Paying for software

Somewhere during the day today read an article and the responses heavily discussed the notion of paying for software.

As a software developer, I may be biased, but I certainly believe in paying for software. I have nothing against open source. And I have nothing against free, ad supported or software with in-app purchases either. I also don't think that free software is truly at odds with paid software where it matters.

Firstly, as a general rule, I work for a living. I expect to be paid for that work if people are enjoying the fruits of my labors. And I think I'm just as justified in feeling that way as anyone else. My worked is skilled work. You cannot pull any random kid off the street and have them write an app for in short order. And even if you could, even they would be unlikely to do it for free.

That being said, software and its prices are assaulted on two fronts that force it to be very proactive and evolve quickly. Those two fronts are free software and piracy. In other industries reform and can be held up by the industry itself or by its workers and advancement and change can be dragged out over decades. You can't really "pirate" a car. Stealing a physical thing is a lot easier to stop. And making your own car is very directly costly and so no one is giving them away so piracy and free stuff don't affect other markets as much.

In the software world, stealing is generally, and comparably easier. Transmitting the data itself requires very little investment. Once people have learned how to effectively steal and redistribute its software, its value goes down. Software is also much more viable for enthusiasts to give away. To give away 1000 cars, I need to create 1000 cars. To give away 1000 copies of an application, I just need to write the application once, the actual distribution of those 1000 copies is infinitely cheaper.

Those two factors drive down the cost of software. I obviously don't approve of pirating software. And the solutions are numerous. Only provide online authenticated services, incorporate some for of DRM, etc... 

But why don't I care about free software then? Sure, it has the potential to impact me, in a similar fashion as piracy does. Free software, generally only takes hold after a successful paid software paves the way. So, there is a cushion of time before free knock offs start competing. How big that cushion is depends on a number of factors including how novel your product actually is and how complex it is. If you've done a good job, you won't see a viable knock off for several months, years or ever.

The best example I can think of is Microsoft Office. Here is a product which has clear utility and value. There are an array of open source offerings. None of them have killed off the business or driven Microsoft to give the software away for free. Office is HUGE. It would take a single person, or even a decent sized community a VERY long time just to knock out a 1:1 feature list. It would take even longer to deliver that in a product that is as solid and bug free, and longer still to deliver in a form as aesthetically pleasing.

I've used (older versions) of a number of competing free packages. And at the time all of those were decent sized community projects that were quite mature and had been around for many years. In general, they were good enough for MOST day to day work. In the end however, none of them could save me from either needing to go back to Office or wanting to. Needing to was caused by features that simply weren't there (sometimes just compatibility with certain document formats) and wanting was caused by features that were in both, but were horribly implemented the free version.

Paid employees are hard to compete against. They aren't working on something as a side project and there are serious repercussions if they stop (they get fired). Open source projects generally get off to a good start and have good momentum early on, but don't take much time to stagnate.

If someone can match or beat you AND offer the product for free, it is time to move on and either improve your offerings or find a new product to build. Quality apps are (generally) only free when the paradigms and tools are well enough established that a single person or a small team can crank out a quality product in a the span of a few months. If the effort is greater than that, most will give up long before they ever match your offerings, and by then you should have improved against their original target product anyway.

In other words... if you're doing something of worth and continuing to improve or innovate you shouldn't have much to worry from free offerings. It isn't true 100% of the time, but it isn't like there is zero job security.