Every time I come across a paid 30 dollar version of software being sold for macos, I can find a free open source alternative that often works better pretty quickly.
Not really, there is already well written solid software for the Mac which I do pay for. What would happen if these companies open sourced their software is most users would stop paying and they would be forced out of business.
Open source is better for libraries than applications. I’m happy to pay for software written with open source libraries that works well so I can support developers like myself.
That’s funny, every time I come across some piece of unsupported free software, I can usually find a $30 paid alternative that looks better, probably runs better, and someone will answer my questions about it, no matter how stupid they might be.
freeware and people like you have killed indie development. Great software should be paid for. Unless or cures cancer or solves humanity’s issues, it should not he made available for free. Otherwise the author of a paid version is forced into office jobs because some idiot makes a free clone just to have something on their cv.
VLC - though it doesn't cure cancer or anything , its a cure for video player industry(if one exist).. cant think of any other open source video players with billions of installs, and FREE.. calling someone who does opensource as idiot is just ridiculous..
Meh, if the proprietary software has a good UI, it's going to do well -- open source tends to suck on that front, quite often because it's cross-platform and that doesn't favor the OS X look.
Sure, for programmers and command line users there will be alternatives, but that still leaves a large market.
Y'know what's going to kill Apple indie development in our reality? Apple. A lot of the paid shareware has a long pedigree, and the upcoming de-Carbonization will put an end to many small-shop software.
Indie shops that are still shipping Carbon in 2019 haven’t been making good Mac apps for a long time.
They may be making useful tools, which their customers really need, but they haven’t been good (in the sense most people mean by good on Mac, which is notably different from on other platforms) for a long time.
Such a bold statement. Numerous times paid software produced errors, which went unfixed until the product was discontinued and then you had to buy a new version.
Also documentation, when it exists (not all apps have or need it) tend to actually be useful instead of a half-assed, incomplete wiki.
(though some paid software in the recent years also have half-assed, incomplete wikis for documentation... my guess is that the proliferation of open source software made a lot of newer developers think that this is how software is supposed to be documented)
Definitely. As someone that helps write wiki content for a open source project it's quite a bit of work, for little-to-no recognition, so I can understand why that happens. Plus you don't know if anyone even ends up reading it.
I still do it because of passion for the project, but it would certainly be easier to be paid for it!
So you're saying people should stop making free software just so some guy can make a profit off of his overpriced basic utility app?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people making a profit from their dev work but when I see something as basic as a cpu temperature meter costing $30 on the Apple store, I'm going straight for the free version. What's even worse with apps like these on the Mac in particular is that the developers often bloat them with useless features in order to justify the price, so in my case I'd end up paying $30 for something I'm only going to use one small portion of.
You wont find too many, as most are either contract workers or just volunteers, because “we want free software” doesn't really translate to pay for hard work and dedication.
> because “we want free software” doesn't really translate to pay for hard work and dedication.
That is one hell of a hot take. RedHat, SUSE, Canonical, would all probably disagree. (also, fwiw, so would I - I have been working on Open Source software for 5+ years, and have been paid for it for the entire time)
> as most are either contract workers or just volunteers
The linux kernel called, said something about having a large amount of fully paid, long term staff.
I get it, you don't like free software - but there is plenty of free software that people are paid to maintain and develop, and it has been a great benefit to software development as a result. Even paid for software is probably using some open source components, (runtimes, languages, compilers, libraries to name a few of them).
These are too few from the massive list of open source software out there. For almost any piece of technical software there is a free clone for it. I like free software, as in free to read the code, but not necessarily freeware.
If the software is simple enough that someone can make it just to have something on their CV, I think a paid developer needs to do something more substantial.
Asking for software that is not "simple enough" is exactly how you get bloated software with unnecessary features that only exist to justify whatever notion of "worth the price" you may have.
Programs should strive to be simple and focus on doing one thing, not try to be Swiss Army Knives to justify their price.