3rd Party Libraries and their future

OZApps · April 2013

This was just a little piece which is on my mind which I wanted to share for your comments.

When Windows was the dominating OS and Visual Basic, Visual C++ and Visual FoxPro were the three pillars that supported the Microsoft foundation in developer tools, there were ActiveX controls. These were controls that could be added to a project and offer the functionality intended by tweaking the few parameters. These were big, big as in a million dollar industry, a lot of companies made their money only on controls.

Then RealBasic/RealStudio had a similar functionality for their line of product with RealBasic Add-ins/Plug-ins and if you look up, there are a couple of developers that have made several of these and charge from $100-$2000 for the plug-ins (and sometimes on an annual basis)

Then we look at xCode and there are free or commercially available projects that extend some functionality, a lot of GIT hub projects would offer or attempt to extend either the Mac OS or the iOS projects.

Finally comes the frameworks, which could be based on a variety of languages, Lua, Javascript, HTML, etc. Depending on how the architecture of the framework is, there are plug-ins/controls. Closer to home, we have seen Greg's TNT controls, I have a couple (while controls are/were not my primary goal). The source of these libraries are available either in plain text or as compiled bytecode.

However the thing that does bother me and where I want some of your opinions too. While most are gainfully employed in a 9:00 - 5:00 type of office job and spend some time after hours to learn/try out new stuff. This time is generally taken at the expense of the family, children (if you have these). Let's say that you spend about 3 hours everyday on trying to do something and we have a unit of cost called 1 Frup (to cater for all different costs in the world) So in a week you spend 21 Frups worth of time. Greg has spend over a year on his TNT libraries, ironing out bugs, collating feedback, etc, that is approximately 365*3 = 1095 Frup (he also let's say spends only 3 hours at 1 Frup). If that library is offered to any developer for even 10 Frup, it has already saved the developer 1085 Frups to actually work on other stuff. If a car manufacturer would start to make everything how soon do you think they can manufacture a car? The Tyres, the spark plugs, the music system, etc... Every industry takes semi-finished goods to use in their final product. and if this does save the developer time and money why should it not be used?

From a mathematical perspective, if 1 Frup was $1 then you are saving $1085 (given the above assumptions) but if your hour is worth let's say $30, then you are getting a library worth $32,850 for $10/$20 and if it is higher at $100, it is $109,500 worth for $10/20.

This article is not about Greg or his libraries, but about the general fact that if something can save you time and allow you to focus on things that you need to do which way do you think you need to go? If any one read/studied economics, you will see that markets thrive on supply and demand. If there is demand and no supply, there will be a shift to the market that has supply. If there is supply and no demand then the market will wither and die, like the GFC. I am in no way affiliated with Gideros other than being one of the early users as I was also with CoronaSDK. Supporting the SDK, the controls makes the developers feel that their products are being used and will prompt them to write/produce more, before they shut shop forever due to no demand. Even CoronaSDK was to start bytecode add-ins way back in June 2010 (Now I guess it is called Project Gulon) but they did not and the libraries had to be distributed in plain text which was not ideal for a lot of developers.

This has become a rather large piece of text, but I thought it needed to be said, things exist as long as we believe in them, when we stop believing they die out...

plamen · April 2013

I am writing custom multimedia apps for TV industry and i use third party libs a lot. They are invaluable and i am always ready to pay for a lib that saves me time. There is no doubt about this. When you have project of this kind is very easy to include the price of the libs in the budget. Things are a bit different when you do one man or small studio game development and you are pressed between time and the budget you decided to spend and the uncertainty about the project success. For large commercial projects the best solution for me is "try before you buy" model because there are always some technical issues revealed after real tests. For indies i think free to develop and payed on release should be possible one. People need their buck for the time and hard work they spent developing libs. Just my opinion.

john26 · April 2013

I think you can't just work out the number of man hours you save by using a product compared to making it yourself. Consider a newspaper or loaf of bread, these would take me thousands of man hours to make (it I could do it at all!) so by your logic they would be worth thousands of dollars. But I will only pay $1 for them. So its not just the time taken but how essential it is and how many people you can sell it to. With software, either a finished product or library, you hopefully will sell to thousands of people so you can afford to sell it cheap and still make enough money. This is very clear in app stores where apps are $1 or even free.

As for 3rd party libs for Gideros, to be honest its hard to see how much profit can be made. Gideros is fairly niche already and not every user needs, eg, a particle engine. Also, few Gideros devs are making serious money, I'm guessing so there is not much money to go around. If a Gideros library was regularly making the difference between 10 sales and a million it would be worth a lot! But the ROI is not so clear!

I had the impression most of the folk who contribute Gideros libs are doing it for fun and kudos from others rather than expecting big bucks....

zvardin · April 2013

I think as Gideros grows there will be more options to monetize. Right now I think a good model may be "free to try" but you must pay before releasing. I thought the TNT projects looked awesome, but as this is a hobby for me currently (and even at that I get to put very little time into it), I mostly fooled with TNT for example when I saw a question on the forums and so I tried to help.

I do think it may be good for the Gideros team to consider key functions or extreme ease-of-use things like some of the TNT projects to be brought on for full support as it's probably an area Gideros could use for someone newly coming in.

bowerandy · April 2013

In my experience the "pay what you think it's worth" model will always fail. Also the "try until you go to market" model is very risky too. The latter means that the add-on seller is taking all the risk for developments that never even get finished. And, just because someone is doing it for a hobby doesn't mean they won't actually spend money on it. Look at gardening or golf, or even game playing. People spend billions on hobbies. In some ways "hobby-time" is worth more than "professional-time" because you generally have less off it. By using the "try until you go to market" model you are cutting yourself off from all of those well-off hobbyists who would pay for your tools if they had to.

Think of the "long-tail" that people talk about in in-app purchases. You have to give the opportunity to buy to those who might actually want to.

best regards

OZApps · April 2013

My Hobbies have been Lego and Miniature Figurines, I do not see any of the companies providing me the same for free because it is not directly associated to my career. Plus making Lego models is not going to bring in any funds for me, so should I expect them for next to nothing? As @Andy mentioned, I have spend a lot of money on Legos till date, even if it is a hobby.

While Gideros is available for free and TNT libs as a donation-ware, they need funds to keep the ship running too. The Cetins are toiling over Gideros, adding features, etc to make it the ultimate product. While they are passionate about this, they also need to look at finances and income to keep this going, so funding, etc helps keep them going.

Ultimately it is up to you on what you feel the worth of something is in your life. I say so because in the western world, what is $10 or equivalent? It is the cost of a subway foot long here in Australia. Or approximately the cost of two beers at the pub. Dunno about how many cigarettes that it, the cost of packs of gum, cost of two coffees. Now is that really that expensive, have a think about it.

If Kudos would pay the bills, that would be wonderful. Unfortunately it does not. $20 in Australia is a hair cut, while in some other Asian countries you could get about 10-20 haircuts in that. So, for some the costs might be high. Apple products cost the same all over the world, so affordability is not an issue anywhere in the world.

techdojo · April 2013

So your proposal is - all third party add on makers should charge up front and not offer code for free? Actually I agree with this sentiment providing enough examples are provided (or even source code to show how features are implemented) so as to give the purchaser enough information as to make an informed buying decision.

One of the problems with "try before you buy" is that it lowers the cost of the "hobby", even if looking at development purely AS a hobby, software development is probably the cheapest hobby you can find and that cheapness is yet another barrier lowered (as mentioned elsewhere).

I read on a blog today about a man who spent $150,000 creating a full size "batcave" under his house, his wife's only concern was that the mortgage was paid - now THAT's a hobby, who here would be prepared to spend anything like that (even if they had the spare cash and enough spare time).

One of the problems catering for this "hobbyist" industry is that the participants by their very nature like to make everything for themselves and so convincing them to buy something that they think they could make themselves (especially when all the other elements of their hobby are basically free) is very hard.

Just my $0.02

keszegh · April 2013

overall it is interesting to argue that as programming is a hobby for many people, it is okay to pay for it.
especially as the same philosophy is behind the many open-source projects and the main concern of all those people doing it as a hobby that it is free. that's how it separates it from their everyday job that they do not get money for it, thus it must be done for fun. of course i don't think getting both fun and money is harmful, but i assume that actually many people out there would be insistent on separating the two.
so basically with gideros i would say that if you develop some useful library for your project, then it is very cool to share it. but to plan on making a living from gideros-addons seems risky, i wonder how big is the (paying) user base currently, but maybe it is better to have it secret.

john26 · April 2013

@OZApps: "It is the cost of a subway foot long here in Australia"

Imagine you and I are on a desert island and you have the subway foot long and I have a briefcase with $1million. I'll happily hand over the briefcase for the foot long. The value of something is what people are willing to pay for it, that's all. If people will pay $1 for a software library but refuse to pay $10 then the value of the software library is $1. Doesn't matter how much effort was put in or how well it works. Comparing to beer and sandwiches is irrelevant. (you could turn the question around and ask why is a pint of beer worth only 1/2 a software library? Think of the effort needed to make a pint of beer).

Of course people can be manipulated to pay more for things through advertising. Look at the Lynx ads for instance.

OZApps · April 2013

reminds me of http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=R2a8TRSgzZY

OZApps · April 2013

@John26, I agree with you on the Value of something. My point was not about the value, not about what the client/buyer perceives but about the fact how it could affect a developer.

Following the GFC the Australian govt handed out some money to all tax payers directly into their accounts ,kind of injecting some money into peoples hands to spend, and that then in turn helped the markets improve (it did bring the budget into a deficit, another story). The point being that it is a domino effect, all countries have had issues with the economic markets, here locally, an electronics outlet shut down. Initial reaction from people was oh how does that matter, we would buy our stuff online and for cheaper anyways. In the long run, the staff used to visit a nearby coffee shop and store for lunch and drinks, the staff that were alid off came back as a strain on the economy, the business of the stores went down, traffic of people to that area stopped, it also affected other shops in the neighborhood. A couple of other shops followed suit as they could not bear to keep their shop running with reduced traffics.

@keszegh, I agree with you that at this point of time, no one can make a living out of Gideros Add-ons alone. However in its current state, Gideros is capable of making an app like the Lost City, which incidentally made millions using the BeerSDK.

At the end of the day it is to what you feel right and what you don't and @John26 you are right in the fact that it does not matter how much time and effort goes into something, I mean one would happily pay BIG money for a BMW, Ferrari or a Porsche (if they can afford it) but would not necessarily buy a MontBlanc or an Aurora for over $800 because at the end of the day it is just a pen and a $2 instrument would also work as good to do the job.

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