[AdmiralAsshat]

Sure, but what's a reasonable price to offer? $1? $10? $100? At what point does it not make sense for the end-user to sponsor a FOSS project in order to bring it up to feature parity with a proprietary equivalent if it costs more to pay for the feature than just buying the proprietary version?

To use a real-world example, I used to use a program called Tag&Rename for managing my mp3 metadata for years.[0] It had a method of scraping Amazon for album info, which I loved. When I switched to Linux, I switched over to EasyTag[1], which is a fine program, although I still find T&R still easier to use, and I miss the Amazon integration.

I would be willing to pay up to $30 to get Amazon scraping into EasyTag, because I believe in the long-term benefits of well-supported FOSS software. But beyond that, it's hard to justify, because I could just as easily pay $30 and run T&R under Wine/in a VM.

[0] http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/EasyTAG

[nerdponx]

I don't understand this post.

It's worth $30 to you, so offer some amount above $0 and below $30. If the core developer won't do it for less than $30, find someone who will, or use a different tool, or live with the deficiency.

This is literally how all other markets work, or are supposed to work. Imagine having a completely unrelated market in which you are totally free to negotiate, and then complaining that it's too hard to settle on a price.

[michaelt]

I think what AdmiralAsshat means is: There's a gigantic gap between typical market prices for retail computer software and the hourly wage of computer programmers

When you buy a $70 AAA game, you pay what, 1/100,000 of the development cost? 1/1,000,000?

So when you try to directly fund the development of almost anything, it's gonna seem real expensive, because you're paying 100% of the cost when you're used to paying 0.001%.

[alangibson]

It's basically a market question. Either side should be able to make an offer and you either agree on a mutually beneficial price or not.

[ebiester]

The right price is the developer's consultant rate * number of hours it takes.

If you are the only person in the world that needs it, you should pay the full rate. If others have the same need, you call can share the price.