I'd like to hear comments from people that have developed or are developing
their own software and are selling it. Similar to people mentioned here
http://www.economist.com/printeditio...ory_ID=2476892.
I'm interested in how you got started and at what point you figured your
idea (software) was feasible.

Thanks,
Brett

Brett wrote:

There are those who would propose that giving away free software is better
than selling it.

You earn "clout points".

http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?MiniRubyWiki

--
Phlip
http://industrialxp.org/community/bi...UserInterfaces

"Phlip" <phlip_cpp@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3ui3d.1965$AR6.1195@newssvr16.news.prodigy.co m...
Do landlords accept "clout points" in lieu of rent?

Jonathan Hendry wrote:

/ ...

Does Linux represent a threat to Microsoft? If it is free, how can this be
so?

--
Paul Lutus
http://www.arachnoid.com

Jonathan Hendry wrote:

Electronic ones do, such as RubyForge.

Life is not a zero-sum game, holmes.

--
Phlip
http://industrialxp.org/community/bi...UserInterfaces

"Phlip" <phlip_cpp@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:Gvk3d.4886$Qv5.2273@newssvr33.news.prodigy.co m...
Can I sleep there? Nope.

Jonathan Hendry wrote:

Why the anxiety over money?

--
Phlip
http://industrialxp.org/community/bi...UserInterfaces

Paul Lutus wrote:
If someone makes the decision to go with a free OS or piece of software
instead of the equivalent pay-product then Microsoft or whoever loses a
sale. If everyone went with free software, Microsoft and the other
software houses would lose their revenue and become inviable. The
threat is fairly clear, I think.

What isn't so clear is whether free software will actually become that
ubiquitous. There's plenty of free stuff out there, but much of it is
fairly low-quality. Some of it is bloody great, but there's still an
air of amaturism to the whole thing.

I've written professional-quality stuff for money, and I've written
cheap-n-nasty stuff for my own use. I've even written a couple of
freebies with fairly simple interfaces and so on... not works of art by
any means, but I like to think they're at least average :>

--
Corey Murtagh
The Electric Monk
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur!"

Corey Murtagh wrote:
Don't mistake 'amaturism' for 'managerless', no matter which manager
says otherwise .

Seriously though, many high-profile free software projects have had
excellent track-records, exceeding the performance of many 'professionals'.

--
Ben M.

Lots of people do this. Most probably don't depend on it for their livelihood
though. I do this myself also. Nothing too big. I sell enough to keep my
online services going, to upgrade my software when needed and to have a little
spending money each month. This is all extra work that is addition to my day
job.

At what point do you figure your ideas are feasible? That's a tough one. For
the little guy like me, I figure it's not that much different than any small
business. You have to be confident in your ideas and abilities and then you
just give it a shot. Most small businesses fail ( quickly even ). However,
the total number that actually survive and continue to grow is still amazing.
Everyone has to start somewhere. If you don't start, you'll never know.

Dan :-)

Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message news:<L%l3d.4283$JQ4.367174@news.xtra.co.nz>...
this is a good point. it gets made now and then, if made in the
company of, shall we say, more enthusiastic linux advocates they often
respond angrily with put downs regarding 'eye candy' and the type of
person who rates that quality highly.

in short they argue that the professional look and feel is of low
importance, or even that it's 'bad', like the slickly presented bad
guy in the typical crime movie! he looks so slick 'cos he's the bad
guy, the company chairman looks slick, he's the bad guy too!

anyway, that's minority view but one i notice often enough. the
distrust of 'slick' look and feel in general applied to softwaer.

it's also probably because presenting and designing the interface for
a piece of software is aided in companies by people who excel at
presenting and designing interfaces, and they do that for money. you
don't get so many of them on OSS projects, probably a rent paying
thing.

the biggest example is in games - as a rule professional games are
more fun and more presentable than OSS counterparts - simple because
pro games have play testers and profesessional media dsigners, OSS
games have quirkyness (hit and miss, can be fun can be dull) and
re-used or amatuer media (which can be nice too).

the underlying code might be about equal on average, at least in the
notable OSS projects. Sometimes it'll be better - more peer review
and little regard to deadlines are good reasons.

the best OSS apps are often those little tools you can string together
with pipes in some groovy bash script that does all kinds of admin
tasks. I'm frequently impressed by what a bunch of little textmode
apps and a bit of 'glue script' can do.

what i've written for my own use i'd never let out into the wild, not
because i think i should be paid for them, but because i know that
with the luxury of not having to think of users other than me i can
forego a fair amount of UI planning and robustness. they're good for
me, but out there they'd rightly be considered 'crap' and could
probably be done with the help of some well known textmode apps and
some script anyway. many of those little OSS projects that aren't so
good are ones that have escaped self-filtering.

In article <20040919180831.21374.00000699@mb-m15.aol.com>, dantex1@aol.com
says...
This link has an interesting article that seems appropriate to this discussion.

http://www.economist.com/printeditio...ory_ID=2476892


The entrepreneur problem is deciding to do it, almost before you are SURE
that your ideas are feasible. To really make it go, I don't see how it
can be a part time effort and be as successful. The other aspect is, if
it's your only potential for income, you're probably going to put more
effort into it than if it is a sideline.

Exactly.

Actually, they are amazingly bad in my opinion. Statistics (yeah, I know)
seem to indicate that 90% fail in the first year, and something like 75% of
those that survive fail the second year. That's not pretty. Service startups
do better than development ones, because many service businesses start
earning some form of revenue almost immediately, where the development
businesses sometimes take 6 months to 2 years to have a product ready to sell,
depending upon complexity. That whole time you are burning into the red.

The key thing is to pick a figure up front, which is exactly how much you are
willing to LOSE, before you pull the plug. Actually keep books on your
expenses (it's amazing how many people don't do this, I think they don't want
to know how bad it is), and when you hit that predetermined number, pull the
plug and find something else, don't chase the dream into bankruptcy. Find a
different one instead.

A couple of good books for people interested in this sort of thing from a
technical business slant are (not sure I have the exact title for the first
one, I don't have them in front of me right now):

Engineering Your High-Tech Startup (get the 2nd edition, it's much improved)
Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore

--
Randy Howard (To reply, remove FOOBAR)

gswork@mailcity.com (gswork) wrote in message news:<81f33a98.0409200038.7a9801a7@posting.google. com>...
That's true of commercial software as well. I would say most software
(both open-source and closed-source) is fairly low-quality.

You'll find closed-minded advocates of just about any system. OTOH,
you can look at projects like Keith Packard's xcomposite extension
(which brings translucent windows, drop shadows, and other features to
X), freetype autohinting (which improves font rendering dramatically),
freedesktop.org (which standardizes a lot of high-level user interface
concepts), etc and see that there is a focus on eye-candy and
user-interface improvements within parts of the open-source community.

I'm not really an avid gamer so I can't comment too intelligently on
this point.

On the other hand, many of the most successful are ones that escaped
self-filtering. Linux started off as Linus' attempt to write a
terminal emulator (minicom kind of thing), then was released as
"something
fun to look at but it's not the Hurd--it'll never be a real OS".
Sometimes
releasing it and getting other people to comment or contribute really
spurs something small to become something big.

"Brett" <no@spam.net> wrote in message news:<414d137d$0$2651$61fed72c@news.rcn.com>...
I suggest you read the essays of Paul Graham, one of the founders of
Viaweb (acquired by Yahoo) at http://www.paulgraham.com , and
especially some chapters of his recent book "Hackers & Painters" (site
http://www.paulgraham.com/hackpaint.html ):

Chapter 5: The Other Road Ahead
Web-based software offers the biggest opportunity since the arrival of
the microcomputer.

Chapter 6: How to Make Wealth
The best way to get rich is to create wealth. And startups are the
best way to do that.

Also read Joel Spolsky, creator of FogBUGZ, at
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ .

If you do discover the secret of making a fortune from software,
please write back .

In article <96c2e938.0409200805.7937c09@posting.google.com> ,
sjdevnull@yahoo.com says...
True. There is a lot of "commercial" software that is just plain
crap, *even if* you leave MS products off the list.

This is what bugs me most about open source efforts of late. "Eye-candy"
is an attempt to make Linux and X into Windows XP. Ugh. Take something
very clean, resource lean and stable, and inject it with growth hormones
and bloatware until it becomes just like the thing it was poised to
replace. Can't imagine a less worthwhile effort than trying to turn
Linux into a desktop for Walmart shoppers. KDE and Gnome crowds are
the worst offenders IMHO.

--
Randy Howard (To reply, remove FOOBAR)

dantex1@aol.com (Dan Tex1) wrote in message news:<20040919180831.21374.00000699@mb-m15.aol.com>...
Fellow Fortranner,
Could you say more about what kind of software you write? Is there a
web site?

The advantage of a software start-up is that there is little initial
monetary investment. Mostly you need time, energy, enthusiasm, ideas,
and domain and programming knowledge. I've written Fortran 95 programs
to analyze financial data and have made about $20 K from trading the
results. I could have used almost any language, but one of the joys of
programming on your own is that you don't need to justify your methods
to anyone, just get results. Since the amount of financial data out
there is vast and getting vaster (as intraday 'tick' data becomes more
available), it's good to use a fast language that scales well.

In article <3064b51d.0409200904.3d84fabb@posting.google.com>, beliavsky@aol.com
says...
This is a myth, particularly if you intend to be successful. Software
startups require substantial investment to have a decent forecast of
sales down the road. Think legal expenses, marketing and sales
collateral expenses, website development, technical support, salaries,
insurance, taxes, payroll and accounting overhead, etc. not to mention
the lack of income while doing the initial product development.

It sounds like you are describing a part-time programming project, not
a software start-up.

--
Randy Howard (To reply, remove FOOBAR)

Randy Howard <randyhoward@FOOverizonBAR.net> wrote in message news:<MPG.1bb8c55b6b9d1c28989a6e@news.verizon.net> ...
The xcomposite stuff actually improves performance in many cases, and
definitely improves perceived performance dramatically on my desktop.

Keith is one of the guys behind tinyx (the X server in less than 2 MB
of RAM); he's worked closely with Jim Gettys for years and is very
aware of resource issues.

From: beliavsky@aol.com

Yeah... we're definitely a minority in this group!!! ;-)

Hi beliavsky,

I'm a Civil Engineer. So... most of what I write has to do with engineering
of one form or another. One of the programs I sell is called DTBeam. It is
simply a beam analysis program that can be used to analyze continuous beams.
It's Windows based and very simple to use ( or should be ) for anyone with an
engineering background. And despite the ease of use, I like to boast that it
can analyze beam structures that generally require a high end ( read, much more
expensive ) structural analysis program while being much more numerically
stable than other programs on the market. Its easy enough for student
engineers to understand and use, yet still powerful enough for working
engineers. It does quad-precision math in it's calculations. It's Fortran 95
under the hood with a GUI overcoat created using Winteracter. The Fortran
engine can analyze much more complicated structures than just beams... but...
I wanted to test the waters initially with something that didn't require a full
blown GUI of a complex structural analysis package ( most commercial packages
like this cost $5000+, are difficult to use correctly and have lots of bugs to
boot ). Besides, I needed something fairly simple to cut my GUI programming
teeth on. I also wanted to see if there was much of a market for less-general
but very user-friendly analysis packages. Currently, it's the only program I
sell using the internet. I already have an updated version of the program and
a couple other commercial quality programs, but.. I don't at this point
openly advertise them.

If you want to check out the demo version ( which does everything except save
or print data ), you can find it at www.dtware.com.

Right now, I'm working on a full scale, commercial quality bridge analysis &
design program. I've set my sights on features and capabilities that ( to the
best of my knowledge as a bridge engineer ) don't exist in any other software
packages. One of the basic features I'm working on is shear speed of
execution. The only available "remotely" similar packages available are very
slow, often requiring 30 minutes or more to analyze a mid-sized bridge. I'm
quite confident that I can do the same analysis in much less time ( between 30
seconds and 2 minutes ). Considering that bridge designers often have to
repeat their analysis many, many times throughout the day... the speed factor
is major in and of itself. I'm hoping to have a first version ready within
about a year. If I succeed at this... I may actually get more than just a
little "spending cash" as a reward. If I dump the wife and kids at the
inlaws... maybe I'll actually make my self-imposed deadlines ( right now, I
should be happy to just finish within any time frame ) ??? LOL. We'll see
how it goes.

So... you writing any new financial programs with intent to sell?

Dan :-)

"Dan Tex1" <dantex1@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040922013730.23542.00000861@mb-m18.aol.com...
Dan,

Very interesting. Winteracter seems expensive. I'd like to create a
financial program written in Java to allow a larger audience (Windows, Unix,
Apple, etc). Java would provide the business logic and front end.
Something similar to the Helix database would store data. Java would
provide what I believe is very good accuracy after say 1 million financial
transactions. In other words, there won't be a $100 difference that some
one can take advantage of. This works because the programs I have in mind
only allow two decimal places of accuracy. However, I don't like the
jerkiness of Java apps and I still debate using Java. If not Java, then
Windows only. This would use VB with an Access backend.

The problem is - does some one actually need such a program? I can do
searches on the Net and see if anything like it is out there. Then I say,
its an open market. The next step is who needs it? I might say this
program will be very useful and I find it useful. However, I might be the
only person who feels that way. That's where I am now.

I think you have found a nice niche. The people writing financial software
packages are many. They seem to cover so many areas of analysis that it
leaves little open for feasible development. There are many areas but
finding them is the key. What are your comments here?

Brett