The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Jb]

"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.15.1219085627.19733.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 06:28:57PM +0100, Jb wrote:
>> I know people who have done things like this. They get 1000s of downloads
>> and accaisionaly someone donates 5 bucks.
>
> That's not the same. What I'm proposing is that the software plain
> isn't written if you don't get enough money up front.

I know I was just emphasising how reluctant people are to part with their 
money when they dont have to. And likewise how reluctant they still are even 
when they see a developer whose products they apparently use & love shutting 
up shop.


>> The vast majority of people will not pay if they dont have to.
>
> Right, so the trick is to make it so they think they have to. Tax season
> is coming up, and you really wish you had a program up to date with
> this year's tax code to help you out. Uh oh, no program exists, but there
> is a development company saying they'll make one if they get a total
> of $100,000 in investments.

Im sorry that just wont work. If you cant get people to donate for somthing 
they can download and use today, you wont get them to donate for somthing 
that they might or might not get in 6 months time.

They will use the exact same rationale that they use already for pirating 
movies.

Whether they pay or not will be a drop in the ocean. It'll make little 
difference if they buy into the scheme or not. So they may as well let other 
people do it.


> Someone else might pay for it, but everyone would think that, so the
> rational person has to assume that no one is going to pay for it, thus,
> the software will never be written and he won't be able to use it.

No the rational person would think "Look it's gonna take 10,000 people to 
get this up and running, whether I invest or not doesnt matter, and the 
developers are probably raking it in anyway"

And on top of that I have no guarantee of what I will get. They could just 
code up some piece of crap and then I've wasted my money.

And no, some kind of "quality validation" mechanism wouldnt work, it'd add 
so much pointless overhead and chaff to an already cumbersome and 
inneficient business model.


> Since he wants to use it, he must buy into the company. Of course, he 
> can't
> afford $100k up front, and even if he could, it isn't worth that much to 
> him,
> so he puts in a fraction of the total and hopes other people think the 
> same
> way.

Or he thinks "screw that" and looks elsewhere. <g>


>> 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.
>
> Valid: I could see it being very hard for someone with a poor reputation
> to get started, but that's again where the satisfaction guaranteed or your
> money back clause comes in. Potential investors have very little risk
> giving a new guy a chance, since they have little to lose if he fails.

What I'm saying is that your kind of scheme would require a very high number 
of investors. People will be far less willing to invest 100$ in somthing 
they might get 6 months from now than they will be to spend $100 on somthing 
they can download now, where they can try the demo and see if they like it.

So for smaller enterpises where the number of customers and margins are 
already small. Your scheme simply would not work.

I would be out of business in 6 months with you as my business adviser.

Sorry.

And yes it would make entry into the market much hard for new upstarts.


>> 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.
>
> Put a price on each feature.
>
> If you want feature A, you have to pay an additional $1000 total.
> Feature B is an additional $500.
>
> An investor says "well, feature A is worth $20 to me, so I'll buy it." If
> 50 other investors feel the same way, then feature A gets implemented -
> they paid for it, so they should get it.
>
> If not, then it doesn't happen.
>
> Adding a direct price up front for features is an easy way to keep them
> limited. You set the prices so features that you really don't think are
> a good idea cost more, to discourage people from buying them.
>
> Then if they do buy it, you still win, since you get more money.

Oh FFS.. why dont I just run a raffle or a tombola?

I'd spend more time auctioning features, talking customers, running voting 
systems, managing who'd paid what, and who wants how much back because this 
or that didnt apear.

I'd never have any time for programming.


>> 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.
>
> So construction contractors aren't capitalists? They don't own the 
> building
> they were hired to build either. They do own their time and skill though,
> just like a software developer working as a contractor.

They *COULD* own it if they want. And a lot of small building contractors do 
do it this way.

What you are doing is removing that possibility from them.

You are forcing them to only do business as a service.


>> Another obvious downside is that people dont like having to wait. They 
>> want
>> the product now.
>
> Good point, and businesses could specialize in this.
>
> Someone could put up an offer saying that the software is already
> written, and if we receive X dollars, we'll release it. If not, we'll
> delete the whole thing.

And the customer will think "Heck they've already written it, they are going 
to release sooner or later because otherwise they loose every pennty of 
their investment"


> It is like selling the software, but doing so in such a way that piracy
> is impossible. By the time the program is out in the open so it can be 
> pirated,
> the company already has their money and doesn't care anymore.

It wont work... i think the donationware / honesty box model would probably 
work better than that would.


>> 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?
>
> So you expect customers are going to wander around the Internet, investing
> money in lots of different projects that might nor might not give them
> what they want when the download is complete?

They can download a demo and try it first.

Or they have 14 day money back guarentee.

Of they can sell the product to someone else.


> That's what copyrighted software as the product does and people are 
> willing
> to do it.

Except they can usualy try a demo. And they dont have to wait for months to 
get it. And once purchased the product still has intrinsic value. They can 
sell it on to someone else.

Whereas with your model the software is worthless to the customer, it has no 
resale value because now anyone can download and use it for free.


>> And then when half these schemes fail they are going to go chasing the
>> developers up to get their money back?
>>
>> CUCKOO!
>
> It's their money, if they want to throw it away, fine. But if you invested
> money in something and you didn't get that something, you'd probably want
> your money back too, and since you have a contract (again, this
> isn't just a donation button I'm talking about), you can prove that you
> deserve it back to a court of law.

Yes and how often do consumers take companies to court over a 50$ payment?

And say I'm a budding record producer, and I've bought into 15 of these 
schemes in the last year. 7 still havnt turned up the goods.

Am i going to go round chassing up all these microdonations?

Dont we have enough shit to do in our lifes with out complicating the 
purchase of software to such an extent that I have to keep track of all my 
investments, and the promises and requestes I made for each one?


>> Look there's been nothing stopping businesses operating like that for
>> decades, maybe even centuaries.
>
> Yes, and things have been done that way for centuries. This isn't an 
> original
> idea.

Lots of them? Are there lots of businesses working this way?

Nope.


> How are buildings designed, constructed and maintained? One option there
> is a building as a product - you build it and wait for someone to come and
> buy it. I think that is how Donald Trump made his money.

Yes and this is still how it's done in the vast majority of cases.


> The other option is you wait for someone to hire you to build it to their
> specifications. This is how most construction companies and architecture
> firms make their money.

A bad analogy. Do we see hundreds of people clubbing togther in order to 
finance the building of residential tower blocks, or residential estates?

No we dont.

We do see big companies comissioning buildings, or developments. But that is 
actualy little different from big companies commisioning custom made 
software.

Sure it happens, but in the vast majoirty of cases people / businesses dont 
need custom made software. So that model doesnt work because it's many 
orders of magnitude cheaper for it to be produced via the generic product 
based model.