Free Software, Paid Support

I would be sincerely interested in hearing what the "support model" is for anime/movies/books/etc, because "give the software away for free, charge for support" is really just another way to say "charge Fortune 500 companies metric truckloads for the software, let everyone else freeload in the hopes that they work for a Fortune 500 company and will be an infection vector for you."<p>Fortune 500 companies do not strike me as having huge anime consumption habits which they wouldn't blink at writing 6 figure yearly support contracts for.

I think there's a mismatch of scale in this conversation. Many of the free apps I see and use are small scale operations. It's just my theory, but I think an issue being masked here is the fear of rejection, For these small apps and utilities, the fear of support and returns is exaggerated in the mind of the developer before they ever occur.

Doesn't this mean you're back to selling time, then, rather than a product, losing the almost-zero marginal cost benefit of selling software?

I don't code to make a pile of money, I code because is fun, if you code just to make money you're doing it wrong, programming is an art that's something non-programmers can't understand.<p>For some reason reading the original Programmers Stack Exchange post made me think of the infamous An Open Letter to Hobbyists:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists</a>

Also increasing the cost of any ongoing maintenance and support (and the need to charge for that support and maintenance) are the "unhedged option calls" [1] made when the idea was first expressed in code.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.m3p.co.uk/blog/2010/07/23/bad-code-isnt-technical-debt-its-an-unhedged-call-option/" rel="nofollow">http://www.m3p.co.uk/blog/2010/07/23/bad-code-isnt-technical...</a><p>I'm also reminded of the joke: "How did God manage to create the world in only six days? He didn't have any installed base he had to worry about backwards compatibility with."

I think the problem with this model is a question of scaling. Suppose I write a fitting program which I sell. Sure, I have to support it for some fraction of users, but for the most part, I have the initial cost of creating/marketing it, but everything above that is profits. If I am selling support, I have to have enough people to cover the support and naively, I think that the costs scale with the number of sales (and one support engineer can only cover so many customers)--so, the only way I can win is if I charge a lot for service.....

What about giving away software free initially to build up a user base and search engine ranking etc, and then once your software is established, either charging for the software that was once free or introducing a premium version? Seems like that could be a good business model when entering a competitive niche if you have few marketing funds available. I would be interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.

In a similar vein to what Fred is saying...<p>Free software, paid support, amass users, then...<p>Watch and listen to what features are missing and what solutions the software isn't providing... and charge for those.

I think most free software is destined to stay that way. How many free software projects have kept their existing user base once have started charging for the software ? My guess is that it is a very low number.

Take it a step further. Design software that can accept lots of data for free, and encourage users to adopt said system. Then charge whatever you want because you're in control of something that's vital to them.

<i>The cost of building software pales in comparison to the cost of maintaining, enhancing, and supporting it.</i> Totally nailed it.

if you're building a super-simple product, this might be the direction to take it all along. make them pay for your expertise...not your software. if you want to deter competition once the popularity ensues, you'll have to put it out there for free or else the me-too market will try to undercut you.