Software Needs To Be More Expensive

URL: https://blog.glyph.im/2024/03/software-needs-to-be-more-expensive.html Type: article Domain: blog.glyph.im

Excerpt: Software, like coffee, is too artificially cheap, and we need to make it more expensive. I have one suggestion for how to do that.

Notes: I agree with the high level argument. The open source situation does need a solution. But in general, we need to find ways to pay software developers more for the work they put into writing software. Wait! What do I mean? We have trained the world to expect to pay $0 for software that took huge numbers of person months to create. $4.90 is expensive! I know this is how the market weeds out useless products. But lots of useful ones need to fight this too. Try-before-you buy should remove the risk factor. But once you adopt an app and use it regularly then be willing to pay a serious amount for a serious app. People just don't have a sense of how much time and effort it takes to create even something as simple as an exellent solitaire game.