What exactly is the problem with charging 2.99? You make it sound as if it was unethical to charge money for a product that someone has spent months to develop/advertise.
I think the correlation if it exists is pretty weak. Plenty of good software produced for free. For example linux is still generally "free as in beer" and I at least prefer it to windows. Plenty of bad software produced as a profit motivated venture. I am not going to provide an example of "bad software" to avoid a distracting flame war, but I'm sure everyone can come up with examples.
It is an interesting subject and hopefully someone has done a nice analysis of it, my non-scientific and highly biased assessment is that hobbyist software (read "free as in beer") tends to be higher quality from a technical standpoint but lower quality from a UX standpoint (read UX as friendly to a non-software engineering audience). Whereas the reverse is true with business produced software (UX over technical). Ubuntu managed to marry both worlds and produce noob friendly linux but this is often harder than it looks.
>You sound like RMS, and that's not rational anymore.
I'm arguing for "free as in beer" not "free as in software", not that I am opposed to "free as in software" in fact I'm a big fan, but we are pretty clear of RMS territory at the moment.
>Google has to make money or kill the project. They are not afraid of killing projects.
Google does not care about the direct value of projects, the thinking that I've heard from Googler's is that if more people use the internet google makes more money. Thus anything that encourages or integrates the internet into peoples lives more is a money maker. Google kills projects when people don't use them, not when they don't generate direct income (think all the years that youtube was in the red).
>However, I would wait for Ubuntu glasses BECAUSE people can also sell good apps there.
I doubt we will see Ubuntu glasses, Ubuntu isn't in the hardware market. Don't get me wrong, people can sell and do sell good apps on Google Play and at some point I expect they will sell good apps for Google glass, but Google has to be very careful about managing expectations (Google is excellent at expectation management for example gmail being in beta this is just another example) and first experiences if they want the technology to take off. A bad expensive app that lots of people can buy will do serious harm to the project's reputation.
Not really, plenty of people do software projects as a hobby and there is evidence that people tend do a better job at creative endeavors (discussed here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc) when they find the work intrinsically rewarding rather than extrinsically rewarding (read, for cash). In fact extrinsic rewards such as payment can reduce the quality of work.
But you can’t fucking eat intrinsic reward! Is that really so hard to get?
Sure, many hobbyists will make lots of good software and that’s awesome. Twitter (and the like) will make software because they don’t have to monetize Glass, they just have to be present. The New York Times (and the like) will make software because they have existing infrastructure with which they can charge people outside of Glass (and people accept that infrastructure and are already used to it).
What, however, about people who develop apps for a living on their own or in their own small company, who don’t want to or think they can become Twitter or The New York Times? What about people who made their hobby their job? What about your mom-and-pop dev?
When I think “great apps” I think primarily of those developers. And they will not be able to survive on Glass.
> What, however, about people who develop apps for a living on their own or in their own small company, who don’t want to or think they can become Twitter or The New York Times?
If you can't build a web app usable outside of Glass on more conventional devices, find a way of charging for it if you need to make money from the whole operation, and build a free interface to Glass, you aren't going to be building compelling Glass apps anyway, given the rather limited interactivity available via Glass.
> What about people who made their hobby their job? What about your mom-and-pop dev?
They build a web-based application (paid, freemium, or whatever other business model) first, and then, if it warrants, build an auxiliary interface for Glass which has no added charge.
> When I think "great apps" I think primarily of those developers. And they will not be able to survive on Glass.
Glass isn't really (by features, independent of ToS restrictions) a suitable primary app platform. So no developers are going to be able to survive on Glass alone.
The question is not what action can google take that will help the largest number of developers. The question is what action can google take that will result in the best experience for early adopters and trend setters thus causing the technology to be adopted successfully. I expect that long term google will allow non-free apps, but short term google wants to lower the bar to use an app. As you say a NYT app, a twitter app. I wouldn't be surprised if google was much more careful about what apps it allowed in the glass app store than the android market.
>What about people who made their hobby their job? What about your mom-and-pop dev? When I think “great apps” I think primarily of those developers. And they will not be able to survive on Glass.
Outside of enterprise contracting gigs very few mom-and-pop devs are successful in the mobile market (few winners, many losers). It's a gold rush not a realistic business environment.
But those people make far and away my favorite apps. I really think it‘s as simple as that. The best quality comes from those people – and Google blocks them. Just like that.