Shareware and Unix?

McDoobie asks: "Is there a market for low cost shareware in the Linux/BSD and Unix market in general? Would it be worthwhile to have a small home based business next to ones regular day job producing well made, but small, shareware for an environment that is dominated either by large corporations or Open Source developers? If so, what should a potential developer/publisher focus on to make their products/price range attractive to customers? What type of customers are most likely to look into such software? SOHO? Small Enterprise? Home users? In a nutshell, where should one begin when investigating the potential of the Un*x (and perhaps Apple) environment for the small time developer who's interested in earning a few dollars on the side?"

No

[WasterDave]

Basically, no. There was something on here a couple'o'months back about ... ahhh ... some text editor or something, can't remember. Anyway, the point is that the author had sold 'n' thousand copies for the mac, ported it to Linux and sold something like four copies.

So, quality shareware for Linux? F*ck that.

Commercial, expensive server software may have a market. Particularly if it enables interoperability with Windows (-1 Unfashionable).

Mac OSX? Now that's a different question. Here we have a target market that we *know* pays for things, otherwise they wouldn't have macs. The big danger is that whatever you write will be released at macworld as iWhatever three days before you release it and the market will be dead. Witness OmniWeb and Safari -> owned. Imagine making photo editing software for the mac now. Or an MP3 player. Or some presentation software. Or an email client. Or calendaring. You get my drift?

Shareware for Linux? Do get a grip :)

Dave

small market.

[Anonymous Coward]

small market but it's there. You just have to provide a semi unique piece of software. I registered MpegTV(mpegtv.com) many years ago as it was the best VCD and MPEG-1 player I could find. Even today I use it to rip my VCD tracks to MPEG files(the other tools screw them up for some reason). I also registered the commercial version of OSS a couple years ago for a particular kind of soundcard(Forgot which). I also registered opera. I don't know if any of them qualify as technically shareware but the general idea seems to be shareware to me(demo/trial free, purchase full version). Your probably not going to make much cash of yet another file manager, or yet another media player, gotta find something new..

Re:Shareware is too risky

[cioxx]

I wonder if there is a specific licensing term in existence stating:

"This is a commercial application and will continue to be so as long as company is committed to developing and distributing it based on market demand, but in the event when software no longer supported and deemed as abandonware, full source will be released under GPL/GNU/LGPL/Whatever to give previous software owners/OSS crowd the option of making it un-obsolite"

This will basically safeguard the customers/users from being milked by companies, tied to software, then be left in the dust at the EOL.

Just a thought. Wouldn't it be great if many windows-based apps had that going? (or maybe there is such a uniform clause in license agreements I'm not aware of).

donate here

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what I'd do (if I was in your position and not employed by a company that wouldn't like me doing something like this). Seriously:

Construct a well-designed web site to support your software, and slap a "give me money" donation button on it from amazon, c2it, etc on it. (Not paypal coz they're bad). Cheap, good website hosting can be had for around $10 a month, getting more expensive as your site uses more bandwidth (asking them to set transfer caps can be good to stop racking up $$ charges $$ if your site is wildy popular by accident but nobody donates). See webhostingtalk.com for some opinions. Of course then there's sourceforge, etc.

The software should almost sell itself. If the program, documentation, code and support you provide are a seamless, efficient, useful mechanism for people to get work done - you'll get donations. Maybe not too many, but perhaps it'll be enough to pay for the site hosting and buy a couple of new music CD's a month. Give your users code so they can be assured new versions of the application cannot be denied them by you.

Nobody likes nag-ware. However - put a (not overly offensive) "Please Donate!" at the top of the documentation, then perhaps pop up a dialog when the program is started after it's been installed for a week (critical point - clearly give the user a checkbox to *never* see that dialog ever again, even if they don't donate).

Hopefully a few will think "This software's great! Maybe I should give them a couple of $'s." If they don't want to give you money they might recommend the software to a friend, expanding your user base. If only 1% of your users ever donate the trick will be to get lots of users.

That's what I'd do. Am I on crack? Comments?

Patented Algorithms

[turgid]

Maybe shareware on Linux would be a way to distribute relatively inexpensive niche programs that use patented algorithms, such as wavelet encoding for image compression. Because money is involved, the patent could be used and paid for legitimately. Obviously this doesn't help the fight against software patents...

Re:What about...

[tchuladdiass]

As to your second idea, I had an idea back a while ago about combining the likes of SourceForge with something like RentAcoder. The basic idea is to provide a site for half-finished open source projects. Customers can then submit sujested to-do items. Multiple customers would then pledge money for completion of those todo's. Once there is enough money pledged for a particular feature, that would then draw an open-source programmer to complete that item, and the completed code and pledge money would then be collected into an escrow account, and appropriatly distributed once all work is completed. Then the code would become gpl'd (or whatever the original project's license was).
Of course, there would be problems with either people pledging money and not paying up, or not being satisfied with the resulting code, in which case they would be inclined to withdraw their pledge. So, the programmer would have to agree to complete the code in exchange for say 80% of pledges to be collected. Other details, of course, would have to be worked out, but in general, it would function similar to Elance.com, or rentacoder.com, with the variation that multiple customers are putting up money, and the resultant code would then be made gpl'd...

Re:I think it is going to be hard.

[Fastball]

You do not have to be annoying about registration/full purchase to avoid losing customers. Add genuine value to your full, registered version. I submit Doom as an example. You get the game engine and the first part of three series of levels. After playing that first level, we were damn hungry for more.

It's probably easier to do this with a game than it is for some sort of productivity app, but my gut tells me that there's plenty of niches for Unix platforms. Tax preparation software comes to mind, especially in light of recent events. Was it Quicken that tried to coerce folks to upgrade by not provided tax tables?

Every few months someone asks on Slashdot where they can find a good 3D modeller. There's Blender [blender.org] among others. It'd be interesting to see someone could take Blender, build a service or development company around it, and sell a brand of it much like Redhat does with Linux. Redhat is still in business right?

Yes, we Linux, BSD, etc. folks are used to not paying for software. But look at it this way. How many of us Linux nerds have a Windows partition handy for gaming? And we're buying those games (and burning a copy here or there).

Shareware for Unix can be done:

1) Develop a righteous product. Nobody gives a hoot about poorly designed software, free or retail. If what you want to produce and offer isn't good and appealing to folks, if it isn't exciting, don't bother.

2) Perish the thought of nagware. Nothing shaves down your user base like nags.

3) Above all else, empower your user. Sounds stupid, but software companies have walked away from this basic principle. Software is supposed to give users the ability to accomplish something they otherwise could not, not tithe in the name of the shareware gods.

Go for it! Shareware software won't make inroads on Unix platforms unless somebody shows up to do it.