[thelist] pricing blobs-o-bits (was: cheap software spam - how do they do it?)
Max Schwanekamp
lists at neptunewebworks.com
Wed Mar 15 01:05:56 CST 2006
Ken Schaefer wrote:
> : You are approaching what I say with entirely the wrong mindset to
> : understand what I'm actually saying.
> :
> : For the moment, forget the support hotline, shrinkwrap, fancy box, 60
> : second commercial on 100 different cable TV and broadcast channels
> : <snip /> Take all that out,
> : and the cost to develop a given program into something usable drops
> : significantly (and we begin to see just where that $1200 for this Adobe
> : Suite thing actually goes).
To say that the marketing efforts are superfluous to the production of
commercial software is IMHO naive. Without the marketing efforts, net
sales would be a small fraction of what they would otherwise be, and the
company would be able to pay far fewer people to produce *and support*
that software. That software would have a smaller userbase, with fewer
maintainers, and inferior support services compared to the competition's
products. In short, the company would die.
> : Besides, it doesn't hold water, as
> : people do make money selling copies of free software: the people that
> : really do need the disc, shrinkwrap, and fancy box get it, and those
> : that don't, don't.
RedHat, Mandriva, et al certainly isn't just providing fancy copies of
their software for a profit. They're also providing support, updates,
communication, and so on. Sure there are some folks charging a few
bucks for burned copies of open source software, but you cannot compare
them to software development companies like Adobe. *That* would be
apples-to-oranges.
> That's a completely different business model. A business can choose which
> model they wish to use. For those that choose to charge upfront for
> development, then I don't see why paying a fair price for it is such an
> outrageous suggestion. People on this list charge hundreds to thousands of
> dollars for their time/effort. Doesn't seem any different to me.
Ken has a good point here: paying upfront costs vs. costs distributed
over time; i.e. assessing total cost of ownership. If you pay $1200 to
Adobe, you get a suite of pro-level programs, reaonably-complete
documentation, support services and free updates for a period of time (a
year, I imagine). If you choose to instead use alternative free or
low-cost tools, you are likely to spend more time hunting for
documentation (if it exists), may have to pay someone $50/hr anyway to
help you when you have a problem (or spend hours hunting through support
forums), etc. Whether dollars or hours, the shrinkwrap-free
alternatives also have significant costs. My point here is not to
compare the relative merits of differing business/development practices.
Rather I'm saying your implication, that people are foolish for paying
$1200 for a blob-o-bits from Adobe because all they're paying for is a
lot of marketing noise and a fancy shrinkwrapped package, is inaccurate.
--
Max Schwanekamp
http://www.neptunewebworks.com/
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