Share ware or commercial
Written on Nov 29, 2005 // Thoughts.A discussion here got me thinking about why it rubbed me the wrong way. Aside from the fact that I think it’s a Bad Thing for Mint to have people charge money for peppers because it will seriously limit the appeal of Mint I think my main beef is not with the guy charging for a plugin, it’s a free world, do what you want. No, I don’t like the reasoning of some of the people commenting.
The way I see it is this; either you code something because you have a use for it, because you want to flex your coding muscles simply because you can. Or, you do it because you want to earn money. Black or white, at least in this case where there’s no other way to get said plugin.
And I’ll be damned if I fork over any money to someone for a small subset of a program which is basically just a small bit of eyecandy. To me that’s something totally different than for example this one, where someone creates something because he gets a kick out of it, distributes it for free (and under an open license, meaning you’re free to modify and redistribute the code) and just put up a small donation notice asking for a few bucks to buy a beer (or whatever) if you like what he made.
Maybe I’m anal about it, but I’d rather hand over a few bucks to the second guy than the first, and I hope many people will follow suit.
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CommSie
Nov 29, 2005, 23:18It’s oftenly because of “not getting enough donations, so we make a buy product”…
Yeah, they should just start and distribute as a business…
But it’s a way to hook people, I guess.
It comes more over like here take this and then later on with, this is a better product but you must pay (~o.o)~
Or something goes FREE, but it isn’t really,
You discover later that you need to pay for the rest or to keep using O:
CommSie
Nov 29, 2005, 23:23And I’ve been typing horridly o__o.
I hope people get the idea about what I’ve been typing up there :D
“It comes more over like here take this and then later on with, this is a better product but you must pay (~o.o)~”
Should be;
“It feels more like when they say:
‘Here take this :D!’
And later on coming with a “better” or “extra” product but you must pay for it now!”
It feels dubious, not really trustworthy, double faced or with other “evil” intent… yeah…
Jehiah
Nov 29, 2005, 6:08So out of curiosity, did You donate anything to Kyle (the second guy)?
and If you did, how much was it worth to you?
For the record, I wrote the pathstats plugin because I wanted to, and because I wanted it to use for myself. I doubt charging $3.80 for it will ever come close to paying for my time, or for part of what it costs me to host my website, and offer it. I’m not selling it to get rich, just to help defray costs, and I have never felt that the donation model works for small ticket items.
I never donated anything to Shaun for ShortStat, but knew I should have, which is part of why I was so willing to pay $30 for Mint. It kinda made up for the value I had already recieved from Shaun. But I believe if he had never charged for either, I would have never given him a dime.
… and then there is the whole deal about developers who give everything away getting innundated with support requets for which they have no resources to devote to. I’ve had that happen with other projects, and offering it for $$ helps keep the resources I have, and support I need to give in sync.
XIII
Nov 29, 2005, 10:23Thanks for the comments. Yes I did donate to Kyle, $5.
I can understand your point of view, I just see it differently. I think for small ticket stuff the donation model is particularly suited. In your case I just shrugged and moved on to the next plugin (although it did look good). The next plugin just happened to be Kyle’s which I could download, install and go ‘ooh, pretty’ over seeing my own stats in the chart so I donated.
Plus, but that’s more of an ideological point, personally I think that being the only demanding money in an otherwise thriving free and sharing dev community reeks a bit.
As for the support argument, that’s kind of moot isn’t it seeing as you yourself say it doesn’t even cover your hosting bill? Plus with an open model you might be more likely to get other people to help with support, seems to work like a charm everywhere else.
At any rate, it wasn’t intended as a rant just about Pathstats but more about the whole issue of whether or not one should charge for scripts or not. I’ve been equally amazed seeing people charge $20 for a Dashboard widget which couldn’t have taken more than an hour to slap together and which offers perhaps 1% of the functionality Pathstats does.
Jehiah
Nov 29, 2005, 14:59well you certainly get more respect from me because you actually donated to Kyle, and I’ve got nothing against you just because you chose not to purchase my pepper.
I also understand the tension because I’m the first one to charge for a pepper, but hopefully it’s clear that I have no intentions of fleecing people with a rediculous price tag.
And on a similar topic: what do you think of free car washes which have a “mandatory donation”?
XIII
Nov 29, 2005, 15:33Hehe, I’m unfamiliar with the concept aside from the occasional reference to it in movies/tv-series, here in the Netherlands there’s no such thing.
But either it’s free, or it’s pay. Someone touching my car without my approval would start me twitching to begin with, demanding money for it afterwards would make me get out of the car.
And no, ofcourse the price tag isn’t ridiculously high, my main objection is with the whole idea behind it, as I hope I made clear.
But good luck with Pathstats, it looks like a nice piece of work, and I do understand your point of view.
Let me know if you ever decide to release it as freeware after all ;)
Jehiah
Nov 29, 2005, 15:46here in the US, often times different highschool groups will run a car wash to raise money. They normally have the “free” car wash at a gas station or someplace like that, and hold signs on the side of the road trying to get you to come.
If you decide to let them was you car for “free”, there is a strong understanding that you will give a donation for whatever value you percieve the car was to have.
It just drives me crazy that it’s marketed as a “free” car wash when there is an understanding that you WILL donate something. In the end there is nothing free about it. (After all, the whole purpose was to raise money)
XIII
Nov 29, 2005, 15:58Ah, I see, I was thinking of bums hobbling along, washing cars and then demanding money for it. But yeah, that IS bogus marketing and I certainly wouldn’t pay for it (or have my car washed by high school groups to begin with, but that’s a different story).
Jehiah
Nov 29, 2005, 16:11I guess the point of that story, was that it illustrates how I feel about donations for software sometimes. Kyle doesn’t suffer from this, but some developers stress the donations so much they remind me of the car wash.
CommSie
Nov 29, 2005, 16:33True, true…
Some places are seemingly begging or “demanding” you to donate. (>O_o)