Hope you'll excuse me for rambling - you can probably tell, the issue
of "donationware" is one we talk about on our site a lot. i don't hope
to convince any of you to my viewpoint, i just want to explain where we
are coming from and what we're trying to do, and why. good people can
disagree about the choices we've made but i just want you guys/gals to
understand our position.
In the past all of our programs were just as you say, pure freeware
without any attempt to coninvce people to donate, and no need for users
to do anything, just download and use.
Some of them were very popular. Everyone was happy. And no one
donated.
Well, virtually no one. Some people did donate. It takes a special
person to make a donation without any incentive, just to support the
work. But there are very very few of these people. the donations
wouldn't even cover basic web hosting, let alone the expenses of web
hosting on a dedicated server like we are on now in order to support
the 4+gb a day bandwidth and hundreds of thousands of hits per day on
our site and forum.
We have been trying to advocate for a donation-based approach to
software (and all digital media), where people pay what they can afford
and are happy with, and they decide the amount.
But at the current time most people won't participate in such an
arrangement. They just do not donate without some kind of incentive to
get them up off the couch.
So in the end we faced some hard questions:
We wondered,
Is there a way to make a tiny bit of money (not enough money to live
off of, but maybe something approaching minimum wage?) on the software
without going to a full shareware commercial model?
Is there a way to promote a donation-based approach that could actually
convince people to donate if they could afford it, and let them decide
how much it's worth to them?
Can it be done in a way that would still facilitate the nice community
spirit of freeware?
That was the impetus for creating the site, to try to build a community
of users and coders who are willing to agree to a kind of compact,
where users are willing to donate what they think the software is
worth, and coders are willing to put in the time and effort to interact
with users to build commercial quality software. With the
understanding that no one is going to get rich, but maybe we can
generate enough rewards to breathe a little life into the donationware
model of funding.
ps1.
a long thread in our forum about donationware:
http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=825.0
and another long one discussing the appropriateness of terms
donationware, freeeware, nagware, etc. and the idea of using "freeware
licenses":
http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=96.0
ps2.
Try this experiment before you come down on us so hard for trying to
encourage donations, pick some amazing freeware on the web that just
has a little donate button or message on the site. Email the author
and ask them if they've gotten many donations. You'd probably be
depressed at the answer. I really do believe that donationware can be
the future of software but we all need to be more willing to make
donations to worthy products for that to work. Right now my personal
believe is that we have these two completely opposite models, one is
this pure capitalistic commercial software model which says charge as
much as you can get away with to maximize profits and who cares who
can't afford it. And on the other end you have pure unadulterated open
source / freeware, which can only be written by people who make their
living through other means or are independently wealthy. This often
results in freeware that is unsuported, gets discontinued, or is never
fully stable. Some open source products land big funding deals from
companies, which is nice, but for independent developers this is a real
long shot.
ps3.
Btw i haven't mentioned that there are lots of programs on our site
that don't have any license key, including some open source programs.
ps4.
for those people who say that we should either make our software pure
shareware, or else stop trying to convince people to donate, or say "if
you can't afford it then it's free",
think of it this way, here is our OFFICIAL policy, you tell me if this
really seems unreasonable.
1. you can make a one time donation for as little as 50 cents to our
site and you get every program on the site (about 15-20 big programs,
and maybe 40 or 50 smaller ones) , plus lifetime updates, if that's
what you feel its worth. you need to check a box in your forum profile
to never get another email from us again. this 50 cent donation also
gets you full access on our site where we try to get discounts on
shareware and frequently have drawings for free software (we've given
away about 100 different programs in the 8 months we've been in
existence). We also have regular comprehensive reviews of software and
other stuff.
2. you can just do the default thing, sign up at our forum, and then
download license keys for any of the programs on our site that require
them; again check one box if you never want to receive our
twice-monthly newsletters. if you never want to donate but keep using
our programs, youd have to come back every 6 months or so for a new
license key. we update our programs quite frequently so you might be
visiting the site more often if you are using the programs regularly.
3. alternatively, if you know you object to donating and don't want to
register on our forum, you can email me, and i will go generate you a
non-expiring license key for all of our programs. cost to you: 0. or
if you cannot or won't donate but do want to have full site access you
will be made a member of the site after signing up.
Anyone who has read these posts and taken the time to think about these
issues and still does not want to make a donation to our site is very
welcome to a no-strings-attached free lifetime membership on our site
with a non-expiring license key that will work with all of our programs
including find+run robot. just sign up at our forum and send me your
forum login name in an email (mouser@_REMOVTHIS_donationcoder.com) and
i'll upgrade your account to full member which will let you access
everything. OR if you object to signing up at the forum tell me so in
an email and ill make the non-expiring license key for you myself
(though you wont have access to the members-only sections of our
website).