software they want continues to be developed and supported. The only people who may not win are the ones who where taking advantage of the donation system to begin with. Then they have a choice to make, pay a small amount for the utility or enjoyment of the software, or not use it.
In anycase, 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
May 25th, 2006 at 5:32 am
Fraser said…
Developers are at the mercy of the market. I’ve worked for small software companies and large software companies, and in every case, regardless of their ISO ratings or their management strategy or how great their customer support was, it was more important to make software available by certain deadlines than it was to implement every single interesting feature request (or even fix every bug report!). In some cases, free branches (e.g., 5.9 to 5.9.1.1) of the development tree were created that fixed bugs in the trunk but also introduced new bugs to encourage users to upgrade to the new trunk release (e.g. 6.0) for a price. This simply would not occur with donationware.
I’m not saying that it’s easy (nor common) for any particular piece of donationware to have a lot of longevity. I’m just saying that if you rush the jump to shareware, then you’re going to severely hurt the novelty and merit of the application.
I like to use NPR as an example of “donationware” that leads to content that ends up being the gold standard for its media (in this case, journalism). NPR doesn’t have to design for listeners who tune in for only 20 minutes and need to see at least two ads during that 20 minutes. However, there is a lot of work and dedication that goes into keeping NPR going because of forces related to the tragedy of the commons. (I actually think that subscription-based services (including radio and TV) produce terrific results. These should not be though of as “shareware” because there are no free loaders here)
All I’m saying is that the software market is not perfect, but as long as there is a supply for interested developers, it’s one of the best compromises available. Also note that I think creative commons style licensing on code may still be too restrictive in many cases. Perhaps there is a way to fix the problems with donationware by making it simpler for new developers to pick up where old developers left off. It’s not trivial to figure out the “best” way to do this… but it’s just a thought. The solution to burn-out may be fresh eyes and new ideas.
May 25th, 2006 at 5:47 am
I was quite surprised to hear this news because I only downloaded Textpander about three days ago or so (must have just got it in time) and am still seeing whether it’s worth a donation - okay, whether it’s worth buying as shareware (now). I didn’t think it had quite got the rep yet to go fully shareware. But I respect the decision - we all have to eat and $30 is easily spent on one meal.
So, I’m interested. How many people “tip” you via the PayPal link for your blog? Ever thought of making it a paid subscription? I bet you have spent as much time writing it as Peter has Textpander…
May 25th, 2006 at 7:41 am
‘…the passing of what some of them called “freewareâ€â€¦â€™
My subjective feeling is that there is much more good freeware (and shareware) available for OS X, than there ever was for OS 9. Many reasons. Only one of which, is the side effect of Apple having a UNIX base.
I haven’t seen the actual laments the above article refers to, but to the detractors: “show us YOUR freeware codeâ€.
Myself: I’m going to pay for either TextExpander or TypeIt4Me. If I’m not mistaken, CopyPaste + yType has similar functionality.
May 25th, 2006 at 8:20 am
The problem, for me, is the word *donation*; a donation is a voluntary gift and if one is *expected* or *required* to donate, both the *voluntary* and the *gift* part of that definition are now gone.
Note also that saying you’ll get a “free license” if you donate is pretty confusing, too. If the license is, in fact, free, then it isn’t a result of the donation; it might be a nice gift in return for that donation but that’s not the same thing.
Saying that everyone who donated gets a free license to the new TextExpander is a very nice and classy thing to do. But I really have to disagree with anyone saying that donations are *expected*. If your software requires payment, admit that and call it shareware or commercial.
May 25th, 2006 at 8:28 am
TextPander was his software, and he can do what ever he wants with it. It is a great product, and I hope the new price will just speed up the development and addition of new features.
May 25th, 2006 at 8:40 am
Andy asks:
Hehehehe…. Nice one :)
The similiarities and differences between developers and bloggers did occur to me while I was writing the post.
I’ve been meaning to post something about that. The situation is not (quite) as bleak you might imagine.
May 25th, 2006 at 8:50 am
Scott Morrison writes:
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.
May 25th, 2006 at 9:12 am
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…
May 25th, 2006 at 9:23 am
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).
May 25th, 2006 at 11:46 am
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.
May 25th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
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
May 25th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
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
May 25th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
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.
May 26th, 2006 at 12:15 am
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.
May 26th, 2006 at 3:20 am
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.)
May 26th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
@Smorr, Andreas and Peter,
How will this happen? Will you developer guys get together and try a joint email to MU and VT?