Re: BDI install disk for EMC

| I don't understand why you are mentioning risks of 1 in 5 if you
| wouldn't consider it, and aren't considering any future returns.

I was just setting the stage for future products. Risk merits reward.

| I think it's a bit pricey, and I don't like the idea of paying a
| developer full price to develop something that he can then sell to
| others for profit.

If 10 million people pay $100 for a word processor, they all overpaid.
It doesn't cost a billion dollars to write a word processor.

| If the group pays the full pull to develope it, then it should be a
| public domain product.

That's how I feel about it. Although customers may want me to wait
some timeperiod (six months?) for most users to buy in before
releasing it PD to non-purchasers. Otherwise everybody waits for
somebody else to spend their money first.

| Of course there's the risk that it won't work, or will go over
| alotted time a few hundred percent, or that support costs will eat
| all the profit in future sales.

Nearly all of my work is bid fixed-price. I'm used to this risk.

| Those are big risks for the first 20 folks, and for the developer.

Yes. I'm looking for some structural way to reduce those risks,
because there's a lot of software I want to see available for Linux.

| But either you see a future with this thing or you don't. See a
| future, take a risk and gain potential future rewards. See only the
| immediate market, tehn why do it at all, even if you get your rate?

Because I get my rate. Much of the work I do is short jobs; the only
unusual part for me here would be having lots of customers. And I do
see a future, but I don't want to bet on it. If I get my rate, I
don't have to bet on it.

| Processing 1500 orders is a lot cheaper per order than processing 20!

Only if the processing is automated. The money to build that
automation must ultimately come from customers. On the other hand,
maybe this is a solved problem. Do you know of a cd order fulfillment
service that's down in the $3/piece range? Other than Cheapbytes?

| At $20 each plus $5 s/h you would net around $20,000. Not a bad
| return on 20 hours of work already billed at $125 and hour!

My business goal is to make no less and *no more* than an expected
return of $125/hour. If I can solidly identify 1500 customers, the
price will drop from $20 to $2000/1500 plus the cost of duplication
and shipping. Perhaps $1.50 development + $0.50 cd duplication + $2
order processing = $4? This limitation on my upside is not
volunteerism or liberal guilt, it's a sales point. I think you'll be
more willing to buy from me if you know my products will be a
consistent value, even if the market takes off.

If future products are small enough to conveniently download, and
fulfillment is automated, and the market grows a lot, then I can very
readily see software prices in the sub-dollar range -- which I'll
still be making $250K/year to write. One of my non-monetary goals is
to pioneer the business models that allow other Linux developers to
write stuff that I want to buy. Another is to shock people into
wondering how the $99 or $149 price at the computer superstore is set.

Also, I wasn't thinking about duplicating CDs and shipping them when I
quoted $20. My bad, I'm used to delivering by email. I'll still
honor the price, because that's the only way you'll know I'm not doing
a bait-and-switch tactic.


A member of the League for Programming Freedom (LPF) http://lpf.ai.mit.edu
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Brian Bartholomew - bb@... - www.wv.com - Working Version, Cambridge, MA