[archagon]

This is awesome, but I wish developers would charge for polished, full-featured software like this. The people who made this probably have full-time jobs; meanwhile, independent developers who want to break into this niche now have to compete with "free". This results in a market ruled by large corporations that can "subsidize" free software via the spare time of their employees.

Maybe I'm just being too grouchy. This editor looks impressive.

[agilebyte]

Well maybe that is the point. The developers get paid, somehow, so why do they need to get even more money? This way more people can use their software because it is free.

(I don't know the developers)

[archagon]

Yeah. I can definitely see the point. I also realize that open source software is often a political statement, and good for that. But at the same time, I want to see a world where a developer could earn money from making cool applications like this without relying on a large corporation for the bulk of their paycheck. It's what the free-to-play app store model is coalescing to, and I don't like it.

[agilebyte]

Sure, but what is a right price? Shall all code editors cost the same and differentiate on features? Otherwise it seems to me like a race to the bottom where CotEditor people charge $30 and indie developer charges $25. So what about the next indie developer then? $20?

And yes you are right, as developers we tend to publish useful stuff more often for free than not. But maybe it stems from our inability to market cool applications so that we get money for them.

[jasonkester]

Astounding. That's potentially the most harmful opinion a developer could possibly hold.

The single greatest benefit of having our skill set is that we are capable, in a way that few other people in the world are capable, of single handedly building products that we can sell for the kind of money that frees us from needing to work for other people. We can quite literally create our own destiny.

And you would throw that away.

I can't even begin to fathom why you would want to live in that world.

[nl]

Perhaps somethings are more valuable than money to some?

[jasonkester]

Money isn't what we're optimizing though. It's freedom.

Having a software product as income source means you don't have to have a day job working for somebody else. It means you can spend your time doing whatever you want, be that working on your own personal projects, surfing, traveling or, yes, earning more money. You can even choose to build open source Mac text editors and give them away for free.

It's your choice what to do with that freedom. The important point is that we, as software developers, are essentially handed that freedom by nature of our skill set.

That's a really cool thing. So while I can see an entitled end-user saying something like the grandparent's "you already have a job that pays you, so give us the output from your nights and weekends for free", it's surprising to see that attitude from somebody who would be most impacted, were that to become a reasonable expectation.

[nl]

Again, you are making a lot of assumptions about the motivation of other people.

Some people crave the recognition a successful open source project gives.

Some want to learn something.

Some want to give a gift to the world.

Some don't want the hassle of supporting software.

Some believe "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need"

[jasonkester]

Indeed. My point is that it's the author's choice, not the end user's.

[agilebyte]

I am not saying that someone should give me products of their labor for free, I am trying to imagine why someone would.

One explanation, like you point out, is that they are free to work on a project such as CotEditor because they are financially secure.

[vectorpush]

I'm not really sure how practical it is to sell an open-source desktop application; anyone can compile and run it for free and the 'sell support' model usually isn't viable for something as simple as a text editor.

[cooper12]

You underestimate the difficulty of compiling from source for the layman. OSX and Windows do not come with compilers out of the box. The user would have to install them and the proper environment for them first. (cygwin, etc...) Then they'd have to get and install the dependencies properly. Finally they'd have to figure out the proper incantations to make it compile, which if you've never done it before can be extremely daunting. How on earth was I supposed to know what an LPATH is or pkgconfig? Not to mention the extremely verbose and scary looking errors from gcc.

That's assuming that it's a program written in C/C++. If it's another language then you might have another huge hurdle to go through. (Properly installing Go in my PATH took me a while). That's also assuming they don't rely on IDE-specific make files. A lot of the time OSX applications rely on xcode project files. The other day I was trying to compile an Android app before realizing that it was written in a language by Adobe which required the purchase of a full suite.

Open source can be really limiting if the developer doesn't make an effort to document the build process well and doesn't use open tools to create the product.

[rossy]

The problem is, only one person has to figure out how to build it, then if it's real free and open source software, they're legally allowed to distribute their own unofficial builds over the internet. The original XChat developer decided that it was too much effort to develop XChat for Windows, so he charged for it, which resulted in silverex's free X-Chat 2 builds and the HexChat fork.

I don't think users respond well to this either. You're essentially splitting your userbase into a group of people who know enough to build it themselves and receive it for free, and a group that have to pay, and I don't think people in the latter group appreciate being in that group.

[cooper12]

Hmm I didn't think about that. I guess that's a genuine option for popular applications. Personally, for some unpopular applications I've tried to compile, I just gave up if the standard `./configure && make` didn't work.

As for your second point, I think it comes down to two things: if the user's time is more valuable than their money, and two, if they can get support for the paid product (at least that's how I've seen some products doing it), so it's not as if the paid is without it's benefits. Your Hexchat example shows how important it is to not alienate your users though.

[cake]

True, it can be a real pain if your environment slightly differs from the developper. I just give up most of the time if I have to compile myself.

[archagon]

How about releasing the source without any of the art assets or interface nibs? Full benefit of open source while still providing high value for money. (Sure, the geeks will go and create their own assets, but it won't be the same.)

[vectorpush]

Interesting idea, but I suspect that the first quality fork that provides a 'good-enough' version of those missing assets out of the box would start to steal the limelight from the main project, especially because the fork could pull in all the bug fixes and new features from upstream.

[drapper]

There's great piece from Ben Thompson on the inevitable trend of apps' price going to zero, worth a read: http://stratechery.com/2013/open-source-apps/

[bluthru]

I agree. Even if they didn't need the money it could be donated to the EFF or something.

[QuadDamaged]

Try Chocolat then. It's not OSS and pretty close.

But I won't be using Chocolat anymore, after they pulled a bait-and-switch so that Version 2 can't be used without you paying for version 3.

Bad dev, no cookie.

[devcpp]

Welcome to the free market. If the price decreases, it means the offer is too large and it should happen.

I'm very afraid the government would one day impose a minimum price for everything, and poor families will never have a shot at any productive activity and will just stay poor forever.

In my country, they voted a law that bans free newspapers and imposes a minimum cost of about 50 cents. Why limit access to knowledge and the effects of a free market? This is the whole "job creator" logic all over again.