![]() Of course people would download cars if we could clone them for free with the click of a button. ![]() "Don't steal", "you wouldn't download a car" those messages don't exactly make sense when it comes to digital products. You think "this movie/this video game/this software can be copied over a thousand times in a matter of seconds, so downloading a pirated copy isn't going to hurt anyone", but you don't think "by buying this copy, I'm going to support its creators who can then go on to improve it or make something else that I'll like." And that's probably where the anti-piracy messages go wrong. With traditional marketing, there's a disconnect between the product and the work. That you're enabling them to continue making what you like. So now it's an issue of branding and advertising, I think.Īnd maybe, the reason why SirCmpwn, Krita, Blender (well, that one's a bit of a special case), and the several Youtube channels that are doing fine on Patreon donations is that they emphasize that you're paying them for the work they're doing and not for the product. Donations or subscriptions would work a bit better since users are now paying you to work on improving the software and producing updates (which a simple fork can't do) rather than for the work you've already done (which can be easily duplicated, open source or not), but that won't help if people think that the fork is the official product. So it seems like the creator is less concerned about users not paying him and more about someone making a fork that users can get for free (or perhaps even worse: said forker selling the fork.) And in that case, there's unfortunately not much you can do. Perhaps Aseprite is too niche in comparison to Krita, but then you can still get Aseprite for free since the code is free on Github, you just have to compile it yourself. It certainly used to be true, but I'm not sure if that's still the case. I'm not sure if it's the community or the fact that he works on a bunch of different projects, but given that Krita was able to raise $38,579, we should perhaps re-evaluate the preconception that the open source community (in this case the artist community inside the open source community) is opposed to paying. That's not really that much, but it is surprisingly much for a single open source dev. However, the sway creator (SirCmpwn) is doing surprisingly well having received $5,480 for his sway crowdfund and getting over $500 per month in donations if my math is correct.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |