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Shareware has always seemed weird to me

Any­one ac­tu­al­ly buy­ing Tree?

Be­cause I just have to won­der: I am pret­ty sure I could clone it in a week­end.

It's very ba­sic, on­ly for Mac...

And yet the au­thor asks for $40 for the full ver­sion. Tell you what, read­er­s, pledge me $400 (amer­i­can dol­lars, that is ;-) and I prom­ise I can de­liv­er:

  • An app of sim­i­lar fea­­tures

  • Open Source

  • Mul­ti­­plat­­form (Mac/Win/Lin­ux at least)

In one week. While do­ing my job and tak­ing care of my boy.

In fac­t, I don't ex­pect it to take more than one full day of cod­ing, and 400 bucks is more than my usu­al rate any­way.

If I don't re­lease it, don't give me the mon­ey and keep the code any­way, which would be in a pub­lic re­po for progress mon­i­tor­ing.

Ankur / 2009-03-15 17:01:

The reason why ppl buy application even today is coz they are naive when it comes to computers.

1) Most don't know about FOSS/open source alternatives,
2) Opinion that what is paid is better than what is free.

While we geeks/computer programmer give that 100 yard stare and say WTF I ain't paying for that.

Alexei Vinidiktov / 2009-03-16 03:50:

Not all shareware is basic, not all of it can be cloned in one week.

Besides, there's much more to it than just coding. Design can take a lot of time. In fact design may take much more time than the execution. That's why it is so easy to clone an existing project - because the cloner doesn't have to repeat the longest and hardest design part of the project.

Roberto Alsina / 2009-03-16 10:40:

@Alexei: sure, but a lot is. And it's not like this is the first outliner ever!


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