One of the issues here that wasn't mentioned, facing independent developers, is the almost pathological tendency of some people/groups in the F/OSS community to clone any even mildly successful product for no particular reason. I'm a big fan of free and open source software (especially when it's genuinely new or fills an actual gap, like the GNU tools and Linux), but there are times I wonder whether there are a lot of vested interests out there who would like to drive the cost of software to zero and make us all work for a wage providing 'services'.<p>There are entire categories of software now where people are now conditioned only to accept an open source product. Can you imagine anyone building a new computer language now, commercially? If it was even vaguely successful it would be cloned and forked so quickly it'd make your head spin.<p>Between the ideologues like Stallman, who effectively think it's immoral to make money off selling the software itself (I know his position is supposedly more nuanced than that, but free software effectively amounts to this if you have to hand out source to all and sundry) and the open-source-friendly companies like IBM and Google - who have every reason to drive the $$$ available off software to zero, it's easy to feel a bit beleaguered.
The sad reality is that if you make something of value, there are rotten people who will come and try to steal from you. The author thinks he's discovered something new. I don't think he has. "Patent trolling" might be a bit of a new angle but business has always been risky.<p>In some parts of the world, if you farm a little too much, gangs come by in rusty toyotas with AK47's and help themselves (and might kidnap your children for good measure). In our society, we've allowed these men to wear suits and pretend they are contributing members and in exchange, they no longer use guns. This seems like a valid compromise until we as a society outgrow this sort of behavior. (Here's hoping)<p>There are tools for managing risk. Create an LLC and have professional liability insurance. Sure bad stuff can happen. I had an over-zealous zoning official try to revoke the business license for my house because I was "manufacturing" software (and manufacturing is zoned industrial, donchaknow).<p>I wish there weren't patent trolls, but at some point you have to admit that you can't spend your life worrying about all of the bad stuff that <i>could</i> happen. Take a few reasonable precautions and then do your thing.
He's got his history completely wrong. From the first days that home computers were affordable at all, there were tons of very small software shops. I recall purchasing programs from computer stores that came in poly bags containing a photocopied manual on card stock and a cassette tape with a photocopied label that had been glued on by hand. If you called the company for support, sometimes you woke the guy up.
All businesses have risk.<p>Even if you are an indie one man shop you are in fact a business and there are risks. Same thing goes for being a lawyer or accountant or contractor. If you screw up, it could cost you financially in a very big way, even if you didn't intend to do anything wrong.<p>Even successful businesses can crumble, even billion dollar businesses can get beat up by litigation to the point it isn't even worth continuing.<p>To say that the sky is falling for indie devs is a bit silly. There are plenty of places you can build, innovate, distribute, and succeed. Sure, the iTunes App Store thing is big today, or maybe Facebook, or maybe Steam, or maybe Wii's downloadable channel, it doesn't matter. Any one of those could be gone in a year or two.<p>Here's an example, there are people out there who make millions of dollars selling e-books and mediocre/overpriced software on Clickbank right now. Some of those people get sued I'm sure for their products. More people show up. You could take the same ebook and sell it on Kindle or Nook if you got shut down or you could sell your software on the Mac App Store or Chrome Web Store if CB went under.<p>There are so many platforms to distribute and build software and businesses on now, it really is hard to complain about the death of the indie developer because there are so many new companies getting started every day on all these different platforms that didn't exist even 5 years ago.<p>As a business owner you can't control all risk, but you certainly can and should plan around them.<p>If one channel gets shut down, move on to a different one or a different product.<p>Great devs and great companies aren't built on one hit one time wonders.
If it were easy, everybody would be doing it. It does suck that now independent developers have to also worry about patent litigation. However, it will not stop the most resolved developers from continuing forward.<p>On the bright side, patent trolls are patenting the most obvious patents right now. In 20-30 years all of those patent will expire. I'll be amazed if 20 years from now we will still continue to patent obvious things like one click button transactions. If so, we all deserve to go down the ship of financial failure since it is us, society, that allows such things.<p>Meanwhile, if we could only find the best ways to make patent trolls' lives more painful... At least it would dissuade the casual patent troll.
Unrelated, but interesting nonetheless: the current software industry has a strikingly similar feel to the early texas oil prospecting days.<p>Independents are suddenly able to take a little bit of risk, take on some money (then: banks, now: angels and VCs), and work by themselves or in small teams to produce something that lots of people need (then: oil, now: good software).<p>Some of the biggest fortunes in history were made back then (1900 - 1930s), just as some of the biggest fortunes are now being made in this industry.<p>The digger I deep (no pun intended), the more similar these two stages of history look alike. I'm sure there are other eras that also share these common threads.
What I'd like to see is a collective legal fund to protect devs from patent trolls. Like insurance, everyone pays into the system and if you need representation, high quality lawyers would be there for you. That seems to me to be the best solution to this problem short of abolishing software patents altogether.
<i>In the days where software was distributed on magnetic media, such as reels of tape, cassettes, or floppy disks, it cost a lot of money to get the product to a customer.</i><p>One of us is misremembering. <i>I</i> seem to recall an interview with Gates and/or Ballmer where they talked about the realization that the cost of 5 or 6 floppies at wholesale was insignificant compared to the revenue from the software, that it was a no-brainer cost-wise. CDs were the first time when cost became an issue, iirc (again) because you had to pay for one or more masters to print the production copies. I'd feel better if his history was right.<p><i>This time the retail channel itself is very cheap, but the ancillary costs, both financially and emotionally, are very high.</i><p><i>And, of course, only large companies and publishers can bear these costs. My fear is that It’s only a matter of time before developers find the risks and expenses prohibitive and retreat to the safety of a larger organization. We’ll be going back to square one.</i><p>I can't even address the "emotional costs" he talks about, but there is a precedent for dealing with risks of this kind. For consulting engineers, it's called "errors and omissions insurance." It strikes me that if there isn't something like that for developers, one plausible reason is that this kind of liability hasn't actually been a problem. Is there errors and omissions insurance for developers?<p><i>From our experience, it’s entirely possible that all the revenue for a product can be eaten up by legal fees.</i><p>The author uses the phrase "from our experience," but I wonder what that experience actually is. At this point, it's not even anecdotal, because he doesn't supply the anecdote! We can't even begin to ask if his experience generalizes. For example, did he get good counsel? Was he actually infringing? Should he have settled? Did he avail himself of the FSF or ESF if applicable? Should his product have been more profitable?<p>I think I'm either blessed or cursed with too much curiosity to take this guy at his word.
Does anyone have any statistics about the number of independent developers / startups that suffer a significant negative financial impact because of a patent infringement lawsuit? My gut feeling is that it's a very small percentage. A few years ago, I think Paul Graham wrote an article suggesting startups shouldn't worry about being sued because in practice it rarely happens to them.
Does anyone think that a legislation preventing NPE's from suing for patent infringement would be practical? They'd still be able to hold them - just not sue.<p>It seems like something that large corporations as well as independents could get behind.
Should move the corporate to China and clone the heck out of everything.<p>Facebook -> RenRen<p>Twitter -> Weibo<p>YouTube -> Tudou<p>Google -> Baidu<p>Flickr -> YuPoo<p>See <a href="http://www.randomwire.com/chinese-web-20-clones" rel="nofollow">http://www.randomwire.com/chinese-web-20-clones</a><p>Yeah, Trolls, go ahead and sue them.
Well, the good thing about it is maybe this will force a "Silicon Valley" to finally appear in Europe where the odds aren't stacked so badly against the little guy.
It's really hard to want to continue reading when the third sentence says this:<p><i>Little has changed with the process of software development since the 1980’s</i><p>I understand the point: that things are the more the same than ever, that this guy is a salty old sonofabitch who's forgotten more than i've learned, but seriously. Little has changed with the process of software development since the 1980s other than the tools? The entire way we think about why we're building software and what we're trying to get out of has changed and is still changing.
Our startup (<a href="http://infostripe.com" rel="nofollow">http://infostripe.com</a>) is built on independent spirit. So far we have been doing well. It's a struggle sometimes but always worth the effort.