The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Jb]

"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.13.1219076519.19733.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
>
>> And your supposed ideas of how it could work just emphasise the point. 
>> The
>> problem is that getting a 100 people together, and getting them to agree 
>> on
>> what they want, and how much they will pay, and then finding someone who
>> will do the work, is just absurd.
>
> Nonsense.
>
> Create a website with a donation system. Someone looking for the software
> you are about to have written can find this website and decide if he wants
> to help pay the developer to write it or if he simply doesn't want it to
> get done.
>
> The donation system wouldn't be just a donation system, it would be 
> entering
> into a contract to get what you paid for - if the developer doesn't 
> deliver,
> you get your money back.

I know people who have done things like this. They get 1000s of downloads 
and accaisionaly someone donates 5 bucks.

It doesnt work.

The vast majority of people will not pay if they dont have to.

One guy i know who actualy releases his plugins as donationware got so 
little money he had to shut his website down because he couldnt afford the 
hosting costs. Yes he got a 10 page thread full of people saying "oh no 
thats so sad, your plugins are great, hope you get back online soon".

But in spite of all those people, of all the thousands of downloads, people 
didnt donate enough for him to pay for the bandwidth to run his website.

Really, it does not work.

It may work for massive projects, with tens or hundreds of thousands of 
users, but for small to medium size enterprize it will never work. At least 
not for anything but a handful of developers.


> Furthermore, since you are paying into the contract, you get a say in
> what you want. Perhaps shareholders can vote on acceptance tests or
> on must have features to write into the contract.

It's hard enough getting half a dozen people to decide on what features to 
include in a prjoect they are all working on without having a couple of 
hundred "investors" arguing over it as well.

The problem is firstly "too many cooks" and secondly "too much 
administration".

It's absurd.

And actualy, if I had to bend to the whim of my customers on every single 
thing my product would actualy be worse for it. It would be the worst case 
of design by commitee ever.

So not only would your scheme stiffle creativity in general. It would also 
stiffle individual creativity.


> Exactly like they would when buying packaged software, except here they
> pay first then get the software made rather than the other way around.
>
>> You are insane if you think that system
>> will be more efficient and more productive than the current copyright /
>> capatilist one.
>
> This /is/ a capitalist system. People invest in a product to suit their
> own needs - that's the very definition of capitalism.

If I dont own the product I am producing then no it's not a capatilist 
system. The fundamental mechanism in capatilism is private ownership, 
whether of physical or intellectual property.


> Even the obvious downside of the above plan: someone chooses not to invest
> hoping that someone else will and he still benefits, is purely capitalist.
> He is looking out for his own interests, trying to get the most product
> for the least amount of money.

Another obvious downside is that people dont like having to wait. They want 
the product now.

So not only is it crippled by the problems of "design by commitiee", and the 
problems of "excesive administration", it's also crippled by the fact that 
consumers dont want to have to wait 12 months to get what they paid for.


> The counterbalance to this is that if he
> doesn't invest in it, he might not get what he wants, or it might not be
> created at all. So he has to make a decision.

So you expect customers are going to wander around the interent, investing 
money in lots of different projects that might or might not give them what 
they want in 6 months time?

And then when half these schemes fail they are going to go chasing the 
developers up to get their money back?

CUCKOO!


> If I was a software developer in such a world, I'd keep the current list
> of shareholders and amount of money I've been paid a secret. Then
> someone looking at the website doesn't know if he has to invest or not
> to get the product, so hopefully, he will, meaning I get a bit more
> profit.
>
> The customer is safe in donating to me, even if I don't get enough
> capital to make the product, since if I don't deliver, he can sue me for
> his money back.
>
> That is pure, unrestrained and safe competition in a wholly capitalist 
> system.

Look there's been nothing stopping businesses operating like that for 
decades, maybe even centuaries. If it did work, if it was so much better 
than the current system, we'd be talking about the multitude of businesses 
that do actualy work that way.

And yet we're not.