From: Mike Masnick (mike@techdirt.com)
Date: Mon Aug 28 2000 - 10:30:01 PDT
At 10:44 PM 8/27/00 -0700, Dave Winer wrote:
>I opened a discussion group on outliners.com (InfoDepot is an outliner) and
>so much whining you see there! These people are reallllly cheap, and at the
>same time they bitch about the companies going under. I haven't told these
>people that Radio UserLand is an outliner, because all they would do is
>present me with infinitely detailed feature lists and then tell me if I do
>all that, they'll pay me $19.95 and want free updates for life. Pardon me,
>but what a bunch of cheapskates. Who would want to make software for them.
>
>Dude, the Cluetrain goes both ways. You want the software. Pay for it.
See, arguments like these confuse me. Maybe I'm crazy, but I actually do
believe in basic economics, and can see how most markets work. Here's a
situation where the market has told you how much the software is worth, and
you tell people they're being cheap. They're not. They're being efficient
and telling you how much they're willing to pay for the software.
If you don't want to produce the software for the price they're willing to
pay, then fine, don't produce the software. But, to call your users cheap
for telling you they won't pay more than they think it's worth seems a bit
counter productive. If making money is that important to you then figure
out a way to create offerings (products or services) that your users will
pay the required price for. Blaming the customers for being cheap suggests
that you personally believe you can set a more efficient price than the
market. If that's true, I'm impressed, but I have a hard time believing it
at this point...
-Mike
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