An idea for commercial support for D

[Zach the Mystic via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 8 January 2015 at 10:37:57 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> You're on the right track: I've talked in the past about a more 
> advanced version of such a pricing model, that could be used 
> for any intellectual property, not just for software.  How it 
> would work is that the developer sets a price for all the work 
> to develop the feature, say $3k, and picks a reasonable minimum 
> amount of customers, say 20.  So he then sets the initial price 
> at $150, which may seem high for a single feature.
>
> But assuming he gets to 20 customers, the price drops for each 
> subsequent customer, and the first 20 get a proportionate 
> refund.
>  So when he gets to 30 customers, each of the last 10 to buy 
> get charged $100, not $150, and each of the first 20 customers 
> get their prices dropped to $100, so that the total for the 
> developer is always $3k.  Right now, this may work better for 
> an up-front payment model, say on a site like kickstarter, or 
> some such marketplace where the customers have ongoing accounts 
> and it's easy to credit money back to them without having to 
> keep issuing refunds to their payment provider, avoiding the 
> accompanying fees.
>
> What are the advantages of such a model?

Another advantage is that the developer avoids being perceived as 
a money-grubbing scoundrel, which seems to be a significant issue 
in open-source development. There seems to be a moral hazard if a 
developer, whose work is not substantially different in quality 
or quantity from the work of myriad others who contribute for 
free, stands to reap royalties indefinitely.

Actually, this could work even with the existing developers. A 
marketplace is opened where developers offer features they would 
be willing to work on. It's like the bounty system but where 
developers also have a say in letting customers know what they'd 
be willing to do. The functionality of this system relies on the 
devastating fact that while hobbyists would like to always work 
on their own pet projects for free, they also need money just as 
much. This gives a way to compromise between what customers 
(bounty posters, i.e.) want, and what developers want, saying 
what they'd be willing to divert their attention towards if the 
price was right. And, seeing that actual money was to be made in 
programming for the D community, more programmers might just 
start jumping in.

The big key is to make it so hobbyists who already contribute so 
much great work for free don't feel in any way abused. Inviting 
them to post their own offers on the marketplace might actually 
work. I mean, isn't the real problem with the bounty system that 
existing developers with the time and resources to do great work 
don't even really have a say, other than "yes" or "no"? Well, 
that and it's not always perfectly clear when the terms of a 
bounty have been met, due to more parties than just the developer 
and the customer being involved.

> This kind of variable pricing model would have been too costly 
> decades ago, with all the paper bookkeeping and chargebacks.  
> It would be trivial to implement today though and would be a 
> much better model for many products.

Yeah, the internet's great.

> Why isn't it done already?  People are stupid, no other reason.

Or, they are distrustful of new ideas, afraid of change, and need 
to be shown good things first - all of which are perfectly 
understandable. Also, don't tell people they're stupid... it's 
bad for business! :-)